• Shambling Shapes@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    A couple got caught behind the high school. Girl giving the blowie was made to apologize to the school over the PA system and then “encouraged” to go to a different school where she would “fit in better”. Boy got no punishment.

    • LANCESTAAAA@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, my high school had a similar issue. There was an “alternative” school that was basically worse in every capacity and every deviant student or pregnant student was “encouraged” to transfer. The wild thing was you would still walk the stage with everyone from the initial high school so graduation day was like 20% people you didn’t even know or thought they moved away.

  • Rose Thorne(She/Her)@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    My high school had a rule about the “difficulty” of books you could read. You weren’t supposed to read too high “above your grade”. I assumed this rule was something with the school library and their Accelerated Reader program.

    Nope! Tried to give me ISS because I was reading “Screwjack”, which I brought from home. It wasn’t even in class! I was a fucking junior. A high school junior should be able to handle Hunter S. Thompson.

    According to them it was “college level” and therefore I shouldn’t be reading it. My father raised absolute hell in that office. Don’t think they tried enforcing that rule again.

    They also tried bitching about girls tops until a group of very pissed off redneck fathers had questions about how they were touching the students to measure the width.

    • DaleGribble88@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      The AR Reading program that was popular in the early 2000s was an absolute disaster. It basically killed my love of reading for almost 10 years. They wouldn’t let me read books “above my level” based on some BS test that used timed reading. I wasn’t dumb, I just sub-vocalized when I read like a lot of people, so I read slowly. Read slow, don’t finish the test, grade poor, so “no books for you!” said the school.

    • Admetus@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I get the fact that reading too high above your grade means you may be way over your head in vocabulary and grammar, but it’s not entirely applicable to everyone. I read Pride and Prejudice and one friend said I sounded posh from the language I accidentally started using. So if a high schooler or junior high schooler can handle it, why not?

    • DauntingFlamingo@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      They also tried removed

      This! This right here! This comment was edited by the mods or a censor bot! I fucking told you guys they were doing it!

      I raised hell under a different name for a politically motivated mod changing my comments to agree with them, so I copied all the original comments into a word document and would edit them back to the original after the mod kept changing it, and they banned that username. This is some bullshit, and it needs to fucking stop.

      • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You ever read a 1-star review on Amazon from someone who was clearly too stupid to know how to use the product? Like someone complaining that a USB-C charger doesn’t work because it doesn’t plug into their iphone?

        That’s you. That’s the type of person you are.

  • ronnypopiel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In 5th grade they defined every kid that can speak another language as ESL (English as a second language) even if you spoke English perfectly. Then they put all of the ESL kids in a different class on the opposite side of the school. The result was that the school became de facto racially segregated with all Asian and Latino kids on one side and all white kids on the other. It’s not like it served a purpose anyway since none of the teachers could speak anything other than English.

  • Pazintach@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    It’s not enforced by my schools, but when I was little, speaking local languages at school was forbidden. It’s getting better now, but at that time, only the official language was allowed.

    Another rule was boys weren’t allowed to wear longer hairs. If the hairline was below the ears, they would be asked to cut it shorter. From time to time, boys from my class were forced to cut their hair during classes with the company of a teacher.

    • randint@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      banning local languages was also done by my local government around 50ish years ago. in every school. take a wild guess at where I’m from?

      (no, I’m not dutch despite being on feddit.nl)

      • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Canada, I’m guessing? We did all sorts of horrible things like that even til the 1990s to the First Nations peoples.

  • Sluggles@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Zero tolerance” policy on fighting. Any “active” participation resulted in automatic suspension. That part sounds fine, but active participation included things like holding up your hands in self defense or trying to push the person sitting on your chest while punching you in the face off of you.

    • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I ran afoul of this.

      Someone came up and suckerpunched the absolute fuck out of me from behind, Was someone who I never even interacted with, commented towards, or even thought about. I still think, to this day, he just wanted to look like a bad ass by hitting the biggest kid in the grade.

      Because they used a crutch to get around due to a gimpy leg, and because I was over a foot taller, I was deemed the aggressor… and no amount of witnesses saying otherwise would convince the principle of my innocence. and because the office was so convinced of it, no one in my family believed me either, so no one fought against it. I had to complete a program for “violent” teens before I was allowed to return to school… a program that was little more than slave labor in the hottest not-summer-break months, where I got accused of being a (gay slur) because only (Gay slur)'s drink their drinks the way I did, apparently. Was a super happy fun time learning experience.

      I totally don’t still carry the rage and bitterness about it to this day at all. Nope. not at all.

    • Salix@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I really don’t understand why schools have this rule (at least in many places in the US). Are they trying to teach you to not practice self defense and just let it happen? Doesn’t sound like a great thing to teach.

      • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        It’s easy for the administrators. No investigation, no attempt to understand what happened.

        • deejay4am@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Since the late 90s, school admins have become increasingly “police state light”; multiple vice principals with walkie-talkies, metal detectors, 3 hour after school detention, saturday detention, in-school suspension (you go sit in a room in silence for literally the entire school day), and zero tolerance. Imagine getting punched in the face and THEN being expelled for it. And I’m not even talking about “rough inner-city schools” or whatever; this shit happened in the Berkshires.

          Of course, all their security theatre commands a budget increase and attempts to instill a sense of fear of the state into students.

          We’re worried about school board meetings being taken over now but the administrations went full right wing fascist 30 years ago.

      • gordon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Looking at it from the other side, it’s actually rare that an innocent kid is beat up without context.

        Usually there’s 2 kids that have a beef and have been egging each other on for days. Eventually one kid says something and the other kid snaps and makes the first move but the second kid was just as guilty.

        If you only look at “who started it” the second kid gets off scot free, while the first kid gets punished. Not really fair.

        "Zero tolerance " attempts to fix this by recognizing that both kids likely played a part.

        • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          You are delusional to the highest degree. Kids in school don’t fight even, it’s one-sided 99% of the time.

          The reason for this (and the rule) is bullying. Bullies fight bullied, and everyone gets suspended because “they were fighting”. Since you announced in advance that was the policy, this enables you to conveniently ignore the bullying that has taken place, and instead act as if all bullying-related fights (read: all fights pretty much) are simple fights that do not require any more attention because the issue has been dealth with with punishment.

          In turn, this means that a bully who already has a bad rap and generally doesn’t care about grades or standing with school admin because both are already at rock bottom can target any one kid and make their admin standing rock bottom because it will appear as if that kid is fighting all the time and constantly suspended.

          There’s no “other side”. The kid who initiated violence is the one in the wrong, even if the other one has been egging him on. “Oh but what if the egging on is one sided and the kid can’t take it anymore?” That is a symptom of your bullying reporting being garbage, not of the natural order of kids. If that kid is taking it out violently it means they’ve tried every other avenue including telling an adult and nothing has changed.

          • gordon@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m not saying it’s right, just that’s their rationale. I literally discussed this with a middle school principal a few days ago and that was what she said.

            Regardless of what you think about the policy, the fact is that your kids will have to abide by it.

            Fact: if your kid is being bullied, they need to communicate to a person of authority. Answering a bully with violence is the wrong choice 99% of the time. They are usually bigger than you and have backup.

            Also usually it doesn’t progress to a fight the very first time, usually it takes weeks, and during this time you would have many opportunities to tell a teacher or something.

            Again, not advocating that this is right, but that’s their rationale.

            • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              And what I’m saying is that the school administrator has a vested interest in “removing bullying” by making all bullying-related in incidents be actually something else.

              I agree that violence is never the answer, but maybe next time instead of talking to someone who wants to not have to deal with bullying, talk to the students who are being bullied. I guarantee you that every single one of them has tried to alert an adult and the reaction was either “well he’s not doing anything too bad so I can’t do anything” or “he’s been put in detention temporarily and I am the only one aware that it was related to bullying”.

              Every single instance of kids fighting in schools can be fixed by having actual support systems in place against bullying. Figure out who the bullies are, and remove them from the bullied’s life. Treat bullying as we treat parental abuse currently, it should be unacceptable that a treacher knew what was happening and did nothing, yet it happens daily.

              Fact: currently, if a kid is being is being bullied, they need to learn how to end a fight.

              What exactly is a person of authority going to do of you go to them? If they are going to actually do anything, is that thing going to stop it? I guarantee it won’t. Their rational might be this, but as it stands either you are blissfully unaware of the reality of bulling or you are aware and simply do not care.

            • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Bullying is a one directional situation. It’s straight physical and mental abuse. And saying zero tolerance is right because it’s two way or the bullied kid can tell an adult is akin to saying a woman could just leave the man beating her.

              It’s naive. It’s harmful. And it’s ineffective.

              Your middle school principal you discussed with this is only a single administrator. I’m sure different schools have had various rationale for implementing the policy and any anecdotal response doesn’t speak to the entirety of school administrators.

    • PorkTaco@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Zero tolerance anything is just lazy and worthless. Only reason to implement is so you don’t have to think or acknowledge any nuance. Admin can just shrug their shoulders and go “Sorry nothing I can do. Zero tolerance.”

  • breathless_RACEHORSE@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We had very few rules in high school until a new principal came in during my senior year. We didn’t even have attendance, as the school believed that it was the students’ responsibility to succeed and graduate (it was a laboratory school, basically part of a college, so it was weird. It was K-12, and I graduated in a class of 25.).

    This new principal comes in and lays down new rule after new rule, most were either ignored or caused enough uproar from tenured faculty and parents that he caved. For some reason, one day, he walks through the hallway and cleans out all the lockers, as well as picking up the unattended backpacks left on the floor. He takes ALL schoolbooks, notebooks, supplies, and electronics. Amazingly, he left some lockers alone, deaming them organized enough to satisfy him. They all belonged to his daughter and her friend group.

    Then he takes all this stuff into his office, and proceeds to charge students $50 each to get school issued books back. He keeps all other supplies and electronics, announcing that he will have a sale at the end of the year to raise money for school athletics (which, being an extension of the college, had shitloads of cash to play with).

    The University Police department showed up and were ready to arrest him for theft. It took nearly a week to redistribute everything, and he ended up in front of a local judge who was the father of a student.

    Then he abruptly ended music, theatre, art, and home econ. classes by locking the rooms and firing the staff by posting signs that these were a waste and unnecessary strain on the school budget. All of the teachers were tenured through, and the classes and programs paid for by a combination of parent donations and a hefty amount of money from the university, which is well known for its communications, theatre, teaching college, and school of music (these are the programs that sell the university nationwide).

    At the end of the year, during commencement, the University president made a speech that basically dressed down the principal publically, and then he announced that the principal was not taking part in the ceremony, and should go home as he would not be returning next term. The principal was in his robes, sitting on the stage, and waiting to hand out diplomas while this happened. The entire gathering of parents and students cheered.

    And that’s how a principal who thought he was going to be adored for “cleaning up” a school for the gifted like he was trying to run a drug riddled, inner city, school in the middle of Chicago, instead of school basically run by the students in a mid-sized University town surrounded by corn fields in Indiana.

  • yiliu@informis.land
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    1 year ago

    Back when I was in high school (in public school), chess caught on in a big way. Chess. It was the weirdest thing. It was a public school in a small farming town, and pre-Nerd Renaissance, so picture a stereotypical 80s or 90s school where jocks were top of the food chain–and then picture those same jocks in their letter jackets rushing to the library on their free periods to take turns playing chess. They set up tournaments and kept track of win/loss ratios and talked about chess strategies in the hallways.

    So obviously something had to be done…I guess? The school started making rules and posting them around the school: one game per student per day. One game at a time in the lounge. No chess in classrooms or in the library! The chess board must be returned to the lounge supervisor between games, then signed out by the next person wanting to play–not just passed willy-nilly from one student to another! No outside chess boards allowed!

    That pretty much strangled the chess fad. The jocks went back to stuffing nerds in lockers and sneaking out to smoke behind the school, and the chess boards returned to the shelf by the lounge supervisor, where they collected dust.

    Problem…solved? The whole thing was pretty surreal.

  • Rin@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Not a rule, but some stupid thing that was allowed to slip by for way too long.

    My highschool’s firewall would often block the most innocuous websites, but that somehow did not include Pornhub. While they did eventually add it in, by that point it had been a known thing for years with even multiple cases of students going on it during classes.

    • Drama_durch_Lama@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      My school had the same thing. In fifth grade I had to give a presentation about computer viruses, but the firewall even blocked the standard Wikipedia article for it. Porn however? No problem!

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    No D&D in the halls during recess like seriously? Gotta love the “everything I don’t like is witchcraft” period of the 90s

  • lastrogue@lemmy.einval.net
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    1 year ago

    I went to a private religious school and they made a rule that there couldn’t be any PDA (public displays of affection) between opposite sexes. And they ruled that pretty well with an iron fist.

    So we took that in the opposite direction, and I don’t think the administration ever saw so much guy on guy slapping of butts, “Hey bigais”, or pecks on the cheek in their lives.

    • spiderman@ani.social
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      1 year ago

      bruh some of my friends weren’t even allowed to talk to the opposite gender in their schools.

      • Wahots@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        This is honestly one of the weirdest things I’ve heard in awhile. Seriously, are people not allowed to have opposite sex friends? Jesus.

        • spiderman@ani.social
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          1 year ago

          eventually my friend’s class had this rule after a parent complained about their daughter talking to a boy at 11pm. i mean india is a pretty conservative country if you exclude big cities.

          • Wahots@pawb.social
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            1 year ago

            School: not allowed to have opposite sex friends

            Society: not allowed to have same sex relationships

            Parents of millenials/gen z: why is everyone antisocial, not talking to girls, and not having kids?

            Lol

  • lunaticneko@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    My school strictly prohibits vehicle use, and considers all violations a strong offense that is on a three-strikes out rule.

    Yes, it includes e-scooters and swan boats.

    Yes, it includes whether you are in uniform or not.

    Yes, it includes whether you are in school or not.

    Yes, even if you are licensed.

    Yes, it is enforceable anywhere.

    The rule is obnoxiously blanket.

      • lunaticneko@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It is illegal but so far nobody wants to raise an issue with it because it’s a school that has a lot of govt officials, diplomats, expats, and businessmen sending their kids there. No one wants to risk stinking their own reputation by raising an issue.

        As for “how”, apparently if someone accidentally snaps a picture of those kids riding things they shouldn’t be, anytime, and a school disciplinary officer sees it, anywhere, he can give out the warning. Has done so a few times actually.

        The rationale of the rule is that vehicle operation is something not befitting the image of a student, especially a student at this (supposedly) prestigious school.

        Suffice to say the damn rule made me apprehensive of riding in a friend’s car for a while, and of the idea of getting my own license when I became of age.

        When I decided to ask the school about the apprppriateness and legality of the rule (as an alumnus), they said “we are disappointed in you. You were a great student. We did not expect you to become someone who tries to force us to change our ways of life.” That said, unless you grow up to become a nationalist or a right-winger, you are a disappointment to them, so maybe even without this vehicle use thing I’m still a disppointment to them anyway.

        This story sounds absurd but yes it is supposed to be this absurd.

        I still pass by this school many times as it’s on my way to work. I wish I could tell those kids and new parents who might not be aware of “the system” something they should know …

  • We weren’t allowed to wear shirts with text on them. Didn’t matter what they said; there could be no words of any kind on your clothes. It was some old ass rule that was still in the charter for the school or something from like 50 years ago, and one of those things most people just wouldn’t enforce. My school enforced it, though. Fuckin VP would be out front every day turning every kid he saw with text on their clothes back home to change.

  • vagrantprodigy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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    1 year ago

    Our idiot principal for my first two years tried to come up with his own rule that shirts had to be tucked in. The written rule added the caveat “if it was designed to be tucked in”. I purposely bought shirts that said they were not intended to be tucked in just so I could be a problem, and then made sure other people know which ones to buy.

    • funnyletter@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      My middle school required all shirts to be tucked in and they meant ALL SHIRTS. They went around making kids tuck in sweatshirts. It was dumb. And also racist because it was the 90s and the rule was made in response to baggy clothing being popular especially amongst black kids, so they considered large untucked shirts to be gang related.