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Japanese high school teachers forcibly cut off hair that was “too long” from 44 students

Scott Wilson Feb 10, 2018
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Because nothing promotes a healthy learning environment like traumatizing students with scissors in front of their peers.

We’ve seen before that some Japanese schools have gone overboard when it comes to making sure kids follow dress code, even going to far as to make one student dye her naturally-brown hair black to look like everyone else.

And now it seems that the hair-obsession is continuing. It has recently come to light that six teachers at Mizuhashi High School in Toyama Prefecture used scissors to cut the hair of 44 students that was deemed too long and against the school dress code.

▼ It probably looked something like this, except with more tears,
angry admonishings from the teacher, and silence from horrified classmates.

According to the school, the “hair cuts” began in April last year and continued up to last month. The school held a monthly “uniform check,” during which time students’ hair length was examined. Students with hair deemed longer than acceptable were warned, but if they did not get it cut outside of school, the teachers would become judge, jury and executioner and cut it themselves whenever they decided.

It’s unclear whether any of the teachers had haircut training, but we’re going to go on a limb and assume that giving the students a nice cut was not at the top of their priority list, simply slicing it to the mandated length was.

The school claims that they received permission from the students before cutting their hair, but something about that still feels wrong. What are you going to say to your teacher, someone who has authority over you, when they start coming at you with scissors?

▼ When your two choices are basically “let them have their way
with your hair” or “drop out,” it’s not much of a choice.

Principal Yasuhiro Nakada has made a statement, saying: “This is not something that should happen. From now on we will have management staff present during the uniform checks to ensure that it does not happen again.”

That makes it sound like he was unaware it was happening. But seeing as this has been going on for almost a year and involved 44 students, that’s hard to imagine.

Here’s how Japanese netizens reacted:

“Really? We’re still enforcing these old, pointless school rules?”
“Those six teachers are idiots. They should have their licenses revoked.”
“I mean, is that really the way to handle a kid who refuses to cut their hair?”
“I heard about this. Apparently the 44 students were both boys and girls. So horrible.”

While some Japanese schools have made great strides by allowing students to wear whichever gender uniform they’d like, others are still stuck in the past by forcing them to do after-school activities they have no interest in.

What will the future of Japanese schools hold? Hopefully more acceptance and less forced haircuts and forced hair-dyeing.

Source: Yahoo! News Japan via My Game News Flash
Top image: GAHAG
Insert images: GAHAG, PAKUTASO