Illustration: Xia Qing/GT

 

I was stunned to read a recent news article describing the furore around the sales of school uniforms in Guangdong and Hainan provinces.

A school in Dongguan is apparently selling its 18-piece uniform for an extortionate 2,180 yuan ($351.2), while in Hainan, the president, directors and teachers of a school receive bonuses for each uniform sold (6, 3 and 1 yuan respectively).

The first question that springs to mind here is: is it ethical for schools and their employees to profit from selling expensive items of clothing to their pupils, particularly when those students and their parents have no choice but to buy the uniforms?

The obvious answer to this question would seem to be: no, it is not. There is already enough profiteering in education worldwide (witness sky-high tuition fees in the US and the UK, for instance) without institutions trying to generate extra cash by selling unjustifiably over-priced clothes to their own students.

There are also questions about the necessity of the uniforms in general. Why do children have to wear uniforms at all when they are at school, let alone pay outrageous sums for the privilege? And if uniforms are necessary, what should they look like?

In my own country, the UK, some schools (generally private ones) require pupils to wear uniforms, while others (generally state schools) do not. My private secondary school made me wear a black suit and tie with a white shirt, which is why I now detest wearing suits.

In the UK, the reasons given to justify the wearing of uniforms are various. They are supposed to instil discipline and industriousness in students and a sense of pride in the school. They are meant to make sure that all students look the same so that there are no distinctions made between them.

I guess in China, the last reason is the main one for wearing uniforms. Chinese school uniforms are baggy, unflattering tracksuits that make all the pupils look as if they are just heading out to the sports field. Certainly that's what the expensive Dongguan uniform looked like in the photo accompanying the news article. This makes it all the harder to understand why such a relatively unimpressive-looking uniform should cost so much money, let alone be required by the school.

I understand that the value of having all kids wearing the same thing, so as to lessen discrimination between them based on family wealth and privilege. This in a sense justifies the use of the type of uniforms common in China, so that no child can come in dressed better than their peers, creating problems such as peer envy and preferential treatment from teachers.

However, it now seems that school uniforms have become just another source of corruption. And if this is the case, it becomes hard to justify schools designing and selling their own clothing.

Perhaps the only answer is to unify all the uniforms. If the government decided that all school uniforms should be produced by the same manufacturer in the same design, with just small differences like badges to distinguish the pupils of one school from another, then the problem of uniform graft would be solved.

At the same time, if the government were to design a unified uniform for the whole country, perhaps it could do a better job than the designers of the Dongguan one. Okay, it's only a school uniform, but a little more sense of style certainly wouldn't go amiss.

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.