After years of wrangling with authorities, college students in Thailand can now let their hair down. Actually.
On Wednesday, Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court docket annulled a 50-year-old directive by the training ministry, which had beforehand set out guidelines on hairstyles for college college students: quick hair for boys and ear-length bobs for ladies.
In observe, coiffure guidelines have been regularly relaxed throughout many colleges. However some nonetheless used the 1975 junta-issued directive as a tenet, and would reduce the hair of scholars who did not adhere.
The 1975 directive violated particular person freedoms protected by the structure and was out of contact with as we speak’s society, the courtroom mentioned.
The courtroom resolution this week got here in response to a petition, filed by 23 public college college students in 2020, which argued that the 1975 directive was unconstitutional.
Pupil activists have lengthy campaigned for coiffure guidelines to be relaxed, saying it infringes on their human dignity and private freedom over their our bodies.
One in every of them is Panthin Adulthananusak, who lately graduated from college.
“Within the eyes of children like us again then… though it appeared inconceivable, we needed to do one thing,” he instructed the PRESSHARK. “If no pupil in Thai historical past rose as much as problem the facility of the adults that suppressed us, it could be a lifelong embarrassment.”
In response to such campaigns, the training ministry in 2020 allowed college students to have longer hairstyles – however there remained some restrictions. Boys’ hair couldn’t cowl the nape of their necks, whereas women with lengthy hair needed to tie it up.
These rules had been revoked in 2023, with then training minister Trinuch Thienthong asserting that college students, mother and father and faculty authorities ought to negotiate their very own widespread floor on what is appropriate for hairstyles of their faculties.
However by means of all these modifications, some faculties continued to comply with the usual specified by the unique 1975 directive.
Faculties have historically related quick hair with self-discipline and tidiness – an argument that has been repeated by many social media customers this week. However lately studies of colleges banning bangs or dyed hair have sparked public outcry throughout Thailand.
In some elements of the nation, lecturers are recognized to shoddily reduce college students’ hair throughout morning meeting to punish them for flouting coiffure guidelines. Such practices have continued whilst training authorities warned lecturers towards it.
In January, the Ministry of Schooling reiterated that it had repealed restrictions on hair size for all college students, saying it recognised the “significance of selling variety and equity in all points of training”.
Wednesday’s courtroom resolution, which additionally says that faculties’ coiffure guidelines ought to think about the liberty and dignity of scholars, reaffirms the official push to depart hair decisions as much as college students themselves.
However Panthin mentioned the revoking of the decades-old directive “nonetheless leaves a gap for faculties to set their very own guidelines”. In circumstances the place faculties have extra conservative administration, he prompt, restrictions may stay in place.
Nonetheless, Panthin mentioned he “felt glad that what I had seen and fought all alongside was acknowledged and there was a tangible progress”.
“I hope this courtroom’s ruling will set a brand new commonplace for the understanding about primary human rights on the college.”
