School uniforms and rules about hair colour are a waste of time

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When Mordialloc College decided that a year 10 student with brightly coloured hair should study away from his peers until his hair complied with the school’s dress code, the world imploded.

At least, that’s what you’d be forgiven for thinking if you read any of the online responses to the story. Pitched battle lines were inked around which of two apparently opposing rights are the heaviest – the student’s right to free expression or the school’s right to enforce a dress standard.

It’s embarrassing to be going to war over hair colour and dress codes in schools – chiefly because they don’t matter.Credit: Louie Douvis

Sides were chosen and arrows were fired. And if the vociferous nature of the public conversation reflects even a little of the private WhatsApp chat groups I’ve seen among parents when a school is perceived to have wronged our child, then a brief pause to reflect on the example we’re setting our kids might be in order.

Parents and schools squabbling over the colour of a student’s hair is as edifying as two toddlers scrapping over which coloured sippy cup they want their cordial poured into.

It doesn’t matter and the eventual winner doesn’t really gain anything anyway. All we do is tell those watching that we have frivolous priorities and weak negotiation skills.

Frankly, it’s embarrassing to be going to war over hair colour and dress codes in schools and that’s chiefly because they don’t matter.

On the side of uniforms and dress codes are those who would argue that they promote social cohesion, respect for teachers, improve attendance, reduce class distinctions and foster a sense of group identity.

And, if you dig deeply enough into research papers that only confirms that viewpoint, you’ll find some supporting evidence. But in each instance, the impact is so small that it simply doesn’t warrant the time and effort required to enforce strict uniform standards in schools.

The research is clear that, if a high-quality education is the genuine objective, then we’d be addressing factors far more impactful than what the students are wearing.

Opponents of school uniforms will tell you that they cultivate robotic conformists of our kids, poison self-expression, oppress student voice and also improve attendance. Except, not so much.

While one study in 2012 found that a handful of secondary schools recorded increased female attendance rates at school, it was only by about half a day a year. It hardly seems something that parents and students should be choosing as their social justice and educational hills to die on. Half a day.

In Victorian government schools, like Mordialloc College and Officer Secondary College, where such friction points over hair and uniform have recently emerged, the decision on student dress codes is one that requires school council ratification.

School councils are parent representative bodies, meaning that parents picking a fight with the school over dress codes are picking a fight with their own comrades, who just happened to make a different assessment of the potential competing rights of the school and the students.

At the precise moment that parents and schools could be uniting in the shared goal of building a decent, resilient learner and citizen of our young people, we’re throwing tantrums about our separate and competing rights. The losers in our ability to see reason? Our kids.

Students have fallen foul of school rules by dyeing their hair.Credit: iStock

The bad habit we’ve formed in our community of dying in the ditch for causes that really don’t matter at all is damaging our kids in two ways.

Firstly, we’re setting our young people the example that getting your way is what matters most – and it doesn’t. It’s abundantly evident that the skills that successful people in the future will need include collaboration, compromise, problem-solving, perspective and empathy.

As artificial intelligence advances upon the more manual and repetitive jobs of the future, it’ll be the jobs requiring the navigation of humanness that remain. The last thing they need is the skill of navigating themselves into collisions about trivia like school uniforms or hair colour.

In effect, we need them to adopt the ability to examine the gravity of an issue and know when to say, “Meh, whatever”.

Secondly, scraps over uniforms and hair colour create a distraction for busy schools that we don’t need them dragged into. We need every school laser focused on installing the skills, knowledge and character traits that give our kids a fighting chance of winning in this crazy world.

They don’t have a second to waste on whether a student’s cause, multiplied by their parental endorsement, is worthy of compromising a standard that the school’s representative parent body itself approved.

I don’t know if Mordialloc College have tried to find a compromise in this particular case. I hope they have and I also hope they didn’t waste too much precious learning time on it.

More than anything, I hope that more Victorian parents are realising that side issues like uniforms, hair colour, canteen lists, homework policies, bus routes and other such nonsense are unworthy of lacing up the boxing gloves for.

Adam Voigt is a former principal and founder and CEO of Real Schools.

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