I recently came across a photo album we had at home. In one of the pictures, I wore a straw hat and a red blazer, while holding my sister’s neck in what looks like a deadlock and smiling widely and almost aggressively into the camera. If memory and my shiny red shoes are anything to go by, it was my first day of school and I was rearing to go. I look happy and well, smart; I look like I’m going to school.

At school, blazers were taken off and hung up and hats were carefully placed on shelves; we loved our uniforms and were told to keep them clean and tidy because whenever we were in them we represented our school.

I must have been no more than seven or eight years old at the time but I was made to feel proud of what my uniform represented and everything that it symbolised. What’s more, it gave me a sense of purpose and belonging. I wasn’t in any way stifled; if anything, I was conscious of the fact that there was a time and place for everything.

School uniforms are not simply an added shirt to wash, starch and iron

Fast forward to over 20 years later and I’ve never had any problem dressing for an interview or following a dress code because I have a healthy amount of respect for what they represent in the bigger picture. Sadly, this isn’t worth much in a country where not many other people seem to care. I have attended weddings where guests showed up in leggings, gone to interviews where people looked like they are about to go clubbing and attended seminars where some thought it was okay to show up in hot pants.

Keeping all that in mind, I was woefully pretty unsurprised when I came across a post shared online about parents going out of their way to urge the Minister for Education to change the uniform rules and allow parents to send their children to school in tracksuits.

The reality is that apart from the fact that most Maltese parents would coddle their children to death given half the chance, many don’t seem to understand what a school uniform represents.

School uniforms are not simply an added shirt to wash, starch and iron: uniforms give children a taste of what it means to be an adult and help them understand the importance of dress codes in a society where ever more men cannot fasten a tie and very few women seem to know how to dress for the office.

In my books, the comfort aspect just isn’t relevant: you don’t go to school to lounge, you go to school to sit straight and learn. Besides, life isn’t always about being comfortable anyway and uniforms impart self-respect and discipline (something which is ever decreasing in our societies). If Maltese parents were to lobby about having more books in school libraries as much as they did about these blessed uniforms, we’d probably be raising a better educated population, but as is usual with us, we seem to be missing the wood for the trees and focusing on the wrong blessed thing. Let’s not underestimate the power of a good uniform: after all, an educated body can only lead to an educated mind.