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- <text id=90TT3226>
- <title>
- Dec. 03, 1990: American Notes:Education
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Dec. 03, 1990 The Lady Bows Out
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 57
- American Notes
- EDUCATION
- Hair-Raising Punishment
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> The euphemism is "alternative education setting," but
- "solitary confinement" would be more accurate. For more than six
- weeks, school officials in Bastrop, Texas, have sentenced
- eight-year-old Zachariah Toungate to a 10-ft. by 13-ft.
- isolation room all day. His crime? Refusal to cut his 7-in.
- ponytail. Zach is taught by substitute teachers but is banned
- from his gym classes and from eating in the cafeteria. He says
- he has nightmares that the walls of the classroom will close in
- and crush him.
- </p>
- <p> Zach's parents Stanley and September Toungate have appealed
- to the school board, but it has refused to halt the confinement,
- as did a state district court judge. The school's
- superintendent, Paul Fleming, defends the dress code and the
- punishment. Zach and his parents may take the case before the
- U.S. Court of Appeals. If girls are allowed to wear their hair
- long, they insist, boys should be too.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-