This image was taken more than a week ago. In the meantime, Simcoe-Muskoka Catholic District School Board has mandated that their students will no longer have an option to leave the school for lunch. In fact, they have to eat lunch in their classrooms.

Great, now they’re being locked up for the whole day!

We live just up the street from Saint Theresa’s Catholic High School in Midland, Ontario. I usually walk our dogs during the lunch hour. This means that we sometimes pass that area, so I take note of what is going on in and around the school. Students are still congregating at the entrance, but instead of just hanging around, they’re going for a walk around the block(s) in groups of ten or so. But most of them are not wearing masks, which isn’t surprising, considering the regimentation of classroom life, these days. Most of the time, I have to leave the sidewalk to these students, because they won’t move over for us. And as they are obviously in a ‘pod’, they keep to themselves. (Some even have a teacher with them, but the teacher isn’t wearing a mask, either.)

So much for staying at school, eh?

My reason for writing this post is not to condemn the students, not the school board, but to point out what is plainly obvious to everyone: society likes to think that teenagers can be made to obey the rules, but the reality is quite different. For one thing, death to a teenager is a very distant event. It isn’t going to happen to them for a long, long time. And the other thing? It’s a drag to have to wear a mask all the time.

Anything else? They are bored of the whole pandemic thing: “Let’s change the channel.”