A student rights group in Thailand, Bad Student, took to social media on 7 February to call out a school in Thailand for punishing students by cutting their hair in an ugly manner.
The group said that the school rules didn’t indicate that students who failed to comply with hair-length guidelines would have their hair cut.
A new director of the school allegedly gave the teachers the green light to cut the students’ hair, and more than 100 students had their hair cut as punishment.
The haircuts include shaving off chunks of hair from some of the students and leaving patches on their heads, and hair could be seen strewn all over the parade square.
Videos of the teacher cutting the students’ hair also emerged on social media, showing the man armed with scissors going around cutting small tufts of the students’ hair.
#BWITfacts รับผิดชอบอย่างไงดีคะ? ตอบหน่อย pic.twitter.com/lMZo0Mwcui
— ค่าหัว 3 ล้าน (@kaikrobb) February 8, 2023
#BWITfacts รับผิดชอบอย่างไงดีคะ? ตอบหน่อย pic.twitter.com/lMZo0Mwcui
— ค่าหัว 3 ล้าน (@kaikrobb) February 8, 2023
The Thai Minister of Education, Trinuch Thienthong was made aware of the incident and has since instructed the state agencies to investigate the incident.
He said that the Thai Ministry of Education had lifted hairstyle regulations in 2020 and added that cutting the students’ hair as a form of punishment was not appropriate.
The director of the school and the teacher will face disciplinary action if they are proven to be in the wrong.
Silencing students
Following the revelations of the haircut punishments, the school is allegedly trying to silence their students from telling the truth about what happened in an attempt to influence the outcome of the investigation into their activities.
Teachers were allegedly supervising students outside the school premises in order to stop them from saying anything bad about them to the media.
The students who had their hair cut horribly by the teachers were also forced to wear hooded jackets to hide their haircuts.
The students who will be representing the school’s student body in the investigations by the authorities have also been pre-picked by the school and instructed to only say good things about the school.
— แล้วแต่ (@kuyraiwaasas) February 7, 2023