To think boys in school uniform shorts at -3c is neglect.

[DragonMumE]

Just returned from rural primary school in Lakes. Young lads in school uniform shorts - it's minus 3 here. I class this as neglect. Discuss.

Are people struggling to afford winter school uniform? Aldi sells school trousers for less than a coffee (1.75 gbp?) Or worse are they indifferent?

Nearly all the boys in my DS's class wear shorts all year round. One started it as a challenge one year and now they all do it. It's definitely not neglect. One of the Mum's is a children's nurse and another is a Social Worker. We all think our boys are mad, but they are all fine.

My DS2 wore shorts all through his last year at primary - possibly because he realised he would have to wear trousers at secondary, possibly as a bet with a classmate, possibly bc he just prefers it.

He's 20 now and still regularly wears shorts in the winter - v sporty if that'sa. factor.

He was not neglected. He had school trousers. He was 10 and able to make his own choices.

I've not rtft yet but in my experience its generally children wearing winter clothes in summer that is a sign of neglect. Think winter boots with shorts or a big thick coat when a lighter jacket would be better. I'd have also thought that a general unwashed smell or look would be more of an indicator.

The boys in my DC class have a competition going to see who can last the longest in shorts.

There were 2 Dads at Monday's pick-up in shorts and there was snow on the ground.

Heartbroken
that South Wales's air quality was nasally irritating causing persistent cold type symptoms,
that I never met anyone else who was a year rounder, never had any of these schoolmates who everyone now seems to have,
that before the web, I had no other known source of info that year round wearing was safe and did not mean catching cold,
that I, in the minority who would have liked a year round shorts uniform, never had one, nor knew they existed, as they practically did not in South Wales, and instead, even in a fleeting private school playing the conservative values card, I got no shorts allowed above the first primary year, = age 8 !
Hence, that the nasal irritation prevented me finding out alone that year round wearing is safe, and prevented me becoming one of these year rounder kids. When I knew I would deeply want to be one if it existed as a really doable thing.

This is why it needs researching by sociology: has the web made everyone grow more confident about this, than before it existed, because they have easy access to confirmatory information ? Or were experiences in some regions always better than mine and like the ones being described now ?

Some schools only have shorts and long socks as their school uniform. I thought that it was rather unfair on the kids having to wear it in cold weather.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that boys wearing short trousers as opposed to long ones,up to a certain age,was a 'posh' thing. All the Royal Family boys wear short trousers up until they're about 9 or 10.

Not just the royals but it is fairly general for boys to wear short trousers with long socks, as part of their school uniform, up to a certain age. They certainly do, and always have, around my way but not usually out of school except in warmer weather and then the short trousers are different, casual.

This is how horrifically they have left us all living in very different random pot luck, and all perceiving our own local bubbles as the general reality and not thinking that it can be very different in other regions. Before the web, we were unable to know that either.

You can say now, in 2024, that In your local experience shorts uniforms are still the general norm. In South Wales, I was able to grow up a half-century ago without knowing they existed, and to start infants class in private school in 1973, yes private school 1973 in Cardiff, with longs allowed and seasonally taken for granted and no notion of otherwise. Followed later by the hated unbearably bad luck that I was naively, and disastrously in outcome, sent to another school that was hot on gifted fantasies, and as part of its dismal businesslike atmosphere, did not allow shorts at all above the first primary year, which was age 8.

I have seen several posts online by folks newly discovering to their shock that shorts uniforms still exist. Throughout my childhood the media never discussed school trousers, never showed me that shorts uniforms existed, nor my mother who believed any question of shorts in winter had ended when the old mid-century boys' costume went out. Equally, it never showed the folks living those uniforms that there were places like South Wales where they were not a visible thing.

Nor did the royals show us, as we were in the gap between Princes Edward and William. Only once was I tantalised, a tad puzzled, and racked with envy, to see 2 schoolboys of my age singing carols on Nationwide in shorts, but I supposed it just had to be the TV studio warmth that enabled that unseasonal style. Around when I was 10, exactly when South Wales catarrh had made my most serious attempt to stay in shorts at home right through an autumn appear to fail.

This is why I ask all the folks with happy experiences. Would your kid still have found their year round shorts choices, and made them in confidence of not being harmful, if you were living before the web and you did not have the idea already existing among school peers ? If you were completely on your own with the idea, would you or your kid have known they were not going to catch cold/chills ? Or did you find and make those choices only because you had that information, either from peers or from the web ?

Yes and they're completely stupid, you know the old saying " where there's no sense, there's no feeling".

They look like absolute Fucking Bellends

There are some kids who just prefer shorts. I have seen a few over the years as a teacher. It has nothing to do with neglect at all.

I have never heard that saying. Out of curiosity, what made you feel the need to post on a thread from December 2023?

I think the poster was just proving that they have no empathy - or feeling towards others thinking differently to themselves. And hence telling us all we need to know about their "sense".