Parent, student, or staff, what’s the dumbest damn regulation you’ve personally come across at an educational institution?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Schools are pro bullying and this stuff is part of it
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
“Students may not bring anything inappropriate to school.”
Yeah I’ll leave my penis at home
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 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!
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.
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!
My guess is suede instead of smooth, shiny leather.
…don’t ask me how I know that.
@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
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.
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.
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
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.
This is a bot ^
How can you tell?
Don’t mind him, he follows me around copy and pasting the same comment and downvoting everything I say. If you’re interested in beef and drama between 2 very unimportant people on Lemmy, here’s a wall of text explaining what happened below:
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.
Anyway that’s how I got my first Lemmy follower (who’d have thought Lemmy even had those eh?). I try my best to be entertaining and a good influence on them, I hope their experience watching me enjoy Lemmy has been as enjoyable to them as just actually browsing Lemmy for themselves could have been.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Snowball throwing was banned because a nephew of a friend of a friend of a teacher was supposedly blinded by one.
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.
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.
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’.”
Well in such case I can see a little rationale behind that
