Parent, student, or staff, what’s the dumbest damn regulation you’ve personally come across at an educational institution?
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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.
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.
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.
“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 ;-)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Cafeteria was for purchasing food, not consuming. Everyone outside!
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.
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.
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 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!
Have psychologists studied this behavior? Like, what goes wrong in school personnel that makes them this dumb?
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?
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.
To be fair, some places go a little hard with the AC.
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
My school did the same thing. Seemed kinda pointless. They also required belts then as well.
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.
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.
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
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?
guy, right? or do they enforce this for girls?
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.
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)
