by YVETTE BEST

MINISTER OF EDUCATION Ronald Jones is hinting that the new Education Act will take into consideration the now controversial issue of appropriate hairstyles for school, which is currently left to the interpretation of administrators.

He said the new act and new regulations would be presented to Parliament as soon as the necessary review of the current act and accompanying regulations had been completed.

One interpretation saw five students being barred from classes at the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic (SJPP) last week for wearing locks. But, deputy principal Merton Forde said the students would be allowed back in school if they presented documents proving they were part of the Rastafari faith.

"Generally the laws speak to people carrying themselves in a manner which is not injurious to the health of others, or injurious to themselves. And what had me aghast, is that what seems to be appearing is a conflict of what one might argue is traditional culture and modern culture, even though the modern culture is part of the ancestral culture of Africa in this context," Jones said.

He cautioned that it was impossible for the act to cover everything and, of necessity, it must still be general.

"Common sense always must dictate what we do. Even though there are laws written down, common sense must [prevail] in circumstances such as those that confronted the administration at the school . . . . There must always be general terms used in education, because from the time you start to demarcate, you're into a whole long troublesome process," he argued.

He said he was "puzzled" by the SJPP development, because the students would have been in school for seven months with the locks and it only became an issue last week.

Final year student Andre Hall has since been readmitted. The 24-year-old student, of the air-conditioning refrigeration department, produced a letter from the Ichirouganaim Council for the Advancement of Rastafari saying that he wore his locks for "religious purposes".

Minister Jones told the DAILY NATION last Thursday that as far as he was aware, all five students should have been back in school.

"One could not understand, or for that matter appreciate, the argument that a citizen of Barbados must bring any kind of document to any institution, asking them to prove if they belong to any religion, caste, sex or creed.

"That is trampling on a person's civil rights [and] their religious rights, their democratic rights in our society, which holds up the individual as paramount, even though within the confines of the law. And there should not be any law in any educational institution which debars young people from getting an education," he stated.