Originally Posted by shesus

This post is very generalized, but I'm using it to try to explain where the school's personnel may be coming from.

It's very hard to teach these days. The kids are over-stimulated and want everything now. They lack patience and attention spans.

Children are very egocentric. They are building self-esteem and very interested in their appearance. An observation that I have made is that the kids stayed in the bathroom longer when there were mirrors available. I can't tell you how many lipsticks, brushes, mirrors, little containers of mouthwash, and various pieces of junk jewelry I confiscated and stored in my desk drawers. I had 2 drawers reserved for distracting items. There were also many toys, but we're focusing on appearances in this thread.

I can completely understand why this letter was sent home. For one, the kids are focusing more on what they look like than learning. Second, they don't do this by themselves. They ask their friends how they look. Third, you have the 'good' kids who are tattling that the other kids are not doing what they should be doing. What a waste of time and a huge distraction.

There may not be many of these types of students, but what you find out when you are in a room of 20+ kids is that it only takes a few to break concentration and cause loss in learning time. When there are so many issues going on to take away from learning, style is usually an easy thing to change because it can visibly be maintained. Of course, nothing is easy when it comes to teaching and managing a bunch of kids and their parents.

On the other part of this discussion, adults are hopefully mature enough to choose a style and not be aware of it all day. Your strawberry hair girl probably doesn't sit with a mirror and brush in class messing with her hair while instruction is taking place.

Also, the designs shaved on the head may be a problem if there are gangs around. I don't know your area, but that has been issues in other schools I've been in. Then again it could be suburban moms just trying to be the 'cool' mom with the punk kid.