"If You Don't CUT THAT HAIR"

Paraphrasing the Beastie Boys this morning. I couldn't decide which group to go with this morning, The Silver Foxes, or more with my generation, Crosby, Stills, & Nash with " Almost Cut My Hair."

I see the Barbers Hill ISD is all in the news with a kid who won't cut his hair, and it wasn't as if the kid knew when school started those rules, the damn school board decided to change the rules at Christmas.

Kid's been wearing his hair for 3 1/2 years of high school like this and they up and change the rules 5 months from graduation.

Part of it I think, the kid has dreadlocks. Black kid. Actually, he was keeping it nice. I've seen white kids with greasy ass nasty hair that needed a bottle of shampoo ( the whole bottle) much shorter, but because it was within the length limits it was okay.

I don't know.

I was in the " bidness" for 30+ years and I never understood most of the dress code when it came to hair.

My senior year in high school, back when I had hair, I had shoulder length hair. I don't remember it changing any academic or disciplinary actions of myself or anyone on campus.  In college, I had the hair and a beard. ( Often wore either a button down long sleeved dress shirt, or a Hawaiian shirt with jeans and cowboys boots. Didn't really fit in the history major dress genre of the day)

Hell, until yesterday, I had not trimmed my beard since Thanksgiving. I had decided I would see how long I could get it. I was even trying to use oils and combed it. In the end, it looked like a bird's nest.( I have bad cowlicks in my beard) I trimmed it back to a more " academic" professorial look.  (Looking like old George Wall, long time philosophy prof at Lamar)

( Confession on why I made boys "shave" when I was at BHS. 1. The damn school district made me cut my beard. Once again, Buna stuck in 1952. 2. I had an administrator tell me not to get on one of the kids so hard about shaving because his "dad" was on the board, so rather than stop, I kept doing it. Got worse. And to seem fair, everyone got the same treatment. Say what you want, I tried to be fair. )

Now, I know, some of you think the clothing code needs to change too, and while some of the schools have stupid stuff like you can't have wording on shirts, and that cuts out kids wearing shirts that say " A&M" or "Texas" or LSU" or "Lamar" or even "US Army."

That said, there needs to be limits. Body parts need to be covered, if not just for the hormonal 17 year old boy sitting by you, but also for the 45 year old male teacher.

For the most part, we male teachers are trying to behave themselves. But looking out in the class and you can tell what color underwear your female students in skirts are wearing that day...or not wearing.....Well, it is why my podium was in the corner of the classroom. It was to try and give both of us some dignity. ( In loco parentis)

( And god forbid I send a girl down on a female dress code violation. Never forget a male teacher I worked in Magnolia with sending a girl to the office for wearing shorts with her "butt cheeks" hanging out. Her dad was at the office, called the teacher a "nasty bastard" for looking at his daughter and that he " secretly wanted to screw her." The male teacher in question was gay. He was just enforcing the rules, thus my lack of enforcing female dress code. It is a no-win situation.)

But hair?

Come on, even police now sport beards. If the kid is going off to college, some professor is going to probably have a worse 'hair-do' then anyone in your small town can dream of. I understand the lack of beards for safety reasons in refineries, or the fire department. But you don't have to work at a plant. You don't have to work for the fire department. Schools have a monopoly. And hair code is various from school to school. Don't like another kid's hair, ain't your kid. Ain't your business.