The Legislative Yuan plans to ban dress codes and hairstyle regulations at schools to better protect students’ freedom of expression.
Although the Ministry of Education abolished nationwide dress codes and hairstyle regulations several years ago, leaving such decisions to individual schools and instructed schools not to punish students for violations, a survey by the legislature’s Organic Laws and Statutes Bureau shows that as many as 93 percent of junior-high schools were still checking students hair as of last year, while 57 percent continue to penalize students for hair code violations.
The bureau said that dress and hair codes restrict freedom of expression which is protected in the Constitution. It also noted that a dress code does not necessarily have any connection to maintaining order on campus or education.
The bureau said that such codes, like other restrictions, can only exist with a legal foundation, henceforth enforcing them could be considered unconstitutional.
The Basic Education Act (教育基本法) should stipulate that, except for health and safety concerns, schools cannot penalize students for dress or hair code violations, and that related regulations “should be decided through a democratic process.”
The bureau made the suggestion in response to an incident at National Tainan Girls’ Senior High School in March when nearly 2,000 students at the school dropped their pants during the morning flag-raising ceremony.
The students action was taken to protest a new dress code that stipulated shorts could only be worn in physical education classes and that uniform jackets must be zipped all the way up to the second button of the uniform shirt.
The bureau also suggested revising the Gender Equality Education Act (性別平等教育法) to prohibit schools from “forcing students of different gender, different gender character or different sexual orientation to dress in accordance with or have a hair style that matches the stereotypical image of a certain gender.”
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