Date: Saturday, May 30th 2015

Participants (from 11 countries):

Team A: (Yes) Angie, Himalay, Laiba, Mohammad, Sunita

Team B: (No) Rick, Kelly, Lala

Team C: (On the fence) Alamah, Sky, Leandro, Alina, Ami

Host: Rick

Moderator: Marwa

Team A summary:

Wearing uniforms may give students a sense of belonging.
Wearing uniforms will make a student think about School reputation and provokes awareness when they are in public wearing them.
Some parents cannot afford to spend money on many clothes for their children, therefore, uniforms are an effective solution.
Same clothing (uniform) help to solve the issue of social status discrimination.
Wearing uniforms prevents students to think about what to wear the next day or how to look better which causes students not to concentrate on their studies.
Uniforms can make parents save money on children’s clothing.
Wearing uniforms prepare students mentally and by custom for their adult working lives to avoid thinking in showing off fashion wise.
Some schools have a better education system and a student from that school may feel proud to belong to a very good level school.

Team B summary:

School uniforms represent an additional cost.
Some schools uniforms are as expensive as high brand clothing and many parents cannot afford to buy them.
Most students relate uniforms with status or difference of some kind and provoke discrimination against students from other schools.
As long as the student performs well at school, whatever they wear is not important.
It is ok to be part of the School but there is nothing wrong to express yourself as an individual.
Wearing uniforms suppress students’ self-expression because it tells students what they should wear (Skirt for girls, Pants and tie for boys) and reinforce gender bias in schools environment.
With some limitations, students shall be allowed to wear what they want as long as they don’t intentionally provoke retaliations from others.
Somehow, enforcing students to wear uniforms keep them from being creative and diminishes the ability to think for themselves, especially at very young age.
Wearing neither uniform will not necessarily make the student a good or a bad student.
Sometimes, small things as choosing what to wear matters.
As for promoting respect through the uniform, students should respect other students regardless of what they wear.

Team C summary:

To break the tie, the moderator was requested to give her vote:

Marwa: voted for team B

Therefore, team B won. Thanks everyone for participating!

There was a bonus chat after the debate and the topic was:

Below are the links to listen to our chat:

For people who did not join the live discussion, feel free to contribute the ideas in the comment blanks below.