Psychologists lauded overturning the restrictions placed on the hairstyles of secondary students, and said that students who were free of such regulations would be more inspired to develop a more important objective of education -- creativity.
Wu Li-feng (吳麗芬), the deputy executive-general of the Humanistic Education Foundation, said that education should not be treated as some kind of "manufacturing plant" that can only make identical products, but should be the kind of environment where students can express themselves without unnecessary restrictions.
"The restrictions on their appearance oppressed students' ability to think. When teachers have the right to punish students for having a different hairstyle, the students, who have been taught to obey the rule, do not dare express their opinions on other matters," Wu said.
PHOTO: MENG CHING-TZU, TAIPEI TIMES
Wu also said that if regulations on appearance were applied to every campus, it would create a society where people would lack the magnanimity to respect other people's feelings.
"Allowing students to decorate themselves -- whether it's through a certain hairstyle or the way they dress -- would give students the chance to learn an important democratic value: People should respect and appreciate other people even though they don't agree with each other," Wu said.
Schools justify having such regulations on students' appearance because of the belief that the rules help prevent other incidents of misconduct.
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Basing his observations on 20 years of teaching experience, Kevin Wu said he didn't think restrictions on appearance had anything to do with students' conduct.
"When the Ministry of Education [MOE] first renounced its rules on hairstyles in 1987, some of my students began wearing their hair very long. I didn't see any misconduct as a result of relaxing the rules," he said.
Wu said imposing restrictions on students' appearance reflects the uneasy attitude of the authorities.
"While the MOE decided to remove the ban on students' hairstyles and allow schools to set their own standards as early as 1987, many school administrators decided to tighten their own regulations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when there were many movements developing in society," he said.
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