After years of wrangling with authorities, Thailand students can now lower their hair. Literally.
On Wednesday, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court Annulled a 50-year-old directive by the Education Ministry, which had previously set out rules on Hairstyles for School Students: short hair for boys and ear-length bobs for girls.
In practice, hair signatures slowly relax in many schools. But some still use 1975 released juntta as a guidance, and cut the hairs with students who do not follow.
The 1975 directives violated individual constitutional freedoms and unrelated society today, the court said.
The court’s decision this week came to a petition, filed with 23 public school students in 2020, arguing that the 1975 directive is not constitutional.
Student activists have long campaigns for relaxed hair rules, saying that it hits their human dignity and personal freedom of their bodies.
One of these is the Panthhin Doshownanususa, which has recently graduated from university.
“In children’s eyes like us then … even if it’s not possible, we want to do,” he told the BBC. “If no student in Thai history has grown to challenge the power of adults who hold us back, it is a lifelong shame.”
In response to such campaigns, the 2020’s Education Ministry allows students to have several strips – but there remain some restrictions. The boy’s hair can’t hide the neck in their necks, while the girls with long hair should tie them.
Regulations rejected by 2023, with the immediate minister of Thiientong education announcing that students, school authorities need to negotiate themselves common for stanceers in their schools.
But through all these changes, some schools continue to follow the standard set to the original directive in 1975.
Schools traditionally related to short hair with discipline and sadness – an argument repeated by many social media users this week. But in recent years reports of schools prohibit bangs or removable public-directed hair in the public in Thailand.
In some parts of the country, teachers know the students’ hair during the morning assembly to punish them because of the rules of the rules. Such practices continue even as education authorities have warned teachers against it.
In January, the Ministry of Education was also repeated that it insisted on hair lengths for all students, saying it indicates the difference and equity of all parts of education “.
The court’s decision on Wednesday, who also said that school hair rules must consider the freedom and dignity of the students, restored by the official pushing students on their own.
But Panthin said the recessive decades of old directives “still leaves a hole for schools to put their own rules”. In cases where schools have a lot of conservative management, he suggests, restrictions can remain in place.
However Panthin said “glad that what I saw and fought all that was recognized and had a figurative progress”.
“I hope that condemnation of Corgage will set a new pattern for understanding about the basic human rights to school.”
