School policies or practices that make no sense.(Inspired by kitchenwitch's homework rant!)

[hedgehog]

My kids were tortured all though Junior High by rules meant to "prepare them for high school", For example, a single missed homework assignment meant detention. (I think all my kids had detention at one time or another but they didn't tell me until well after the fact so I wouldn't get enraged at the school.) Anyways, once students get to high school, the freshman are only given a 20 minute lunch. (Everyone else gets 30 minutes.) the reasoning? Freshman aren't prepared for all the extra free time in high school!

Here's another one: students are taught in health class to eat a lot of fiber and drink a lot of water. Simultaneously, schools cut break times between classes to avoid fights and public displays of affection in the halls. (I counted the toilets at the junior high one time and discovered that they wouldn't neat minimum requirements for toilets per person under state labor laws!) Some kids at the junior high used the toilets near the office until a sign went up reserving them for visitors only! I learned never to stand between the door and the bathroom when the school bus dropped the kids off.

How about making the kids enter the school by going down an icy ramp to the back door instead of using the front door. Supposedly some students coming in the front hid out in the gym. Heaven forbid the principal take 10 steps from his ooffice to monitor the front door and greet the kids in the morning!

My favorite: the junior high principal banned any bells or buzzers on the PA to announce the end of class periods. Unfortunately, he never had classroom clocks synchronized. So teacher A kept all the kids to the last minute on his clock while teacher B started class promptly on her clock while students struggled to get from one end of the building to another in 28 seconds. If the student was late, he got detention.

[IndianaJones]

1. not letting me sleep in class. nt.

[DarkTirade]

15. Hear hear.

I only had one teacher that wouldn't let me sleep... and I don't know why, since even when I was sleeping I still kept a B average for the class.

Maybe if she didn't READ THE LESSON STRAIGHT OUT OF THE GODDAMNED BOOK I would have had a valid reason to stay awake...

So yeah, that year my drawing skills increased quite a bit. They got a whole lot of practice in second period.

[SeattleGirl]

2. Jeez, when did our schools turn into prisons?

:grr:

[hedgehog]

4. Oddly enough, the small parochial school my kids went to was very laid back

while the big elementary school they transferred to when the parochial school closed was very regimented. I think it's a function of having too many kids per class and too many classes in one building.

[evlbstrd]

11. Some time in the fifties.

Regimentation is at the root.

[Midlodemocrat]

3. Almost all of them, IMHO.

At my kids' high school, no hoodies, no basketball type shorts, (Someone may shank them, so it's best to punish the wearer, rather than the culprit)

If you even *look* at someone in the commons when you are on your way to someplace else, it is called 'misuse of a pass'.

My favorite is the principal who is a buffoon. Clueless would be a step up for her.

[hedgehog]

5. How about no hats because they might be gang colors

while some kids are walking around with scarfs knotted around their calves.

[hedgehog]

7. I forgot my favorite of all:

Students entering the Junior High are randomly assigned to A, B or C team. About 10 years ago some kids on B team managed to disassemble and remove a desk piece by piece over several weeks. They smuggled the pieces out in their back packs. To this day, students on A team and C team are allowed to wear back packs in school. Student son B team are forbidden to wear backpacks in school!

[LynneSin]

6. Damnit - they took away my recess after 6th grade

School went downhill from there

[Zoigal]

8. Good grief...

Taught for forty years in elementary and Junior highs...never once in a school (or district)
that operated anything like the one you described. Is this common practice
all over the US? p

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. I swear, some school principals are wannabe dictators who couldn't get a

country of their own.

I grew up in Minnesota when it was still cold. In the 1960s, girls were not allowed to wear jeans or long pants to school. We had to wear skirts or dresses, even if it was -30° out (which happened at least once per winter).

Sometimes we got desperate enough to wear pants anyway, and then we had to sneak into the school by the back door (where there was a girls' bathroom) so that no one in authority could see us wearing the forbidden garments. We'd then change into skirts, roll up the pants, and hurry to our lockers to hide them, as if we were smuggling contraband.

Round about 1965. some of the boys began growing Beatle-style haircuts, so that their hair was (gasp!) 2" long.

A couple of the coaches got bent out of shape and started grabbing such boys during lunch hour and forcibly giving them crewcuts.

[DarkTirade]

13. If somebody comes at me with a pair of scissors

I'm reacting just like I would if they came at me with any other sharp object.

There will be broken arms involved. At the very least.

My mom mentioned the same smuggling pants in during the winter thing when she was in high school, she lived in the Boston area. Not quite as cold as Minnesota, but still too damn cold for something that's open at the bottom.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. Only 6 minutes break between classes in a huge high school.

There were 3500 kids (that's right, bigger than a lot of colleges) in my high school.

I never had time to go to the bathroom. I had orchestra at noon and lunch at one o'clock.

I had to go to the bathroom at noon to change my pad during that time of the month. because we went in the instrument storage rooms and got our instruments out, and then walked out into the main band hall, so we didn't slide into a seat, directly in front of the teacher, when the bell rang.

The orchestra director threatened me with detention and kept asking me if I could go some other time. I told him no.

If he had kept it up, my mother would have given him a piece of her mind, and I probably would have thrown a bloody Kotex on his desk, if he wanted to know WHY I had to go to the bathroom.

Many a time I didn't go pee at all during the school day from 8 am to 3:45 pm. No time for it.

Also having to wear a dress to school every day for twelve years, even when it was freezing, has made me a permanent fan of shorts and slacks.

:banghead:

[Broken_Hero]

12. When I was in Jr. High, they had a very strict

"No Hat" rule...and I am a hat man...in highschool, it wasn't as strict, but we had a big handful of teachers, who would confiscate our hats, and not return them until the end of the school year....but, I was a good little thief, and liberated many hats, numerous times from those teachers...

:D

[DarkTirade]

16. It's not theft if it's yours.

[DarkTirade]

14. Not allowing spagetti-strap shirts or very short-sleeved shirts... in Florida.

Or how about this one: Children aren't even allowed to defend themselves. If someone attacks you in a school, at least here in FL, your ONLY option is to go to a teacher. Even if you've already tried that and the teachers won't do anything. Even if the person bullying/stalking/attacking you is PHYSICALLY PREVENTING you from leaving. Your ONLY option is to take it, then complain afterwards. If you defend yourself it's considered fighting, and you automatically get suspended and/or expelled from school.

Which, I might add, is illegal. The ONLY way schools can enforce this ridiculous zero tolerance policy is if the parents and kids sign the note they send home at the beginning of the year agreeing to follow the ridiculous school policies. However, most schools sneak that by them by telling them they MUST have it signed. Some even go so far as to give kids detention if the school policy hasn't been signed and returned by a certain time.

When we found this out, it was because some guy had been stalking my little sister. He physically cornered her one day, preventing her from leaving. So she did what anyone would do in that situation. She beaned him with her notebook and forced him aside so she could go. Later on when a teacher overheard her telling this to a friend, the teacher (being a smart and sympathetic person) didn't punish her for it, but warned her that she could get in trouble for that. So from then on my parents and my brother (he also has a daughter) have refused to sign these forms when they're sent home every year, and my mother called the high school straight up and told them she was rescinding her signature for that year. She said in no uncertain terms, "You can tell every other future rape victim that she isn't allowed to defend herself, but my daughter IS allowed to."

Gotta love having a strong feminist for a mother. :evilgrin:

[hedgehog]

17. I love the contracts teachers send home - especially the ones

in which the teacher goes through the pretense of negotiating it with the students. Set the rules, I do in church school. Just don't pretend that everyone came to a spontaneous agreement over them!

[XemaSab]

18. Not letting kids have a water bottle

because they might have booze. :eyes:

[hedgehog]

20. or aspirin or motrin

because they might be using drugs!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

21. How are the girls supposed to learn if they're dying of cramps?

Idiot male teachers -- and female ones too that have no empathy.

[Danger Mouse]

19. Any and all 'Zero Tolerance' policies. Most ridiculous shit ever. Also, NCLB.

Which goes without saying.

[DarkTirade]

22. Yeah, they're all ridiculous.

If kids actually got caught for everything the 'zero tolerance policies' covered, there would have been a half dozen kids left in my 3000+ student high school.

Hell, even though I never skipped class or did drugs or anything, I'm not even sure I would have made it. I got into a fight in 8th grade... off school campus, but at a bus stop so it would have been treated as such.

[Rosie1223]

23. PE Swimming: Swimsuits must meet the dress code.

Seriously. I got a notice of this, saying if the swimsuit was deemed inappropriate by the PE teacher the student must wear a T-Shirt over it. Obviously they've never attended a wet t-shirt contest.