I told a student to tuck his shirt in the other morning.
It was mufti day but rules are rules.
Lucan, from St John's College in Hastings, has been in the news recently.
He and his parents successfully defended his right to retain his hairdo while at the school.
Good on them for defending him against a headmaster keen to stamp his authority.
We don't need unnecessary rules in our schools or society.
No-one should be judged solely on their appearance.
We should judge people on their inner character.
Ugly men should be able to date beautiful women.
People with facial tattoos and dreadlocks should be able to serve in the police force and army.
Politicians should be allowed to campaign in G-strings if they choose, excepting maybe Gerry Brownlee and Ruth Dyson.
But the reality is that appearances do matter.
Lucan may have won his battle to keep his locks while attending St John's.
But if, later in life, Lucan was to demand that his employer accept his appearance based on his individual right to choose, he could run into trouble.
He would first have to gain employment and this requires playing the appearance game.
If he gained a job and then radically changed his appearance the employer could claim they had been deceived and use the six-month probationary period to terminate his employment.
It would be an interesting case particularly if the employer argued Lucan's new appearance was affecting custom.
Certainly the employer could choose not to promote Lucan if his appearance was felt to be detrimental to the business.
Appearances matter.
We may not like this fact and believe we should be judged on our inner qualities but the reality is we all make an initial judgement about people based on their appearance and presentation.
An application for a job that contained the email address ''dirtypartyanimal@hotmail.com'' is unlikely to impress a potential employer.
Lucan's case highlights the fundamental tension in a schooling system.
It is the tension between education and control.
It is the tension between liberating the mind and training the future citizen and worker to recognise and conform to social norms.
Much of the antipathy that occurs between teachers and pupils in schools stems from this tension.
Such conflict doesn't occur at tertiary level because the relationship is not compulsory and the conditioning is largely completed.
Our society has become more conservative in many ways over the past few decades.
This is despite a variety of social legislation aimed at reducing discrimination and encouraging acceptance of different lifestyles.
Parents obsess about giving their child the extra edge in choosing a school, getting access to tertiary education, gaining a job or succeeding at sport or in the arts.
They inherently recognise that in a more market-based economy this could provide their offspring with a better path to material success and possible happiness in life.
Such a system also encourages conformity.
Many schools that offered alternative approaches to education have closed in recent years.
Many parents want uniforms, rules and traditional values.
It is hard to actually determine when in history these traditional values actually come from.
Humans have a rose-tinted view of some imaginary epoch in history that is often quoted when referring to traditional values.
Catholic schools such as St John's have generally benefited from this trend.
Many parents seek the traditional values that a Catholic education is said to provide.
It is unclear whether the traditions they are seeking are pre or post Reformation.
From an economist's point of view there is an irony in the conformity imbued by our schooling system.
The heroes of a market system are the entrepreneurs.
These are the people who ask why or why not?
They challenge the rules and look for better ways of doing things.
A climate of control and fear about employability can actually curb this entrepreneurial flair.
Lucan's hairdo and the court case that went with it is minor in the general scheme of things.
But it does expose a fundamental conflict in our schooling system and the economic model we have adopted.
• Peter Lyons teaches economics at St Peter's College in Epsom.
