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Learning by Example
Teachers who try to force pupils to conform by imposing absurd hair restrictions should follow their own results, argues Barry Ronge.Aids infection is soaring among teenagers. Teachers and pupils are gunned down on school premises. There are plans to place metal detectors in some schools to keep guns out of the classroom. Fraud involving exam papers and results makes the headlines every year alongside reports of drunkenness in the schoolyard, of kids who buy their own cars out of the money they make selling drugs, and about large-scale fraud in the tuck shop. So you may imagine my astonishment when I fell into a conversation with a group of parents of teenage children and discovered that in many schools hair gel is considered to be a primary risk to school discipline. Hair gel is forbidden. Teachers and prefects run their fingers through the hair of any boy suspected of using it, and should he be found guilty of gel he is made to wash it out and some form of punishment is administered. In my own personal memories of school, I recall two phrases that I heard more often than I ever heard words of inspiration or intellectual richness. They were, "Get a haircut or you'll get cuts," or the more spiteful variation, "To the arty, long-haired types like Ronge and his friends this means nothing." So I was astonished to learn that it is now possible for a boy's hair to be too short. A Number One buzz-cut is interpreted as being subversive and sinister in many schools and even a Number Two cut is tainted with suspicion. So extensive is this repressive hair regime that hairdressers report a great surge of business on the day after schools close as pupils come in to have their heads shaved and their remaining hair tinted in every hue from platinum blond to gleaming imperial purple. It's obvious that the teachers in these schools with "exotic hair policies" just don't get the point about hair. How you wear your hair is a crucial psychological statement about how you define yourself. Even the Bible says so. Samson's uncut hair had a powerful symbolic meaning. It was an emblem of his covenant with God. When it was cut off he was destroyed. The Nazis and other fascist law-enforcement bodies immediately shaved the hair of anyone they captured to strip a sense of individual identity and power from them, the first step in a process of humiliation. All these educators who get their knickers into such a twist about hair in the classroom should go back and read the story of Rapunzel, the beautiful girl whose mother-guardian would not let her go or grow up. She locked her up in a high tower, allegedly to protect her from harm, but actually to keep her from feeling or knowing anything at all. Rapunzel escaped from her clutches by growing her hair and releasing it to serve as a passage to freedom, romance and marriage. For generations kids have been told that story but when they get into school their hair gets put under lock and chain, presumably as a first step to putting their minds in a similar condition. It's a follicle fascism that seems truly ridiculous at the start of the year 2000. I have a modest proposal about all this. In schools where uniformity of look and style is a high priority, it should apply to the staff as well. Why should the teachers who express their individuality and personal style through their cars, clothes and hairstyles enjoy a freedom that they deny to their students? If uniformity is all about consistency, then let the schools in question draw up smart uniforms for their staff, in the way banks and airlines do. That way they will be teaching by example and not by command. "Do as I do" has always been a lot more effective than "Do as I say". There will be greater credibility if the hand that snakes through a head of hair in search of the dreaded hair gel does not have ornate plastic nails or decorative rings on it. There is a real hypocrisy about a teacher whose hair has been coloured, whether for the sake of fashion or to conceal the grey hairs, sitting in judgment on that deeply sinister Number One cut. None of the male teachers should be allowed to wear wigs or hairpieces and any sign of defiance or frivolity in their neckwear or the cut of their trousers should be stamped out at once. If a school truly believes that the herd mentality is part of the education process, they must practise what they preach. I must, however, observe that any educator who truly believes that he can measure the success of his work by having flocks of docile, identical-looking pupils trotting neatly through school corridors should do a reality check and ask whether sheep farming in New Zealand would not, after all, be a better career option.
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