My school cut my hair?

This post is dedicated to Mr Lee Hee Fock, teacher, Jurong Junior College (Singapore). He was a wonderful teacher in leading Civil Defence Club, and a quirky math teacher who taught math in lots of Chinese. He was also famous for "Ah, 你没剪头发!" (You didn't cut your hair!) We all know he was the Discipline Master of Jurong JC for a long, ... long... time.

Should schools cut students' hair? What are the implications?

Premise:

• Schools should warn students of hair checks a few days in advance to ensure they get their hair cut
• Students should be responsible to get their hair cut at their favourite barber
• If hair isn't cut, schools should ask student to call his/her parents, and pass the phone to the teacher to talk after the student is made to confess that he/she hasn't cut his/her hair and obeyed the school rules
• Schools should bring the student to the nearest barber to cut his/her hair - whether teachers should ask barber to cut it real short, the jury's out
  

No:

• Human rights will be observed.
• Singapore would slowly shift towards westernisation while abandoning its Confucian (respect your teachers') roots
• Management of discipline would become increasingly difficult, as this rule has been in place for a long time. Schools would have to look at all disciplinary rules and revamp the entire system again. Should students be punished for not doing their homework?
• There is also a sublimal question of whether the great divide between the lesser off and the better off would increase. Students like myself had learned discipline in schools, from teachers. And stuff that I had learned in school allowed me to rise in social ladder
• Scrapping the school rule would also acknowledge students' rights to a greater degree beyond what the Singapore society would wish to cope with. This would further increase teachers' woes of having to deal with students.
  

Special concessions to students who are parents' gems/babies?

• Should there be schools who market themselves as having students' welfare and interest at heart? If yes, is discipline part of having the students' future at heart?
• Should students be sent to international schools (SIngapore has plenty of them) just to avoid the hair-cut?
• Should schools allow long hair or coloured hair if parents write in to request for exceptions to be made?
• Has MOE done enough to assure parents that students are WELL taken care of?
  

More significant questions:

• Question on responsibility: Should a student, an adolescent, obey school rules, stop being mummy's boy and start understanding that life is full of rules and they are often unfair?
• Is progress always good? What about traditions which makes us who we are? If westernisation is the new norm, should we abandon the right to cut students' hair just to follow what is the new cool? When the new cool blows over, we forget who we were, and move on to the next new cool?

To students of the future: It's important to cut your hair because short hair is the acceptable norm of the society. Whether you venture into the arts industry is another matter. If you, as a student, gets an interview either for scholarship or job, turning up with a haircut not touching the collar or covering the eyebrows is crucial. The school is an institution. Colour your hair or keep it as long as you want (or even wear a wig, if you like) once you step out of the school compound, but when you're within its premise, obey its rules, or leave.