Comment by Hermitian909 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hermitian909 | Hacker News Reader

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So the following is a true story:

In a district in the bay area, one of the elementary schools was given a certain special designation that allowed them to accept kids from the district by lottery. The condition of entering the lottery was as follows:

1. A parent must take a 2 hour tour of the school, tour times were between 9 am and 3 pm.

2. A parent must sign an agreement to volunteer at the school at least 3 days a year.

Number 2 was unenforceable, and many flouted it, but poorer (mostly non-white) families who actually managed to schedule the tour generally backed out upon hearing that requirement.

Diversity plummeted, the school went from 60% white to 90% white in 5 years (though the district as a whole became less white).

This lasted over a decade, and only recently was the system overturned by popular vote. Every incoming class since then has been significantly more diverse.

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The point is that those who can afford to live in the bay area and not work every weekday are the well to do. As a software engineer I can usually just tell my boss "I've got an important personal matter" and get the day off. People I know who work as janitors or barista's often get told "well, if you don't show up you're fired" for the same request.

Sounds like an elementary school in my Bay Area district. Lottery admissions. Parents are required to volunteer ~10 hours per year and pay for uniforms. The school is 90% Asian even though Asians make up 1/3 of the city.

Another one that's more art focused and requires 4 hours of volunteering PER WEEK is majority white even though whites are 1/3 of the population.

> and pay for uniforms

It's bad enough that the school enforces a school uniform in the first place, let alone has the nerve to make parents pay for it.

There are lots of benefits to uniforms. In NSW (Australia) public schools have uniforms, and parents pay for them. Low income families are generally able to obtain financial assistance through some grant, or fundraising programme; sometimes through donated uniforms.

Uniforms actually help with socio-economic gaps: everybody dresses the same, regardless of whether you can afford more expensive status symbol clothing or not.

I'm not super knowledgeable on the topic of uniforms, but don't other things just become the status symbol? Phones, laptops, cars, purses? A lot of these things already have premium brands that most people on this site could name trivially.

Other things do, but it still does protect to a certain an extent.

It is much harder to tell the poor child from the one who may not have eaten today and might not tomorrow.

It is harder to tell the well-off child from the super-rich child, because the status symbols are in reach of both.

It's not a perfect fix, but it reduces the gaps.

I mean yes, but you don't even need to make that leap. Just look at outwear, shoes, and clothing accessories.

fwiw, I'm also a big fan of uniforms and the uniform separates can typically be purchased at places like Old Navy or Target for <$10/item (compared to my kid's soccer uniforms, which run $300-400 for the kit and have to be refreshed every year).

School uniforms is somewhere where Facebook has facilitated some social good.

Various community facebook groups and "buy nothing" facebook groups facilitate giving away items you no longer require. That the items be given for free, no strings attached is often a firm requirement.

School uniforms are a common item to be given away because children frequently outgrow uniforms long before they wear out.

Its very helpful for families with young children as they outgrow clothes incredibly fast and also don't yet have any resistance to the idea of second hand clothing.

I'm more thinking from the kid's point of view. These are the formative years when a human being develops one's own identity and sense of self-worth. Mandatory school uniforms encourage, well, uniformity instead of diversity (on a psychological level), and I doubt that's healthy for a developing mind.

In particular, justifying school uniforms because "you can't tell the rich kids from the poor kids" deprives both poor kids from learning how to positively interact with rich kids and rich kids from learning how to positively interact with poor kids. Being able to interact with people of wide socioeconomic diversity is a valuable skill.

I've also heard a lot of anecdotal evidence about school uniforms being problematic in inner cities because they'll inadvertently align with gang colors, meaning that students walking to/from school would have to either bring a change of clothes (and change at school twice a day) or risk being targeted for gang violence.

I'll have a side of facts to go with your speculations, please.

I don't necessarily disagree, but you can really form any number of arguments and reach wildly different conclusions (try it, for a few you don't like). Without evidence (not anecdotes) to prefer one over the other, you're really biasing yourself to how you feel the world ought to work.

Uniforms aren't necessarily bad, especially if the classes are diverse income-wise.

>Number 2 was unenforceable, and many flouted it, but poorer (mostly non-white) families who actually managed to schedule the tour generally backed out upon hearing that requirement.

I'd like to see how that requirement would work on the rural poor. I have a suspicion they are far more acquainted with the difference between making a rule and enforcing a rule.

Surely even the poor people have 3 days off per year. They're just unwilling to give it up. If the school can decide on the 3 dates I can understand but otherwise it's just laziness.

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