When I was in elementary school, I had an extreme friend who did all sorts of wild things with his hair, whether it was dying it or cutting it in all kinds of unimaginable ways.

None of the students or teachers seemed to be distracted by what Frank’s hair looked like when he showed up to school each day.

Some thought it looked bad, some liked it and others just really didn’t care. But any way of looking at it, it was his decision on how he styled his hair no matter how goofy he looked.

This same sort of issue has been brought up in Charleston by a fourth grader at Jefferson Elementary School.

According to an article in the Times-Courier, Jason Herendeen came to school with his normal mohawk style hair, but this time it was colored.

The article stated that Herendeen had worn his hair in that fashion since the second grade but did not get reprimanded for it until it was colored.

Oh no! A kid dyes his hair blue or red. Somebody send him to the bathroom to wash it out.

And that is exactly what school officials did. They said it was distracting to the other students’ learning environment. I can’t say I struggled with my multiplication and division tables because the kid in front of me had a unique hairstyle.

An event that happened almost a month ago has kept the fourth grader at home getting home-schooled by his mother. Why is it a student should be pushed out of a more adequate learning environment for something as tiny as hair color?

This is nothing more than a kid who is trying to be an individual and express himself. It should be the child’s choice how his hair looks. It’s actually pretty harmless when looking at it as an outside source.

Letting children rebel in somewhere as small as hair would be better than the children rebelling because people won’t let them be who they want to be.

I can understand someone having to change clothes if there are obscene words or meanings on a T-shirt or sent to the principal’s for using foul language, but hair, come on.

Now this child is brought out of a learning environment that features interaction with other students, which is a fundamental process for young children. Officials should have looked beyond the hair and into what really matters.

Aren’t there other problems with younger kids today and their expression of themselves? Just taking discussions out of my human sexuality class, I could think of a few.

A girl can wear a short skirt these days with no problems while a boy gets sent to the bathroom because of colored hair.

Girls are dressing as if they are 10 years older than what they are, and nobody seems to care. Now that is a problem worth talking about.

Many years later I bet Frank is doing just fine with whatever hairstyle he has. He was allowed to be himself, and nobody had any problems with it.