Here’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite a long time. I know what I want to say but I’m not sure how to put it in words. I survived Catholic School. That was a bumper sticker making it’s way around a few years back. It may still be around but I don’t know as I don’t get out much. But I did survive it. As I watch kids these days I wonder if some of the things I most resented about Catholic schools may have been a blessing in disguise.

In high school the boys were in one part of the school while the girls were across the street in another. Same campus, same studies, but boys over here and girls over there. I hated that. Here I was, blossoming into a screaming pile of adolescent hormones and the very focus of my life was across the street. How screwed up was that?

As it turned out, not screwed up at all. We still had plenty of time to socialize before and after school. There were no rules against that. There were Friday night football games and some kids would have parties at their houses after the games or on a Saturday night. It wasn’t as if there was no mingling of the sexes but being at school was all about being at school and we were there to study and learn. We were not there to socialize and show-off.

So maybe that was a good thing, I don’t know, but it seems as though it was. These days schools seem more a social event than a learning experience. The quest to learn has deteriorated to the point that schools lower test standards rather than raise expectations.

Corny stuff like multiplication tables, memorizing poetry, remembering historical dates, knowing the states and their capitals, art appreciation and music, spelling and syntax, all gone the way of the dinosaur. Teachers are afraid to challenge students but students don’t hesitate to challenge teachers.

I doubt I would have learned those things either if I spent my days being the class clown and chasing after the girls from one classroom to the next. Which girl was seeing which guy, who was going to be my next steady, all the things that school shouldn’t be about but seems to be these days. Learning has taken a back seat.

Having the girls in the classroom would have been an endless distraction. Speaking for myself, my every move would have been to impress the girls. No reason to try impressing the guys as most of them were as big a jerk as me. I always thought that the separation of boys and girls had to do with the Catholics being a bunch of prudes but it wasn’t. It was about keeping out the distractions. You were there to learn and they took that responsibility seriously. Think that would work today?

But wait! There’s more. I had another complaint and it was even bigger. It was right out in public and public school kids were relentless in their ridicule. It was those damned uniforms. I remember one year a friend of mine wanted to borrow one of my uniforms to wear out trick or treating. In grade school the uniform was dark blue trousers and a white shirt. The girls wore a white blouse and those pleated plaid skirts. In high school the boys added a tie. Remember ties?

If you are in high school these days and are somehow reading this post, I gotta tell you that you scare me. There is every chance that you are a nice boy or girl and wouldn’t hurt a flea but the clothes you wear are scary. Baggy britches, two or three ill-fitting shirts, untied shoes and the ever present chain dangling from somewhere, or something.

The girls aren’t much better. Pants with a waist down around, well let’s just say embarrassing low and grubby T-shirts with some unsavory comment silk screened on them. Oh yes, and tattoos. Lots of tattoos. More tattoos than even the gnarliest of sea dogs would sport.

In all of this let’s not forget the hardware. Metal stuck into and dangling from everywhere. Eyebrows, lips, tongues, cheeks, navels, ear lobes, every imaginable location. It’s like you have become the Shrapnel Generation. If all that regalia isn’t enough to impress everyone add the predictable shuffle. When you folks walk the halls of your school do you drag your feet like they are just too heavy to endure?

What if, and that’s a huge what if, what if school boards began a systematic introduction of uniforms? Kids can be awfully cruel and I’m sure there are many children teased about their clothes. I’m sure there is plenty of peer pressure to wear what has, somehow, become stylish. I can’t imagine the amounts of money parents shell out just to keep youngsters in scruffy clothes, tattoos and metal.

Maybe the catholic school had that in mind as well back in the day. There were no distinctions between rich kids and poor kids. Everybody wore the same thing. There were no gang emblems, no metal, no leather, no chains. Just kids wearing clothes that suggested they had some measure of self respect. Kids that seemed to know that a presentable image was a benefit to them.

Do you think it would work these days, or do you think the ACLU would be suing every school board in the country. What about free expression? Why can’t we be who we are? We have a right to look and dress like street urchins. What’s happening to our rights, don’t they even matter?

What’s happening to your education, doesn’t that even matter?