N.Y. May Push For School Uniforms

Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew suggested Friday that he might require uniforms for students in the primary grades, saying that too many children in New York City are basing their self-image on the clothes they wear to school.

If students in kindergarten through third grade wore uniforms, he told several hundred alumni of Teacher’s College at Columbia University, their self-image would be based on academic achievement instead of on wardrobe.

“These young people have literally gotten the notion of human worth confused with the notion of material worth,” he said. “It’s time for us to clear this notion up that you are not what the label says in the back of your shirt.”

Although Crew has supported the idea of school uniforms since he arrived in New York in 1995, he has said he would not pursue a mandatory uniform policy. Instead, he has urged schools to develop voluntary uniform policies. Several have done so, with dress codes that range from formal to casual.

National interest in school uniforms has been growing since last winter, when President Clinton said he supported mandatory uniform policies.

Other school systems around the country have required uniforms as a means of discouraging gangs. But Crew said Friday that if he adopted a uniform policy, its main purpose would be to improve students’ self-esteem.

“We’ve got to level the playing field about their emotional understanding of their human value,” he said. “That, in my mind, is the basis for talking about uniforms.”