School needs an education

[Chris James]

This incident took place in Utah at an elementary school called Arrowhead. If anyone doesn't realize the Native American roots associated with those place names then they are dumb as a rock...kind of like the administrators at this school.

Let's talk about developing a teachable moment here, perhaps more for the adults running this place than the students, but they both seem to need it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/19/native-american-boy-pulled-from-class-over-mohawk-haircut/

The haircut was distracting...oh gosh...now get over it.

[DesDownunder]

It's like the musical HAIR had never existed.

[TalonRider]

Things like this has been going on for years. I remember a classmate in elementary school who came in on the first day of the new school year with a mohawk. It was gone the next day.

[Lugnutz]

Things like this has been going on for years. I remember a classmate in elementary school who came in on the first day of the new school year with a mohawk. It was gone the next day.

They're doing that now. I just read that a 7 year old may be suspended because of his Mohawk. He is Indian too.

[ChrisR]

Let's talk about developing a teachable moment here, perhaps more for the adults running this place than the students, but they both seem to need it.

The haircut was distracting...oh gosh...now get over it.

You've nailed it, Chris. If it's a teachable moment, then TEACH for goodness sake: It's a SCHOOL!

I'm not fond of classroom distractions, particularly when they are contemporary "culture-of-the-week" related, but a hair style reflecting the boy's native heritage is a super message for his classmates - and, obviously, the teachers and administration.

But I guess it didn't incorporate a question on the standardized testing program, so it has to go. Educational equality. Keep them all equally ignorant.

[Nick Deverill]

Nothing new...

First two stanzas of Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.

There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Woe betide the kid who doesn't fit in his/her little box.

[Joe]

Well I can't say I'm surprised.

[DesDownunder]

Ever since I screamed at my mother and the barber, when I was very young, I have to say I regard anyone's hair as sovereign territory, never to be the subject of violation by other people's demands to conform to their ideas of what is appropriate or acceptable. In other words I regard the individual's hair style, or lack of it, as a human right pertaining to freedom of expression.

Even so, cultural influences will persuade each of us to investigate particular styles at different times of our lives.

However, authoritarian, fascist, demands to conform must be protested against, even when, especially when, resistance is futile.

Anyone from the late 1960's knows that Hair is sacrosanct.

[Lugnutz]

And you haven't cut yours since the 70's.

[DesDownunder]

And you haven't cut yours since the 70's.

1975 to be precise.

[Merkin]

The ‘buzz cut’ was a big hit in my youth, popular with moms because it would disclose the presence of nits, and with dads because it at least gave them hope that their sons would turn out to be manly. I had barely emerged from that period when both Ed Sullivan and the Summer of Love revealed the allure of the bouffant page boy look and we all began to make appointments with our hairdressers for perms and afros. Soon thereafter I noticed hairs on my pillow and, alas, they weren’t someone else’s. I began to count the locks that remained, but not for long. Today I’d settle for just about any style that I could run a comb through, and I spend a great deal of time shopping for warm hats.

[Cole Parker]

You couldn't go to elementary or middle school today, James. Your head would be an distraction.

C