In a time when the academic status quo is coming into question throughout America, educators, civic leaders, parents, students, and legislatures are left cycling through a myriad of standardized options to ameliorate the system. From gender-segregated classrooms to the implementation of national standard tests grading both students and teachers, suggestions abound on ways the American public might make its school system a better functioning environment for the socialization and academic study of its children. Among many other suggested and sometimes implemented deviations is the option of school uniforms as a mandatory part of American schools. Already a part of many school environments, usually private, parochial, or urban, uniforms come with a heady line of debate to the forefront of systematic discussion. Those in support of uniforms in both primary and secondary school environments stand in staunch opposition to those who suggest it might not only detract from the creative development of a child but may ultimately be a waste of time, money, and effort. .

             Many critics of the school uniform movement proclaim that uniforms cannot "fix" anything about the failings of the American school system, and that it is, in fact, the morals, attitudes, and determination of those in the academic environments that create good schools, not uniforms. Yet, the detractors seem to fall short of reasons to not use school uniforms; those schools that have implemented them as a regimented part of school life support the uniforms as a mechanism to focus children on their work and away from each other, equalize the exceedingly hierarchical playing field of consumer popularity supported by the capitalist marketplace, and undermine the social tensions prevalent in the teenage years that account for so much wasted time, effort, and emotion during the classroom day.

             Contemporary American culture supports the performance and display of class and status as an important component of society; American schoolchildren replicate these trends, particularly those associated with familiar celebrities and elite brands, overpopulate the classic schoolyard.