A viral video from Yaa Asantewaa Girls’ Senior High School in Ghana captures a new female student crying as her long hair is cut to comply with the school’s mandatory short hair policy during orientation week.
This has caused rage and discussion on the social media as some opined that the barbing of hair does not equate intelligence or diligence of a student
Someone queried: “I’ve been asking this for a long time? What happens when we cut our hair? Does it make us smarter? Is it more distracting than the chores we do? And our parents went to the same schools without cutting their hair those days & turned out fine, so what happened?”
@yiniboma_ pointed out: “Why should one be forced to lose their identity just to be educated? Is the purpose of education to add to us or to take away from us? This single haircut can significantly impact her self-esteem, confidence and/or approach to education.”
The policy, originating from colonial-era standards, mandates short hair for female students and has sparked criticism for undermining cultural identity and self-esteem, with calls for reform citing Ghana’s constitutional protections for human dignity. @Bobthebuil19383 shares opinion:” this has never made sense to me but it originated from the British colonial era. During this era schools were modeled after British ideologies of what the African should be. Cutting our hair was a symbol of erasing our culture and accepting western standards of beauty. It was never about uniformity but reshaping our identity to feel inferior and to groom us into believing our ways of life were less civilized”