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©The Star (Used by permission)
Insight Down South by Seah Cheah Nee

Schools are cracking down on unacceptable looks, but some feel such action should be through persuasion rather than regulation.

At a time when Singapore is striving to become a vibrant world city, one of its largest private schools is enforcing a strict dress code.

In the past week, wardens of the 52-year-old Management Develop-ment Institute of Singapore (MDIS), have been rounding up students who wear mini-skirts, flip-flops, and who sport dyed hair and visible tattoos.

The ban on sloppy appearance has angered many of its 12,500 students, some 30% of whom are from neighbouring countries, including Malay-sia, Indonesia, China and India.

To the school, unacceptable dressing also includes Bermuda shorts, singlets, low-cut tops, slippers and facial piercing.

It is seen as part of a tertiary blitz on unacceptable looks and behaviour.

A government-controlled university and a polytechnic have also come down hard on students who smoke. Many students are livid, calling it unnecessary and a restriction of individual liberties.

But some Singaporeans have expressed support for such action, saying that institutions are right to disallow students from weird, hippie looks that could undermine their dignified appearance.

One writer said the crackdown was a courageous move. “I wonder why Singaporeans love to be so sloppy. Maybe it’s because we don’t have a culture, and we’re too ‘rojak’, so much so no one cares anymore.”

Parents, in particular, are happy to learn their children are getting a wholesome education.

However, resorting to the use of regulations, rather than persuasion, is regarded as a blow to the concept of civil society, considering that most Singaporean students are well-behaved.

“Few could quarrel with the need for a gracious, clean image in schools, but we should first try to persuade”, commented a foreign-trained teacher.

And if enforcement was needed, it could be done firmly – but quietly – within the small groups of offenders without resorting to a high-profile ban.

To the critics, the crackdown – using wardens to check on skirt length and footwear – is a throwback to an era when long hair, drainpipe pants and jukebox music were stopped by a pair of scissors or a summons.

The move also runs against the current trend of social liberalisation to turn Singapore into a vibrant, creative city like London, Paris or Tokyo.

To succeed, Singapore must erase its overseas image of being a stifling, over-regulated place where “this cannot do, that cannot do”, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once said.

Ironically, such contradiction is the result of the freeing up of the civil service and the educational system, in which headmasters are given a higher degree of independence in various schools.

(MDIS, being a non-profit private school, of course, doesn’t come under ministry control).

There are cases in which schools have been accused of zealously imposing rules and meting out punishment on students for the slightest distraction from regulations, all “for the general good”.

Two years ago, some 30 students who went to collect their “O” level exam results were made to wait 90 minutes as punishment for wearing sloppy clothes.

Some had arrived with dyed hair or bared midriffs.

They had thought that since they had finished their secondary schooling, the dress code would no longer apply. They were wrong.

A student who was serving national service at the time said: “We have worked so hard for the exam. It is atrocious.”

In another case, parents were upset when their teenaged daughters were punished for breaking a ban on coloured brassieres – in an extremely embarrassing manner.

Their offending undergarments were confiscated, forcing the girls to attend lessons – or go home – braless.

“It’s embarrassing. I had to use a file for added protection over my white uniform,” one of the girls said.

One angry parent said after the incident: “This is almost tantamount to outraging a child’s modesty.”

Since Lee resigned as Prime Minister 18 years ago, the tightly-regulated regime that he established has been relaxed by his successors – except arguably in politics and media control.

The deregulation is evident, with people enjoying more lifestyle choices; one foreign commentator calls it a change from hard to soft authoritarianism.

The young generation of Singaporeans, however, want more of the same, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has promised to give it – eventually.

At times, the stick-by-the-rule bureaucracy still raises embarrassing controversy due to eager civil servants, rather than direct leadership orders.

A bus driver who took at 15-minute nap at a park bench last month was fined a whooping S$200 (RM480) at a time when inflation was hard on the working class.

He was asked for his identity card, told that he had “abused park facilities by sleeping on the park bench” and issued a ticket.

Earlier, an epileptic patient was arrested for “drunken behaviour” by a policeman when he found him lying on a road and put in a lock-up.

When officers suspected that he had a condition, he was removed to “a special holding area” where he suffered another seizure three hours later. Only then was an ambulance called.

The apologetic police promised to re-brief its officers to avoid a similar mistake.

There is no denying that over-regulation that caused people to draft – and follow – regulations, sometimes automatically by instinct, has contributed to a safe, clean and efficient Singapore.

That was in the past when people were production ants.

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