100 YEARS AGO

Bobbed teachers “unfit”

Hudson Valley school superintendents planned to “censor” their teachers’ hair, or rather, “the girl and women teachers’ for no rules are being laid down for the tonsorial dress of the school men.” The superintendents of the schools of Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Newburgh, Beacon, Mechanicville, Middletown, Ossining, Goshen and Peekskill took no official action but all entered into a “gentlemen’s agreement” to stand for no more short-haired teachers. Those who went in for such fads were decreed unfit to teach the young by the superintendents, who added that any female teachers currently sporting bobbed hair “must camouflage the awful condition by wigs or tucking it under and puffing it out.”

—Times Union, May 12, 1922