Many schools put dress codes into place. It’s to help prevent distraction and to help kids stay focused and safe. But…when has a dress code or “appearance guideline” gone too far?
Some rules, like skirt length and no jewelry in phys ed, make sense. Others, like rules on hair color, makeup, and even packed lunches, are nothing short of pointless and annoying.
You’d think that by this day and age, we’d finally have left those pointless rules in the past.
Unfortunately, even today, kids get sent home from school for all sorts of silly reasons, and parents are left to deal with the consequences.
One adorable little boy, Farouk James, is the person you’d least expect to have issues with his appearance at school.
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As a child model, Farouk is used to attracting attention for all the right reasons.
His hair has gained him hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, and it’s easy to see why.
But Farouk and his mom, Bonnie, who live in the UK, are seriously concerned that Farouk’s waist-length afro will have to be chopped off – because it’s somehow against the school rules in his country.
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Yes, plenty of school rules are silly, but they go beyond that when they start banning natural hairstyles.
Farouk hasn’t dyed his hair or styled it in any particular way that could be seen as offensive. If he was a girl, he’d be allowed to rock his hair at any length he wanted. So his gender shouldn’t factor into this at all.
The 8-year-old model has always had lots of hair – even on the 4D scans of Farouk as a baby, before Bonnie had even given birth, she noticed that his hair was already plentiful.
Farouk has grown up with long hair, and told This Morning presenters that he thinks it’s “lovely”.
But when Bonnie started looking for schools for Farouk to attend in the future, she struggled – and it was Farouk’s hair that was the problem.
One of the two schools that turned Farouk away was The London Oratory School – a school that Bonnie’s other son, now 23, had attended.
Ironically, Bonnie experienced a different kind of problem with her other son – the school once warned her that she’d cut her son’s hair “too short”.
Bonnie had hoped that the school’s policies would have been updated by now, but it wasn’t to be.
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Farouk’s hair still violates the rules, and Bonnie knew that something was definitely not right.
Instead of cutting Farouk’s hair, which he’d grown so attached to by now, Bonnie decided to campaign for change. Speaking to CBS News, she said:
“We’re getting a real team together and calling it the Mane Generation. We’re going to fight this until these rules get changed. And it’s globally, not just domestically in the U.K.”
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Bonnie had a big job on her hands – but she also had hope.
She’d heard of similar stories of parents who had fought back against school rules on afros and dreadlocks, some of which had encouraged schools to change their policies.
Bonnie hopes to use Farouk’s Instagram account as a platform for this cause – and to share stories of parents and children who have been through similar situations.
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Watch more about Farouk’s controversial story in the video below.
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