An abandoned poster by learners at the Pretoria High School for Girls urges pride in black identity.
On Monday, when a group of learners, parents and University of Pretoria students demonstrated outside Pretoria High School for Girls, many teachers were taken by surprise. There was perceived racism in the school’s hair policy, which was decried as anti-black.
School rules are thorny issues. Around the country, the issue is debated ad nauseam, usually by frazzled teachers who just want to get through the day and by energetic teens who just want to be free.
In South Africa, where schools that are in demand are usually private or fee-paying government schools, racial issues are often raised.
So, taking into account a code of conduct that may have been drawn up many years previously and with a historically “white” majority of learners in mind, what should a teacher do when he or she encounters a learner who has come to school with green hair – and another who has shaved her head?
Both are as likely as not to state that they have “rights” and that this look follows a “cultural norm”. As any parent will tell you, a teenager’s sense of justice, fair and foul play, and manipulation is keenly developed.
The problem, as the questionable pencil test should have taught us, is that everyone’s hair is different. People are people, as different in their thoughts as they are in their choice of hairdo. But the rub is that schools are practical places where practical decisions need to be made every day.
These decisions around dress and hair will sometimes upset parents, learners and staff members, but on the whole will be correct and will be supported by the powers that be.
Unfortunately, in this and other cases, there is a perception that blackness is being negated and rejected.
Racism certainly does exist in South Africa’s schools. But, to be slightly facetious, most teachers do not wake up every morning with a mission to deprive students of their cultural identity. More often than not, they are more preoccupied with having to juggle teaching, disciplining, caring for and engaging with learners.
By the end of the day on Monday it was discovered that the Pretoria High School for Girls’ code of conduct allows cornrows, natural dreadlocks and braids. It does not address Afros, which is something that will have to be done at the school as well as at other schools in South Africa.
Philosophical questions abound: Are cornrows, natural dreadlocks and braids inherently “black”? What should a teacher do if a non-black student comes to school with braids?
It is just as difficult with boys: those with curlier hair are generally allowed to shave their hair very close to baldness, but boys with straighter hair would be hauled in for a disciplinary hearing for the same thing.
Of course, the difficulty in all of this stems from applying one rule, or even many specific rules, to a complicated situation.
It’s complicated because of time constraints, the fact that teachers shouldn’t really be spending their time addressing issues of uniform every day, and because people are different and their hair is vastly different too.
What could be an ideal compromise for schools going forward? Should hair regulations be scrapped? Probably not. Most people would agree that rules and guidance are needed. But whose rules? What is the dividing line between tidy and untidy hair?
Google is unlikely to have the answer to this. Many schools have followed a formula of inviting comment from the communities they serve, drawing up extensive codes of conduct and dress codes and then enforcing those codes through leadership structures in those schools.
But, like Afros at Pretoria High School for Girls, exceptions will always be discovered over time. Fashion and hairstyles change, necessitating the continuous updating of these codes and policies.
This is, frankly, a waste of a school’s time.
Rather, “hair codes” should simply state something to the effect that all hair should be neat and reasonable. Staff members, the principal and learner representatives, in consultation with the school governing body, will be the final arbiters of what constitutes “neat and reasonable”.
This, or more a generic, open system of rules that is not explicit nor too prescriptive, might often be subjective and could plausibly lead to other problems. But this kind of rule would empower schools to do what they see fit.
Importantly, it would allow schools to get on with the business of education without being distracted by unnecessary and racialised debates that have a hugely damaging effect on the reputation of otherwise excellent South African schools.
Luke Simpson is a teacher at a school in Gauteng