Discussions

Dyed Hair/Loss of Freedom in Schools

Posted by calais50 • 7/10/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic

I'm tired of public schools being so legalistic. When I was in high school (graduated in '97), our principal made the decree that kids could no longer dye their hair unnatural colors (blue, pink, etc). I don't dye my hair, but I just found that to be overstepping the school's authority. It seems like kids can barely breathe w/o breaking a rule in schools any more.

What do you think? Do you know of any school policies that violate students' freedom?

User Comments

7/10/08

psychosolodiver

Some may consider a blue or pink haired student a "distraction."

However, when I was in High School (graduated a few years before you) I enjoyed the freak show of punkers and rockers.

Now, policies that restrict freedom of expression are implemented just to get the youth of America used to be a conformists - remember, the masses are suppose to be sheep.

[reply]
7/10/08

Katuluu

comment removed by the community.

[reply]
1. 7/10/08
  
  calais50
  
  Lol! What's this world coming to when that's against the rules? My principal yelled at me and my b/f in high school b/c he gave me a peck on the cheek as we were headed to class.
2. 7/10/08
  
  Katuluu
  
  comment removed by the community.
3. 7/10/08
  
  riverstyxxx
  
  comment removed by the community.
7/10/08

MadameX

I don't know that these are "new restrictions" so much as responses to issues that didn't arise until quite recently. I went to high school in the early eighties at a relatively large public school (about 500 in my graduating class, from a starting class about about 650) in a racially and economically mixed area, and the only person I ever saw with an unnatural hair color was my cousin when she died her hair with food coloring for Halloween and forgot to include the baby powder (so that it didn't wash out as anticipated).

I think a lot of school rules are silly, but I also think that they often aren't new limitations at all but simply codification of something that was once assumed.

[reply]
1. 7/10/08
  
  Katuluu
  
  Your answer is much better then mine.
2. 7/10/08
  
  MadameX
  
  I think they're pretty similar, actually.
7/10/08

DrowseyMonkey

I agree with you, dying your hair is pretty common and a decision for the parents not the schools. Anyone who gets too fussed about hair dye is just too fussy as far as I'm concerned.

Freedom of expression is good when you're in your teens ... there will be time enough for conformity when they become adults.

I think when school boards focus on this type of nonsense they're missing the point. Which is sad, since they're the educators.

[reply]
7/10/08

dlowe

One of my teachers made me turn my shirt inside out because it said "Too Drunk to F***" on it.

I swear, the nerve!

[reply]
7/10/08

ChicaX

I think it's bull. When I was in high school, baggy pants and chains were banned. Both of which I wore, so it affected me, and made me not want to go to school. I think it's the same with denying kids certain hair colorings. They will rebel and end up getting suspended.

If only they allowed them their uniqueness and creativity, would make for a more relaxing place to be.

Who really looks at the pink and blue hair folks anyways? They really cannot be the majority, and the majority are probably too "up on the ladder" to even pay more then a grimace to them. At least that's been my experience.

[reply]
7/10/08

focusorganic

I went to high school with a girl who had naturally red hair. She enhanced it to make it a brighter red (albeit, with Kool Aid, but it didn't look distracting), and she got sent home. This was in 1998 or 1999... I thought it was ridiculous.

Another kid I went to school with was checking his email in his computer class (which was allowed), and was suspended because he had received an email that the school didn't approve of... as if he had any control over what other people sent him!

[reply]
7/10/08

gingerbeer25

I totally disagree with this rule but the function of school is to teach children to conform to social rules as well as educate. We have a practice of disciplining and stifling individuality despite the rhetoric of free will. The minute you enter the business world you will be expected to out on your prison uniform (suit) at carry on like all of the other automatons.

[reply]
7/10/08

Hoeno

I'm not against a loose dress code like ''You can't wear a machete on a chain around your neck or a shirt with John Holmes and Ron Jeremy crossing swords'' but not allowing teens to dye their hair in a public school is just plain over officiating. As for the common ''it's a distraction to the other students'' excuse, I find that to be a whopper. I'm trying to imagine another child so stupid that they just can't focus on a teacher or a book because Billy's hair is purple! Day after day, he just can't seem to get used to it. He goes home and he just mumbles about it, unable to think about his homework or comprehend such a distracting occurrence. He can't sleep properly because he keeps waking up shouting ''Ack! Purple hair! Billy's got purple flippin' hair!'' and then eventually he goes completely insane and never gets an education. Yes, it's possibly a distraction for the split second it would take a teen to notice it, accept it and then move on to go think about Paris Hilton or their Tony Hawk video game or why they're cursed with a stray pimple directly in their ear hole. Raise children to be distracted, easily offended, picky and socially inflexible and they will grow up to be...the majority of the country apparently.

~JD

[reply]
7/10/08

Anok

Our schools have banned just about everything here.

Including recess.

Reason number seven thousand three hundred and sixty four of why I'm homeschooling

[reply]
1. 7/10/08
  
  ChicaX
  
  Including recess?!?! What in the world for, now that right there is totally uncalled for. That's the one thing in school besides art that I looked forward to. I bet it makes it really hard for the teachers, even harder for the kiddos. :/
2. 7/10/08
  
  Anok
  
  Yup, grades k-8 have no more recess. No art classes, no music, no after school sports, or extracurricular activities.
  
  All gone. It's a combination of zero-tolerance and no child left behind that has created this void in schools.
  
  They now wear uniforms, (so, no dyed hair or nuthin) they cannot bring in peanut butter products, no cupcakes, no school parties that aren't pre-approved, no medicine (not even inhalers - one kid died because of this rule), no holiday parties unless it's totally neutral....
  
  nothing.
  
  They are robots.
7/10/08

kat822

the kids in my school i teach are not allowed unnatural colors in their hair, but when they go to the highschool there are no restrictions, it kind goes along with the assumption that most of the middle schoolers are not mature enough and their behaviors are restricted, it's interesting how much the kids mature and even out once they get to high school, there are so many less incidents of immature behaviors once in that environment hense more privileges

[reply]
7/10/08

kxthy73

I know of a boy who's parents made him a tall mohawk for wacky hair day at his school. After wacky hair day they trimmed his hair shorter, but it was still in a mohawk. He won an award that came with a prize. The powers that be would not allow the child to have the prize until he no longer had the mohawk, and mohawks were banned.

[reply]