Swedish teen denied spot in school due to piercing
Published: 22 Jun 11 08:32 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/34504/20110622/
A 13-year-old girl with a pierced nose has been told she's not welcome at a Swedish school, prompting her mother to file a complaint with the country's education authorities.
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However, when staff discovered she had a pierced nose, the family was told she wasn't welcome.
"When we were going to sign the papers the principal said my daughter wasn't welcome in their school if she had a piercing in her nose," the mother wrote in her complaint to the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (Skolinspektionen), according to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.
"She compared it to tattoos and short skirts."
According to the school's dress code, students aren't allowed to tattoos, clothing with racist slogans, or piercings.
School principal Yvonne Wirhall said the school's ban on piercings and tattoos is reasonable considering all the students are 15-years-old or younger.
"Our wish is that the girl leave the piercing at home," she told the local Nerikes Allehanda newspaper.
"That's something you do when you get older," she said.
Wirhall emphasised that the girl hasn't been denied entry to the school, per se, but that the school has expressed its desire that the small pearl the girl wears in her nose be left at home.
The request didn't sit well with the girl's mother, however, who chose report the school's policy to Sweden's education watchdog agency.
The agency, which received the complaint on June 10th, has requested that the school provide a response by July 7th.
According to Wirhall, she is prepared to change the school's policy if the agency finds that the school's ban on piercings is unjustified.
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Maybe if christian institutions pulled their heads out of their ar#ses for long enough they would see why their support is dwindling down to a few old age pensioners and the odd alcoholic looking for free tea and biscuits!
I don't have a problem with the piercing personally, but the school has a right to adhere to a dress code. If the dress code is applied evenly across the board, the parents have no grounds for complaint.
So the question should be, why is anyone surprised that a conservative school acts conservatively, and why would parents that don't subscribe to these values want to send their daughter there so badly anyway ?
If its against the school rules then its against the school rules. Jeez....
It has no bearings on whether its a Christian school or not.
Would she like that the school make a U-turn and allow everything possible and then admit her child into the school.
Same reason the parents would let a girl under 15 get a nose piercing, they believe they're forward thinking and want to challenge accepted norms.
Some of the commenters here are being misled by the article title. The school said she could go there if she left the nose piercing at home, they just have a dress code. The people who run the school don't want to control their students lives in private, they just want a certain example set in the school.
Too conservative? Maybe, but as long as they let her in the school so far as she conforms to the dress code, the mother doesn't have a case.