Parent, student, or staff, what’s the dumbest damn regulation you’ve personally come across at an educational institution?
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.
I got in trouble for doing homework at school. Because it was meant to be done at home.
Lol Nerd
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
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!
I was punished for missing mandatory dorm meetings by washing the same car that multiple other people had already washed.
I missed said meetings because I was doing night classes and workstudy.
All of the content of said dorm meetings could have been taken care of with a paragraph email, hut apparently I was supposed to hunt down the RA whenever they felt like giving me their time, when I was already taking, like, 18-25 hours, doing extracurriculars and workstudy, and also regularly puking my brains out from the uncontrolled migraine disorder.
I stopped caring about their authority after that.
What the fuck even happens in a dorm meeting? “Keep it down, don’t smoke inside, drink responsibly”?
Basically. Do this, don’t do that.
I think that they thought glaring at people in person would be more effective?But this was for the early admissions students, so they had to have the appearance of doing things, I guess.
But punishing non-problem students with good grades, acting as normal students seems so ridiculous.They literally called my mom over this and she laughed at them. I was so proud of her.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
TBF, students using going to the bathroom as an excuse to do other things is very real.
Can confirm, I did this to skip parts of band rehearsal on days where my part was super dull to play.
That’s genius
I’ve got 2, both from middle school:
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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.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”
That had a much nicer ending than my version wherein a young brown classmate taking AP math and science classes was thrown against a wall, frisked, and searched because his graphing calculator was sticking up out of his back pocket and the school police thought it was a gun. It was a TI-99. This was long before smart phones were a thing.
And I thought that my school is weird. Well, maybe I should reconsider that
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.
Some girl reported me (a boy) for apparently having a mascara. Our teacher then searched my bag, as if it was a grenade.
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.
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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.
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.”
Sounds like you did the right thing. Advocates for anti-truth don’t deserve to be treated nicely.
