Maths teacher cuts ‘long hair’ of two 7th grade schoolboys in Ploiesti

A high school in Ploiesti is the pipeline after a maths teacher has cut the hair of two seventh grade schoolboys during the class on Friday.

Magdalena Vasile, who has been teaching mathematics for 27 years at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” National College (photo) in Ploiesti, explains that she has never intended to denigrate the boys and that she will never do this again, but argued the pupils “are permanently preoccupied in arranging their hair and they don’t pay attention to the class”. She is also the form mistress of the seventh grade class.

On the other side, the parents of the boys argue the hair was not so long and the teacher had no right to cut it.

The management of the high school started an investigation, with the headmistress asking explanations from the teacher.

The schoolmistress argued that first information reveals that the form mistress has cut the two boy’s hair with a scissors from some other pupil and has done it without threatening or bullying the boys. “These two boys have long hair, they wear their hair in a bun, they accepted to have their hair cut a little bit so that the form mistress could prove that she is no hairdresser, that she doesn’t know how to cut and that they should go to the hairdresser (….) There was joy in the class, the children measured their hair to show that most of them have their hair normally cut, while these two boys don’t have their hair cut,” the schoolmistress said.

She said that the school’s rules say that the boys should have 5cm-long hair and that parents sign for that at the beginning of the school year.

In her turn, the maths teacher recounted that the boys wear their hair in a samurai-like bun and when they loosen it, they “are permanently preoccupied with arranging their hair, with having a new look and they are not paying attention to the class anymore.” The teacher also argued that she has cut their hair in joke, but added she would not do this again. In her opinion, she is amid a scandal “which has grown much more than it should have been the case.”

However, the parent of one of the boys stated he hadn’t agreed on the haircut and that the form mistress had threatened his son many times that she would cut his hair. “Even if she has cut only a strand of the hair, it’s a malicious act. She has humiliated the boys, it has been a real circus in front of the class, they have been treated like sheep,” the parent said.

The case in Ploiesti related to the topic of boys’ wearing long hair is not the only one exposed in the media lately. Several high school pupils in other counties have complained on social media this autumn they have been kicked out of classes or have been sanctioned by the school for they have long hair.