Let's be clear hair

SCHOOL rules for conduct and dress are meant to instil self-discipline in students. And self-discipline can help a child on a path to success as an adult. It’s also meant to allow for equity among students.

These have been some of the important tenets in education – for decades.

But how far should schools go in telling a student and their parents, what’s acceptable, especially when it comes to hair. It’s a debate that’s raging once more arising from a government secondary school's edict to students – and their parents – about what hairstyles are appropriate.

And once again, it’s the natural hair type of more than half the country’s population that is the source of this contention. Black schoolchildren are often critiqued for afros, braids, cornrows; styles that somehow are seen as acts of indiscipline.

The administration of Fyzabad Secondary not only sets out rules of what it considered appropriate, groomed hair – pineapple buns is deemed a breach – but warns of dire consequences: suspension for three days, a punishment which the student and parents can mull over at home.

An official attempts to admonish the female students that they are “more than their hair,” so teased updos won’t do. But where’s the evidence that children who wear such hairstyles go on to be failures, unsuccessful in their studies, or in careers.

It’s unfortunate this latest incident plays out as racism and cultural shaming.

The education ministry, under both past and current governments, sought to allow schools the authority to make clear guidelines about grooming that don’t infringe on students’ rights.

But its own suggestions are confusing and conflicting.

Hairstyles should not obstruct the view of others and should not be intricate in design, a July 2023 national school code declared. Why not? But in October that year, it recommended schools set up committees on hair policies which it would review.

On January 19, the ministry seemed to come down on the side of students, stating that rules on grooming should be “reasonable, non-discriminatory, respectful of students’ dignity, and consistent with the best interest of the child”; and respect “cultural identity and personal expression.”

Education Minister Dr Michael Dowlath rightly cautioned that while schools may set grooming guidelines, “they must never deny a child their right to education.”

TTUTA and the National Council of Parent Teacher Associations also caution against discriminatory rules that are unfairly punitive.

Activists weighing in harken the confusion over hair rules to post-colonial ideologies; especially for black students, that still informs social acceptance. Twenty years ago, American R&B singer India Arie sang. in her self-affirming hit – I am not my hair – about how damaging this cultural conflict over hair can be for black girls and boys: "Good hair means curls and waves (no)/Bad hair means you look like a slave (no)."

Educators must be careful that this is not the lesson they are teaching.