The Hair Purge

So, I'm back in town, back to school. School was great this week: no major fisticuffs with the kids, good discipline, good lesson planning, and great execution. Nothing major happened, and that's what I liked.

But recently at school, there's a funny little phenomena going: their haircuts are getting shorter. As I mentioned before, the high school has an unusual rule where the boys' haircuts has to be shorter than the ears, more like military-style cuts designed to keep the boys in line.

Its one of the most unpopular rules that is enforced at the school, all due to the principal. The principal is a wanted man for this.

What is more unusual is that other high schools are relaxing this rule, with many other boys' schools producing students with shaggy and long-haired cuts similar to the many boy bands in South Korea. Whereas our student body looks like a bunch of "fuzzy kiwi fruit heads," as one 2nd level student told me in humor the other day. Even my girl cousin's high school back in the day, she was forced to wear her hair near her ears, which made all the girls look like cute little boys...sad indeed. But today, even the girls' high schools are sporting hair that is long, frizzy, and stylistic for their needs.

So, our students are being "hunted" down by authorities to conform to the haircut law: if they do not get a haircut, then they are deducted points and punished even further until they go under the knife, errr, razor/clippers. The hair purge of the Yeonsu Regime begins.

But it brought back an interesting thought and question about this whole hair purge: why? I think its mostly conformity. As one of the top high schools in Incheon, the principal wants to make sure they conform to a high level and look neat for that purpose.

However, I disagree with this policy. I think that your hair is one major aspect that makes your individuality. I remember when I had short hair, you can't do much to it and you have to let it sit there until it grows back. So just like Samson from the Bible, these boys feel they are being robbed the last of their individuality, and their power! And they're kids too!

Its bad enough to have 40 to 1 class ratios, where no one speaks out and does "individual learning," but the whole deal with this haircut policy is questionable. I feel bad for the kids, and the kids joke with me by saying, "Nice hair, Mr. Soni." I couldn't imagine, unless in the military or for oath reasons, where someone told me to cut my hair. I cut my hair when its necessary, not because someone tells me to do it. I think the whole spiel is that they want kids to get be integrated into one system and one set of rules, and having long hair would increase the number of non-serious students. But to have a kid conform to a haircut rule...its just shaky ground to bring an old rule in a new modern era of education.

Its sorta like when someone says, "do this because its fashionable." So when trendsetters or other people who say this is cool "because everyone else does it," does not mean its always healthy. Movies, clothing-styles, expressions, secularism, whatever the crowd implicitly says that you need to feel good...its hardly good for you. People who follow pop culture to the t and conform because everyone does it...they get a hair cut.

On a cool note today, an unknown senior student randomly plopped into my classroom to ask me how to conduct an interview with a foreign professor. Nice boy had the guts to meet me. He asked me what is the most polite way to greet a professor from the West. I gave him my spiel on Western culture and the usual greetings in the "nopimal," or "high form" of speech of English, and off he went. Good luck to the kid...his future is on the line...November 15th. A day that is a day of infamy for all seniors of South Korea. Two words: national exam.