Dead people.
Posted on 02/27/2008 4:56:15 AM PST by E Rocc
PARMA, Ohio -- A kindergarten student with a freshly spiked Mohawk haircut has been suspended by school authorities who said the hair was a distraction for other students.
Michelle Barile, the mother of 6-year-old Bryan Ruda, said nothing in the Parma Community School handbook prohibits the haircut, characterized by closely shaved sides with a strip of prominent hair on top.
"I understand they have a dress code. I understand he has a uniform. But this is total discrimination," she said. "They can't tell me how I can cut his hair."
An administrator at the suburban Cleveland charter school first warned Barile last fall that the haircut wasn't acceptable. The school later sent another warning to her reiterating the ban.
Mohawks violate the school's policy on being properly groomed, school Principal Linda Geyer said. Also, the school district's dress code doesn't mention Mohawks, but it does allow school officials to forbid anything that interferes with the conduct of education.
Ruda's hair became a disruption on Thursday when Ruda arrived freshly shorn, Geyer said. Administrators called Barile on Friday telling her to pick Ruda up from school.
"This was his third infraction," Geyer said Tuesday. "We felt that we were being extremely patient."
Rather than request a hearing to appeal the suspension, Barile said she'll enroll him at another school. Changing the hairstyle is not an option, she said.
"It's something that he really likes," Barile said. "When people hear Mohawk, they think it's long, it's spiked, it's crazy looking, and it's really not."
Dead people.
>>During the 60s and 70s, attempts by schools to regulate hair length were struck down because of its effects beyond school. It seems to me that this is the parent’s perogative, not the school’s.<<
Legally, I can a difference if dress is a set as a condition of a charter school - but I still don’t think its a good idea.
>>Legally, I can a difference if dress is a set as a condition of a charter school - but I still don’t think its a good idea.<<
The whole point is that you may not think it’s a good idea but you don’t have to have your children attend a charter.
If I want mine to, they will wear uniforms. To get them in there, in the State of MI where our schools rank 41st in the country and a charter offers a quality education, I’ll shop at French Toast!
Awww!
-Eric
I, like probably most posters here, have spent at least twelve years in a classroom (K-12, both public and private, with dress codes and without), so my experience with the educational system is at least as valid as yours. And there's nothing fair or proper or useful about banning haircuts. From my perspective, things like that never mattered to anyone in terms of "distraction" and we students inevitably saw these sort of restrictions as nothing more than power trips.
So? Read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom he points out that in between the wars Germany, Nazis and Communists were competing for followers from the same mind set of the population. That's because they were but two sects of the same religion - Collectivism - and wanted to organise society on the same principles.
>>The whole point is that you may not think it’s a good idea but you don’t have to have your children attend a charter.
If I want mine to, they will wear uniforms. To get them in there, in the State of MI where our schools rank 41st in the country and a charter offers a quality education, I’ll shop at French Toast!<<
I agree they should be able to set up charter schools this way. But that doesn’t stop me from believing its a good idea.
I’ve been studying various schools around the country and ran into one where the school uniform is tie dyed. Even there the attempt is to provide uniformity at a time when kids are coming into their own as people. Allowable but not desirable, in my opinion.
And if their long hair did provide a distraction to the learning environment, they WOULD be asked to cut their hair. But that is the whole point - the “litmus test” so to speak, is if it causes and interruption to the learning environment.
I don’t know about the school in question, or schools in your area, but around here - long hair does not even bring a second look - but a spiked mohawk would cause quite a stir - and not just for a few minutes - but for an extended time.
I beg to differ - 12 years as a student are nothing like 12 years as a teacher. Period. The difference is staggering.
Too funny! Honesty I don’t know! I know that some of our roads change names 4 or more times! Talk about confusing, but I can’t remember what Rockside Road becomes unless it’s the same as Brecksville Road (but I don’t think that is right).
Another poster pointed out that they should put a dress on the boy.
Sounds about right.
Besides, these kids are in Kindergarten. How do they know what’s normal?
Given that students are object of all the rule-making, the experience of actual students is important, if not supremely important, in determining whether or not these rules are meaningful or not. Otherwise, it's merely rationalization on the part of those with power of their own prejudices.
While the mohawk is a silly hairstyle and the mother is foolish about approving it, it’s none of the school’s damn business.
What the school is putting inside the boy’s head (mostly nonsense) is more alarming than what the barber did to the outside of it.
Amen!! Big brother is everywhere meddling in our lives. Behold the Twilight Zone of Liberal Insanity!
This is a charter school, so ( unlike the government indoctrination camps) the mom is not under police threat to send her son there. If the charter school was clear about the rules before enrollment then the mom should abide by them.
Good for her. She is a mom who DOESN'T think it takes a village
You would think, but it hasn't been that way here for a very long time. When it comes to a confrontation between a private citizen and a public taxsucking bureaucrat, most freepers cant wait to come running to the defense of the bureaucrat, while trashing the private citizen in every way possible. The more independant and freedom loving the private citizen, the more freepers will defend the person who's paycheck comes with a government seal on it.
Hanging out on FreeRepublic for any length of time one would come away thinking that "conservative" means school uniforms (parental rights, we don't need no stinking parental rights), a love of "authority figures"(aka were from the government and were here to help), and making sure you call anyone under the age of 20 a ""brat", "punk", "hoodlum" or "little darling"(sarcasticly).
Yep, so glad I have a conservative web site to come to.
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