mastermindWhat's the stupidest rule your school ever enforced?
I always thought the no hats rule was really stupid. The teachers enforcing the rule was more distracting from the lesson than someone wearing a hat.
Security guard at the school was out to get me. To this day I have no idea why. He’d let my lowlife friends get away with murder.
Taking me to the dean for wearing a hat, he’s talking to another student, wearing a baseball hat. These guys were the same height, not like he missed it.
Security guards in schools are such a weird concept to me
MagnorWell that’s the US of A for ya…
I thought so too, until people were fighting in the hallways because some idiot yanking off peoples hats, knocking them off peoples head, just to start crap for the shit & giggles of it all. Also people wearing hats with logos or statements that were starting more crap and/or offending others. So, got a new rule, no hats in school.
So after they stopped allowing hats, the assholes were so outsmarted that they resigned themselves to no longer causing any form of shit or harassment?
“Zero tolerance” policy on fighting. Any “active” participation resulted in automatic suspension. That part sounds fine, but active participation included things like holding up your hands in self defense or trying to push the person sitting on your chest while punching you in the face off of you.
I really don’t understand why schools have this rule (at least in many places in the US). Are they trying to teach you to not practice self defense and just let it happen? Doesn’t sound like a great thing to teach.
ddhIt’s easy for the administrators. No investigation, no attempt to understand what happened.
deejay4amSince the late 90s, school admins have become increasingly “police state light”; multiple vice principals with walkie-talkies, metal detectors, 3 hour after school detention, saturday detention, in-school suspension (you go sit in a room in silence for literally the entire school day), and zero tolerance. Imagine getting punched in the face and THEN being expelled for it. And I’m not even talking about “rough inner-city schools” or whatever; this shit happened in the Berkshires.
Of course, all their security theatre commands a budget increase and attempts to instill a sense of fear of the state into students.
We’re worried about school board meetings being taken over now but the administrations went full right wing fascist 30 years ago.
And nobody cares because once they get through school, they never have to deal with it again. It’s an endless cycle of suffering, and nobody who is capable of stopping it is willing to do so.
Maybe its internet hokum, or maybe its real, I dont know.
by my favorite story I ever saw, that outlined how stupid the zero tolerance shit was, and how destructive it was, was a kid in the last year of highschool who moved over the weekend, and apparently a butterknife fell out of one of the boxes, and you could see if you really smashed your face up against the rear driver side window and looked really hard under the drivers seat… Which someone, apparently, did, and got the kid expelled for bringing dangerous weapons to school.
a butterknife isnt even a goddamn danger to butter. Muchless a human being. Especially when its locked in the goddamn car.
GormadtFunnily enough it had the opposite effect at my school
“If I’m getting suspended regardless, I’m going to stop it here and now.”
Yeah they had to repaint some walls due to blood on a number of occasions. And tear carpet out.
It’s was like the fucking thunderdome the moment shit started going down at my school.
Because bad parents. Kids who are bullies usually have parents who are bullies, and even when their kid is the instigator, they will defend their kid and bully teachers and administrators into lifting punishment. Zero tolerance means that discretion is removed and everyone is punished.
The changes in parents the last few decades is why schools are so awful.
Looking at it from the other side, it’s actually rare that an innocent kid is beat up without context.
Usually there’s 2 kids that have a beef and have been egging each other on for days. Eventually one kid says something and the other kid snaps and makes the first move but the second kid was just as guilty.
If you only look at “who started it” the second kid gets off scot free, while the first kid gets punished. Not really fair.
"Zero tolerance " attempts to fix this by recognizing that both kids likely played a part.
themoonisacheeseYou are delusional to the highest degree. Kids in school don’t fight even, it’s one-sided 99% of the time.
The reason for this (and the rule) is bullying. Bullies fight bullied, and everyone gets suspended because “they were fighting”. Since you announced in advance that was the policy, this enables you to conveniently ignore the bullying that has taken place, and instead act as if all bullying-related fights (read: all fights pretty much) are simple fights that do not require any more attention because the issue has been dealth with with punishment.
In turn, this means that a bully who already has a bad rap and generally doesn’t care about grades or standing with school admin because both are already at rock bottom can target any one kid and make their admin standing rock bottom because it will appear as if that kid is fighting all the time and constantly suspended.
There’s no “other side”. The kid who initiated violence is the one in the wrong, even if the other one has been egging him on. “Oh but what if the egging on is one sided and the kid can’t take it anymore?” That is a symptom of your bullying reporting being garbage, not of the natural order of kids. If that kid is taking it out violently it means they’ve tried every other avenue including telling an adult and nothing has changed.
I’m not saying it’s right, just that’s their rationale. I literally discussed this with a middle school principal a few days ago and that was what she said.
Regardless of what you think about the policy, the fact is that your kids will have to abide by it.
Fact: if your kid is being bullied, they need to communicate to a person of authority. Answering a bully with violence is the wrong choice 99% of the time. They are usually bigger than you and have backup.
Also usually it doesn’t progress to a fight the very first time, usually it takes weeks, and during this time you would have many opportunities to tell a teacher or something.
Again, not advocating that this is right, but that’s their rationale.
And what I’m saying is that the school administrator has a vested interest in “removing bullying” by making all bullying-related in incidents be actually something else.
I agree that violence is never the answer, but maybe next time instead of talking to someone who wants to not have to deal with bullying, talk to the students who are being bullied. I guarantee you that every single one of them has tried to alert an adult and the reaction was either “well he’s not doing anything too bad so I can’t do anything” or “he’s been put in detention temporarily and I am the only one aware that it was related to bullying”.
Every single instance of kids fighting in schools can be fixed by having actual support systems in place against bullying. Figure out who the bullies are, and remove them from the bullied’s life. Treat bullying as we treat parental abuse currently, it should be unacceptable that a treacher knew what was happening and did nothing, yet it happens daily.
Fact: currently, if a kid is being is being bullied, they need to learn how to end a fight.
What exactly is a person of authority going to do of you go to them? If they are going to actually do anything, is that thing going to stop it? I guarantee it won’t. Their rational might be this, but as it stands either you are blissfully unaware of the reality of bulling or you are aware and simply do not care.
Bullying is a one directional situation. It’s straight physical and mental abuse. And saying zero tolerance is right because it’s two way or the bullied kid can tell an adult is akin to saying a woman could just leave the man beating her.
It’s naive. It’s harmful. And it’s ineffective.
Your middle school principal you discussed with this is only a single administrator. I’m sure different schools have had various rationale for implementing the policy and any anecdotal response doesn’t speak to the entirety of school administrators.
I was randomly assaulted fir no reason all the time when I was in school just because I was short and quiet. I wasn’t instigating shit. I kept to myself as much as possible.
I always told my kid to fight back, and I’d have their back. More parents should be that way. Same way too many kids get beat up in HS because they were afraid to fight back.
I ran afoul of this.
Someone came up and suckerpunched the absolute fuck out of me from behind from someone who I never even interacted with, commented towards, or even thought about.
Because they used a crutch to get around due to a gimpy leg, and because I was over a foot taller, I was deemed the aggressor… and no amount of witnesses saying otherwise would convince the principle of my innocence. and because the office was so convinced of it, no one in my family believed me either, so no one fought against it. I had to complete a program for “violent” teens before I was allowed to return to school… a program that was little more than slave labor in the hottest not-summer-break months, where I got accused of being a (gay slur) because only (Gay slur)'s drink their drinks the way I did, apparently. Was a super happy fun time learning experience.
I totally don’t still carry the rage and bitterness about it to this day at all. Nope. not at all.
Zero tolerance anything is just lazy and worthless. Only reason to implement is so you don’t have to think or acknowledge any nuance. Admin can just shrug their shoulders and go “Sorry nothing I can do. Zero tolerance.”
If they are truly zero tolerance then any teacher or security guard who steps in to break up the fight should also be suspended. They participated.
As my dad said. You’re going to get in trouble either way. You might as well fight back.
A private school I used to go to banned Listerine breath strips, the ones you put on your tongue, because too many kids were using them.
Was this kind a Monsters Inc. Academy or something?
I wish. I’d have liked it even more. Totally regular school just private. Only there for a few years before moving.
NewEnglandRedshirtIIRC didn’t they have a small amount of alcohol or other chemical that kids would use too many of to purposely get drunk/high? Maybe I’m thinking of something else though
That’s true of mouthwash, but that seems impossible with breath strips. Like, both physically and financially impossible.
So back when I was in high school (in public school), chess caught on in a big way. Chess. It was the weirdest thing. It was a public school in a small farming town, and pre-Nerd Renaissance, so picture a stereotypical 80s or 90s school where jocks were top of the food chain–and then picture those same jocks rushing to the library on their free periods to take turns playing chess. They set up tournaments and kept track of win/loss ratios and talked about chess strategies in the hallways.
So obviously something had to be done…I guess? The school started making rules and posting them around the school: one game per student per day. One game at a time in the lounge. No chess in classrooms or in the library! The chess board must be returned to the lounge supervisor between games, then signed out by the next person wanting to play–not just passed willy-nilly from one student to another! No outside chess boards allowed!
That pretty much strangled the chess fad. The jocks went back to stuffing nerds in lockers and sneaking out to smoke behind the school, and the chess boards returned to the shelf by the lounge supervisor, where they collected dust.
Problem…solved? The whole thing was pretty surreal.
Checkmate, Chess players!
A similar thing happened in my school with a card game called Euchre. Heaven forbid the students enjoy the small amount of time between bells or in a class once their work is complete.
Did you go to school somewhere in the Midwestern US? Everyone I know who has even heard of euchre is from there (mostly Indiana).
Michigan, but I know what you mean.
RivalarrivalOhio following suit. Euchre seems more a Great Lakes thing than a Midwest thing.
Euchre can be gambled on right? So at least there is some angle where it’s “undesirable”.
Wh… Why wouldn’t they encourage this?
I mean, I know, but how dumb can they be?
Cant have the jocks get weak and start viewing the other students as people and cohorts.
Can’t start losing football games
tomcatt360I yes, we’ve got a Problem. And that starts with P and that rhymes with C and that stands for CHESS!
Definitely didn’t expect to wander across a Music Man reference in the wild today, love it.
Get some contraband travel chess boards with magnets, doing black market chess moves in bathroom stalls.
Great job your school
x4740NNot sure if it was a rule since I think ot was temporary but putting a whole year level in detention because a few students from that year level broke the rule, that really passed me off even though my year level wasn’t being punished for anything
This school didn’t care about students at all with teachers stereotyping and playing favouritism
ah yes, the blanket blame everyone ‘solution’. why bother putting in the effort to get down to the root of the problem when punishing everyone is that much easier!
ThurgoNo jackets. My school was using a wing of a building under construction as additional classrooms and you had to take a bus from the main building. In the winter you could not wear or carry your jacket around prior to your class in this building, so you had to spend your passing time visiting your locker to pick up your jacket and hope you make it to the bus in time to not be late to your class. The school was not small so I was frequently late or didn’t wear a jacket.
ghost_birdWow I can’t imagine… my school was so cold during the winter I wouldn’t have made it.
My school had a semi-loose dress code. Polos and button ups and the like. Also hoodies were allowed but what kind was usually based on the person who saw you in it. The one thing that never made sense to me was that girls couldnt show their shoulders. Wasnt an issue with guys, hell in weight training class guys and girls could wear tank tops. But anywhere else, even when school was out, the smallest amount of shoulder could get a girl wrote up. Even as a guy, this shit made no sense. It wasnt like some guy was gonna get aroused by a little shoulder so it didnt make much sense to play that “distracting guys” argument. And almost every teacher enforced this. My friend went on a long winded rant about it to me while waiting on the bus and ever since then its been confusing.
Shambling ShapesA couple got caught behind the high school. Girl giving the blowie was made to apologize to the school over the PA system and then “encouraged” to go to a different school where she would “fit in better”. Boy got no punishment.
Yeah, my high school had a similar issue. There was an “alternative” school that was basically worse in every capacity and every deviant student or pregnant student was “encouraged” to transfer. The wild thing was you would still walk the stage with everyone from the initial high school so graduation day was like 20% people you didn’t even know or thought they moved away.
Our alternative school was kind of awesome. Great teachers. They let us smoke outside. Work at your own pace.
No bottle flips.
The elementary school I went to from kindergarten to second grade didn’t allow us to talk during lunch. It was called “chew time” when we had to stop talking.
MothraWhat country was this??? And how did they enforce it??? Sounds near impossible
This was in the US. It was a long time ago so I can’t exactly remember but I think if a kid didn’t stop talking, they would be moved to another table and have to eat by themselves.
The dumbest rule that fortunately was only “tried” to be enforced was no gun racks in the student vehicles in the parking lot. This is was a rural area where for almost a hundred years people would have guns in the gun-racks in their trucks mostly. But with fire arm thefts etc it was pretty rare to actually have a gun loaded or unloaded in the gun-rack. Generally you’d just have the gun in the rack if you were hunting, or patrolling your ranch or whatever.
Then Columbine happened and suddenly gun-racks and leather trench coats, aka dusters, another extremely common piece of clothing in a rural ranching town were priority number one by reactionary’s. Hundreds of otherwise lawful students were suspended, ticketed, arrested etc and finally after several months I assume someone had a “are we the baddies?” moment, and coupled with hundreds of lawsuits, the school system got a new superintendent and suddenly gun racks and dusters were back to being treated as the mundane items they are.
But with fire arm thefts etc it was pretty rare to actually have a gun loaded or unloaded in the gun-rack.
So what you’re saying is, people did - rarely - leave guns unattended in a car? Murica gets more absurd every time I read about it.
Under no circumstances in the wrold would I leave my guns in a car.
I mean generally I agree with you, but much like you have your phone with you constantly, you will sometimes leave it somewhere you normally wouldn’t accidentally. So if you’ve had the gun in your truck all day, you may just leave it in the rack once in a while. As for “students” yea, it would be pretty weird to grow up in that area and not be very familiar with firearms. It would be like being amazed and surprised that most students had been driving since they were 14, or were riding horses at 8. It’s pretty mundane.
No I won’t leave my gun “accidentally” anywhere. Handling a gun means “accidentally” is not part of your vocabulary.
I’m a gun owner myself, so I’m not the pearl clutching type but this is genuinely unthinkable to me.