Livin' the life...

Three days ago I posted about an article on some students in Barbados that were "Expelled because of their hairstyles". The following excerpt is a follow-up to that article, and I think it's just as good a read as the original article itself!

"MINISTER OF EDUCATION Ronald Jones is hinting that the new Education Act will take into consideration the now controversial issue of appropriate hairstyles for school, which is currently left to the interpretation of administrators.

He said the new act and new regulations would be presented to Parliament as soon as the necessary review of the current act and accompanying regulations had been completed.

One interpretation saw five students being barred from classes at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic (SJPP) last week for wearing locks. But, deputy principal Merton Forde said the students would be allowed back in school if they presented documents proving they were part of the Rastafari faith.

..

He cautioned that it was impossible for the act to cover everything and, of necessity, it must still be general.

"Common sense always must dictate what we do. Even though there are laws written down, common sense must [prevail] in circumstances such as those that confronted the administration at the school . . . . There must always be general terms used in education, because from the time you start to demarcate, you're into a whole long troublesome process," he argued.

He said he was "puzzled" by the SJPP development, because the students would have been in school for seven months with the locks and it only became an issue last week [Even I picked up on this one; see the last paragraph of my previous post].

..

Minister Jones told the DAILY NATION last Thursday that as far as he was aware, all five students should have been back in school.

"One could not understand, or for that matter appreciate, the argument that a citizen of Barbados must bring any kind of document to any institution, asking them to prove if they belong to any religion, caste, sex or creed.

"That is trampling on a person's civil rights [and] their religious rights, their democratic rights in our society, which holds up the individual as paramount, even though within the confines of the law. And there should not be any law in any educational institution which debars young people from getting an education," he stated. " (Ref)

Wow! Well that surely is a mouthful! And a thought-provoking one indeed! I wonder what the repercussions are in store, if any! And also how far-reaching they will be eg. will Secondary schools have a more relaxed hairstyle rules?

I wonder...