Shear Defiance: Thai Students Rebel Against Mandatory Haircuts

[Hans Mann]

Thai students get haircuts at a school in Phuket. Some students are resisting the traditional cuts. Photo: Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters

By
James Hookway
June 23, 2016 3:57 p.m. ET

WAT JINDARAM, Thailand—There’s a distinct buzz in schoolyards around Thailand when the academic year starts every May, and 19-year-old Wattanachai Rojyindee aims to silence it.

The sound is of electric clippers that teachers use to shear students’ hair in a standardized fashion, a ritual that is part of the nation’s longstanding passion for strict dress codes. Mr. Wattanachai, having suffered several of these haircuts himself, has formed the Student Hairdo Resistance Organization of Thailand to encourage schools to drop the clippers.

“It’s not a good look when you are 15 and trying to find your own identity,” he said. “How would the teachers like it if they had to get haircuts like that?”

“Haircuts like that” are clipped-down military styles with a tuft on top for boys or, for girls, a pudding-bowl bob. Sometimes teachers shave just a strip up the back of a student’s head, for a parent or barber to finish.

The haircuts are as much a part of the school experience in Thailand as the crisp white shirts with khaki shorts or long navy-blue skirts seen around the country. The regimented look harks back to former dictator Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, who decreed in 1941 that Thais should wear uniforms “as position and opportunity permits.”

As with much in the nation today, the coiffures have become part of a struggle between the modern forces of democracy and militaristic traditions. Although an elected government dropped the haircut rule in 2013, many schools chose to stick with shearing after a new military-installed junta came to power in a coup two years ago.

“We need it to maintain the school’s reputation,” said Thanikul Kaewketmanee, deputy director of the Phrapathom Wittayala school from which Mr. Wattanachai graduated last year in this small town west of Bangkok.

In an old-school approach to adult education, senior citizens in northeastern Thailand don the kind of uniforms they wore back in high school to attend weekly life-skills classes. Photo: Wilawan Watcharasakwet/The Wall Street Journal

“Our school has a history going back 107 years,” he said. “If the boys want to look handsome, well, they’ll just have to go study somewhere else.”

Mr. Wattanachai, the son of a guava farmer who now studies computer science in college and has treated himself to a thick mop of hair, counters that Thailand needs to shift with the times. “These days people are sharing pictures of themselves online,” he said. “If you have a bad haircut, it’s so embarrassing.”

Last year in his high-school senior year, he devised his Hairdo Resistance group to encourage students to voice opposition to what they view as the tyranny of the clippers. Its Facebook page, with over 19,000 followers, bears the strap-line “Long hair or short, what matters is how we exercise our rights” and carries students’ accounts of their latest cuts.

Nitithon Phitsawat, 17, described how his high-school teacher used electric clippers to shear a stripe up the back of his head to force him to get the rest cut to school specs. “This happens every month,” he wrote. Some wrote that teachers had students sit in their schoolyards cross-legged, waiting for trims. One wrote forced haircuts were “a violation of students’ rights.”

Others have posted pictures taken furtively from the back of class, showing bald patches on heads recently shaved by teachers, sometimes in the shape of an X.

“This guy helps us speak the truth,” said Sunant Pangsri, 16, a high-school student in Bangkok who recently got the traditional cut.


Many Thai schools require traditional cuts: clipped-down military styles with a tuft on top for boys or, for girls, a pudding-bowl bob. Photo: Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters

A parent, Wanjarat Kodkham, said she laughed the first time her sons came home with a school-inflicted haircut. “It serves you right!” she recalled telling them. “It’s better to keep our traditions, but I don’t agree with it if the teachers are deliberately trying to make the haircuts embarrassing or ugly as a punishment.”

Mr. Wattanachai said parents ask him for advice on what to do after their children’s schools administer haircuts. “There’s not much I can tell them,” he said, “except to pressure the school to change its policy.”

He concedes that isn’t likely, though some private schools have loosened regulations for girls.

The shorn look is bound with Thailand’s broader fascination with uniforms. Civil servants’ formal wear comprises a white, navy-style buttoned tunic trimmed with a gold lanyard. University students still wear uniforms.

And some older Thais remember their school dress code so fondly they are going back to it themselves. In Phibun Mangsahan, near Thailand’s border with Laos, elderly students are proudly putting school uniforms back on in a return-to-school program where they learn new skills such as nursing or computer use.

“I feel like I’m about 15 or 16,” said one, Buntana Jamsri, 69. “My grandchildren said to me, ‘Grandma, you look much younger, like a young girl.’ So I checked myself in the mirror, and I thought, oh yeah!”

Her classmate Phanom Boriboon, 60, smiled broadly as he struck the school bell to start the day’s classes. “They never called my name to ring the bell when I was a kid,” he said, “so I’m really pleased to have a chance to turn back the clock.”

Some of these mature students have cut their hair schoolboy-style, though others struggle just to keep their comb-overs in place.

Thai teenagers have ways to avoid teachers’ shears. Mr. Wattanachai recently took visitors to meet his favorite hairdresser, Buasai Dengdom, at the Diamond Hair Salon. Ms. Buasai, he said, has a knack for keeping hair within school guidelines but still stylish. Her secret: cutting with scissors, not clippers. “You can provide more shape and style,” she said.

“The parents bring their sons here,” Ms. Buasai said, “and they kick up such a drama. ‘I don’t want it short, don’t cut it, please,’ they say.”

“I tell them this: It’s either me who cuts it, or it’s the teachers. That usually shuts them up.”

—Wilawan Watcharasakwet contributed to this article.

Shear Defiance: Thai Students Rebel Against Mandatory Haircuts - WSJ

[KEVIN2008]

There are so many bloody things wrong with the Thai Educational system and the kids hair is not one of them....typical Thai crap again.

[taxexile]

and the kids hair is not one of them

yes it most certainly is.

along with the thais obsession with status and uniforms, inflicting and forcing these demeaning haircuts on children from an early age only reinforces a system that punishes individuality and self expression and forces them into an unhealthy unconditional acceptance of authority and a fear of challenging it.

[KEVIN2008]

[email protected] point...



COMMENTARY

Our children deserve education, not indoctrination

All three of my children attend Bangkok Patana International School. So I would like to declare my bias upfront.

Bangkok Patana is a fantastic international school. What a superb organisation, blessed with a long roster of highly qualified teachers and staff, all dedicated to providing our children with a first-class education.

On behalf of the parents, I think I can say we are all eternally grateful. Last week, however, I was even more impressed when my son's Year 4 class teachers, Miss Miriam and Miss Paula, "summoned" my wife and I to listen to our son speak about his own progress at school. In that meeting, I was handed a sheet of paper which was labelled "Critical Thinking", and was told that it was imperative to the school that students learn to develop this ability as soon as possible. Hallelujah!
The teachers were preaching to the choir, because in my opinion, the most valuable gift any parent can give to their child, is the ability to think critically, which will hopefully lead to independent thought.

But after reviewing Thailand's test results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), visiting some rural Thai schools and reading Gen Prayut's 12 Principles textbooks, which will be disseminated to all state schools, it is my belief that for the past 50 years successive governments have disgracefully left millions of our children behind in a ramshackle educational system designed to bore the hell out of them.

This is obviously a sinister attempt to create impressionable, programmable, pliable, vacant and obedient young minds that can easily be told what to think, instead of how to think. Every Thai government has failed to educate our children; they have always tried to indoctrinate them. The indoctrination of children and denying them the freedom to think critically is wholly irresponsible, and in my view, tantamount to child abuse and it must be stopped. This is why I think the argument by the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) and members of the Bangkok elite against real democracy and universal suffrage is totally disingenuous. Their stance basically rests on the notion that real democracy can't be applied to rural communities, because a democracy requires an informed citizenry to function properly, and communities outside of Bangkok have simply not been educated yet.

No argument from me on that basis at all. An informed citizenry is essential for a thriving democracy. But the privileged class keep harping on about how unprepared the huddled masses are for democracy, but what have we done in the last 50 years to educate them? Absolutely nothing! It's tragic. Don't take my word for it, look at the latest OECD-sanctioned Pisa educational attainment test results. First of all they show huge disparities between Bangkok and other parts of the country in the areas of maths, science and reading. They also indicate that internationally, Thailand is way behind OECD averages. But most shocking of all, our average scores are all behind Vietnam, a mere developing country, compared to our status as a newly industrialised one.

Thai culture has an unhealthy obsession with producing subservient children, blindly obedient to the will of senior members of society. It is my hypothesis that this obsession is the probable cause for Thailand's inability to produce creative minds for the economy of the future and quality leaders required in all walks of life. Of course, teach children the value of respect, that's vital. But we should also teach them to have the courage to express themselves, otherwise we will be a nation of sheep without having produced enough shepherds.

Look at how sport teaches respect while preparing kids to lead. The US Masters golf tournament in the first day of play places the reigning Masters champion in the same group as the reigning US Amateur Champion. What message does this send?

The message is that kids of today should be empowered and their abilities recognised because they are the leaders of tomorrow.

During Scotland's referendum on the question of independence, the voting age was reduced from 18 to 16. What does this mean? It means Scotland thinks that on issues that will fundamentally affect the lives of future generations, they too should have their say.

In the United Kingdom as part of Ed Miliband's general election campaign, the leader of the Labour Party recently appeared on a BBC political programme called Free Speech, where he was mercilessly grilled for an hour by a bunch of young inquisitive voters.

But who will this benefit? It will benefit all of us, because it will create a culture where in return for respect, senior members of society, and even those running for prime minister, have to be accountable to the younger generations in our country.

Let's stop this nonsense. If the argument against democracy is lack of education, then let's educate them. Instead of using Section 44 to fix airline safety or land encroachment, why not do something for the future of our forsaken children?

Gen Prayut should abandon indoctrination and instead come up with a plan backed by legislation to revamp Thailand's education system by 2030 and order all political parties and the bureaucracy to sign on to this monumental national commitment.

After all, a Bangkok Patana education shouldn't just be available to rich people or to those living in Bangkok, it should be available to all Thai children.

Songkran Grachangnetara is an entrepreneur. He graduated from The London School of Economics and Columbia University. He can be reached on Twitter: @SongkranTalk

[DJ Pat]

[email protected] point...



COMMENTARY

Our children deserve education, not indoctrination

All three of my children attend Bangkok Patana International School. So I would like to declare my bias upfront.

Bangkok Patana is a fantastic international school. What a superb organisation, blessed with a long roster of highly qualified teachers and staff, all dedicated to providing our children with a first-class education.

On behalf of the parents, I think I can say we are all eternally grateful. Last week, however, I was even more impressed when my son's Year 4 class teachers, Miss Miriam and Miss Paula, "summoned" my wife and I to listen to our son speak about his own progress at school. In that meeting, I was handed a sheet of paper which was labelled "Critical Thinking", and was told that it was imperative to the school that students learn to develop this ability as soon as possible. Hallelujah!
The teachers were preaching to the choir, because in my opinion, the most valuable gift any parent can give to their child, is the ability to think critically, which will hopefully lead to independent thought.

But after reviewing Thailand's test results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), visiting some rural Thai schools and reading Gen Prayut's 12 Principles textbooks, which will be disseminated to all state schools, it is my belief that for the past 50 years successive governments have disgracefully left millions of our children behind in a ramshackle educational system designed to bore the hell out of them.

This is obviously a sinister attempt to create impressionable, programmable, pliable, vacant and obedient young minds that can easily be told what to think, instead of how to think. Every Thai government has failed to educate our children; they have always tried to indoctrinate them. The indoctrination of children and denying them the freedom to think critically is wholly irresponsible, and in my view, tantamount to child abuse and it must be stopped. This is why I think the argument by the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) and members of the Bangkok elite against real democracy and universal suffrage is totally disingenuous. Their stance basically rests on the notion that real democracy can't be applied to rural communities, because a democracy requires an informed citizenry to function properly, and communities outside of Bangkok have simply not been educated yet.

No argument from me on that basis at all. An informed citizenry is essential for a thriving democracy. But the privileged class keep harping on about how unprepared the huddled masses are for democracy, but what have we done in the last 50 years to educate them? Absolutely nothing! It's tragic. Don't take my word for it, look at the latest OECD-sanctioned Pisa educational attainment test results. First of all they show huge disparities between Bangkok and other parts of the country in the areas of maths, science and reading. They also indicate that internationally, Thailand is way behind OECD averages. But most shocking of all, our average scores are all behind Vietnam, a mere developing country, compared to our status as a newly industrialised one.

Thai culture has an unhealthy obsession with producing subservient children, blindly obedient to the will of senior members of society. It is my hypothesis that this obsession is the probable cause for Thailand's inability to produce creative minds for the economy of the future and quality leaders required in all walks of life. Of course, teach children the value of respect, that's vital. But we should also teach them to have the courage to express themselves, otherwise we will be a nation of sheep without having produced enough shepherds.

Look at how sport teaches respect while preparing kids to lead. The US Masters golf tournament in the first day of play places the reigning Masters champion in the same group as the reigning US Amateur Champion. What message does this send?

The message is that kids of today should be empowered and their abilities recognised because they are the leaders of tomorrow.

During Scotland's referendum on the question of independence, the voting age was reduced from 18 to 16. What does this mean? It means Scotland thinks that on issues that will fundamentally affect the lives of future generations, they too should have their say.

In the United Kingdom as part of Ed Miliband's general election campaign, the leader of the Labour Party recently appeared on a BBC political programme called Free Speech, where he was mercilessly grilled for an hour by a bunch of young inquisitive voters.

But who will this benefit? It will benefit all of us, because it will create a culture where in return for respect, senior members of society, and even those running for prime minister, have to be accountable to the younger generations in our country.

Let's stop this nonsense. If the argument against democracy is lack of education, then let's educate them. Instead of using Section 44 to fix airline safety or land encroachment, why not do something for the future of our forsaken children?

Gen Prayut should abandon indoctrination and instead come up with a plan backed by legislation to revamp Thailand's education system by 2030 and order all political parties and the bureaucracy to sign on to this monumental national commitment.

After all, a Bangkok Patana education shouldn't just be available to rich people or to those living in Bangkok, it should be available to all Thai children.

Songkran Grachangnetara is an entrepreneur. He graduated from The London School of Economics and Columbia University. He can be reached on Twitter: @SongkranTalk

This guy wants to watch himself, defamation charges

[BobR]

and the kids hair is not one of them

yes it most certainly is.

along with the thais obsession with status and uniforms, inflicting and forcing these demeaning haircuts on children from an early age only reinforces a system that punishes individuality and self expression and forces them into an unhealthy unconditional acceptance of authority and a fear of challenging it.

There's another danger to this nonsense; that when these children, who are justifiably angry get old enough to rebel, they'll go overboard doing so with ugly tattoos, body piercings, purple hair etc.

[Maanaam]

and the kids hair is not one of them

yes it most certainly is.

along with the thais obsession with status and uniforms, inflicting and forcing these demeaning haircuts on children from an early age only reinforces a system that punishes individuality and self expression and forces them into an unhealthy unconditional acceptance of authority and a fear of challenging it.

There's another danger to this nonsense; that when these children, who are justifiably angry get old enough to rebel, they'll go overboard doing so with ugly tattoos, body piercings, purple hair etc.

I wish more of them would get purple hair and piercings.
It's a great thing for kids to show individuality.

[stroller]

and the kids hair is not one of them

yes it most certainly is.

along with the thais obsession with status and uniforms, inflicting and forcing these demeaning haircuts on children from an early age only reinforces a system that punishes individuality and self expression and forces them into an unhealthy unconditional acceptance of authority and a fear of challenging it.

Just like the UK not long ago...

[taxexile]

It's a great thing for kids to show individuality.

yes it is.

[BobR]

It's a great thing for kids to show individuality.

yes it is.

Sure, but not to the point of making one's self an unemployable freak. large ugly tattoos and purple hair do not rate well in job interviews or for finding a quality boy/girlfriend.

[Dragonfly94]

Uniforms need to be done away with, not just one, they need about 5 sets of the stupid outfits.

[DJ Pat]

Imagine if these kids were proficient in english and thought for themselves, all hell would break loose

[Cold Pizza]

Jesus, LOS is a fucked up place.

I am glad I left and I'm not saying this to be sarcastic.

[Latindancer]

I greatly resented having had to get two haircuts in one day in grade 12. The first was not short enough. After the second, I felt mutilated.

Basically it's an invasion of personal space and infringement of personal rights.

[taxexile]

^

and your point is exactly what?

[stroller]

It's no different than how you grew up, hardly an exclusively 'Thai obsession', is it.

[taxexile]

it is very different to how i grew up.