Polish school attempts to crush nonconformism

lublin | 06.01.2006 21:43 | Culture | Education | World

In line with other repression by president Kaczynski, a local school
in Lublin, Poland, is likely to expel student Krzysztof Kowalik for
sporting a radical hairstyle. Your fax/email support in a few quick,
polite sentences would greatly be appreciated by young activists in
Poland.

http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lublin/1,35640,3097560.html

http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lublin/1,35640,3099815.html

In III LO, which is Senior High School III in the Polish city of
Lublin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lublin , Krzysztof Kowalik
unintentionally sparked off a school crisis by going to an examination
with a haircut known in Poland as "irokez" (iroquois)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois

He may soon risk being thrown out of school.

The Educational Board of the school met on Thursday 4 January 2006 and
is considering changing its statutes, allegedly in order to be able to
expel Krzysztof from the school if he continues to his iroquois hair
style. The proposal to change the statutes, prepared by the
Educational Board, needs to be passed by the School Board in order to
take effect.

CONTEXT: This comes in the context of the election in Poland of an
extreme-right, homophobic, pro-death-penalty political party (PiS),
whose Minister of War (Radek Sikorski) was until a few months ago a
member of the American Enterprise Institute.

International support against the generalised climate of repression
against the weak or different would be appreciated. A quick polite
letter to the school saying that this sort of repression is unacceptable
might help support a small space of non-conformism in Polish schools.

The statement of the school director exemplifies that this is a
struggle for symbolic power and of stereotypes about non-conformist
sub-cultures: Anna Suszyna stated that: "We've never had such extravagance
here and we won't have it. Iroquois [haircuts] frighten people, and are
associated with a sub-culture in which violence is the order of the day."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Constitution_of_May_3%2C_1791

ACTIONS:

Please urgently send *polite*, unaggressive, but firm letters
(English is fine) to the III LO School by paper mail, fax or email,
pointing out that:

* the Iroquois Confederacy wrote its constitution "the Great Law of Peace"
probably about 900 years ago (probably on August 31, 1142),
which was more than 700 years earlier than the first Polish constitution
(May 3, 1791)

* solidarity with the Iroquois, victims of systematic massacres by European
settlers, is a symbol against violence, not for violence

* that the purpose of a school is to encourage learning through curiosity
and initiative and through the flowering of students' individual personality
development

* that you associate this sort of fuss about a student's hairstyle
in North Korea or Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, but not in a Polish school.

ADDRESS:
III LO im. Unii Lubelskiej w Lublinie
Plac Wolności 4
20-005 Lublin
woj. Lubelskie
Poland

tel/fax +48 81 53-209-47

http://www.3lo.lublin.pl/
e-mail: