School

For primary school the big memory is of cold knees in the winter. As you can see from the enclosed photos showing my school uniform, it was not uncommon for Irish mothers to put their sons in short pants for school until early teens. I am talking about the mid 70's.

My school was a catholic school with a strict uniform. We had to line up for uniform insepction before class first thing in the morning. Think of that with the snow blowing around your bare knees! Short or long was the parents choice, but in primary most of us were in shorts. By the 6th form of junior school (about 11 years of age) there were still several boys still wearing shorts. As you progressed to secondary most of the boys, but not all, wore long pants. There were some exceptions. Some boys still wore shorts in the 2nd year or about 13-14 years of age.

Scouts

My scout troop all wore shorts, which was part of the uniform in the 1970s. I remember that the Scouts shorts at the time tenhded to be quite short.

Every-day Clothes

In the winter I used to wear long pants on my days off, but shorts all the time in the summer. It was quite progressive in Dublin, as soon as I hit secondary school I only wore shorts in the summer. The countryside was a bit more conservative, The first time I saw my cousin in long pants he was 15 years old !

Of course its all different now, boys in Ireland never wear shorts to school anymore, and even school uniforms are fast on the way out.