"It nurtures the culture of unquestionable acceptance of authority," Srisanga said, adding that "the system often encourages teachers to act in an authoritarian manner." Thailand's education system is focused on conditioning people to abide bycertain social norms and does not encourage students' development ofcritical thinking skills or creativity, explained Treethep Srisanga, a Thai graduate student at the University of Florida. "I think the students with long hair in the Thai school system still look very bad," the 29-year-old teacher told DW. Lalita's experience prompted the ministry to send a letter to all schools, instructing them to repeal earlier regulations on student hairstyle and length.Ī maths teacher at a school in Bangkok, who requested anonymity, admitted that although she never went as far as cutting or shaving her students' hair, she used to enforce strict hair policies because she believed it would instill discipline in students. Phailin says her daughter's school director claimed to have never even been informed by the ministry. However, many schools chose to ignore the instrucitona and continue to look enforce old rules. In May this year, the Ministry of Education issued an instruction for schools to clarify existing rules to reflect changing times and to protect human dignity. With school permission, however, long hair is authorized but must be neatly tied. But for female students, the rules remained the same. Introduced in 1972 by the military government, rules on school dress codes were partially eased in 1975 to allow male students to have longer hair.
The school's director warned pupils not to bully Lalita or bring up the forced haircutting incident, but Phailin said the incident left her daughter feeling guilty and wanting to transfer to another school.Įxperts say that individuality in students is generally looked down upon in Thailandĭress code passed down from military ruleįor decades, strict school dress codes mandated earlobe-length bobs for girls and army-style crew cut close to the scalp for boys. It is not uncommon for teachers to shave male students' hair, leaving just a strip at the back of the head. But Lalita's teacher retaliated by making spiteful comments online after she raised the issue with her. Read more: Rights group slams Thailand's repressive laws to intensify crackdown on COVID-19 criticsĪfter failing to reach the teachers responsible for cutting her daughter's hair, Phailin took to Facebook to expose the incident which she felt was a case of undue punishment. It's not like she wouldn't listen," the 33-year-old mother said. "Couldn't the teacher have told her nicely that her hair was too long and that she needed to have it cut shorter? You could have warned her. Lalita's mother, Phailin, said the teacher should have handled the situation better.
I was naturally embarrassed," Lalita recalled, adding that cutting off students' locks against their will is a regular occurrence in Thailand. "One side of my hair was long, while the other was short. When she returned to school, however, she said teachers chopped off her hair so that other students would stop asking them to have the right to choose their own hairstyle. Punished for not having a short enough mandatory pudding-bowl bob, 15-year-old Lalita was forced to have her hair cut in front of her peers during the flag raising ceremony at her school in the northeastern province of Si Sa Ket.īefore her school reopened, Lalita obtained written approval to have her hair mid-length but neatly tied back with a ribbon. When students across Thailand returned to school on July 1 after more than four months of closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, reports of students receiving forced haircuts – often humiliatingly carried out in public – emerged on social media platforms.