"Salute the Uniform" Can Only Go So Far

Way back when I was a teenager, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement brought some, but certainly not all, younger Americans to begin to question the nation's adults. In those times, that was a "no-no." Back then, a common expression used by adults to avoid the difficult arguments of the young was, "Children should be seen and not heard," an expression that apparently dates to the mid 1400s. It means that children should only be seen, and they should not offer opinions on what were seen as "adult matters." Back then too, adulthood was "often" legally defined as the age of 21 on many matters. The 26th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by the states in the summer of 1971 and it established the age of 18 as the lowest legal age for voting.

Over the years there have been various allegations about members of the clergy being involved in sexual matters with children, both male and female. The clergy is a group that has benefited by people's trust and the fear that if you criticize a member of the clergy, there is a spot reserved for you in Hell. Now, just days ago, we learned of a major scandal in the state of Pennsylvania involving Roman Catholic clergy. The scandal comes from a grand jury report hundreds of pages long in which it alleges that a thousand children were abused by hundreds of Catholic priests and that Church officials developed a plan to protect the abusers, not to help the children.

I "suspect" the same thing has been true, to some degree, in schools. Teachers have received lots of respect because of the role they are supposed to take in educating children and in preparing them for life. Accusations of misbehavior, especially criminal misbehavior, against a teacher is not something the public will necessarily leap to believe right away, and that was even more so when I was young. Back when I was in high school, a good friend of mine, a girl, talked to me very privately one day. She ended up crying as she told me about a male teacher who had grabbed her and tried to kiss her. It's all been so long ago, I can't remember everything, but she didn't want me to do anything about it. I was a student leader and I was on pretty good terms with the school principal, an ex military officer. I advised the girl to talk with her parents, which I believe she did, but I can't say that with complete certainty, as time has clouded my memory. The thing was, in those times, to accuse a teacher of such an offense was difficult, to say the least, as adults were given the benefit of the doubt and, "children should be seen and not heard" was the prevailing belief. Even today such would likely be the case, but in those times, the chance of breaking through against a teacher would have been very, very low. Not only that, this was not just any teacher, but a man well known throughout the community because of his other job, which was highly public, but not in government. He didn't really like me anyhow, but I didn't particularly give a damn. I don't recall exactly what happened, but he confronted me about something one day, and I threw out a hint that I knew about what he had done with my friend. He was furious and threatened to have me suspended. He always acted as if the principal had died and left him in charge. This is how people in power can abuse that power to cover their asses. And this is why there must be checks and balances on power, including, or perhaps especially, on the power of the president of this nation. I never pursued the matter of his behavior, because the girl didn't want the matter brought out in public, so we went on with our lives, but not too many years later, a family member mentioned that this teacher had been implicated in similar matters with female students. The teacher passed away a couple of decades ago, but with the recent grand jury report, this episode with my friend and the teacher came back to me.

"Salute the uniform" needs clarification. We do not always have to agree with leaders in various parts of society in order to give those leaders respect, BUT if they are breaking laws, they are not deserving of our respect, and I don't care what garb they wear, whether it be a military uniform, some type of religious outfit, law enforcement uniform or the outfit of a school teacher. People need to earn respect by who THEY are individually, not by just serving in some position.    

WORD HISTORY:
Use-The ultimate origin of this word is unknown. The verb form (pronounced in English as if, "youz") goes back to Latin "uti," which had a wide range of meanings: "to make use of, to gain from (thus also, to benefit, to profit), to enjoy, to consume." This produced Latin "usare," meaning, "to use." This passed into Latin-based Old French as "user," meaning, "to make use of, to employ." English borrowed the word as "usen" in the early 1200s. By circa 1400, the word had also come to mean, "to take advantage of," a sense shared to a great extent by the derived words, "misuse" and "abuse" (formed by "ab" + "use"). The noun form (pronounced in English as if, "youss") has the same older history, which then produced the Latin noun "usus," which meant "use, employment, habit, skill," This passed into Old French as "us," meaning "a custom, a habit, the usage of." English also borrowed the noun form in the early 1200s.