Do School Uniforms stifle Freedom of Expression?

Requiring school children to wear uniforms is a reasonable way to improving learning skills, discipline, and focus.

"Uniforms instill discipline, help students focus on their studies and eliminate pressure on parents to outfit their kids."

Objections to school uniforms are unfounded and frivolous and so are lawsuits filed against school districts on the grounds that the students' right to choose clothing is a first amendment freedom.

He used this button as his own form of protest.

While Mike Kelly made good points in his article, he failed to realize numerous things...

*While requiring school children to wear uniforms may help influence them to improve their learning skills, discipline and focus, it can also take a way from a child's self expression. While clothes may not define a person, they definitely help express a persons' individuality and creativity.

*For some people clothes help express a persons' feelings, and their personal style. It's a way to to communicate yourself to the world.

And in the case of Mike DePinto, wearing a Hitler youth button may have not been appropriate and highly provocative, but it was used to provoke the attention of the school district that requiring uniforms is unfair towards the students.

Do School Uniforms stifle Freedom of Expression?

By Maia Steese

DePinto v. Bayonne Bd. of Ed.

"School Uniforms Do not Stifle Freedom of Expression"

by Mike Kelly

My Viewpoint

This case is about Mike DePinto, a student of the Bayonne public school system in NJ, who filed a lawsuit against his school in 2006, so that he could have the right to wear what he wanted.

The reason he filed this lawsuit was not because of the uniform but what he wanted to wear on the uniform.

DePinto added a button with a photo of Hitler Youth members in their Nazi uniforms~ He used this button as form of protest.

The Bayonne school system told DePinto and another student that if they didn't get rid of the buttons, that they would be suspended.

Shortly after that, DePinto filed his lawsuit along with another protesting student saying that his freedom of expression was stifled because he had to remove the button.

Was DePinto's case valid or just a waste of the judges' time?

Mike Kelly definitely believed it's a waste!

* He believed that cases like these waste judges' time

*He believed that the idea of using the button that is associated with the Nazi Party leader Hitler as a vehicle to promote freedom of expression is as he says is "Silly.."

In September 2007, the lawsuit was a

WIN! (Sorry, Mr. Kelly...)