Parent, student, or staff, what’s the dumbest damn regulation you’ve personally come across at an educational institution?
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.
Did you live in the South per chance? My school had the same policy in Louisiana.
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.
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.
“Students may not bring anything inappropriate to school.”
Yeah I’ll leave my penis at home
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.
chewy
My guess is suede instead of smooth, shiny leather.
…don’t ask me how I know that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No hats. Toques are allowed, everything else is banned. Thankfully it was not enforced.
No hats. Toques are allowed, everything else is banned.
It’s always rough when a gang of Chefs take over a 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.
Ah yes. Controlling that rebellion energy by giving them something harmless to be rebellious about.
Sounds like that gender stuff we’re seeing so much of.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
- The Matrix came out in late March 1999
- Colombine happened in late April 1999
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.
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?
