I remember numerous times at school asking why we had to wear a uniform. The answer was always the same, so that ‘children who couldn’t afford fashionable clothes, wouldn’t get bullied’, and so everybody would be relatively the same.
While I’m pretty against school uniforms in general, I agree with that statement, and although they take away a sense of individuality from school kids, if they prevent bullying, then great.
However. This. This really takes the biscuit. No actually, this takes all the biscuits. This is the McVities factory.
A school in a fashionable district of Tokyo has left parents absolutely raging after they announced they would be swapping their compulsory school uniforms from an average cheap one to one made by Giorgio Armani, reports The Huffington Post.
Why @Armani? Parents question pricey $730 uniforms at #PublicSchool.#education
https://t.co/Z4mdHRJZ6R pic.twitter.com/s5aWvDbJZc— BrettMDecker ?? (@BrettMDecker) February 9, 2018
As if that wasn’t irritating enough, the uniforms also cost a monstrous 80,000 yen (roughly £525) – which works out well over three times the price as last terms uniform. Yikes.
One parent said to The Huffington Post:
I was surprised. Why has a luxury brand design been chosen as the uniform of a public elementary school?
Another added:
Why Armani?
Exactly.
The school, Taimei Elementary, located in the upscale Ginza district, claim that the new uniform, which comes with a hat and a bag too, reflects the school’s status as a ‘landmark’, whatever that means.
To make matters even more bizarre, Taimei isn’t a private school. The students there aren’t paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to go there every year, it’s just a standard run of the mill state school.
Although there has been understandable uproar, the uniforms are still set to go ahead, with them being introduced come April.