Fair play to the girls from Maryfield!

Throughout grammar school and high school, I wore a uniform. A dark green jumper and a white blouse.

In grammar school, the green jumper was scoop-necked, and worn with a short-sleeved, round collar blouse with scallop trim. And don't forget the bowtie and beanie.

In high school, the green jumper was v-necked, and worn with a long sleeve blouse, which - ah, the freedom - could be worn buttoned to the neck or with the lapels flared open. 

I found this pic on my high school website. This is Class of 1956, but things looked exactly the same for the Class of 1967. During my era, most other Catholic schools switched to the infinitely more modern and hip uniform of plaid skirts and blazers, but not us. At least they allowed us to wear our shirts buttoned, an option apparently not offered to the Class of 1956.

In both grammar school and high school, we also wore green knee socks. 

I don't remember if we were allowed to wear sweaters in grammar school when it was cold. Maybe with 50 kids in the classroom, the body heat kept us warm

In high school, they would announce in the morning whether we'd be allowed to wear a sweater for the day, which had to be either white or dark green. One day, when the boiler was out, they announced that we could wear our coats. By mid-day, they sent us home.

Little kids in grammar school - primary grades, 1-3 (maybe) - wore snow pants to school on wintery days. As we got older, we just toughed it out, shivering there in the schoolyard with our cold legs and thighs while we waited for the bell that alerted us to line up and march in. Shivering during recess, where I guess we kept warm by running around. Shivering on the walk home. 

In high school, were it not for pettipants, we would have been shivering as we waited for the bus, and walked to and fro from the bus stop.

Ah, pettipants: long, close fitting shorts made of nylon or polyester that came to a few inches above the knee, worn under our jumpers, over our undies. 

Thank God for those pettipants, which kept us from freezing to death! (Do pettipants exist any longer? According to Wikipedia, today "they are most likely to be worn by square dancers or persons involved in historical reenactment." I know I'm getting old, but the thought that there might be historical reenactors out there reenacting Catholic girls' high school of the 1960's. Wow. Just wow.)

I had a number of pairs in different colors and patterns. I recall a dressy pale yellow pair, and some blue and white striped ones. But my favorite was a pair of bright green pettipants with a black border, and silver kangaroos on them. I loved them! I even got to wear them as part of my costume when I played Tinkerbell in some skit. (You had to be there.)

In those days, of course, girls did not wear pants to school. Even public school girls - and we know how lax the standards were among the pubs - wore dresses or skirts. 

Tough luck if we were freezing! It's how girls rolled. 

But some high school girls in Dublin have decided that they've had it with the skirt wearing. 

...the chilly, open-window policies in classrooms during the pandemic proved the final straw.

Students at Maryfield College, an all-girls school in Drumcondra, Dublin, have launched a campaign to end what they describe as cold, impractical and discriminatory skirt-only uniform policies.

While a growing number of Irish schools allow girls to wear trousers, many continue to insist skirts are mandatory.

Students argue that the policies are uncomfortable, outdated and hinder exercise and cycling to school. (Source: Irish Times)

Exercise and cycling to school? In my day, neither existed, so we just had to worry about freezing while we waited for the bus, or when the heat was on the fritz. Exercise? My high school has become something of an athletic powerhouse, but when I was there, that wasn't the case. We barely had gym. As for cycling to school, I can only imagine how weird we would have thought it if someone actually rode a bike to school. The implicit rule was that you stopped riding your bike anywhere when you graduated from grammar school.

Maryfield is going to allow uniform pants to be worn come fall, but the students want an end to gendered school unis across all schools. 

The girls are arguing that say over school uniform is their right, not the purview of those in charge. 

The Irish Second-Level Students’ Union says it is a growing issue in schools and is due to be addressed at its first women’s conference on Tuesday.

 “Gender-specific uniforms are the one issue we see come up time and time again when consulting with students,” said ISSU president Emer Neville. 

“... There is no argument in favour of gendered uniforms that is good enough to justify it. It’s time this outdated practice is brought to a much-needed end.”

The issue is even being debated in the Irish parliament.

The girls at Maryfield conceived the campaign during a Young Social Innovators module, which encourages students to come up with solutions to real-world problems.

Their teacher Margaret McLoughlin said the girls agreed that the notion of uniforms making girls appear “ladylike” was outdated.

Indeed it is! (If there's ever a word that needs retiring, it's "ladylike.")

So fair play to the girls from Maryfield, who know a crock when they see it. Good on ye!