High School Haircut

The hair style of high school students has been a controversial issue for many years. The prescribed plain short hair may look tidy, but the insistence on the hair length below the ear lobe in the case of girl students, which is fixed at one centimeter or at most two, is quite unnecessary. Until recently, the Mayor of Tainan had tried to persuade the Ministry of Education to give the high schoolers the carte blanche to determine their own hair styles. It is difficult for us to say if the idea is right or wrong. So far as I am concerned, problems of the young are not confined to such a small matter as hair style; what matters is the reinforcement of the students' moral consciousness, the way they should behave, and the like. The length of their hair or whether they have the right to give it a permanent wave is relatively unimportant. Cleanness and neatness is what really matters. There is hardly anything that stays unchanged all the time. Why doesn't the concerned authority reconsider this hair business? Maybe the bickerings that sour the relations between the military instructors and their students will therefore be gone. By the way, to improve one's appearance is nothing wrong, is it? We all expect to see a new look of the young. Maybe a change in the concerned authority's policy toward the high schoolers' hair style will bring this about.

{2} In my opinion the problem of the high schoolers' hair style has been overemphasized. So far as I know, this problem has been existing for quite a long time and possibly in our country alone. High school students are supposed to study hard, but it seems that few care what they really want. I just graduated from high school this year. While in high school I didn't care much about my hair style, but whenever the school checked to see if we had had our hair cut I always felt a little annoyed. If anyone forgot to have his hair cut to the required standard, he was sure to be reprimanded or even punished. I hope our high school can show a greater interest in helping students cultivate their minds than in picking holes in their hair. Once in a while our society seems to be interested in this problem too, but it is a pity that the students' own view in this matter is rarely consulted. That is why students often quarrel with their teachers, and this mutual misunderstanding is often detrimental to the students themselves. Most high school students do not really care what their hair style is; what they beef about is perhaps the constant check on their hair length. Why doesn't the Ministry of Education release high school students from this particular pressure? No wonder more and more youngsters in school are inclined to commit offenses. It is time to try and keep our educational house in order.

{3} It is surprising that high school students' hair style should become a controversial subjects. As a matter of fact, this is not a serious problem, because in my opinion high school students should not in the first place spend too much time on hair care. Time is money. The most important thing for high school students to keep in mind is to do well in school and be well prepared for the college entrance examinations. Since the admission rate of college aspirants is low, high school students should make more of an effort to prepare for it. Furthermore, the period of restricted hair length is only from junior to senior high school; if the junior high school students find nothing wrong with their hair style, why should the senior high school students take exception to it? So my conclusion is this: though it is right for the concerned authorities to relax the restrictions imposed on high schoolers' hair style in a reasonable way, the students themselves should also realize that their hair style is nothing important, that when they are graduated such restrictions on their hair will automatically become null and void. Although I am a college student now, my memory of my high school days is still fresh. As a high school student I did not care about my hair style; on the contrary, I was thankful to the uniform hair style because I could thus save much time as well as money in paying less attention to my hair. In a word, there is really no need to bother about one's hair, especially if you are just a student. If one's hair is compared to a tree and one's period of education to a river, then we can see that the tree will keep growing new leaves while the river, if it ever flows, will never flow back. Youth is itself a kind of beauty, an asset, so I don't think a student's hair will in any way detract from this beauty.

{4} The hair style of high school students was once an interesting subject in the newspaper. Almost all the educators, top-ranking government officials and teachers said that we high school students should not pick on the prescribed hair style of ours. According to them, the sole duty of a student's was to study and study and the inner part of the head was more important than the hair that covers the scalp. Despite what they said, I still don't like hair style imposed on us high school students. I isn't beautiful and it is unnatural. It looks like some dry dark grass on a boy student's head and a very small black hat on a girl student's. I am tired of having my hair cut every four weeks, yet I am obliged to do that because the military instructor so frequently inspects the hair style of every student. To me hair style is strictly a personal matter. I like to have my hair a little longer and be spared the trouble of having it cut every so often. We students labor under so many rules in school and we are taught to obey all of them. I think a uniform plain hair style is not necessary at all. Why can't we do as we like? We are eager to see the time when we are free to choose our own hair styles in our post-high school days.

{5} Closely following my graduation from junior high school in 1975 I entered a college to major in Chemical Engineering. Thus I have had no experience whatever as a senior high school student. I do not really know how the average high-schoolers react to this "hair problem," so the point of view I offer here is strictly personal. The main reason why the authorities want to impose a prescribed hair style on the high-schoolers is that this would prevent them from being contaminated by bad social influences. But I can cite an example to show that the length or the style of one's hair has no baleful effect at all on a student's behavior. From the day they enter the school the students of the college are perfectly free to choose their own hair styles, yet nobody says the students here are spoiled by such freedom. Is this enough to justify the demand that high-schoolers be liberated from a prescribed hair style?

{6} In accordance with a regulation a high school student here in Taiwan must have his or her hair cut short. Top-ranking officials in charge of education may have many reasons to justify this regulation, but the fact is that almost every student regards it with distaste. We go to school, not only to gain knowledge but also to learn how to tell right from wrong and acquire independent thinking. This is really what the educators or educational officials should be concerned about, certainly not the hair of the student. My personal experience tells me that the rule governing the student's hair style is simply the cause of endless troubles between students and teachers. Why don't they give the students the right to make their own decisions in this matter? If school officials insist on enforcing a hair style, it will only make the students more estranged from their teachers. We hope every boy or girl is a good student, but to pin this hope on a student's close-cropped hair is certainly naive, if not absurd.

{7} The hair style of high school student has long been a controversial issue. Authorities concerned insisted that the fixed hair style could make high school students look fresh and tidy. I myself was a high school student. I never thought this hair style had done me any good. When I was a high school student, my classmates often got into trouble with our military instructor, and it was not infrequent that they would be awarded a demerit simply because their hair was a little longer than the prescribed length. What is important, I should like to point out, is the mind under the hair, not the hair on the head. The authorities need not be afraid of the consequences of a cancellation of the hair regulation. I believe the law and order of our society does not depend on the length of one's hair, especially on that of the high school students'. For many years we have tried to solve the problem of juvenile delinquency. All we need to do in this respect is to encourage them to give more attention to their education and allow them more leeway in their activities. To prescribe a hair style for the young is certainly the least admirable means to achieve this end.

{8} I think it is all right for a high school student to wear a clean and plain hair, but it is not necessary to force him to have his hair cut very very short. Such kind of short hair is simply not a "style" at all. Some students often quarrel with their teachers and military instructors over the hair issue and there are even "battles" waged by the students to protect their hair. The love of beauty, we must admit, is human nature, and so is the care of one's hair. In fact, not at all is the very very short hair beautiful to look at. What then is the kind of hair style fit for a high school student? In my opinion, a clean, simple, nice-looking, and moderately long hair will cut the mustard. Actually I am very much in favor of high school students wearing their hair moderately long, for such a hair style will not only protect the head from exposure to severe cold of severe heat but will also make the wearer more nice-looking. Allowing the students to wear their hair this way will also help to put an end to many of the squabbles between them and their teachers or military instructors. The most important thing today for a high school student is, however, study; all other things are relatively unimportant. So we should not bother ourselves too much with this question. After all, beauty is but skin deep.