After decades of wrangling with government, pupils in Thailand is then let their hair down. Absolutely.
On Wednesday, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court annulled a 50-year-old order by the training government, which had originally set out guidelines on hairstyles for college students: short mane for boys and ear-length bobs for girls.
In practice, styling laws have been progressively relaxed across many schools. But some still used the 1975 junta-issued law as a guide, and had cut the mane of kids who didn’t agree.
The 1975 order violated personal rights protected by the constitution and was out of contact with today’s society, the judge said.
The jury selection this year came in response to a complaint, filed by 23 public school students in 2020, which argued that the 1975 order was illegal.
Student protesters have long campaigned for beard guidelines to get relaxed, saying it infringes on their individual dignity and personal independence over their body.
One of them is Panthin Adulthananusak, who just graduated from university.
” In the eyes of children like us up then… even though it seemed difficult, we wanted to do something”, he told the BBC. ” If no scholar in Thai past rose up to challenge the power of the people that suppressed us, it would be a lifelong guilt”.
In response to such efforts, the education department in 2020 allowed individuals to have more hairstyles- but there remained some restrictions. Kids ‘ hair may not support the back of their heads, while girls with long locks had to tie it up.
Those regulations were revoked in 2023, with then education minister Trinuch Thienthong announcing that students, parents and school authorities should negotiate their own common ground on what is acceptable for hairstyles in their schools.
But through all these changes, some schools continued to follow the standard laid out in the original 1975 directive.
Schools have traditionally associated short hair with discipline and tidiness- an argument that has been repeated by many social media users this week. But in recent years reports of schools banning bangs or dyed hair have sparked public outcry across Thailand.
In some parts of the country, teachers are known to shoddily cut students ‘ hair during morning assembly to punish them for flouting hairstyle rules. Such practices have continued even as education authorities warned teachers against it.
In January, the Ministry of Education reiterated that it had repealed restrictions on hair length for all students, saying it recognised the “importance of promoting diversity and fairness in all aspects of education”.
Wednesday’s court decision, which also says that schools ‘ hairstyle rules should consider the freedom and dignity of students, reaffirms the official push to leave hair choices up to students themselves.
But Panthin said the revoking of the decades-old directive” still leaves a hole for schools to set their own rules”. In cases where schools have more conservative management, he suggested, restrictions could remain in place.
Nonetheless, Panthin said he “felt glad that what I had seen and fought all along was acknowledged and there was a tangible progress”.
” I hope this court’s ruling will set a new standard for the understanding about basic human rights at the school”.