Uniforms good for school

You might have read elsewhere in today’s paper that All Saints Catholic School in Bangor will require that its students wear school uniforms for the first time next fall.

The move, which makes All Saints the 15th of Maine’s 17 Catholic elementary schools to adopt such a measure, is an attempt by the school board to remove the pressure children feel to either look as fashionably and expensively outfitted as their schoolmates or risk the shame and embarrassment of being, like, totally not cool. The school believes that eliminating the obsessive focus on clothing, and the inevitable one-upmanship between the haves and the have-nots, will allow the kids to concentrate more on schoolwork and to express their creativity in the more suitable venues of art, music and sports.

To that, I extend a fervent “Amen,” as well as a lament for the parents of public schoolchildren who probably never will be similarly freed from the tyranny of youth-fashion marketers, whose sole aim is to mercilessly siphon off an inordinate amount of a working family’s income in the name of childhood self-expression and individuality.

As a product of the 1960s, when wearing outrageous clothes was considered a tribal badge of honor and a snub to the established order, I suppose I could be called a heretic for supporting anything that comes even close to a standardized dress code for schoolchildren. OK, so mea culpa for that. But as a product of Catholic schools, from the first grade through the 12th, I can also now look back on those uniformed years as a simpler, less confusing time that was its own form of social liberation.

Back then, much the same as in Catholic schools today, deciding what to wear in the morning was a snap. I could choose to put on either a white shirt or a light blue one, to go with either a dark pair of pants or, in my later school years, khakis. A tie was required, too, although we were permitted to express a little individuality in our choice of stripes or solids, clip-ons or hand-knotted. That, and perhaps the letter sweaters and team jackets athletes got to wear in high school, was pretty much the extent of a boy’s sartorial decision-making process. Girls were limited to white blouses and plaid skirts – what is it about Catholicism and plaid, anyway? – and sneakers were strictly prohibited for anyone who was not actually in a gym or on a playing field.

I might not have appreciated how easy dressing for school was back then. I probably griped about having to always look so sensible and neat when compared with the anything-goes garb of my public school friends. But I began to see the light about the time I became the parent of two fashion-conscious middle-schoolers, who insisted that buying only the very latest, most criminally expensive styles from the mall could save them from a life of dorkish scholastic ignominy.

In those years, we squabbled over every clothes-related issue – from the obscene prices of the latest must-have sneakers for school to the fiscal irresponsibility of buying simple T-shirts for $30 to exactly how many inches of one’s boxer shorts was appropriate for public display. Yet no matter how much we shelled out on these autumn school-shopping trips, there would always be other kids at school to outshine ours and remind the rest of their classmates just how expensive status can be.

I’d say the kids and parents of All Saints Catholic School just got a gift from heaven.