After arguing with the authorities for years, students in Thailand can now lower their hair. Verbatim.
On Wednesday, the Thai Supreme Administrative Court canceled the 50-year Directive of the Ministry of Education, which previously set rules on hairstyles for school students: short hair for boys and bob for girls.
In practice, the rules of hairstyles are gradually relaxed in many schools. However, some continued to use the 1975 directive as a guidance and cut the hair of students who did not adhere to.
The 1975 Directive violated individual freedom protected by the Constitution and was in contact with today’s society, the court said.
The court decision came this week in response to a petition submitted by 23 public school students in 2020, which claimed that the 1975 Directive was unconstitutional.
Student activists are a long campaign for the relaxation of the hairstyle rules, saying that they violate their human dignity and personal freedom over their bodies.
One of them is Panthin Fluerdanac, who recently graduated from the University.
“In the eyes of children like us then … Although it seemed impossible, we wanted to do something,” he told the BBC. “If no student in Thai history has risen to cause the strength of adults who have suppressed us, it would be a lifelong shame.”
In response to such campaigns, the Ministry of Education 2020. It enabled students to have longer hairstyles – but there were certain limitations. The boy’s hair could not cover the crowd of neck, while girls with long hair had to tie her.
These regulations were recalled in 2023, and then Minister of Education Trinuch Thiethong announced that students, parents and school authorities should negotiate their own common ground about what is acceptable for hairstyles in their schools.
But through all these changes, some schools continued to follow the standard set up in the original 1975 Directive.
Schools are traditionally associated with short hair with discipline and office – an argument that many social media users repeated this week. But in recent years, reports on schools forbidding bangs or colored hair have caused public action across Thailand.
In some parts of the country, teachers are known to have tortured the hair of a student during the morning assembly to punish them for the rules of the hairstyle. Such practices continued even while the education authorities warned teachers about it.
In January, the Ministry of Education reiterated that it abolished the limitations of hair length for all students, saying that it recognized “the importance of promoting diversity and honesty in all aspects of education.”
The court decision on Wednesday, which also says that school rules should consider the freedom and dignity of the students, confirm the official pressure on leaving the choice of hair to the students themselves.
But Panthin said that the recall of the Directive of the Old Decade “still leaves the hole for schools to set their own rules.” In cases where schools have more conservative management, he suggested, restrictions could stay in place.
Nevertheless, Panthin said he was “glad I saw all the time and fought and there was a tangible progress.”
“I hope that the judgment of this court will set a new standard for understanding basic human rights at school.”
