Schools Have No Business Regulating Students' Hair
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that hair and hairstyle policies have nothing to do with education and schools should stop policing them.
Key Takeaways
- Hair isn't an educational issue - A student's hairstyle has zero impact on their ability to learn or anyone else's ability to learn
- These policies are often discriminatory - Hair regulations disproportionately affect Black students and other students of color
- Focus on what matters - Schools have plenty of real issues to address without policing personal appearance choices that don't affect learning
Transcript
A student in Texas has been in in-school suspension for weeks now, basically the entire school year, over hair.
And obviously this is a racist dress code policy.
This is a policy that may not explicitly discriminate based on race, but it's a policy that's known as facially neutral, but has a disparate impact on African American students.
And we see this kind of thing all the time.
historically in the south especially especially in texas and it is time for this kind of thing to go away for this kind of policy to go away why on earth do schools have policies about hair hair is not an educational issue whatsoever i like i can't think of any human being who has ever said you know what i had a lot of potential i was doing really well in school and then another student had a hairstyle that was distracting to me and that really just ruined my prospects in life like This is not a thing.
This does not matter.
Schools have no business regulating hair whatsoever and certainly not regulating hair in a racist way.
So I think we've got to get rid of all of these policies, but especially the ones that are targeted at African-American students, especially like this is just ridiculous.
Like let this kid go to school, let him go to class.
Let's not make kids cut their hair to comply with these bogus dress codes around hair.
Let me know what you think.