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School uniforms: Get'em on, I've heard myself thinking, especially those mornings when many in my public high school class of 42 seniors are garbed in studied grunge--baggy pants, T-shirts and baseball hats backward. Those are the well-dressed.
Then the fantasy behind the idea that kids in uniforms would be more teachable, more disciplined and less violent fades.
Why? Because my students' arguments against uniforms are more reasoned and persuasive than President Clinton's in favor. He believes that gunplay among kids will decline if uniforms are required. "Discipline and learning" will come back to schools.
Clinton was impressed by the uniformed boys and girls in a Long Beach, Calif., school he visited recently. He beheld look-alike kids and was told by think-alike administrators that since a dress code was imposed two years ago, suspensions, fights, robberies and the rest are down. The Department of Education has bought in by sending manuals to the nation's 16,000 school districts on how to suit up the kids.
I haven't noticed a...