E-Paper
Global village idiot: One from LHLB community files... conform not at cost of individuality
I want my kids to be whoever they want to be every day of their lives. Because that’s what an education is supposed to do in the first place - help them find and understand themselves. The world comes later
I feel kind of stupid talking to people who talk about leadership skills, especially leadership skills in children. Which means I feel stupid talking to almost everybody, because right now, almost everybody seems to be busy grooming leaders and entrepreneurs and innovators and critical thinkers, and they have all realised it’s better to start young. It seems we require many such professionals in the future.
Now, I have grown up with images and stereotypes and unwritten expectations of what a good manager, charismatic leader, successful engineer or generally great achiever is supposed to look like: crisp, well dressed in formals (or studied casuals, which are really designer), firm, but nice, intelligent but caring, commanding, but nurturing, agreeable, and of course: short-haired.
Which of course rules out people who are long-haired and/or ask too many questions, and/or generally have difficulty being a predictable type. I am ruled out on all counts. Thankfully.
My children seem to prefer wearing their hair long as well. For now, anyways. And they are quite amused with people who tell them to cut their hair.
Here are the typical comments our boys get:
“You look like a girl.”
“Why do you have such long hair like a girl?”
“When are you going to cut your hair short and neat like regular boys?”
“If you don’t cut your hair by next week, I will tie it in a pony like a girl’s!”
“The rules don’t allow boys to have long hair!”
What is it about boys in long hair that raises insecurity within men and women? Renders them incoherent, forcing them to abandon reasoning abilities and eventually be forced into a corner from where they clutch at the straw of archaic rules and societal propriety?
The irony is not lost on the children, especially since the remarks come from adults and educators who are otherwise desperately trying to get them to look at “gender equality” and to “express” themselves and to “think” for themselves.
I remember a conversation couple of years ago with Mr D, our 9-year-old (he was seven then). “Baba, one of my teachers asked me the dumbest question today – “Why do you like long hair? Why does she like asking me to cut my hair every month? Why doesn’t she cut her own hair first?”
The last 12 months have been fantastic - the kids don’t have to cut their hair and they are happier on that count. There was a brief turbulence in that paradise a couple of months ago when talks started about schools reopening. The boys told me quite seriously then, “You have to talk to the school Baba. We don’t want to cut our hair when we go back to the classroom. Okay?”
As a parent and a member of the very, very, very, minority LHLB community, I intend to talk and keep talking to schools and teachers and adults and the world at large, because it is important to my children. (LHLB = Long Hair Long Beard). If I had a daughter, I would also be part of the MASFM community (Makeup & Accessories in School Freedom Movement). If kids can’t make their own choices about how they look, what they wear, don’t expect them to grow up all sorted and feeling good about themselves. A child’s person is their own space and they have a right to self-expression - in fact, it’s a core part of how they feel about themselves. The more years adults repress that expression, the deeper the self-doubt in the future.
If we are lucky, it’ll explode in rebellion when adults will have to listen to them. But, very often, kids grow up into adolescents who go into a shell, giving up the fight against conformity, and then grow into brooding young adults who spend their 20s following cool young singers and artistes and like-minded friends, but never finding peace; and then the 30s are spent affirming to themselves a self-image that is cobbled together from fragments of images impaled into their psyche by society; and then the 40s come and thereafter, they start from rock bottom, finding themselves in therapy and career changes and an endless cycle of ruing a wasted life and looking for people and places to allocate the blame.
I want my kids to be whoever they want to be every day of their lives. Because that’s what an education is supposed to do in the first place - help them find and understand themselves. The world comes later. For that to happen, I have to first strive every day to not tell them what they should wear or eat or like or not like; and to not tell them how they should feel or not feel in any given situation. And after I have checked myself, I have to also respond when they come and ask me to stand up for them against the world’s arbitrary and illogical norms and expectations.
And that’s why I feel kind of stupid talking to people who talk about leadership skills in children. Far as I am concerned, I will be happy if they learn to lead themselves.
Mukherjee, author, learning-tech designer and management consultant, is founder of Mountain Walker and chief strategy advisor, Peak Pacific. He can be reached @ thebengali@icloud.com
