As a result, a culture of dress code policies and school uniforms have been instituted to counteract the peer competition, ostracism, tensions, and even theft that distract children from their schoolwork. .

             Review of Literature.

             Holloman, Lillian O. "Dress-Related Behavioral Problems in the Public School Setting: Prevention and Policy - A Holistic Approach." The Journal of Negro Education. Vol. 65, No.2, Educating Children in a Violence Society, Part I. (Summer, 1996.) p. 267-281.

             In her review of the uniform policy of urban schools, Holloman reflects on the current violence that infects public schools where there is no system in place to counteract the social problems set in motion by the capitalist-spawned problems of material competition. She addresses not only the problems these play in all schools, particularly in terms of stress, the development of male-female relations, and socialization of American school children, but carries her discussion further to the way these issues play out in lower and working class ethnic groups. She says that while students at all schools must face the issues of material competition represented by clothing in the classroom, it is a situation far more exaggerated for the urban black demographic.

             She includes the work of other sociologists and academic thinkers in her analysis of the school uniform option for the public schools most frequently attended by blacks. In this environment, she discusses the frighteningly frequent occurrence of violence as a result of material competition between students, with armed assailants stealing one student's jacket in the middle of a school day in Washington, D.C. While national attempts at school security have limited the level of danger in the schools, it has not limited the violence nor the lasting psychological effects it has on impressionable teens. Because the emotional implications of the violence that frequently ensues as a direct result of the clothes student wear to school in urban black environments, Holloman fully encourages the use of school uniforms, even if they detract from a student's ability to cultivate a unique sense of self through physical expression.