When young people engage in civil disobedience

It can be discouraging to read the newspapers in the silly season before elections. The accusations are bad enough, but for a writer, the sheer devaluation of language that passes for political-platform speech is excruciating. Worse still is the continuing insistence on promoting race as the basis of any and every social and political comment.

Currently, the topic appears to be hairstyles chosen by a few boys contrary to the standards established by the authorities in their school of choice.

The boys are adolescents, at the age where we all want to rebel against what we perceive as authority. We do this by wanting to be different. It is part of growing up, like the need to be part of a community of peers, which is important in learning to be part of business and professional teams as adults.

For teenagers it can be a sports team, a debating team or, as in the current issue, a team that opts to rebel against something they see as important, which, to the children they still are, is hairstyles.

Don’t knock it. Hairstyles are not the point; the point is a choice of action they know will be regarded as anti-authoritarian.

If you watch the news on TV or on social media you will have seen teenagers in France in their hundreds protesting against the police murder of a 17-year-old. In Scandinavia a teenager called Greta Thunberg started a worldwide protest against industrial pollution.

As they become adults, this action will be known as "civil disobedience," action chosen to force change in rules, standards of behaviour and often laws. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just plants a seed that others nurture.

Most radical social and political changes start through social disorder instigated by well educated middle-class professional adults such as Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and others whose names will easily come to mind.

Change is fundamental to business success, as is stability. As a recruitment consultant I was trained to analyse behaviour in job applicants, especially in professional categories. Usually the client company wanted someone with the potential to be promoted to senior management, to take the organisation forward, who could show evidence of written comprehension, of understanding ever-changing markets, and who projected leadership and authority.

Anybody with a degree in the relevant discipline can learn technical stuff once they have been in the position for a couple of years, but how to motivate and encourage the people you lead and how to develop the attitudes for staff development is a different thing.

If potential managers are to lead and be respected as authorities, they must exhibit ethics, and this comes from understanding the importance of contracts, among other things. They expect employees of whatever rank to be disciplined, to understand the value of adhering to company standards, culture and behaviour.

Almost all supervisory managers have to work with teams. So we ask about their youthful activities and interests. Being a rebel will be a qualification for some entry-level positions. In other positions, team leadership and teamwork are key. In still others, candidates must have the ability to work with little supervision.

But most important is to be able to understand and implement a contract you enter into responsibly on behalf of the organisation. If you disagree with the terms of the contract, as an employee or manager, don’t sign it.

If, however, you do, because you need a job, follow the first principle of industrial relations: comply and complain. Change from inside is always more effective than forcing it from the outside. If you can’t change it from inside, find another job.

When a parent sends their child to an institution to be educated, this is a contract for services. It implies the boy will get an education on one part and will accept and uphold the standards of the school on the other part.

Most institutions have rules and standards, a contract, that child, parent, teacher and administrator agree to follow. Most denominational schools in Trinidad have predetermined rules and standards that are “expressed or implied, oral or in writing,” as the law dealing with employment puts it.

There are reasons for rules, and there are many options available to people who want to change what they perceive as unjust rules, often outdated but that no one has bothered to change.

Appearance in children is standard in all schools. If and when you apply for work in a commercial business, military, diplomatic or most sporting organisations, what you wear and even hairstyles usually do matter.

If you first agree to meet those standards, then repudiate them, this is known in public law as “civil disobedience,” meaning you don’t agree to obey what you feel is unjust, and determine to change it. It is an admirable decision if you are fighting for human rights and willing to sacrifice, to stick to your principles, with the courage to accept the consequences.

Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Gandhi, Mandela, Florence Nightingale, Dorothy Dix, Gene Miles – all of them stood and acted on principle and were persecuted for it. All were successful in effecting change. They were beacons of human rights and were punished, often bitterly, for it.

Women throughout the Commonwealth, as in TT, were only granted the right to vote in 1949, less than 100 years ago. They were called ugly names and publicly ridiculed, but fought, through civil disobedience, not for themselves, but for all of us. We respect them for it now.

But civil disobedience by teenagers fighting over hairstyles in school? Supported by parents who reportedly shouted obscenities, when consequences they were repeatedly warned about came to pass? Is this what we want our children to learn?

Heaven knows we need change from corruption, money laundering and sex trafficking. There are many important issues we want our children to learn to fight and change.

But if hairstyles is your thing, support them by sending them to schools that don’t care about appearance. Everybody knows denominational schools are more disciplined academically and in regard to behaviour. And do not make up racial excuses: denominational schools in Kenya, Africa are just as disciplined when it comes to appearance. Mandela attended two such schools.

In order to push students to achieve higher academic and social standards, in my view denominational schools can, indeed sometimes do, demand adherence to rules which, at that age, I would also have fought against. Some schools in the Caribbean still expel girls who become pregnant, even as a result of forced sex. This is a real cause nobody seems to take on, but then, boy students don’t get pregnant, do they? Girls do it all by themselves.

Protest is a constitutional right, a civil right in TT. Protest by breaking the law or civic rules is breaking the civil contract we all enter by being citizens. Expecting no consequences is just narcissistic and irrational. Even rumshops have behavioural standards.

Your children are going to become adults. If you want them to learn now about breaking rules, even with parental or peer support, go ahead. But be honest: they must also learn being a grown-up means facing and having the courage to accept the consequences.