*** schoolwear school uniform -- chronology country trends





Schoolwear Chronology: Country Trends




English school uniform

Figure 1.--England was particularly important in establishing school uniform conventions. Uniforms styles often resist trendy fashions and lag behind such chsnges. This English school in the 1980s had a casual uniform if yellow short sleeve shirts, grey corduroy shorts and knee socks, The vlue cadet jumpers were optional.

Chronological changes in schoolwear have generally involved fashions trends that spanned national borders. Children's clothing until after World war II, however, was often quite varied from country to country. One could often identify where a photograph was taken by the fashions the children were wearing. Sometimes this mean individual countries, but if not countries at least regions. After the war these difference gradually began fade, but are not entirely gone. As many countries, especially European cointries, did not have school uniforms, this generally ment regular clothing fasions. Of course countries with school unifgorms are especially easy to identify. Here school uniform fashions while influenced by reguklar fashions, often lagged in actual changes.n We have begun to build chronologies on schoolwear trends in individual countries. We only have enough information on a few countries to create national schgool chronologies. We have only developed these chronologies for the major countries, but are constantly expanding our coverage.

Africa

Public schools as we know them are basiclly an Europen convention. Schools do not exist until the invention of writing and sub-Saharn Africa was a pre-literate society. Thus we do not see schools in Africa until the arrival Arans of the Europeans. Neither of which was inteested in educating Africans. This did not change until the 19th century nd the arrival of European missionaries. This is about the same time that Euopean countries began founding colonies--the Scramble for Africa. As part of the colonmization process some schools erte founded, but no colonil mpower founded a pubklic school system ained an educating all children. (The only colonial mpower to do this was the United States in the Philippine Islands. The reason was tht there was no partuculpar advantage to the colonial power and it was expensive. More schools were founded in the 20th century, but mostly after World War II as the Africn ciuntries began to move toward indeondence, but still there were no public school systems. This only began after indeoendence. So in the 1930s we see schools in Africa, but only a small minority of African children actually attended any schools.

America, Latin


America, North


United States

American school children, with some exceptions, have not worn school uniforms. America's parochial school children have worn uniforms--although I'm not sure when uniforms were introduced. Private school children--especially America's elite private schools modeled on British preparatory and public schools--also had uniforms. Quite a substantial number of children were involved in the parochial schools, but the number of private school children until recently has been much more limited. American public (state) school children have not worn uniforms, although quite a number of public schools have begun to study the issue. Many in the 1990s have begun instituting non-compulsory uniform policies.

Canada

We have very limited chronological informtion on Canadian school clothes at this time. School images are not only important as a record of schoolwear, but because many of them are dated, they are a wonderful record of changing fashion trends over time. Available images show boys at the turn of the century wearing knee pants and dark long stockings with a wide range of caps, shirts, and jackets. There is some indication that boys in Nova Scotia may have worn kilts. I'm not sure how common this may have been. We suspect that most boys during the 1920s and 30s would have worn knickers to school, much like American boys. Long stockings and knickers were very common. Knickers were more common than in America during the 1940s. Some boys in the 1940s wore short pants with both long stockings and knee socks. As in American, Canadian primary boys in the 1950s began wearing jeans to school, although they were not allowed in secondary schools until the 1960s. We notice that in the 1980s boys commpnly wore sweaters and jeans. Dresses were still common for girls.

Asia


China


Japan

One of the early modernizing steps taken by Japan's new Imperial Government in the early 1870s was to establish a new national public education system. Soon the country's secondary school children were oufitted in foreign miliary uniforms, showing the importance of the military and the approach toward education in the new Japanese state. No other country outfitted virtually all of its secondary school children in military uniforms. The power of tradition in Japan is shown by the fact that Japanese school children still mostly wear these same uniforms, unchanged for more than a 100 years. Some primary schools also adopted uniforms. The distinguishing characteristic of primary uniforms were the short pants that the boys wore, a reflection of the Japanese penchent for clearly marking out one's status and even ocupation by the way he or she dressed, a custom that only in the 1980s has begun to disappear in Japan.

Europe


England

Modern school uniform has in many ways been a British creation. The first uniforms were implemented in the 16th century for charity children at the famed hospital schools. Eventually more modern styles emerged in the 19th century, but at the country's elite private schools. School uniform garments like peaked caps, boaterrs, and blazers emerged at this time. The British school uniform as we now know it became widely worn in the 1920s as soft collars and ties replaced Eton collars. These basic styles have been little changed since the 1920s. There have, however, been some changes. The peaked caps once so common are now little worn. The school sandals once worn with a narrow center strap now mostly have wide straps and look more like shoes. The major change has been in the trousers worn by boys. Short pants once so common are in the 1990s much less commonly worn, but there are still some schools that continue to require them for the younger boys. Available information on school uniform trends is as follows. HBC has rather limited information on many decades and would of course appreciate any interesting information that our English readers may have to fill in the blanks.

France

The decision to require French boys and girls to wear smocks was a decision implemented by French authorities during the 1870s. It was in keeping with the styles of the day as both boys and girls commonly wore smocks. France has such a centralized, highly respected educational system, that the decision was relatively easy to implement. The smock certainly served the purpose of a uniform, covering differences in the clothes worn by children from different economic circumstances. It also protected the boy's clothes. In an era when clothes were expensive and writing was done with basic pens and ink wells, a black smock made considerabe sense. Beside the schoolboy smock, nothing like the elaborate school uniforms common in England developed in France. While state schools generally did not require have a school uniform, such uniforms were generally worn in Catholic schools and at some private schools. Unfortunately I have managed to collect very little information on French school uniforms. I am hoping that a French visitor to this web site will eventually provide some interesting information.

Germany

We are compiling information on German schools over time. The task is somewhat confusing as until modern times there was no one Germany, but rather a conderation of German speaking states. German was an early leader in public education. but this varied from state to state with curious mixtures. Prussia gave consuiderable attention to public education, but some children esspecially the Poles if East Prussia into the 19th century grew up on still largely Fedual estates. In the German Empire (1870-1918) education was a function largely related to the different Landen or states. Only with Weimar (1918-33) and more importantly the Third Reich (1933-45) did Germany begin to build a national educational system. This effort was truncated by World War II and the post-war division of Germany between East and West that did not end until after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Italy

HBC believes that chronological trends concerning schoolwear in Italy has been similar to that of France. This is in part because children in both countries have not traditionally worn school uniforms and school clothes are thus in large measure a reflection of regular clothing trends. Our historical information is still very limited, but we have begun to collect a few images from different periods. Of course a photograph at a specufic school can not be traken to be represenastative of Italy as a whole. We can develop some idea of basic trends as we add more schools to our aarchive. We know boys were commonly wearing school smocks in the 1930s, but we believe that smocks were introduced much earlier. One major exception is school smocks. French boys tended to wear smocks less after World War II (1939-45) and even more so after the 1950s. School smocks in Italy, however, continued to be commonly worn even into the 1970s. While declining in the 1980s and 90s, some Italian children still wear them in the 2000s, although generally younger children in primary school.

Russia

Russian elementary children used to weer distinctive uniforms, both before and after the Revolution. This suggests that the continuation of the uniform after the Revolution was influenced by the pre-War tradition rather than a change of direction by Soviet educators. The fact that the Soviets unlike educators in the rest of Europe, continued uniforms suggests the insular policies persued by the Soviets in many areas. School uniforms for girls did not change greatly after the Revolution. Girls' uniforms consisted of a black dress with an Edwardian style pintafore white apron. Boys before the Revolution often wore a Russian revival style bloused tunic. Many schools during the Soviet era had military style uniforms. Several European countries has school uniforms in the 19th century, but this was rare in the 20th century, especially after World War I. Russia was one of the few countries where school uniforms were worn. The boy's uniform continued to have a military look. This changed after World War II when the Soviet Union carved out an Eastern European Empire. Many of the new Soviet satellite countries either influenced by Soviet authorities or attempting to emulate Soviet examples also adopted uniforms. The Eastern European school uniforms had a less military style than the Soviet unifiorms. After the disolution of the Soviet Union children no longer wanted to wear the Soviet-era uniforms.

Middle-East and North Africa


Oceania


Australia

Australian school uniforms, like those in other countries, have changed over time. The first school uniforms were simply copies of English school uniforms. The Australian school system was set up by English colonial administrators. They were schooled and trained in England and set up Austalian schools along the same line as English schools, complete with English school uniforms. We have collected some information about modern Australian school uniforms, but little information about earlier historical eras. We believe, however, that the further you go back the more similar Australian chool uniform is to European school uniform.

New Zealand

New Zealand was colonized by Britain in the 19th century. The school system was basically the English system transported to New Zealand. Most early teachers were English. With a small, scattered population, the initial approach was to open large numbers of small schools. The same dynamic was at play imn America on a larger scale with the opening of many one- and two-room schools. New Zealand schools from the onset of the country's educational system in the mid-19th century adopted English clothing styles. When uniforms were adopted, they followed English styles. As a result, New Zealand uniform trends are quite similar to English styles. This continued until after World War II (1939-45). Since the War, New Zealand schools have retained some classic English styles even after they had disappeard in England. Most New Zealand secondary schools continued to require short pants long after older English boys no longer wore them. Many schools still required them even in the 1990s.

Philippines

We have very limited information on Philippine schools at this time. We have no information on the Spanish colonial era. As far as we can tell, the Spanish gave very little attention to public education and had no interest in appropriating the needed funds. We suspect that schooling in the Spanish Philippines was very limited, especially outside the main cities. We suspect the situation was similar to that of many Latin American countries, although most of those countries achieved independence in th early-19th century. There were presumably schools in the major cities, but probably very few schools in the countryside. This changed with Spanish-American War (1898). After the United States acquired the Philippines in the Spanish-American War, American administrators began a major program to create a public education system. Today that does not sound like anything special. But at the time it certainly was. The Philippines was only the second non-Western country to have a widespread public education system. (The first was Japan.) American officials organized the building of schools throughout the country, including rural areas. Here we see a newly built school in the countryside during 1911 (figure 1). The Japanese after invading the Philippines found it very difficult to get parents to have their children study in Japanese and were not about to fund the existing American public school system. As a result of the American emphasis on public education, the Philippines has a substantial functioning public education system at the time of independence following World War II, a rarity in the Third World. The only other non-Western public school systems were in the liberated Japanese colonies (Korea and Taiwan).







HBC





Related Chronolgy Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Late 19th century] [The 1930s] [The 1940s] [The 1930s] [The 1940s] [The 1950s] [The 1960s] [The 1970s] [The 1980s]



Related Style Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Long pants suits] [Knicker suits] [Short pants suits] [Socks] [Eton suits] [Jacket and trousers] [Blazer] [School sandals]



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Created: 6:11 PM 10/29/2010
Last updated: 6:52 PM 9/3/2022