Figure 1.--The photo was taken in the village of Bunutan on Bali. Many younger children feel uncomfortable wearing the shoes that they are required to put on at school. So, walking to and from school, some childrn carry their footwear. The rice straw the other bo is carrying may be fopr a ceremony.

Indonesian children commonly wear basoc school uniforms. We are not sure when school uniforms were first introduced, but ghey are widely worn today. The inspirtation was not the Dutch as school children in the Netherlands do not wear uniforms with few exceptions. We suspect that the missiomaries may have introduced uniforms, but we can not yet confiorm thaty. Indonesian boys tend to wear short pants through junior highschool, often with colorful uniform shorts. Indonesia is one of the few Moslem countries where boys wear short pants as school uniform. There are different ethnic and religious groups in Indonesia. There are Chinese in most cities and their is a Hibdu population on Bali. The school uniform shorts were quite short in the 1960s and 70s. Much longer shorts became standard in the 1990s. We do not know if there are national rules or the uniform is determined by each school. A HBC readder tells us, "Here are two students in Bali wearing school uniforms in 2005. The shirt has what looked like a paisley pattern in blue. Only one appears to be wearing a tie, but I am not sure about the other student. They wore navy blue shorts. They both wear white ankle socks and black shoes. They appear to be 15 to 16 years old. This picture was taken at 11:30am and the students were waiting at their parents stall before going to the second sitting of school for the day.

Created: 12:09 AM 10/9/2013
Last updated: 12:09 AM 10/9/2013