SAN SALVADOR — Oscar Melara, the director of a technical college in El Salvador, stations himself on the entrance gate on daily basis to examine gown code compliance as college students file in.
Melara checks for infractions corresponding to shirts lacking a monogram or identify tag, soiled sneakers and lengthy haircuts. He’s following a directive issued by the nation’s new schooling minister, navy captain Karla Trigueros.
Whereas gown codes have lengthy existed all through the nation’s public faculties, Trigueros’ directive provides directors the ability to ding college students’ grades or require neighborhood service if they don’t comply.
“We thank the minister, as a result of this permits us to appropriate and higher our college students,” Melara mentioned.Native media confirmed movies of barber outlets with traces out the door as college students chopped off their locks, with some providing specials to benefit from the brand new order.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele reposted a message on X cheering the brand new pointers, which not permit hairstyles such because the mohawk or the so-called “Edgar minimize,” a bowl cut-like model popularized in recent times by younger Latinos, significantly within the U.S.
Trigueros herself has toured faculties in current days, typically with a slicked-back bun and wearing navy fatigues.
Academics’ teams have opposed her naming. The Salvadoran Academics’ Entrance, in a press release final week, mentioned placing a navy official in command of schooling was “absurd” and that it harkened again to the nation’s many years underneath navy dictatorship.
Bukele, sharing the memorandum on X, argued that full instructional overhaul was wanted within the Central American nation.
The chief is well-liked in El Salvador after launching a widespread gang crackdown that has slashed crime charges, although rights teams say harmless individuals have been caught up within the dragnet.
His occasion just lately handed a constitutional reform scrapping presidential time period limits, which critics say opens the door to Bukele staying in energy indefinitely.
