Monday, February 11, 2008

Hair Distraction

From Why Homeschool comes a story of a girl who was told that her hairstyle was not allowed in school:

A Louisville mother is making claims of discrimination after she says her daughter's hair color got her kicked out of a school. Fatimah Osborne got her hair braided and colored over winter break. The hairstyle cost her $300. However, the principal at Carrithers Middle School said the student had a non-traditional color and that's against their rules. Administrators from Carrithers middle school told Fatimah to change her hair or she'd have to leave the school, permanently.


This doesn't surprise me one bit. When I went to high school, there was a kid in class who was a bit of a class clown and did occasionally get into trouble. One day he came in with his hair in a million little braids held at the ends by rubber bands with happy face beads on them. Was it distracting? Sure, a little bit. Everyone wanted to talk about it and it was pretty interesting-looking. The principal told him to take it out, or stay home until he did.

Want to guess which was more distracting, the hair, or the principal's decree? We wanted to chat about his hair for a few minutes before class. I'm sure it would have been old news after about 5 minutes. The idea you could be expelled for hair? That distracted us for quite a long time after that! And this kid now was on a quest to find out exactly what he could get away with and what he couldn't, to test his boundaries. Which led to one distracting weird thing after another, culminating in his bizarre run for class president.

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