Once again, a school makes a fool of itself over dress codes.
A boy was put in isolation at his school for having his hair cut too short, his mother has said.
Damon Steel, 15, was told his short back and sides cut must grow back before he could return to classes at his school in West Walton, Norfolk.
The Wisbech teenager has now been taken out of school by his mother Elizabeth Steel, who said it was wrong to punish him for a haircut.
Marshland High School has refused to comment.
I’m firmly with the boy’s mother on this one. As I’ve said before, I have no problem with dress codes. I do have a problem with idiotic adherence to petty rules that have no purpose other than to enforce compliance. Such authoritarianism needs to be robustly challenged. In this case, there appears to be a modicum of making it up as they go along…
Damon said he had no idea there was a rule about having hair too short.
It’s entirely possible there wasn’t one – much like there wasn’t one about hair being too long when I was taken to task by an employer. The issue hadn’t arisen before and when it did, a rule got made up on the hoof. I suspect the same is happening here.
Mrs Steel posted a photo of her son on Facebook, saying: “They say his hair must be appropriate for a professional learning environment. He must remain in isolation till his hair grows back.”
Well, yes, I agree – but there needs to be clearly communicated rules. And those rules need to be reasonable and proportionate. Looking at the images, I see nothing wrong with the boy’s hair and nothing that undermines a professional learning environment – unlike the cretins who decided to take exception to it.
@LR,
Disagree, hair rules are common in schools now as parents can’t be trusted to be sensible aka be parents not friends.
“Damon said” – with a name like that his (single?) mother is visualised by me as a fat, tattooed chav.
School is similar to military discipline: obey, learn, accept punishment.
Couple of points here. I did not say there should be no dress code, merely that it should be sensible and properly communicated. This appears not to be the case.
As for military discipline – this is to break the will and individuality of recruits so that given the circumstances they will get themselves killed because they are given an order. To apply this to schools is disproportionate. The most important thing a young mind can learn is to question authority. Authority should always be questioned and where it is disproportionate or plain wrong, robustly resisted.
Still on military discipline, this boy is a cadet and his haircut is fine for them, so why not the school? It is just a short haircut. It is not “unprofessional”.
Unprofessional is the cry of the disciplinarians who wish to impose a rule but don’t really have a valid justification, so they wheel out the woolly excuse that it is unprofessional. The only unprofessionalism I see here is a school that is making it up as they go along.
People have some very strange ideas about “military discipline”, thinking that its involves unthinking adherence to orders. In fact, and I know this from personal experience, that pretty much most of what is termed “military discipline” is in fact self discipline. Moreover, the days of “I was only obeying orders” are as dead as a dodo – Nuremberg saw to that. I can quite clearly countermanding an order by the Watch Leader to raise a periscope when I was Ship Control Officer of the watch. When questioned by him, I reminded him of the speed limit for raising masts and that had we gone ahead, he would be looking at a bent (and thus unserviceable) periscope.
However – I am with you on this questioning of authority as a matter of principle. All I see is the school making it up as they go along in a bid to establish “authority”. What they’ve actually done is to diminish that authority by making themselves look stupid.
Although you make a valid point about military discipline, so is mine. Military discipline is essential for people who may have to be ordered into a deadly situation – without the training and discipline they could not be relied upon to behave as intended.
I do recall a day many years ago at HMS Drake when a warrant officer ordered me to get my hair cut, despite it being well within Queen’s regulations. He was making a point and it was this petty adherence to rules that made me realise that a long term career in the Navy really wasn’t for me as I am far too independently minded.
However, self-discipline is essential in life and I agree, the only following orders defence was put to bed at Nuremberg.
Back to the subject, though, military discipline has no place in the school environment – and taking Jannie’s point below, if children are to break out of the indoctrination, then a healthy dose of scepticism and disrespect for petty authoritarianism is essential.
He’s not in a “professional learning environment”; he’s in a 21st century indoctrination environment.
Or as I call them – Marxist infested, prizes-for-all, feminised, everrrrreeeee-chuyyyyyuuuullllldd-is-preshhhhhuuuuss, I-know-my-rights, discipline-free, knowledge-lite, propagandised, daytime holding penitentiaries aka British Komprensiv Skoollzz in thrall to the malignant teechuzz unions and teechuzz training colliejizz.
Take him on holiday while you have the chance, out of school times. It could set a precedence and a movement that schools would find hard to combat.
Teachers who can’t teach, it’s been going on a long time. When I was at school teachers were unable to teach boys who had long hair. The inability didn’t extend to girls; I have no idea why. Now they are unable to teach boys with short hair. As I’ve said before, maybe it’s time we taught our teachers how to teach.
Indeed. My teachers couldn’t teach boys who didn’t wear ties. Mine remained in my pocket most of the time.
When I was a boy, short back and sides was the normal and usual haircut for a schoolboy. I too think the school aka headmaster is being an idiot about this.
Yup. And like all idiots is too stupid to see it.
Proving once again, that if you give inadequate, small minded, purse-lipped, jumped up petty bureaucrats and jobsworths power, they will always, ALWAYS, abuse it to the Nth degree.