One day, Jim was caught by the discipline master for having his hair too long. The DM wanted to cut Jim’s hair, but Jim, being the rebel he was, retorted that a lot of successful people had relatively long hair, and he took out a few pictures of them as proof. The DM was surprised at first, but proceeded to rebuke him,
“One person’s success doesn’t depend on how he looks Jim, what matters is your hard work.”
Jim replied without flinching,
“But sir, so why must you catch students for having their hair too long? If you say that one’s success did not depend on how he looks, then why should care about how we look”
The DM had nothing to say.
The above story most probably won’t happen; since no students would ever dare to talk back to teachers (We’ve been taught from young). However, the story puts forward the question whether school discipline is achieving its purpose. I am not saying that school discipline is not essential, or that rules are not important. The way schools put forward the notion of discipline is simply not catering to the growth of students. Firstly, as the story pointed out, we do not judge one’s success by his looks. I do have to admit that this problem is rather subtle as times have changed. Schools nowadays would like the students to view discipline, in particular self image, as something the public would take note of. The problem arises from here, we have always been taught to never be bothered how people thought about us. We’ve been taught no matter what we look like, what we wear, we should always have confidence in ourselves. However, schools would always want students to look good in front of the public, and to leave a good impression on them. If people are so concerned about first impressions, then it just shows how shallow people are. These people only know how to look at the surface, and never look deep enough. You can’t judge a book by its cover.
In a sense, schools are hinting that the general public, or should I say adults, are shallow and only knows how to look at the surface.
Comments:
This article I wrote is terrible. Clearly disorganized and not in order, out of point too. Hopefully none of my articles that follows is like that…..
