On Uniforms, and a Choice of Providers

Each morning at our campus entrances, I watch hundreds of children come through the doors dressed alike. Some shirts are crisply tucked. Others have plainly spent the night on a bedroom floor. A collar turned up by accident gets fixed with a word and a handshake. What strikes me, morning after morning, is how quickly the uniform disappears from view. Within a few steps of the threshold, I stop seeing clothing and begin seeing faces.

 

That disappearance is a primary purpose of a uniform policy. The Greek word for leisure, scholē, is the root of our word school. Josef Pieper reminds us that it named a time set apart from the press of buying and selling, when the mind could turn toward what is true for its own sake. A uniform marks the threshold of that set-apart place. When a child dresses for school in the morning, he steps out of the marketplace of brands and logos. The question of who owns the newest sneakers or the most expensive jacket stays at the curb. Children who might otherwise be quietly ranked by what their parents can afford stand on level ground, and their teachers meet them there.

 

Aristotle taught that a person becomes just by doing just acts and temperate by doing temperate ones. Character is built through small, repeated practices, and the uniform is one of them. Tucking a shirt and straightening a collar are modest acts of self-command. Performed every day, they tell a child that this place asks something of him and expects him to rise to it. Children dressed for serious work tend to take their work more seriously.

 

Because the uniform carries this much weight in the life of the school, I understand why trouble obtaining it generates so much heat. Few things test a parent’s patience like a backordered sweater in the last week of August, or a polo that arrives with its crest already peeling. Your frustration has been real, and it has been earned.

 

When Dennis Uniform went out of business, CLASSICAL moved to Shaheen’s. As enrollment grew, Shaheen’s struggled to keep pace with demand, and families had difficulty finding the items they needed. The school then transitioned to Lands’ End in an effort to improve access. With Lands’ End, families have endured lengthy order delays and raised fair concerns about the quality of printing on some items.

 

Through every transition, the aim has been simple: uniforms that are easy to obtain and reasonably priced. Too often the experience has fallen short of that aim.

 

Moving forward, both Lands’ End and Shaheen’s will stock uniforms for Cincinnati Classical Academy. You may purchase from either approved provider or from both, depending on which has the items and sizes you need at a price and within a timeframe that works for your family. If an item is unavailable or delayed with one provider, you will have a second place to look.

 

Getting a child ready for school should be straightforward. The uniform exists to free a child’s attention for the things that matter, and it can hardly do that while it is consuming your attention. A choice of providers is a practical step toward restoring that ease, so that the uniform can return to its proper place: noticed for a moment at the door, then forgotten in favor of the child wearing it.

 

Torches Up!