Squabble over hair length outdated

By Steve Ray

The year was 1965 and I was on my way to the principal's office to explain how a seventh-grader could be so rebellious as to let his hair swoop down over his forehead.

The Beatles were the most popular group in the country. They released five singles that year, all of which hit the No. 1 spot on the Top 40 chart.

The mop-topped quartet held a concert that made the most money of any musical performance up to that time. They released their second motion picture and their song "Help," which sold over a million copies in one week.

None of that made any difference to the folks at Hillsboro Junior High School. They threatened me with expulsion. They called my parents and told me not to come back to school with locks that almost touched my eyebrows.

I yelled, I cried, I threatened to leave home ... but the next day I was back at school looking more like Frank Sinatra than Ringo Starr.

Some 32 years later, the Texas Supreme Court has decided to hear a case of an 8-year-old Bastrop boy who was booted out of the regular classroom and banned from school functions because he had a 7-inch ponytail.

School officials decided boys could not have hair below the top of the collar. They said the school district had a right to tell kids what they can wear and how they must look.

Somehow, it's hard for me to believe that in 1997, Texas schools are spending thousands of dollars to fight over hair.

A whole lot of education issues need to be addressed, but the length of a ponytail isn't one of them.

The purpose of public schools is to educate our kids, teach them to think and to be independent citizens.

Yes, they have to learn to abide by the rules - when those rules are fair and equal. But deciding how long a boy can wear his hair, or whether he can have an earring, is sexist, outdated and just plain wrong.

School district rules should be confined to those that prohibit disruption and keep kids from learning. It's hard to see how a 7-inch ponytail could do all of that.

No one ever claimed that ponytail was keeping Zachariah Toungate from learning. No one ever claimed it made him disruptive or a bad student.

The Texas Supreme Court's record on the rights of kids to get a public education while wearing their hair the way they want is not good.

In a 1995 case involving a Colorado City student, the Court ruled that hair-length disputes weren't a matter for courts to decide.

But the 8-year-old Bastrop boy had to leave public schools to keep his hair. He's now 14-years-old, attending private school and still has that ponytail.

But he had to trade his guarantee of a public education for his personal rights.

Most members of the Texas Supreme Court are about the right age to have been Beatles fans and remember all the hoopla surrounding their hair length and how it would result in the moral decay of our school kids.

They may have been among those forced by worried parents or outraged school administrators to grease back their hair in an effort to close the door to the future.

Maybe this time they will tell school boards to keep their priorities straight, stop worrying about how someone looks and concentrate on making sure our kids get a good education.

That'll give me time to stop worrying about the Zachariahs in Texas, and just dream of the days that combing my hair over my forehead was a fashion statement and not an attempt to cover a receding hairline.

Steve Ray is chief of the Harte-Hanks Austin Bureau.