What is the stupidest school rule you've ever had to deal with?
yukichigai@kbin.social to 
Parent, student, or staff, what's the dumbest damn regulation you've personally come across at an educational institution?
yukichigai@kbin.social to yukichigai@kbin.social to
In 3rd grade we had a rack of books in the class and we would sometimes be given half an hour to pick a book and read, I was a reader, I got like half way through a book and it was time up and we had to put the books back, well I wanted to finish it so I put it in my bag and went to ask the teacher if I could finish it later, she was busy talking to someone and told me she would talk to me "in a minute" and like a 7 or 8 yo I promptly forgot about it. An hour later she sees the book in my bag, calls me out in front of the whole class for stealing and when I tried to tell her Id tried to ask if it was ok to take it home so I could read it later but she was busy she called me a "liar and a theif" and back onto the shelf it went.
A few days later I took the book and hid it behind a cabinet near the door to our room, at reading time she noticed it was missing, demanded to know what Id done with it, accused me of stealing it again and tipped my bag onto the floor to find it. When she didnt find it, she told me "once a theif always a theif" and when the bell rung that day and she was busy packing up her desk, me the last kid out the door put his bag down to tie his shoe... and I stole the fucking thing.
If you're going to treat me like I'm guilty anyway, might as well be guilty.
What a fucking shit educator: 'Once a thief always a thief.' Humiliating a student in front of the class.
If I was the principal I would have them fired, or at least suspended.
This was like 1992 or so... it was either 2nd or 3rd grade I dont remember. It also kind of predates parents siding with a 7yo over their teacher. She was a cunt though.
There was a pretty big rich/poor divide in that school, I learned young that you have to prove the rich are guilty and the poor have to prove they are innocent.
In hindsight as I get older I've realised that moment was one of those cornerstones that shape the way people grow, I wonder if I would have turned out not to be a hustler for most of my 20s if she hadnt been a twat. If people are going to assume the worst, might as well take the cash too.
It's so weird how so many of the teachers I encountered in my school years were just like this. Of course you're going to get some, but why do such a surprising amount of people that think this way choose to become educators? It sucks for them and all the people who had their 'teaching' inflicted upon them.
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A few days ago I made a comment on an article about people being afraid to board planes manufactured by Boeing, the article said something about air travel being statistically very safe, but I tried to point out that given we have specific reason to be worried about Boeing aircraft, that's not particularly reassuring since those statistics could likely change if poor manufacturing processes leads to lots of incidents bringing down the averages. Unfortunately for me, I tried to explain this with a really awkward and convoluted analogy that took a lot of text to write out so someone replied to tell me that they didn't read my comment but that they assumed I was trying to say Boeing planes are safe and nothing to worry about and that they disagreed with that idea and Boeing should be punished and dragged through the courts.
I thought that was kind of ironic and replied to that person telling them that their comments might be more relevant if they read the thing they were commenting on. This triggered a sudden and significant pouring of downvotes upon my original comment and that second one and someone replied saying my original comment looked like it had been written by AI. Then our friend Zuberi here got really excited and started copy and pasting an AI prompt that he thought was going to trigger some kind of response. I didn't really feel like arguing with randoms to defend this one comment that even I thought could have been written better so I ignored them but that seemed to really get on their nerves so now I have this goofy little Lemmy sidekick saying "this is a bot ^" and downvoting me whenever I say anything to anyone. I'd be tempted to think the repetitive and limited responses mechanically reproduced regardless of context within a short timeframe of whatever I post was behaviour indicative of a "bot" but frankly I think a bot would have managed to be a lot cleverer than that and it's pretty clear this is someone who just got a little too excited and just can't help themselves. I'm not sure if they ever really thought I was some kind of a chatbot or "AI" at first but I think now they probably know that's unlikely and they're just holding a grudge for reasons they likely don't even know themselves and never bothered to interrogate. Ironically I can't even see my original comment that caused the whole fracas because presumably this guy or his mates reported it for.... something because it and a later comment explaining it got removed by a moderator.
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Reminds me of a teacher I had in primary school. She was most of the time okay, but she had her moments where she'd pick a student (usually of a minority background) and just make an example of them.
One kid walked to school everyday because her mum worked and didn't have time for her in the morning. Sweet girl, but she was often 10mins late. Teacher made an example of her, criticised her entire home life and implied her mother was a bad one.
I once got in a fight with "Bad" kid (he put me in headlock and I rammed him against a fence to try to get free). The kid was troubled and everyone knew it, but if you left him alone he left you alone. The "Nice" kid from nice background told me that I should tell my teacher what happened. I didn't want Bad kid to get into trouble over me, so I opted to say nothing. Nice kid told his teacher, who then told my teacher, who then made an example by pulling me in front of the class and calling me a coward. At the point I learned that sympathy for your enemy yields no reward to the judgemental.
Reminds me of a teacher my dad told me about when he was in trade school (he went to a trade school for high school back in the 70s/80s). He said all the students called the guy Mr. Hitler behind his back.
He would regularly make fun of students, call them stupid for not understanding things, send kids to the principal for the slightest infractions, etc. My dad didn't grow up with money but started working at like 14, and he said it always bothered him the most that Mr. Hitler would especially pick on poor kids.
"Oh, is that all your family could afford for you, rags and old shoes?" "Really, the same pants two days in a row, what, your family can't afford to wash them?" Just shit like that, in front of the whole class, absolutely demeaning and stuff that wouldn't be tolerated today.
Well, apparently Mr. Hitler suffered a stroke at some point during my dad's high school days, and according to him, not a single student gave a damn to do anything to help him. He had trouble walking/was in a wheelchair, kids would let the door slam behind them despite him trying to get through. If he had several things to carry, students would ignore him requesting help to carry them, pretending like they couldn't hear him.
Harsh, but I guess you reap what you sow
I got suspended once because someone "punched" me as a joke. By the letter of the regulation it counted as a fist fight even though (a) we weren't fighting and (b) I didn't do the punching. Good times.
Schools are pro bullying and this stuff is part of it
Zero tolerance fighting rules are the dumbest thing ever. I told my daughter if she ever got hit at school, beat the fuck out of them until I get there and then we're going for ice cream.
Lol similar things to me but only with a disciplinary letter saying I was being punched. We were joking, it was not a punch (it was more like a ticklish thing that I exaggerated a bit), and we had both to go in front of the school principal. Wonderful
You can't be late more than x times. Sounds fair till u realise the school bus was always late hence racking up like 200 official warnings. School couldn't change the rule cos government regulations bus couldn't get there sooner cos government refused to change the shedule.
My school at some point tried to be very extreme about being late. A new rule was that if you were late for even 1 minute, you won't be allowed in the school.
I was literally walking to the door and saw a kid go in, but I wasn't allowed in because oh I guess I was a few seconds too late.
Me and other teenagers crowded around the front door and the exchange was basically this
"So you won't let us in?"
"No, you were late. Go home."
And we all shrugged and took the day off. Needless to say the rule didn't last very long and there were many angry parents.
Homie! My school was neighbors to a bar right next to the train station. When they said, "no," I said party!
Have psychologists studied this behavior? Like, what goes wrong in school personnel that makes them this dumb?
My school briefly had a rule that when you were late, you could take a note (3 notes = detention), OR you could go to headmaster and explain yourself during lunchbreak.
Lunchbreak was 40 minutes, so if you stood there for more than 40 minutes, you'd be late for the next class, meaning you'd of course show up again tomorrow. Repeat for a while and there were kids lined up through the hallway, standing in line to explain they were late due to standing in line.
The rule only lasted a few weeks. They changed it so that you could get 9 notes before detention.
Why couldn't the school change the rule though? Weren't they free to have implemented it in the first place? Once it became apparent it was unworkable couldn't they have changed it?
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Anyone who ate hot lunch had to eat everything on their tray, and we weren’t allowed to pass on any part of the meal because children in other countries were starving or something. Lunch ladies checked our trays before we were allowed to leave the cafeteria.
On the days when sauerkraut was served, we’d take turns being the sauerkraut smuggler, cramming that dank crap from about a dozen 8 year old kids’ trays into an empty milk carton, so we could toss it all without the lunch lady catching it. One day when I was the kraut smuggler, lunch nazi grabbed my carton and marched me back to the table. She said I had to eat every strand of the milky garbage we’d all stowed before I could leave.
I tried, but kept gagging and retching. I sat huddled with the collective slop at the table, crying for about 3 hours before my teacher found me and released me from lunch jail.
Supposedly there was a similar policy at my elementary school early on, which led to a kid being forced to eat something they were allergic to. As the story goes, they vomited violently all over the lunch monitor and then had to be taken to the nurse's office. Their parents were not amused. The policy did not stay in place.
I literally dont understand how teachers or school staff can be so authoritarian that theyd rather a kid die than that kid possibility be lying
They've got a tiny scrap of power and by god, they intend to use it! More enjoyable than going to therapy for the abuse they suffered as children.
Man, thats bullshit.
We were quite lucky that our cafeteria had some delicious food for breakfast and lunch. I actually looked forward to it. Sometimes we'd get lucky and the lunch lady "overproduced" and would invite us to get seconds, and those of us who stuck around for them would get excited!
Holy shit, that last part though. That's the kind of shit that scars children. I'd be going to jail if you were my kid.
I hope you came through it without too much damage and is in a better place now.
Got detention for having the wrong shoe texture.
Texture.
What was the texture? What was the texture supposed to be? We're missing valuable context!
@ouRKaoS is right, it was black suede leather instead of normal leather.
Dress code didn't say anything about level of shine though, it just said black leather brogues.
they wore alligator skin shoes and not beaten baby seal skin shoes.
Classic mistake. When in Yellowknife, do as the Yellowknifers do.
My guess is suede instead of smooth, shiny leather.
...don't ask me how I know that.
chewy
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I've got 2, both from middle school:
No card games: Like, why? I even had a classmate who during one period didn't exercise on PE. Perhaps due to previous sickness, I don't remember. As he wasn't the only one, he played some card game with others. The PE teacher noticed it, took that card deck, AND FUCKING RIPPED IT IN HALF. How much strength does that...? Anyway, I remember he cried, I'd say rightfully so. "You are supposed to pay attention!" Pay attention to what, people running?
Card games were even banned during breaks, not just free classes. What's the problem? Teachers didn't care if someone was beating the shit out of someone else with a chair, they didn't care if someone was playing with a butterfly knife, but card games? "That's dangerous for the youth."
No smartphones: I mean, not even during breaks, except for "A" classes. A classes had the "better" students. The weirdest stuff here was that I haven't taken the phone with me to school. After all, why? I could break it, I'd have no use for it and I lived 2 minutes away from school. But, when it came to collecting them, no one believed me. "Everyone has a phone nowdays, so you'll either give it to me, or I'll have to search your bag." Thankfully, after a week our class teacher finally understood that I in fact do not carry a phone with me.
Or perhaps I could also add something from elementary school. I have no idea what rule it would break though:
Some girl reported me (a boy) for apparently having a mascara. Our teacher then searched my bag, as if it was a grenade. I did in fact not have it.
And no, she didn't report me stealing a mascara, just me having one as a boy. And the teacher took that seriously.
They come up with some serious bullshit in school.
I got lucky in that they didnt care about cards when I was in middle school. Wed be playing poker, California speed, etc. I rememeber wed be in woodshop when all the equipment was in use, so wed just play card games to pass the period. Or during breaks between classes. And especially the last day, it was a free for all for some reason. Testing was all done, teachers had nothing else to teach. Wed just go to each class like normal, and just hang out playing card games, getting our yearbooks signed, etc. But this was the 90s, before anyone had cellphones or gadgets.
Which of the former(?) Confederate states did this happen in? Sounds like a grenade might have been okay with them if you'd had one, they're manly enough.
Oh, you're going to be surprised. Slovakia, central Europe.
A little surprised but I know we don't have a monopoly on dipshittery here in the land of pickup trucks with pink rubber scrotums flapping in the wind. Just seems that way sometimes.
I literally have the opposite experience with the phone thing lmfao
at some point I had a calculator (one of those slick 1990s casios) in my pocket, that king of looked like a phone. When I was passing one of the admins, I actually thought she thinks I have a phone in my pocket, so I gestured to it to say it's a calculator which she misinterpreted as me somehow boasting that I got a phone, so she was like "Oh so you got a phone, so what? Everyone does nowadays"
And I thought that my school is weird. Well, maybe I should reconsider that
I was in middle school when the Columbine shooting happened. The following year, they updated the dress code to require everyone to tuck in their shirts with the stated reasoning that it would prevent people from concealing weapons.
I was in high school. Trenchcoats were pretty popular to wear at the time with the nerds and geeks. We even had the kids in choir who looked up to an a capella group called "The Trenchcoats", who would regularly wear them.
Trenchcoats got banned because of Columbine and the choir kids werent allowed to wear them anymore. Even the a capella group changed their name to "The Coats" around that time. Weird times, man.
For anyone wondering:
I too was in middle school when Columbine happened. The next year we weren't allowed to wear trench coats... In Phoenix...
To be fair, some places go a little hard with the AC.
My school did the same thing. Seemed kinda pointless. They also required belts then as well.
During a grade 6 camping retreat, my best friend and I got in trouble for gambling, playing five card draw with evenly dealt chips and no actual money.
It was eventually officially decided that the chips were the problem. We collected rocks from the gravel road and played with those instead. Our roommates who originally complained were pissed, but five card draw with pebbles instead of chips was apparently allowed
When I was in 8th grade year, right before the end of the year in one of my classes, we ended up having a substitute teacher. For some reason, she and a few of us were talking about poker and that we, the students, didn't know how to play.
The next day, she brings in cards and chips and is trying to teach us how to play! She did say that she probably shouldn't be doing this, but continued anyway. Interestingly, this was in Utah, in a suburb of Salt Lake City, which is the capital of the Mormon church. And she herself was Mormon. I always thought it was funny that our Mormon teacher was teaching us how to gamble in school!
One of my math teachers spent an entire semester teaching us how to gamble. He used it to teach us how statistics and probability worked. Final assessment was to set up mock bookie offices for a fairly famous local horse race.
Not allowing to go to the toilet whilst in your lessons and only during break/lunch time.
This was such an issue since needing a toilet is a natural thing and it’s not something we can control/control for very long and it’s very bad if we do so, yet teachers would literally send out detentions/warnings if we even attempted, which was so idiotic of itself.
The reason we couldn’t use the toilet whilst we were in our lesson, was cuz to the teachers, they though it was an excuse for us to skip lessons, which already caused many ppl inc myself to immediately lose trust in our teachers and therefore internalise our problems, which was a huge case at my secondary school.
I hid so much shit from people at the time cuz of teachers behaviour like this but also didn’t help that coming from a toxic household, just made things ten times worse due to it.
We had one teacher who decided this was the rule in his class and the school backed him. We also had an absolute madlad who insisted for 20 minutes that he needed to go to the toilet and when constantly refused shit his pants on purpose.
The teacher was fucking apoplectic demanding he get up and get out and he just sat there "You said no, deal with it. Call the principal down here if you dont like it but I'm not moving from this chair for another 10 minutes."
Nobody ever gave him a hard time about it, we all appreciated him taking one (or a 2) for the team they rescinded that policy shortly after.
We had a fucking legend shit in a teacher’s trashcan when the teacher wouldn’t let him go to the bathroom. Teacher was one of the infamously strict “zero bathroom breaks, you should have gone before class and can hold it until afterwards” types. So after asking a few times and getting denied, the kid just dropped trou and squirted molten hatred into the teacher’s desk side trashcan.
And yes, the teacher changed his rule following the incident.
TBF, students using going to the bathroom as an excuse to do other things is very real. Not all student do it, but some do and these people cause a lot of issues.
I generally keep the rules: leave your phone in the classroom and be back in 10 minutes.
The amount of students that suddenly don't have to go anymore once they're reminded they need to leave their phone is very high.
That's genius
Can confirm, I did this to skip parts of band rehearsal on days where my part was super dull to play.
There's a school nearby us for which the teacher must call a duty teacher for the student to go to the toilet. That's at least 30 seconds of the class wasted.
At ours, I say to the student they better be fast, and they are. If it's 5-10 minutes to the end of class I ask if they can hold it, respectfully (they're 16, honestly) and they usually acquiesce. If it's a girl I wouldn't be harsh and let me them go, but that's because I almost rarely get requests from girls. Boys just wanna piss.
Where I live, the winters get very cold. Not like Canada cold, but cold by my country's standards - think a top of 9°c during the day. My city also has an odd culture where no one remembers how cold it gets, given our summers are so hot, so we're all left confused and freezing come winter - no one has proper clothes for it. It's like a citywide, seasonal amnesia.
That was certainly the case when I was in highschool 20 years ago. At lunch/recess time, the only time students were allowed inside the building was if it was raining. I understand that this was for the teacher to student ratio of supervision. Everyone outside or everyone inside - much easier to manage.
But it meant that every time it got really, really cold, half the student class would go inside to huddle against the radiators to keep warm. Periodically a teacher would come in and kick us out. You'd repeat this process a few times over recess/lunch.
So while it wasn't a stupid rule, given I understand the teachers need to not be spread too thin, it was also ridiculous to expect kids to hang around outside in the freezing cold, in a place where people act like wearing a beanie is being dramatic.
Maybe it is because I am used to a colder climate, but how did you come to school without outerwear? Did your parents not notice the temperature in the morning and put a jacket on you?
I mean we were highschool kids so we dressed ourselves. No one had proper coats. From what I've seen driving past schools, they still don't. It's a very specific form of temperature denial we have here.
That makes sense. Sorry, I grew up in a school system where recess stops after the fifth grade.
Also, you mentioned that lack of coat was a problem for lunch? I assume that means that your cafeteria only had outdoor seating. How did that work when it was raining or very windy?
Cafeteria was for purchasing food, not consuming. Everyone outside!
I went to a religious highschool, and at the time I was (shocker) a teenager. You could sign up either for religious education, or for Christian classes. Me being an atheist (and, I stress again, a teenager), went for the least terrible option.
After the first guest teacher came in to talk about their own religion, we got a new rule.
"Students are not allowed to ask more than 5 questions each to guest teachers".
One class later that was changed to
"Students are only allowed to ask 3 respectful questions to guest teachers"
That rule was then dropped, and I get a stern talking to explaining that I, personally, was allowed to ask only a single question during religious education classes.
And then I didn't have to follow those classes anymore, which was nice. But with a couple of years of maturity on me, I feel like I could have been nicer to the poor guest teachers.
Sounds like you did the right thing. Advocates for anti-truth don't deserve to be treated nicely.
Man, I loved my middle/high school's religion classes as an Agnostic.
It was a super fancy prep school, so they went all in with the religion classes being 'academic' with the teachers needing a relevant PhD or Masters.
I still remember my very conservative Old Testament teacher writing all sorts of passive aggressive statements across my envelope pushing essays and then begrudgingly giving them A- grades.
The other teacher for NT and electives was awesome though. Instilled a real passion (pun intended) for the material with fun classes that did things like look at early Christianity as a cult and the sociological factors going into it or reading bizarre apocrypha like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (which in later years I realized was less 'bizarre' and more subversive and probably even satirical).
Religion could be a really cool class, and it's a shame cowardly institutions try to make it "indoctrination by any other name" as opposed to "let's learn about the criterion of embarrassment and Peter's denials."
My highschool had a no yoga pants/tights/stretch pants/leggings rule. But only enforced it for the not hot girls.
One day I wore a pair of my (at the time) girlfriend's yoga pants to school. When a teacher stopped in me the hallway I just pointed out all the other girls wearing them with no issue. I got detention but yoga pants were never brought up again.
Also the volleyball team wore yoga shorts as part of the uniform.
I do love the "shorts can be no more than 1 inch above the knees", but "cheerleaders get to wear the equivalent of bathing suits to class because it is a 'uniform'."
When I was in high school boys would get suspended if their hair touched the collar of their shirt. I was suspended all the fucking time because I refused to cut my hair. I eventually ended up getting sent to a different school.
By far not the stupidest, but it's one that's coming to mind.
The school was in a poor area and had a mandatory school uniform. One of the rules was that for boys, "school shoes" must be worn, not "boots". In many cases, the distinction is obvious, but in ambiguous cases, the distinction came down to how high up the shoe/boot went. I think they defined a length that was the boundary.
What's silly though is that this length was such that if you were wearing regular school trousers, it would be impossible to discern whether it was a shoe or a boot. At uniform inspections, they would literally have people pull up their trousers legs enough that they could see the top of the shoe/boot, and measure it with a ruler. Inspections were usually overseen by a senior member of staff (not the same one each time).
My brother was sent home from school because his brand new school shoes were 0.5cm too high and were therefore boots. He wasn't meant to return until he'd replaced them, but my mum called the school and went nuts because she couldn't afford to replace them for such a stupid rule. They "made an exception" in this case.
Girls schools have the same deal with skirt length. They make a fuss over it because they know the kids will rebel over a stupid rule like that, instead of the kids rebelling by doing drugs.
Similar story. Few years ago in a previous life, I was a teacher. Our administration would make an announcement in the morning that we had to check uniforms in first period and send non-compliant students to the office. Kids were generally in uniform, but a lot of the rules were nitpicky. One of the uniform rules was that students had to wear a certain color sock of a certain length. I don't care what socks kids are wearing so never checked. They're under their pants. Our assistant principal would stand in the hallway and check uniforms. When he found kids out of uniform, he would figure out who their first period teacher was and send a nastygram. Imagine living a life where you allow your blood pressure to rise because of the kind of socks on somebody else's feet.
My math teacher one year made a rule that if you skipped more than 3 problems on the homework you got a zero on it. This was because she was assigning 80-100 problems a night and I had only been completing just doing enough to get a passing grade because I didn't have an hour to spend just on math every night.
Could you just fill the answer with garbage?
Yea, that's what I ended up doing. It was stupid.
I wrote my first AP English thesis in high school on this exact issue: students being assigned too much homework and the detriment it caused them. I don't remember the source, but an academic paper from around 2010 (I wrote the paper in like 2012) talked about how assigning more than 5-10 math problems per night could cause way more harm than good.
Not only was it incredibly time consuming for people who likely had sports/music/jobs/family obligations/etc, but it reinforced incorrect learning habits. Basically, if you were given 100 math problems, but didn't understand how to solve them correctly, you'd just be reinforcing your mistake 100 times. Add in the fact I never had a teacher who would spend an entire class going over all 100 of them, and kids were basically learning the wrong way every night. Plus, at least in my experience, the assignments were turned in and then the class moved on to the next lesson, and by the time you were given the graded assignment back, you were already 3+ lessons ahead, still learning everything wrong because the foundation was built on sand, not stone.
Yea, I was always good at math but shit like that made me hate it. Like you said I either understood the concept or I didn't. Having a higher volume of problems wasn't going to help. The funny thing was, later on in high school, my english teacher gave me a list of all the assignments we would have that semester with how many points they were worth so I went through and figured out what I would be a able to skip (pretty much all the stuff that I'd have to get in front of the class for) and still pass. She did not give a shit about it other than initially being concerned that I was failing really hard for a while because most of what I skipped was at the beginning. I told her what I was doing and she was just like "... well ok if that's what you want to do...". I
Had a similar issue with a science teacher, we had to copy down several pages of words and their definitions every single night. Made me hate science when I'd normally love it. I just refused to do it and failed the class. Explained to my parents why I failed and they were shockingly understandable about it.
No facial hair. 15 year old me hated that he had to shave his sweet nu-metal chin goatee.
Taint nation just wasn't the same afterwards
Taint misbehavin'
I got in trouble for doing homework at school. Because it was meant to be done at home.
I loved doing my homework at school. It was so easy to concentrate, all the textbooks were there, and then afterwards you have whole evening to yourself at home to watch whatever you want without any guilt or stress
Lol Nerd
Snowball throwing was banned because a nephew of a friend of a friend of a teacher was supposedly blinded by one. Same school had an assembly that informed us that listening to heavy metal would make us want to kill our friends.
Maybe they mixed up cause and effect there
Yeah, it’s well known that you can’t listen to heavy metal if you haven’t killed anyone yet.
FWIW, this can actually happen, although I still think that's an overbearing rule. One of my younger siblings had a teacher who was blind in one eye - ice shards from a snowball when she was in elementary.
Was in an AP English class, and we were given a book on AP format for writing essays and such (think proper way to cite sources, alphabetize authors, other grammatical and formatting rules, etc). The class was given an example handout and told to group up into fours and go over the handout, finding mistakes and such based on the book previously mentioned.
When we went over it as a class, every group found basically every mistake except one. Every group missed this one mistake, and none of us flagged it because the book we were supposed to base all of this off of stated that it, in fact, was not a mistake. Since it was a graded assignment, we started debating with the teacher that since everyone didn't flag it, and the book we were given said it was actually correct, we shouldn't be penalized for it.
The teacher, however, refused, stating that it was incorrect based on AP formatting standards. Students even showed her, in the book we were given, where it said that the "mistake" was in fact correct. She refused to budge, and arguing continued.
The discussion ended when she (the teacher) finally said, "I'm the only one in this room with a Master's degree in English, you got it wrong, I'm not hearing further debate on this," and took the points off from all of us.
Same thing happened with a math teacher (who was an absolute piece of shit, literally everyone including the staff hated him, but that's for another time). Everyone got a problem wrong, and when he went over it, several students pointed out the answer we all got was correct based on how we were initially shown how to solve the problem. He pulled the same "I'm the only one here with a degree in mathematics, so none of you are getting the points for it because you're just wrong."
Several students went to other math teachers and showed it to them, who in turn went to the piece of shit and not only pointed out that he was wrong, but the head of the math department was basically demanding either the points be restored or the question thrown out. The next class he went on a long spiel about how "after conversing with several of my other academic colleagues, it was brought to my attention it was a poorly designed question, and thus I will be removing it from all of the tests."
Just fucking admit when you're wrong, all you're teaching us with your fancy degrees is that you're a prick and to resent authority figures.
This is correct; there is a section in the Aviation Instructor's Handbook about this. It is important for a teacher to establish themselves as a subject matter expert, you absolutely should appear knowledgeable and competent. There are ways to do this wrong. For instance, if you don't know something, just make shit up. If a student asked a question I didn't know the answer to, I had a go-to technique for handling it: I would turn it into a lesson on aviation reference materials. "What book would you look for that in? Let's see if we can go find it." Another way to undermine your own credibility is to insist you're right no matter what. Your students WILL see through that and it WILL undermine your credibility.
And it's one thing to pull that shit when you're a high school English teacher and you're not responsible for anyone else's safety. A flight instructor is not only a teacher, but also sometimes the only qualified airman on the plane. "I don't want to fly with you anymore, you scare me. A real expert pilot doesn't have to pretend to know what he's talking about."
Your students are smart, capable scholars and they should be respected as such. It's remarkable how many people are in education professions that don't get this.
Yeesh. I've had teachers that will give points back if all (or nearly all) students get a question wrong on a test because they know it's more likely their own failure than the students. Maybe the question is confusing or poorly worded, maybe the material wasn't covered or it's too difficult with the amount of time available.
not really a school rule but it is one they tried to push on my mom when i was in elementary school.
i was the tiniest kid in class and my mom wanted me to take karate lessons. to give me some self esteem. the teachers tried to tell her the only thing it would do would make me want to get into fights. but somehow playing football would have been completely ok. so a high impact physical sport where you grab people and throw them to the ground is ok... as long as there is a ball involved. but giving a little kid some self esteem in an environment that encourages restraint and self control is not ok.
this was sometime around 1982-1985 i forget exactly what year.
moronic way of thinking.
My high-school math teacher made us all submit our work in these tiny notebooks that were like less than half the size of an American standard notebook, with unlined paper. He would write the homework problems on the board and then you had to copy them into the tiny-ass notebook and then hand write all your work on the single tiny-ass page, he would fail you if you used more than one page or side of a page because "One page is all the room you need to work out a problem."
I am really horribly bad at math and even writing numbers down is hard for me, sometimes i can't even read what I wrote, so being forced to write them even smaller was a nightmare. I barely passed his class. Plus he was just a total dick in general to anyone who struggled in his class, and most students did (it was already the math class for dumb people), and we could all tell he didn't want to be there.
I hope he's miserable whenever he is now.
My algebra teacher was an ex Army Airborne Ranger who hated kids, and probably people in general. Whenever I asked a question because I legitimately didn't understand why a formula worked the way it did, he would tell me to shut up. When i finally protested and said "I can't shut up because I don't understand!", he made me stand outside the door to the classroom for the rest of the period.
I had a teacher like this senior year, finally one time when she made me stand outside I just went out to the parking lot and drove away and never went back to that school. Switched to a virtual program and passed that way.
Wow, that's wild. There were no virtual programs when I was in high school, so that wasn't an option for me. It wasn't until several years later that colleges started offering remote learning programs by sending VHS tapes in the mail. Haha.
Yeah it was the early days of that kinda thing, went from a c-d student to an A student right away. Should've been working that way the whole time for me.
But why? Did they collect the notebooks to check the homework?
Yup, you had to take the page out and turn it in.
Well in such case I can see little rationale behind that
I guess this is less of a regulation and more of an individual teacher. I had a math test that was multiple choice, with space in-between each question to do the work. I did everything correctly for a particular problem, including writing down the exact correct answer, but I circled the wrong multiple choice answer. There was a minus sign instead of a plus sign for one of the terms, and I just missed it.
When we got the tests back, and it was marked wrong, I asked the teacher if I could still get points for it because I clearly actually did the math right. The teacher said that only the multiple choice answer I circled mattered, so I still got points off.
The next test was 5 pages with 5-ish questions on each page. The front of the last page only had 1 question, so I wrongfully assumed that was the last problem on the test, but there were 3 problems on the back. I only noticed this when I went to turn it in, and with the teacher watching, I just circled 3 answers at random. It turns out, I somehow circled the correct answers, but the teacher marked them wrong because I didn't actually do the work; I just got lucky.
I complained, and to their credit, the teacher relented and gave me the points.
In middle school, we had some militaristic gym coaches. Youd think we were in boot camp or something? They have very specific rules that had to be followed to a T.
You had to wear briefs, no boxers allowed. If you did have boxers, you had to have briefs under them.
You had to wear the school gym uniform, no exceptions.
The provided shorts were super short, so you could also wear sweats, but you had to wear the shorts underneath them.
You had to have your shirt tucked in.
You had to form a line in your designated spot and wait on the playground for the class to start before the gym coaches would arrive to take attendance. This was in the SoCal heat.
During attendance, the coach would also inspect your uniform. Youd have to show the band of your briefs and shorts to show compliance with the rules.
You had to use the gym shower, no exceptions. God that was awful and awkward.
You break enough rules and youd collected "non-strips", like a demerit, which would earn you detention.
All that hubub and all we ever did was run laps on the field. We used the gym once or twice, but I cant even remember what we did. All the attendance, uniform crap, and shower took up most of the period.
Its no wonder I hated gym class and exercising after dealing with that shit. It wasnt till I hit my 30s that I realized I quite enjoyed working out and hiking.
All the pants, underwear, and shower rules dude sounds like a pedo
The underwear rule could have more to do with accidental flashing if the uniform shorts have very short legs.
He always said it was for support, as boxers don't offer any.
Perhaps, but middle-schoolers genuinely stink to high heaven, especially after P/E. I think one can imagine more obvious/less conspiratorial reasons for showers being mandatory.
It's was actually two dudes who ran the class. One was a bit more chill but the other was straight out of Full Metal Jacket.
Yeah fuck gym class. I actually think it's super important for kids to be active but the way it's implemented, especially at the junior high and high school levels, is asinine. And your situation sucked, what a stupid amount of bullshit!
I was a habitual skipper of gym class from about grade 2 until I graduated high school. I'd only participate enough to get a D, and some marking periods I misjudged and got an F. The only times I didn't try to skip were when we had the weight room, because I actually liked that. But failing gym class had exactly zero impact on anything in my life. My dad gave me the whole "I'd be disappointed in you, but I've learned not to have expectations so you can't disappoint me" schpiel, which whatever, emotional manipulation was my parents' bread and butter, so I didn't really care. Other than that, no repercussions at all.
Yeah, I remember one of my teachers (I think my high school biology teacher) chastising us a bit one day because most of the class would come from PE before hers. She was complaining that we smelled like sweat and working out and all that.
But we weren't allowed (or given even close to enough time at the end of the PE class) to use the showers. You basically showed up, had until the second bell (about 5 minutes after the first) to be in the gym ready to go, you'd run/play/workout/whatever for almost an hour straight, and then be given at most 5 minutes to change and go to your next class.
No shit we stank, and when we asked why we couldn't use the showers, we were told there was no way for us to be monitored in there, so it left too many opportunities for misdeeds and shit.
Our showers were strange. It was basically a wide hallway with showerheads along both walls. And considering how strict my gym coach was, he'd have everything on a schedule and timed. So everyone would go to the locker room at the same time, get undressed and hit the shower at the same time. We had to have a towel wrapped around our waists. Then wed have to all wait at the showers exit for everyone to finish, and only then would we be released back into the locker room.
No talking during lunch. This was in a public elementary school in the early/mid 90s, at the first school I attended through second grade. Literally the only school I attended that was like that. It was so fucking stupid.
Of course, kids tried to talk to their friends, whispering and such. I got in trouble once because a teacher saw me whisper to my friend who asked me a question and so I got moved to sitting with older kids I didn't know for the rest of the lunch period. That was the first time I got in trouble at school, so I was crying.
Never understood why we couldn't talk. I think because it'd eventually get too loud in there? Which, who cares? Didn't matter; family moved and I switched schools. Where it was totally normal and acceptable to socialize during lunch.
HOLY SHIT! Mine had the same stupid-ass rule! It was the mid 2000s for me, and I managed to get myself in trouble ONCE. The yard duties told me that I had to spend the rest of my lunch in the multipurpose room instead of getting to leave for recess. And you know what I did? I sure as hell didn't stay. I snuck out as discretely as I could because even at my small age, I knew that rule was bullshit. Never got caught, but I'm still salty that I even got in trouble in the first place. Thanks for reading.
Did you live in the South per chance? My school had the same policy in Louisiana.
Nope, this was in the Midwest! Missouri, to be somewhat more specific. I do know our principal (who I didn't mind) was often in the lunchroom. Maybe she was from the south? No clue.
Write each vocabulary word 20 times if you have to go to the bathroom during class. Not a great policy for seven year olds and resulted in several accidents (including me).
We also could not talk to each other during lunch at all. Paddling was also still allowed.
Shaving. I was obstinate enough about it they ultimately gave up. A coach would pull you out of lunch and hand you a razor. Fuck that. I'm not doing it. What are you gonna do? Shave me yourself?
They put you in a tiny cubicle in a room where you do your work and nothing else in total silence for the entire school day. Or send you home unexcused.
My dad's trade school had this rule back in the 70s/80s. If you showed up and weren't clean shaven, you had to pay $0.25 for a disposable razor and small little pouch of shaving cream. If you refused, you were sent home for the day.
He had a teacher that he said was really well liked among the students, former Marine who I think served in Vietnam. The guy had a coconut carved into a monkey's head on his desk, and he'd tape a cigarette in its mouth. But he had some odd rules and, according to my dad, could be a scary dude at times.
Like, if he caught you yawning, he sent you out of the class because "You aren't full awake, and therefore didn't prepare for class properly with a proper night's sleep."
If the class got off track, or really pissed him off, he'd either: A. Lift one of those old-school metal drafting tables off all four of its feet and slam it back down, causing a HUGE boom sound that got everybody's attention, or, B. He'd drop-kick the coconut monkey head down the hallway before returning to the class.
guy, right? or do they enforce this for girls?
Not a rule, but I got in trouble by jumping near a brick wall. The school I went to had bars on the bottom windows, and kids used to jump off the wall and hang off them. During recess, I was jumping beside the wall, and got yelled at.
It was a catholic school. Most teachers were garbage. Except this one Australian teacher. He was awesome.
Just wait till you get hired by a large corporation. It boggles the mind how idiotic bureaucracy can be.
Twice I've found myself working in the corporate world and the amount of busy work and needless things completely boggled my mind.
I was working at a small agile company... we were acquired by an ogre because we were so profitable. Our parent company has been trying it's damnedest to reduce our profitability with as many bullshit policies as it can manage.
Don't ask the gym teacher with the German last name, blond hair in a buzz cut and a swastika tattoo on his arm if he was actually a Nazi, or he'd give you detention. Probably not a formal school rule, but people still got detention for it.
But was he???
If it looks like a Nazi, and it quacks like a Nazi, it's probably a Nazi.
The only way to know for certain is trepannation via procussive excision.
Nah, have you ever seen a non-Nazi with a swastika tattoo?
And I don't mean those Hindus with a mirrored swastika.
It's going to be a maze
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Lose your punishment stamp card? We'll assume it was full and get the next card(it went green, blue, then red.) and detention essays. Fill or lose another card double the previous punishment. I burned the cards I got and handed the ashes to the principal at the end of the year.
My highschool insisted t-shirts were designed to be tucked in and thus anyone wearing a t-shirt had to have it tucked in or be sent home. I have always worn button-up shirts untucked and they didn't seem to have a problem with that...
That's really odd, since it's pretty much the opposite. Button up shirts are usually designed for tucking, and T-shirts for wearing untucked.
“Students may not bring anything inappropriate to school.”
Yeah I'll leave my penis at home
I pointed out that you could stab someone in the eye with a pencil making a basic tool of learning into a wildly inappropriate object. It was really rough doing all my work in crayon ;-)
Sophomore year of highschool my school had a new attendance policy where if you miss more than 4 days of class you automatically failed the class unless you did after school detention for each day of class pass 4 that you missed. What made the rule stupid was that there were no excuses allowed, so that if you were sick for 5 or 6 days you'd either fail or have to do a bunch of after school detention. The school changed it the next year to allow for excused absences, which is what it should've been to begin with.
This is the kind of shit that made me lose all faith in school administrators. Extreme mandatory attendance rules have absolutely nothing to do with curriculum, and everything to do with money. They - almost without fail - disproportionately impact disadvantaged students. I'm lucky that I finished on-campus college before they implemented mandatory attendance at college too, or I would have outright failed. There were so many times that I'd have to miss class because I got stuck at work. I would cram extra hard for tests when that happened and still pass with good grades. But under the new rules I would have failed all of my classes.
I attended a Catholic high school. One of the rules was that if you did not serve detention within a week of it assigned you could face suspension. During my school’s weekly mass a friend next to me cracked a joke. And I burst out quietly laughing. The assistant principal, sitting in the pew behind me, scolded me then gave me 7 hours detention. This was a on a day before a long weekend so it was physically impossible for me to serve all 7 hours within a week. My parents were called in and the school informed them I was facing suspension. My dad ask what I did to warrant to 7 hours detention leading to the suspension. The assistant principal said well he laughed during mass. My dad looked at me then looked at the assistant principal. He sigh and said “that’s fucking stupid”. My dad then turned around and walked out of the office. Days later at school the assistant principal said they were going to show me leniency. Removing the suspension charges.
I was taking classes at a community college around I wanna say 2011 or 2012. Teachers didn't want you to use phones during class because they didn't want you to cheat or be distracted, but there was a big push from the administration to get students to buy digital copies of the textbooks (I assumed because physical copies can be sold used and that was eating into their profits). But reading the digital textbooks on your smartphone was in direct conflict with the no phone policy. So the workaround they found was to say, "phones are not allowed but tablets are ok and encouraged" (which is silly because a tablet can do anything a phone can do). To add confusion around this time phone manufacturers were exploring with making bigger and bigger screens, meanwhile tablets were exploring being more portable, so there was ambiguity in the distinction between the two both in function and physical dimensions. So how did they determine what devices were allowed and which ones were banned you ask? They landed on an arbitrary dimension of 7 inches. Anything smaller than 7 inches was a phone and was clearly being used to cheat, anything larger was a tablet and was an instructional tool. Teachers were given rulers to measure devices and if you were caught using a device smaller than 7 inches you would be disciplined for academic dishonesty. Mind you we also had laptops that also were not viewed as an issue, the school had free WiFi everywhere on campus, and we had apps like fb messnger for messaging and Skype and google voice for phone calls and also access to just Google, so there really was no distinction in mechanisms for academic dishonesty or for distractions between the two.
Imagine if this rule was still around and you brought a foldable
As soon as you close it up, it would be taken away
My school cannot do anything on Sunday except Christian fellowship. One time there was a competition on Sunday and one of the teachers is needed to guide the students, but got denied by the school.
(Before you ask me why did I attend a Christian school, it's because other schools that are not Christian sucked academically)
No backpacks. We had to have all of our books and class work on us at all time due to poor locker placement as the school was being renovated.
But hey, messenger bags were 100% fine. What the fuck.
Have you seen the videos of students bringing anything but backpacks in opposition to this.
No, but I want to now. I'm glad I am out of school for this reason.
Most of them are stupid especially when related to uniforms. Example: jumpers must be worn in class even if in a heatwave. (I kicked off about this and they amended but the fuss was unbelievable). Coats off at the door even if it is cold and raining. You have to put coats on once you have left the building. Insane.
I'm sure I can think of more but I remember an assignment in middle school where I could type it out or write it out by pen, but if you wrote it in a pencil, you get a zero.
The school where I did the equivalent of elementary/middle school education had a strict "absolutely no hats" rule.
I have no clue why, but if you were caught wearing a hat (or cap or...) you'd get into trouble. First time a warning and you take it off. Second time they take the hat away from you and return it after seven days. Third time you get suspended.
My high school had a "no hats indoors" rule and even that was regarded as dumb. No hats at all? Screw you if you wanna keep the sun out of your eyes I guess?
They tried to ban phones in the hallways and cafeteria, while only providing online schedules which could change at a moments notice.
Ban went into effect, no one complied. Ban was lifted next week.
In elementary school, we were only allowed to have up to 8 people at each lunch table. One day we sat 9, and all got detention for it.
No hats. Toques are allowed, everything else is banned. Thankfully it was not enforced.
It's always rough when a gang of Chefs take over a school.
Teachers are not allowed to finger prick a diabetic child to check their blood sugar. Hell, teachers aren't allowed to remove a fucking splinter.
I'm in Ontario, Canada. Fear of liabilities have made us a brain-dead society.
There was this show on TV in the 90s where I live. They were making fun of what's happening in the news and politician.
One of the characters was a lowlife rocker called Bob Binette, and at 11-12 years old, boys found him very, very funny and would sometimes impersonate him in show and tell, or speak like him on the school grounds.
Well, of course, it got to a point where they would apply an interdiction of imitating Bob Binette on school grounds and in class.
I gotta admit, this guy was pretty funny.
My secondary school had a card system based on behavior. If you got in troubled 3 times that semester you had to go to the "trainee" lunch line which had really long lines and less variety of food. You was also restricted from areas of the school at lunch like IT suite, music room and library.
That I was required to attend.