Qualified to Cut: How much “education” does a barber really need?
Qualified to Cut: How much “education” does a barber really need?
The Alabama Court Case of Barbers Comm’n v. Hardeman (1945)
Barber licensing laws, and licensing laws in general, were often historically justified as a measure to ensure public sanitation and safety. During the early twentieth century, union barbers argued that licensing laws were necessary to ensure public sanitation. They argued that unsanitary and incompetent barbers were responsible for spreading diseases such as barber’s itch or even syphilis. Connected to this argument was the notion that states that did not license barbers would be flooded with disease ridden barbers who could not get a license in their own state.
In previous research, Marcus Witcher and I argued that while union barbers often made these arguments, what they really wanted was to restrict entry into the market, thus driving up their own wages. Barbers understood that to get a barber licensing law through a court, it would have to be justified as a public health and safety measure. This was also a strategy to convince politicians and the public in general.
Another justification for licensing is that the laws guarantee a level of competency. Indeed, a common trope against those who want less licensing restrictions is the question of “don’t you want a guarantee that your brain surgeon is going to be competent before going under the knife?” Of course, very few people are arguing that brain surgeons should not have to be licensed (though I might!), but the same arguments were made for barbers. “Professional barbers” felt that their profession was being undermined by poor practitioners, and they wanted a law that forced every legal barber to prove their competence.
To ensure the competency of barbers, state and county laws forced people to have a certain level of education before being allowed to get their license. When Alabama passed its first local barber licensing law in 1935, section 4 of the act required that barbers have an “elementary school education, or its equivalent in the judgment of the Commission, and shall be at least 18 years of age” (182). Now, in 2022 having an elementary education could be considered a very low barrier to entry. However, for someone living in the 1930s (and especially during the Great Depression—and especially if you’re a Black person living in the Jim Crow South), such an education might not be available.
It's also worth asking, does a barber really need an elementary education, let alone a high school education? Consider the case of Nelson Malden. In an oral interview, Malden recounted how he learned to be a barber:
“My father was a barber in Pensacola. He was born in 1896 was a World War I veteran and I was raised up basically in the barber shop. So no one needed to teach me to cut hair, it’s just by you being in the barbershop every day you picked up all the skills you need to know at that time. And so that’s how I got started. He was a barber and he had seven boys and I was the youngest of the seven and all the three youngest ones cut hair and the other four, they never did fool around in the barber shop.”
Learning to cut hair from one’s family was common at the time, and it appears to have required very little education. And this is not to say that barbers are not skilled—on the contrary. People like Malden are exceptional in that they were able to pick up skills and a profitable trade at such a young age. Nelson Malden is also not your average barber. Malden cut hair in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement and could boast of having some pretty notable customers—MLK Jr. being just one of many.
Given that barbering does not require much of a formal education, it seems fair to say that most educational requirements are simple ways to filter out potential entrants into the industry. However, Alabama’s original barber act from 1935 did give barbers without an elementary education the opportunity to take a test given by the Commission to prove the equivalent of an elementary education. However, the Act did not say what the test would look like. Luckily, we get to see what those exams looked like in Alabama (and perhaps other places as well) in the court case of Barbers Comm’n v. Hardeman (1945).
In 1945, George Hardeman applied for a barber license in Mobile, Alabama. Since Hardeman did not have an elementary education, the Mobile Barber Commission gave him an equivalency examination. After failing the examination and being denied his license, Hardeman appealed to the circuit court, and it was ruled that he be granted a license. In response, the commission prosecuted an appeal with Alabama’s Court of Appeals. The subsequent court case gives us a glimpse into the operation of county barber commissions, and their efforts to restrict entry into the barber industry. Furthermore, the case lays out succinctly the ridiculousness of education requirements to be a barber.
One of the first things the court pointed out about the commission’s exams was that “the examination paper contains 50 questions, many of which, in our opinion, cannot possibly throw any light on whether a man is qualified to follow the occupation of barber” (2). Indeed, the court case includes many of the questions the commission administered. Some of the questions were:
“Q. What is science? Q. What is art? Q. Too many of our practitioners live in the yesteryear. Too many feel they know what? Q. During the year 1745, marked the decline of what? Q. In order that we may know how you take care of our hair and scalp scientifically we should know what? Q. How many varieties of hair are there? Q. What is essential to good health? Q. What is alopecia areta? Q. How many stripes are there (on a barber's pole) and what do they stand for? Q. What is history? Q. How much of the earth is water?” (3)
And I get it, one of the most frustrating things is when you’re at the barber shop, and the barber can’t tell you how much of the earth is water. The court went on to say:
“The barber's trade is in no sense a trade that requires one following that occupation to have an elementary school education in order to be an efficient and successful barber. We must remember that some of the most efficient and successful barbers we ever knew, and we might say some of the most beloved, were barbers who had no school training whatever. They had a wide experience in the trade and they knew enough to understand and practice the fundamental sanitary rules of the trade. We note that the trial court observed that "barbers practicing at the time the local act became effective, including members of the examining board, were considered qualified rather by experience than by any examination to determine their educational qualifications."” (3)
Alabama’s Court of Appeals understood that licensing was being abused to restrict entry and deny people the right to their vocation. The court also understood that barbering is a noble profession that requires skill, but it is absurd to suggest that the trade requires formal schooling. The court went on to point out that “education means more than the acquisition of knowledge out of text books” and that Hardeman’s experience as a barber for decades in Alabama proves his educational competency in regards to barbering (3).
While the court case turned out well for Hardeman, it should tell us about the true motivation behind government licensing boards and those who advocate for licensing laws. As is often the case for humans, we say we want something for one reason, while we are really motivated by another. So, the next time you hear someone advocate for a new regulation because it is supposed to protect us or serve the “public good,” remember that there’s reason to be skeptical and inquire into what their true motivations are.