Odd policies your school system had

[Omega Glory]

Odd doesn't have to be insane, just rare at the time. For reference these things took place between 1987 and 2000. I'm sure a lot of the safety things on my list happen today, but were uncommon in the 80s. Feel free to correct me if your school did any of these things.

In middle school, we had "star cards." They were pieces of cardboard about the size of a credit card with about ten stars printed on it. If you weren't prepared for class, or if you broke a rule, the teacher would remove one of the stars with a hole punch. If you had at least one star left at the end of the quarter, you'd get to attend a party, or go on a field trip, or whatever that quarter's prize was. This lasted a couple of years, then suddenly stopped.

Another middle school thing were the assignment notebooks. Those aren't strange in themselves, but for a few months, the school suddenly decided that we needed to write something in the book for every class. If there weren't any assignments, you had to write about what you did that day, then get them signed each night, and turn them in to be checked the next day. I understand the point behind it, but it took up so much time that it didn't last long.

My school also called parents if their children weren't in school that day - which made skipping more difficult than it apparently was at other schools. In order to take a child from primary and middle school, you had to be in the list parents filled out in the beginning of the year, and show ID. More on the over protective front - kids weren't allowed to share home made snacks with the class, so no making cupcakes and bringing them for your kid's birthday.

[Markxxx]

The only odd thing I recall is when I entered the 6th grade we got a note, before the school year started that there was a new policy and that all pens would have to be black ink, no blue ink or any other colors allowed. And this was like 1974 I think, so I don't know why they did that.

[Shagnasty]

This wasn't unheard of in other rural places but we were allowed to bring guns to high school as long as we left them in our vehicles. Technically it was supposed to only be during deer season and only rifles but even that wasn't really enforced. Lots of students, both male and female liked to go hunting and then drive straight to school later in the morning. It seemed perfectly reasonable then (and still does to me now). Nothing ever happened in the slightest in regards to that policy. I graduated in 1991 before the zero tolerance patrol got their hands on just about everything. They would probably call out the SWAT team and pursue terrorism charges for that these days.

[dangermom]

When I was a kid we lived in Bakersfield, CA, which has thick fog in the winter. If it was foggy in the morning, you would listen to the radio to see if your school had a fog delay, which might be 1, 2, or even 3 hours. The fog was thick enough that it could be dangerous for the buses and cars to drive. We often couldn't see our own sidewalk from the house.

Our school never ever had a fog delay, not once. It was out of town, in a bunch of cotton fields, and the fog could get very thick, but the superintendent lived downtown and never saw a reason to delay school. We were always so disappointed. :)

One foggy morning a car hit one of the school buses and punched a hole in it right near the driver. But we still never had a fog delay!

[kanicbird]

There was a policy where you had to show a empty lunchbox or bag or if you bought lunch from the school then a empty soup/stew can before you bought candy from a machine. This was a policy up to grade 6. I didn't know about this till about 1 month remaining in grade 6, where the lunch monitor caught me, I told her I didn't know about it, and was just going up on my own for 2 years, we both laughed about it.

[matt_mcl]

In middle school, we had "star cards." They were pieces of cardboard about the size of a credit card with about ten stars printed on it. If you weren't prepared for class, or if you broke a rule, the teacher would remove one of the stars with a hole punch. If you had at least one star left at the end of the quarter, you'd get to attend a party, or go on a field trip, or whatever that quarter's prize was. This lasted a couple of years, then suddenly stopped.

We had something like that at my school: a system of "honours" and "stripes." Honours were given out at the teachers' discretion for any good action, whether scholastic, behavioural or whatever -- similar to "points" in Harry Potter, even to the point of the house with the most at the end of the year winning a prize . They were written in these agendas that we had to carry around and have signed by our parents.

Misbehaviour earned you the dreaded "stripes," which were equal to -2 honours. The rather chilling term may point to the system they replaced, which I think was somewhat more recently than I or my behind care to think about. You might get off with a "warning," which did not deduct any honours but was still written in the book and would consequently still have to be explained to your parents.

[Ann Onimous]

In middle school, we had "star cards." They were pieces of cardboard about the size of a credit card with about ten stars printed on it. If you weren't prepared for class, or if you broke a rule, the teacher would remove one of the stars with a hole punch. If you had at least one star left at the end of the quarter, you'd get to attend a party, or go on a field trip, or whatever that quarter's prize was. This lasted a couple of years, then suddenly stopped.

Another middle school thing were the assignment notebooks.

Our current elementary school does both of these things. They have what are called "Oops Cards" - they get five at the beginning of the year. and they can lose them for the reasons you stated above. If they have one left at the end of the year, they get to go to a party. They do have end of semester field trips, but you can still go on those if you've lost all your Oops cards: you just can't have three demerits.

[Malleus, Incus, Stapes!]

Before I started ninth grade, I was reading the new school's dress code. Among the expected "long skirts, long sleeves, high necklines" stuff was a prohibition against... cornrows. I didn't know what a cornrow was. I found out it meant "those braids you see a lot of black girls wear", and it cleared up nothing for me. What could they possibly have against small braids? For that matter, how many sheltered white Jewish girls were wearing cornrows in the first place? I never did find out what their problem was.

The same school had a policy against early marriage. Students who got married weren't allowed to graduate. This one wasn't as strange as it seems- apparently, in some of the more right-wing Jewish high schools, "senior kallahs" are a common occurrence. One girl got engaged in twelfth grade- since she wasn't married yet, she still got her diploma, but she wasn't allowed to go to the senior trip or the graduation ceremony.
(From school rumor, you'd think half the seniors were shopping for wedding gowns instead of graduation robes. I finally worked up the courage to ask the principle how many senior kallahs we'd had. Turned out there were only three).

[alphaboi867]

...The same school had a policy against early marriage. Students who got married weren't allowed to graduate...

My mother attended public schools and would have been Class of '73, but she got pregnant junior year (& married) and was not allowed back for senior year. Her husband was (because it was important for him to finish his education :rolleyes:). She was told that since she was past the compulsory school age they had no legal obligation to let her continue and it would be a waste since she'd just end up dropping out anyway since she'd be busy being a wife and mother. She's still bitter.

[Taomist]

I grew up in St Charles <about an hour west of Chicago proper> in the 70's early 80's; the high school at that time had armed security guards, regular locker checks and 20 minute lunches, with no eating or drinking during class. Of course, this was also at the time when calculator during class was cheating, not necessary, so...things change. :P

Went to 3 high schools, another in Michigan and one in Idaho, and never saw the level of security as I saw at St. Charles. I am not complaining, but that town at that time was the very definition of white vanilla boring, and I remember very little if any crime.

Oh yah...also, stand-up video games were assessed a 100,000 yearly tax to discourage businesses from having them. I think the record store had one or two, and a bar, and that was it.

[Taomist]

Let's add the regular 'disaster drills' <how exactly is my desk going to prevent a bomb from getting me?> and the 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday-morning tornado alert siren checks <which were in fact air raid sirens left over from the wars, a fact I didn't pick up on until MUCH later...>

...Oh, and having to sit through VERY graphic films about WWII concentration camps in 5th grade...that was definitely...something. O.o
...I remember those films far more than the 'sex ed' classes during the same year though. =p

Jr high, again in St. Charles...We lived less than 2 miles from the school, so we didn't take the bus, we walked. Nowadays it seems everyone is afraid to let their kids walk; we had whole neighborhoods of kids walking together, across the river and through the parks. I even made money off that, as there was eventually a policy instituted that didn't allow students to leave the campus for any reason during the day, so...I'd stop by this somewhat-shifty 'store' that was run out of this guy's house and buy candy, and everyone at school would come to me to place orders for the next day.

Moved to Idaho when I was 16, and the first thing I went 'whoah' about was that there was a soda machine right in the hallway for anyone to use, and you could drink soda during class. SO weird in comparison!

[aruvqan]

The only odd thing I recall is when I entered the 6th grade we got a note, before the school year started that there was a new policy and that all pens would have to be black ink, no blue ink or any other colors allowed. And this was like 1974 I think, so I don't know why they did that.

If memory serves, that is about the time that colored lined notebook paper and matching ink pens were hitting the market. Nothing as horrible as trying to read green on green, purple on purple or purple on green homework...

[dangermom]

My mother attended public schools and would have been Class of '73, but she got pregnant junior year (& married) and was not allowed back for senior year. Her husband was (because it was important for him to finish his education :rolleyes:). She was told that since she was past the compulsory school age they had no legal obligation to let her continue and it would be a waste since she'd just end up dropping out anyway since she'd be busy being a wife and mother. She's still bitter.

This was also policy in CA universities way back when. My grandmother was at Berkeley in the early 40's and dropped out to get married.* Right up through the 50's, a woman could not go to the university if she was married. :rolleyes:



*To the utter fury of her mother, whose family had not allowed her to get the education she wanted. She finally got her BA in 1969 when she was in her 70's! Then my grandmother followed her example and got her BA in the early 90's. We got our Masters' degrees the same year.:cool:

[kidneyfailure]

We arrived for our high school graduation ceremony and were given the traditional mortarboard and tassel, but with our names printed inside. We were told we'd have to turn in our hats before we could get our diploma. No hat=no diploma. I think it was meant to discourage people from doing the whole "throw-your-hat-in-the-air" thing. Does anyone really do that anyway?

[Inner Stickler]

I did it and I only graduated 2 years ago.

[Hilarity N. Suze]

Our high school had a rule that you could not tie your horse to the goal posts on the practice field.

Really.

This came about because one year we had a Western Days. A bunch of us owned horses and we thought it would be fun to ride in that day, so we did.

We parked the horses on the football field, because the only other place we could tie them up would have been the bike racks, and those were on concrete.

At the time, we actually had permission to bring the horses. Nobody had thought ahead to what happens during the five hours when the riders of said horses are in class, and the horses themselves are standing around on the football practice field.

Hence the rule. Not that those circumstances would ever have been repeated.

[Hilarity N. Suze]

We arrived for our high school graduation ceremony and were given the traditional mortarboard and tassel, but with our names printed inside. We were told we'd have to turn in our hats before we could get our diploma. No hat=no diploma. I think it was meant to discourage people from doing the whole "throw-your-hat-in-the-air" thing. Does anyone really do that anyway?

When I graduated from high school, the mother of one of my friends had graduated exactly 20 years before. Overcome with nostalgia, she got out all her yearbooks, scrapbooks, etc., and her diploma, which was neatly rolled up and tied with a faded maroon ribbon.

She untied it...for the first time...and what was inside was a rolled up, faded mimeographed sheet that said something to the effect that the real diploma would be handed over when she turned in her cap & gown.

Good thing she got married and didn't try to go out and get a job with that thing.

[SurrenderDorothy]

I went to Catholic school and they had all kinds of goofy rules.

Like, we weren't allowed to wear necklaces. I'm not talking about huge, chunky, ostentatious necklaces or anything- stuff like my little silver chain with a tiny pair of ballet slippers on it was forbidden. The reason we were given was that it was a strangulation risk- someone could grab your necklace from behind and strangle you. Okay, fine. far-fetched, but whatever.

The dumb thing, though, was that cross necklaces and saint medals WERE allowed.

We also had another completely stupid rule. We all had uniforms- they consisted of a plaid skirt and a white blouse and a uniform sweatshirt if we wanted. Sometimes, during gym or recess, people would get hot in their sweatshirts and want to take them off and tie them around their waists.

Well, this was absolutely forbidden. We got long, heated talks from our principal about how it was improper and vulgar for young girls to wear their sweatshirts tied around their waists because it drew attention to their hips and whole pelvic area and was just too sexy.

[Robot Arm]

This wasn't unheard of in other rural places but we were allowed to bring guns to high school as long as we left them in our vehicles. Technically it was supposed to only be during deer season and only rifles but even that wasn't really enforced. Lots of students, both male and female liked to go hunting and then drive straight to school later in the morning.What if you actually got anything, did you just leave it tied to your fender all day?


Like, we weren't allowed to wear necklaces. I'm not talking about huge, chunky, ostentatious necklaces or anything- stuff like my little silver chain with a tiny pair of ballet slippers on it was forbidden. The reason we were given was that it was a strangulation risk- someone could grab your necklace from behind and strangle you. Okay, fine. far-fetched, but whatever.

The dumb thing, though, was that cross necklaces and saint medals WERE allowed.Tell them your necklace is in honor of Saint Twyla.

[tygre]

Our athletic code of conduct not only regulated the typical "drink/use drugs and you're off the team" but also stated that any male on a sports team had to have hair shorter than collar-length and off the ears. This was in the early 1990's, by the way.

For graduation, we did not line up by last name: rather, we lined up by...height, and alternating boy/girl, so as to "make a nice picture for the yearbook".

Girls were not allowed to go stag to dances, but boys were. Single girls were not allowed to buy tickets and were turned away at the door. The logic was that single girls woul steal away coupled boys to dance, but since boys don't like to dance, it was okay for them to come alone.

[billfish678]

Not so much a school policy so much a pet peeve of our high school hall monitor/bouncer/enforcer.

Kids nearly having sex in the halls ? No problem. Language that would make Red Fox blush? No problem. Drug dealing No problem. Bullying the resident nerd with atomic wedgies? No problem. The aroma of weed wafting out the bathrooms? No problem.

But dare to actually wear a hat while walking down the main hallway that was 15 feet wide and nearly as high? Oh man, were you in deep shit with Mr. Coushawn (sp?) now.

And this was in a high school that was locally famous for race riots in the recent past. Thank god for Mr. C ensuring that we observe the finer points of social grace.

[Malleus, Incus, Stapes!]

For graduation, we did not line up by last name: rather, we lined up by...height, and alternating boy/girl, so as to "make a nice picture for the yearbook".

Both times I've graduated, we lined up by height. Is this something unusual?

[tygre]

Both times I've graduated, we lined up by height. Is this something unusual?

I've been to maybe a dozen graduations for other schools and all of those were in alphabetical order. The program for my high school was printed in alphabetical order, yet the order we went across the stage was by height, which made it impossible for parents or guests to follow along.

[Spoons]

But dare to actually wear a hat....This reminds me of our elementary school. Before school, everyone would gather to play in the playground; then, when the bell rang, we'd line up two-by-two to go in our assigned doors. The first two kids in line would hold the doors for the rest, and the second two stood just inside to remove the hats from any kids who still had them on at that point. You see, you were expected to remove your hat (we were in Canada; winter toques and other warm hats were needed) as soon as you stepped inside the school. You would not put it on again until you left school.

To this day, when I step inside pretty much anywhere, I automatically remove my hat. I've learned that I can keep it on in a mall, but for some reason, remove it in hotel lobbies. Go figure!

[kopek]

Athletic shoes were forbidden outside of gym class and all other forms of shoes/boots were banned in gym class. The purpose was to force us to change shoes rather than have stinky feet but many of us being farm kids, it didn't work too well. Lots of my friends simply took gym in their socks since their families couldn't afford two pairs of "school shoes" at the same time.

Out of that, in our community, developed the tradition among the "wealthier" kids of taking their gym shoes, tying the laces together, and tossing them over a power line on the last day of school. It was their way of showing off.

SHAG - we were allowed to hunt to and from school but our firearms and ammo were kept by the gym teacher during the day under lock and key with the other equipment. If you were a "nice kid" and shared what you got, you could often talk the lunch ladies into stashing your rabbits or such in the one freezer during the day; assuming you had it properly cleaned and tagged (not required by law for small game) to make it easier on them.

[joebuck20]

In middle school, we had "star cards." They were pieces of cardboard about the size of a credit card with about ten stars printed on it. If you weren't prepared for class, or if you broke a rule, the teacher would remove one of the stars with a hole punch. If you had at least one star left at the end of the quarter, you'd get to attend a party, or go on a field trip, or whatever that quarter's prize was. This lasted a couple of years, then suddenly stopped.



We had something like that in elementary school, except they'd do weekly parties where they'd show a movie or have some cupcakes on a Friday afternoon. If you had all your stars punched or lost your card, you couldn't attend.

[Zoe]

In high school (1957-1961) we couldn't talk in the hallways during a change of class. This rule was very strictly enforced. We were in the same building as the Junior High classes and they were not to be disturbed.

Also, in the second and third grade (I had the same teacher for both), we were not allowed to speak during lunch. If this same teacher left the classroom, we were not allowed to speak and were encouraged to rat each other out. Yet I remember another time when she hung a sign around one child's neck that said "Tattletale." Lots of mixed messages.

I don't remember anyone being late to class. You just didn't do it.

In chemistry class we didn't have lab the entire year.

[joebuck20]

Athletic shoes were forbidden outside of gym class and all other forms of shoes/boots were banned in gym class. The purpose was to force us to change shoes rather than have stinky feet but many of us being farm kids, it didn't work too well. Lots of my friends simply took gym in their socks since their families couldn't afford two pairs of "school shoes" at the same time.


At our school they made us buy an extra pair of sneakers to use during gym class. They wouldn't let you go barefoot and they didn't want you using your regular sneakers. Usually my parents would get me a cheap pair from Payless to use for gym.
Also my elementary school had a policy that during recess on snowy days you couldn't leave the sidewalk or blacktop unless you had a pair of boots. The strange thing was, though, that it didn't seem to matter whether they were snowboots or not. There was one day when I forgot to get my boots and just had my regular sneakers. But a friend of mine happened to be wearing cowboy boots that day and he was allowed to go play in the snow.

[robert_columbia]

I attended High School in the early days of the home internet revolution (1990's), and our school had somehow wheedled an internet connection (which was a BIG DEAL back then), and the Internet acceptable use policy was also a big deal, and agreement slips to the AUP were formalized. You had to go to a special session just to get usage permission, and during the session they showed sample disciplinary folders like you could end up with if you were not careful.

In terms of the usage policy itself, if I can recall, it stated, in two different places (not verbatim):

1) Students are not permitted to give out any identifying information about themselves. (the implication being that people up to no good can do nasty stuff to you if they can track you down)
2) Students must identify themselves whenever communicating online, so that people who interact with you know who to report if they catch you engaging in inappropriate behavior.

I also took at least one class (middle school?) that had notebook checks as part of your grade. You would be given a handout that looked at first like an ordinary test, but would as questions like "On the homework from September 2, what was the answer to problem #5?", and "On the exam of September 10, what was question 3 asking about?". This was supposed to drill it into your head that you THROW AWAY NOTHING from the class, every returned homework and every graded quiz had to be kept in an orderly manner so that you could fill out the notebook check.

We also had ceremonious no hat reminders. There were posters that said something to the effect that "This is a NO HAT zone".

There were also skits that were supposed to remind you that you were bound to the school behavioral rules wherever you go, and that you could get a school disciplinary referral and even be suspended for foul behavior at the video arcade at the mall.

[thirdname]

When I started high school, we were allowed to eat lunch outside at some picnic tables . After Columbine happened, the school made everyone eat in the cafeteria and they eventually removed the picnic tables as some sort of gesture to make it look like they were doing something. That seemed pointless and contrary to modern infantry tactics to me, to concentrate all the targets in a small area. Maybe if all the students made a bonzai charge at a shooter it could save lives, but if there was any such training I must have skipped school that day.

I spent the rest of high school figuring out ways to get out of the cafeteria. Eventually as a senior I realized I could walk right past the monitors as long as I did so with confidence and didn't look back. I called it my Jedi Mind Trick. I don't know if they didn't notice me, or if they assumed I was a teacher's aide.

[Todderbob]

You could leave school for lunch, if you were a Junior or Senior. Freshman and Sophomores be damned.

I didn't eat lunch in school once, and I looked like a young freshman -- the trick was to simply walk past the teachers.

We had two cops at our school, both were cool if they liked you. And they liked me, so I could raise hell and not get in trouble. Yet... other kids couldn't walk by them without getting stopped and asked why they weren't in class. (And I was certainly worse behaved than many of them.)

Our school had very strict usage policies. You couldn't access any sites that were "fun," or entertaining. You couldn't access any forums, or anything unrelated to school (all through very thorough blocks). But, you could access a remote server and browse the web that way, which I did frequently.

Men were strictly and expressly forbidden to wear any outfit that did not have separate holes for each leg, this explicitly included (but was not limited to) skirts, dresses and.... kilts.

Men were forbidden to wear rings of any sort, but that was dropped half way through my freshman year when it became too difficult to enforce. And, get this, women were forbidden from "being pregnant." There was nothing about what would happen if you got pregnant, and in fact the two girls in my school (out of 1,000+ females) that got pregnant didn't seem to suffer for it... but it was damn well against the rules.

[dalej42]

We had a moment of silence every day. This was in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in the 1980s. The high school was probably 50% Jewish, so it certainly wasn't a way to get around school prayer restrictions. Still, northern Florida was still Bible Belt at that time, I'm guessing school districts were strongly encouraged to have 'prayer time.'

[pepperlandgirl]

In elementary school we were all required to go outside for recess unless it was colder than fifteen degrees. To this day, that still boggles my mind. Who set it at fifteen degrees? And didn't they think little bodies could be harmed by prolonged exposure to any temperature under freezing?

In middle school, hall monitors checked to make sure that all male and female students regularly kept at a literally arms length.

I went to two different high schools. At the first, they wouldn't call your home if you missed a class. They would, however, charge you $5 for every absence after the first 3 in the semester. You couldn't get your grades for the year (and seniors couldn't graduate) unless they've paid off their "sluffing fees." In the other high school, we weren't charged for missing school, but they did require everybody's parents to call and excuse them from the office.

[Icerigger]

I went to a Catholic grade-school and anytime the class as a whole had to go somewhere like to lunch or an assembly we had to be in one big line, no exceptions. The line was not just students at random it was structured smallest to tallest and boy-girl, boy-girl order. The order was because at that age the sexes did not speak to one another and the nuns believed this would cut down on the chatter. I can still remember the classes going from place to place weaving like giant snakes around the school all in perfect order.

[Dallas Jones]

My high school had a smoking area....... for the students. It was an open campus in a small town and the school had about 200 kids for the 4 grades of high school. To reduce the risk to students caused by people piling into their cars to leave at lunch, they just created a smoking area out under the chesnut trees.

It was 1970-74 and most of the dress codes and other crap had already gone out the window. I have fond memories of bra-less halter tops and hot pants.

Society did not come to an end by expecting students to behave as adults. There were few problems and most everyone graduated.

Of course then we all grew up and had kids of our own and created the school system of helicopter parents and teacher/nannys that encourages children to be dependant until they are 30ish. But that is a different thread.

[NinetyWt]

I was gonna mention the smoking area also. I graduated in '77. The central courtyard of the school was a designated smoking area. You weren't supposed to smoke in the bathroom but a lot of girls did. They stationed some of the janitor ladies in there to prevent it, but all they did was bum cigarettes off of the school girls.

[Ponch8]

I attended public schools in the 1980s through 1995. In my school district, shorts were only allowed the first six weeks and last six weeks of the school year. Usually this wasn't much of a problem, but every once in a while there'd be a very warm day in October and we couldn't wear shorts. There was a big to-do about shorts, because shortly before I was old enough to be affected by the rule, shorts were not allowed at all in middle school or high school.

Also, like many other school districts in Illinois, we got a day off the first Monday each March. The occasion was Count Casimir Pulaski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Pu%C5%82aski) Day.

[Enuma Elish]

I attended Middle School (6, 7, & 8th grade) in central Wisconsin in the mid 70s. Every fall, a few weeks before deer hunting season, the Principal would give this message over the loudspeaker:

'We are getting quite close to deer hunting. Every boy who is leaving directly from school to go hunting and wants to keep his rifle in his locker must have a signed permission slip with my secretary before the end of next week. No slip, no rifle. Also - no ammunition in the same locker as your rifle.'

Technically, no ammo was allowed in school, but everyone knew from experience that if you left it up to your dad or another member of your hunting party to remember your ammo, they wouldn't, so the school looked the other way as long as you didn't have rifle and ammo in the same locker. I didn't hunt, but the boys with lockers on either side of me did, so I kept their ammo in my locker in exchange for snickers bars or something like that.

Also, we had open campus and when I was in 8th grade, in an attempt to keep us on campus during lunch hour, the school launched the idea of offering us 8th graders our own smoking room. It never went through, but not because of the smoking thing. The school couldn't get funding for a pop machine and really, what's a smoking room without soda anyway.....

I went away to high school. We lived in dorms. We weren't allowed to dance (we had a sports banquet instead of prom, we weren't allowed to wear blue-jeans to class, You couldn't hold hands with a girl until you were a Junior (11th grade), we had mandatory chapel every day, hazing of Freshman by Juniors and Seniors was accepted (though violent hazing was frowned on), and a bunch of other crap I can't remember.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

About when I was in the third grade, they introduced a policy that each class had to play an assigned game at lunch and recess, rather than allowing us kids to simply join up with whatever game we wanted to play. I suspect that some safety or crowding issue might have been the real reason; it was a small school that normally had only about 300 students, but maybe from that point the student population grew a bit. But the funny part was that the official justification for not being allowed to pick our own games was that we kids were littering. I can't remember this being particularly obvious; this was back when anti-littering PSAs were familiar sights on TV, and most people seemed to be reasonably conscientious in picking up after themselves.

For years a local weather reporter has done elementary school visits, and it now seems to be policy that these schools all have mascots or "team" names. It seems rather pointless since they don't have actual interscholastic teams as far as I know. My old grade school's team name is The Wizards.

Long, long after my time, both my middle and grade schools have forced the kids into uniforms.

[Joey P]

The only odd thing I can think of off the top of my head was the school's policy to delete any files that ended in *.exe.
Let me preface this by saying each student had a login/password onto the network, you could save files to the f:\ drive and they would appear as local no matter where you logged on from.
I got called into the VP's office one day and he showed me a list of files that he found on my network drive and said "Now, I understand from [comp sci teacher] that files that end in exe are games so we have deleted them" Well, I think some of them were games but luckily I was in a class that was learning the Assembly language which means before testing a program I'd written it would have to be compiled in to an EXEcutable file. Like I said, I'm sure some of them were games, but I threw a fit telling the VP this and then telling him that he deleted all my homework (considering that he decided that *.exe automatically meant game, I was confidant he would know that I could just recompile them). I think they changed their policy after that.

In the VP's defense, I'd be willing to bet that 99% of exe files on the network were probably games. I would say that they should have run the file first to see what it was, but most of the comp sci programs that we wrote (especially when we started dabbling with graphics) would have looked like games also. We just learned to back things up on to floppies so it wouldn't be a problem.

Oh, and this wasn't me, but back when my dad was in grade school they had a policy that EVERY STUDENT MUST TAKE THE BUS TO AND FROM SCHOOL. There was one kid, that lived next door to the school and was picked up first and dropped off last. So even though school was from 8 to 3 he had to get picked up at 6:30 and dropped off at 4:30, sucks for him.

[Spoons]

This is interesting. I guess by the standards of other posts, our high school had some odd policies, but to us, they were normal:

-- We could leave school grounds at any time. Lunch did not have to be taken at school. If you lived close enough, you could go home; or if you preferred, you could go to KFC or McDonald's or the coffee shop across the street.

-- Our smoking area was "anywhere that wasn't inside the school." Yep, in the football stands, outside the main entrance, under the trees on the front lawn. Students regularly had packs of smokes in their shirt pockets in class. Still, some got busted for smoking in washrooms. Given the freedom to smoke outside, smoking inside was a big no-no.

-- Those over 18 enjoyed a special status--they could write their own notes for absences, for example. They were adults in the eyes of the law, and so the school couldn't do much to them for things that younger students would get hammered for (lateness, for example). When you hit 18, you knew the school couldn't touch you.

-- Students were expected to make their own way to and from school. No yellow school buses for us. If you couldn't walk or bike or drive, there was public transit; and the city bus stopped at the school. Few parents in those days drove their kids to school; and those few that were driven by parents, were laughed at.

Public high school, Toronto, mid-70s, by the way.

[Rambler88]

Our high school used to chain up the fire exits to keep people from skipping out. I never had any trouble walking right out the main entrance.

They never called a snow day--even on days the buses couldn't make it up the road to the school. Typically, these were days when our parents kept us home because the roads weren't safe, and we went out and played ice hockey in the street.

At the end of the year when you took half-day tests, you had to spend the other half of the day in the gym doing nothing. (Or you skipped out through the front door. They had gym teachers stationed at the entry roads to head people back, but you could go out through the woods.)

They allowed no early graduation--you served your four years no matter what.

All this because the school district got $X for every full day a student was actually there, and they weren't letting any of that money (and the patronage power it gave them) slip out of their hands.

This was in a well-to-do and highly reputed school district in the early 70s.

[njtt]

Maybe if all the students made a bonzai charge at a shooter it could save lives, but if there was any such training I must have skipped school that day.

Murderers hate those little Japanese trees. ..... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonzai)

[panache45]

We had a mandatory 6 weeks of swimming class ever semester. The boys had to swim nude, but the girls didn't (separate pools).

[brad_d]

I graduated from high school in 1989 in Texas (suburban Dallas-Fort Worth).

Boys were not allowed to wear shorts to school - period. It became so ingrained that it really felt weird when I went to college - being allowed to wear shorts to class was quite a novelty!

Girls may not have been able to wear short pants, either - I don't recall - but they could wear skirts of some unrecalled minimum length.

[zweisamkeit]

Girls may not have been able to wear short pants, either - I don't recall - but they could wear skirts of some unrecalled minimum length.

My guess is that their skirts had to be at their fingertips (when their arms were down at their sides) or lower. Or that if they kneeled on the floor, the hemline would at least touch the ground.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

It became so ingrained that it really felt weird when I went to college - being allowed to wear shorts to class was quite a novelty! .Just as I felt when I got to college and saw an ashtray on the back of every third seat or so in the lecture halls. But they had introduced a classroom smoking ban effective that Fall, which was in 1975.

We had the student smoking area at my high school, too. You had to be eighteen or older though, so it wouldn't have applied to me; I was only seventeen when I finished HS.

[Joey P]

We had the student smoking area at my high school, too. You had to be eighteen or older though, so it wouldn't have applied to me; I was only seventeen when I finished HS.

I don't know when they stopped allowing students to smoke in the lecture halls at UWM (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee) but when I went there for Summer School around 2000 or 2001 you could still smoke in the Union.

[brad_d]

My guess is that their skirts had to be at their fingertips (when their arms were down at their sides) or lower. Or that if they kneeled on the floor, the hemline would at least touch the ground.That sounds very familiar - I think it was something very much like that.

[Dewey Finn]

My suburban Connecticut high school had a rule against joining fraternities (and still does; I just checked the online copy of the student handbook). Which was odd, I thought, as I never heard of a high school fraternity. Also, you're not allowed to go off campus during the school day. Twenty years ago, when I was there, this wouldn't have mattered as the closest place you could go to off-campus for lunch was a sandwich shop about five miles and ten minutes away. I have no idea if there are any restaurants any closer now.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

You could leave school for lunch, if you were a Junior or Senior. Freshman and Sophomores be damned.

I didn't eat lunch in school once, and I looked like a young freshman -- the trick was to simply walk past the teachers.



Men were strictly and expressly forbidden to wear any outfit that did not have separate holes for each leg, this explicitly included (but was not limited to) skirts, dresses and.... kilts.

Men were forbidden to wear rings of any sort, but that was dropped half way through my freshman year when it became too difficult to enforce. And, get this, women were forbidden from "being pregnant." There was nothing about what would happen if you got pregnant, and in fact the two girls in my school (out of 1,000+ females) that got pregnant didn't seem to suffer for it... but it was damn well against the rules.Did the administration and teachers refer to the students as "men and women"? If this was high school, as I assume, then that in itself must have been rather unusual too.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

I don't know when they stopped allowing students to smoke in the lecture halls at UWM (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee) but when I went there for Summer School around 2000 or 2001 you could still smoke in the Union.

I went to UCSD; California generally has been ahead of other jurisdiction in smoking restrictions. Interesting--there's a 26 year difference here. I smoked a little in my college days; during the years I was at UCSD, roughly 1975 to 1980, I saw the beginnings of the general turn against smoking. They stopped selling cigs in the stores, and by the time I was a senior there were only about two cigarette machines left on campus. You could still smoke just about everywhere outside of class, though.

I started grad school in 1982 at UCLA, and at that time they eliminated tobacco sales, and banned smoking from most or all indoor areas. I imagine that students living in dorms could still smoke there if the room or floor wasn't designated nonsmoking, but I didn't know any to ask.

[Troy McClure SF]

There were also skits that were supposed to remind you that you were bound to the school behavioral rules wherever you go, and that you could get a school disciplinary referral and even be suspended for foul behavior at the video arcade at the mall.

Ah yes. Our "Christian Code of Conduct" got a hearty fuck-off from even the parents.

[apollonia]

Did the administration and teachers refer to the students as "men and women"? If this was high school, as I assume, then that in itself must have been rather unusual too.

Really? My high school's rulebook referred to the students as men and women. I didn't know this was unusual.

Unusual: Men's hair could not touch their collar. If it did (and it often did) they would be called into the dean's office for a little session with the shears by the dean, who was not notably gifted in the area of cutting hair, which was possibly the reason she chose to become a high-school dean in the first place.

[Todderbob]

Really? My high school's rulebook referred to the students as men and women. I didn't know this was unusual.

Unusual: Men's hair could not touch their collar. If it did (and it often did) they would be called into the dean's office for a little session with the shears by the dean, who was not notably gifted in the area of cutting hair, which was possibly the reason she chose to become a high-school dean in the first place.Now that would've been an interesting sight to see in my school.

[Perciful]

The outside teacher/student smoking area was weird. Having a cigarette while talking with your teacher was almost not worth smoking.

[Maiira]

My high school's tardy policy started out being pretty lenient. I forget exactly what it was, but you could be tardy about 8 times before anything could truly affect you (you were placed on a P+ system, where you'd get either a Pass or a Fail...so, the equivalent of a C or an F...no matter how well you did in a class). The beginning of my sophomore year, they did a complete overhaul of the system. If you were tardy three times (or truant once), it was an automatic 1/3 grade deduction. If you were tardy another three times, it was another 1/3 deduction. And so on, until you flunked the class. They also automatically called home if you were truant.

I never had a problem with it, but I talked to a lot of kids from other schools and they thought it was pretty strict.

[Shmendrik]

In elementary school: I don't remember recess ever being canceled (or held inside) due to cold, and we had plenty of -20 C days. Invariably, you had to go outside because it was essential to "get some fresh air". But the slightest bit of drizzle meant we had to stay in the gym or lunchroom for recess. Apparently the air ceased to be fresh when it was moistened.

[Joey P]

My high school's tardy policy started out being pretty lenient. I forget exactly what it was, but you could be tardy about 8 times before anything could truly affect you (you were placed on a P+ system, where you'd get either a Pass or a Fail...so, the equivalent of a C or an F...no matter how well you did in a class). The beginning of my sophomore year, they did a complete overhaul of the system. If you were tardy three times (or truant once), it was an automatic 1/3 grade deduction. If you were tardy another three times, it was another 1/3 deduction. And so on, until you flunked the class. They also automatically called home if you were truant.

I never had a problem with it, but I talked to a lot of kids from other schools and they thought it was pretty strict.
In my city they made excessive truancy illegal. After a certain amount of missed classes you were reported to the police and if the cops were to catch you out and about you'd get picked up for it.

[Marlitharn]

Every year, from 1st grade through 6th, we spent a couple of weeks learning square dancing in P.E. I still don't know why.

My 5th grader tells me that it's against the rules at her school (elementary - the 5th graders are the oldest students) to date. Since at this age "dating" pretty much consists of declaring "Dylan is my boyfriend!" and then sitting together at lunch and walking together at recess this puzzled me, until my daughter explained that these "relationships" typically last a couple of days, and then this one would talk smack about that one or that one would start two-timing this one and everybody would choose sides and gossip shrilly about each other for a day or so and then the whole cycle would start all over again with a new couple. According to my daughter the teachers finally got sick of all the drama and pronounced dating a no-no.

Of course the kids are still "dating", they're just being a lot more quiet about it. Which is probably all the teachers wanted in the first place.

[palindromemordnilap]

There was a jukebox in the cafeteria area, known as Commons, in my junior year of high school. This was at the height of the rock vs. disco era (and Chicago area where Disco Demolition took place) and the rock kids would unplug the jukebox when somebody played a disco song. So they took out the jukebox.

In freshman year the English department tried an experiment. Students had a choice of three books to study, and depending on which one they picked they went to the classroom of the teacher who would teach it. Problem was that one of the three teachers was universally disliked and no one wanted to be in her class no matter what book was being taught. So when it was time to choose a book, no one in the other two classes moved and that teacher's class emptied out with students who stood in the other two classes and refused to leave. Eventually the teacher had some kind of breakdown and left teaching.

[cwthree]

My suburban Connecticut high school had a rule against joining fraternities (and still does; I just checked the online copy of the student handbook). Which was odd, I thought, as I never heard of a high school fraternity.
I think that high school fraternities and sororities were common quite a while ago, but have long since fallen out of favor.

My own experience of odd policies: I attended an elementary school that allowed students to leave school for lunch and recess. Some students went home for lunch, others went to a pizza place near the school (Of course, students could also eat in the lunchroom at school). However, students who went home for lunch weren't allowed to play on the playground if they came back during recess. Students who went to a restaurant for lunch were allowed to play on the playground.

I've never figured this one out. Clearly, it wasn't related to leaving school property, since kids who went to the pizza place could be on the playground.

[Khadaji]

There was a tunnel between two buildings that we were supposed to use during bad weather. But if you did, you would be late for class and get "written up." So many of us would go out - however this would cause a mess due to tracking in snow and rain - so teachers would send stand at the entrance and send you back - where you would still track in snow and rain and also be late for class.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

I think that high school fraternities and sororities were common quite a while ago, but have long since fallen out of favor.

.
From what I know of this subject locally, there were quite a few in high schools around the country a century ago. In those days, most HS graduates didn't go on to college so HS was the culmination of their academic life. It made sense that these students would seek to emulate college students in this regard; more surprisingly, national Greek offices recognized their chapters and members as brothers. High school probably got a lot more respect in those days.

Moving on to 1935, Los Angeles High School's website offers a copy of the student handbook for that year, in which it draws the student's "most careful attention" to the following, namely, the state Education Code statute outlawing fraternities or sororities in public schools. In my vast archives there exists a copy of the Winter 1923 Semi-Annual, and there's no mention of Greek societies in there. So the law must have come down sometime in the prior twenty years or so.

Still, some high school kids apparently carried on the tradition nevertheless. What could make a secret society more alluring than official condemnation and the resulting need to make it even more super-secret? My wife says there were such clubs at her school in the late 1960s.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Really? My high school's rulebook referred to the students as men and women. I didn't know this was unusual.

Unusual: Men's hair could not touch their collar. If it did (and it often did) they would be called into the dean's office for a little session with the shears by the dean, who was not notably gifted in the area of cutting hair, which was possibly the reason she chose to become a high-school dean in the first place.Was it a public school? IMO the generally restrictive nature of high school life--essentially that you have to be present for all your classes every day--"men" and "women" is a bit euphemistic. You're still a child under the law until eighteen.

Now that I think about it, in my time there were no dress codes, or rules about hair. The guys didn't wear the sort of saggy oversize attire that's associated with gang life today, and so there really wasn't much of anything there to make rules about. When there's no dress or hair rules, there's a good chance they won't have to make any rule that specifically aims at males or females--so the question of whether to denote the students as "men and women" or "boys and girls" doesn't arise.

[Todderbob]

Did the administration and teachers refer to the students as "men and women"? If this was high school, as I assume, then that in itself must have been rather unusual too.I think they were, and I think the restrooms labels were all "men," and "women," as well.

[Shagnasty]

My small town high school burned straight into the ground my senior year due to arson. It was probably for the best. It was built in 1923 in rural Louisiana and didn't have air conditioning at all. I don't know how the older generations handled it but we got so hot that all the textbooks were ruined by sweat stains and during a heat wave, so many kids were fainting that they had to institute mandatory water breaks halfway through every class which took up much of the class all things totaled.

After it burned down, the only big building left was the gym so the disaster recovery effort put in partitions to have fake classrooms. When we returned to class two weeks later, the remains of the main school were still visibly smoldering, emotions ran high, and chaos ensued.

Teenage boys can figure out how to screw up just about anything in about .2 microseconds and the solution to this problem was to throw random objects as far as you could above the barriers as soon as the teacher's back was turned. So many coins were dropping around that it sounded like a slot casino on blue hair special night. You couldn't let your guard down even for an instant because you knew you about to be popped in the eye by Abraham Lincoln himself.

That experiment didn't work so they let us spend almost all day on the football field or in other recreational areas as long as there weren't any visible tornadoes. We had some textbooks but they were donated from other extremely poor districts but deemed unworthy by their students which is to be expected for warped science books circa 1950. That plan could of worked, after all, our parents had the same ones, but they only had a mismatch of different ones available and it was first come, first serve, and no one really cared to enough to come. They just gave us grades based on their impressions on what we had done so far which was usually not much in almost all cases including mine. It was fun though although I would love to have some better pictures.

[Meeko]

We also had ceremonious no hat reminders. There were posters that said something to the effect that "This is a NO HAT zone".

There were also skits that were supposed to remind you that you were bound to the school behavioral rules wherever you go, and that you could get a school disciplinary referral and even be suspended for foul behavior at the video arcade at the mall.

Both of these for me.

We were never, EVER allowed to have hats. I never was told why. I knew it to be bull back then, even if I didn't know the term. It apparently was a given. No posters or anything it was just fact, no hats at school.

In public elementary school, we N E V E R had Recess. We had P.E. but it was always 15 minutes or so of actual exercise, and then 15 minutes of what ever sport we were learning.

My mom once inquired about the school Nurse. I was not in on the conversation, but she tells me, she was told that the Nurse was only on campus on Tuesdays. (Elem)

"And what happens if he is sick on any other day?"

Our schools did not have any Auditorium or presentation room. We had a company from Calif wanting to "Adopt" us [read sponsor] they wanted to show us video of their company, and what it was they did, etc. (Elem)

Apparently, schools in Calif have auditoriums. -- We had, and I am not joking, a ""Cafetorium"". This was school system wide, Cafetoriums - Lunch Rooms and Auditoriums one room double duty. For the school I went to, it got real fun, because our Music room, was the Stage in the Cafetorium. - A single curtain seperating Music from Lunch. (Elem)

One time in high school, during a study hall type period, I was told I could not read the book I brought from home. (Despite the fact I had nothing else to do.) The book had to be assigned to me. I can understand the spirit of the law here. Except

It was DUNE.

Oh, and I never picked the book up ever again since that day. Years later, I considered asking my Homeroom teacher to assign me the book.

We tried a version of the star cards, coupons being handed out when ever we were "caught being good". The idea was even magnified on a class level. The entire class having its own version, and classes competing with each other. (Elem)

We could not play cards at Lunch. Despite that, we got a few games of Magic the Gathering in, anyway. Apparently, all cards mean gambling, even if they don't have Bicycles on them. :confused: (High)

One year, security was increased on Halloween day. Everyone was checked, bookbags were checked for raw eggs. (High)

To protest this, I simply threw my bag down on the floor at the entrance. I asked the Vice Principal if he thought eggs were in there. He agreed with me that I wasn't packing. [I wasn't]

Despite this, I saw someone get egged 10 minutes or so later.

And the one that takes the cake :

No student is allowed to bring their bookbag to school on the final day of school.

Yeah. (Elem)


DeKalb County School System, Atlanta GA 1990s-2001.

[BigT]

We had a rule were guys could not wear sleeveless shirts. When challenged that this was sexist, it was revealed that the administration thought the male body hair would be distracting. So a bunch of guys got together and shaved their armpits so they could wear them, too.

When my dad went to school, there was a rule about facial hair. But by the time I made it to school, the handbook mentioned some sort of ruling stating that people could not be discriminated against based on their hair. We always thought that someone didn't like the old rule and sued the school and won.

Oh, and now I found out from my cousin that my school no longer lets you carry a backpack. I could see that between classes, now that every classroom has its own set of books. (Although I'd hate not being able to get my homework done while I'm waiting on the teacher in my next class to finish telling us stuff we've already learned.) But they can't even bring them to school. So you have to figure out other ways to carry anything.

[HazelNutCoffee]

My Korean high school had all sorts of stupid rules, but the one that really annoyed me was the rule against socks that wrinkle around your ankle area (the kind you push down a bit to make them wrinkle). Apparently wrinkled socks were a sign of vanity unbecoming a student.

I can understand the rules against colored socks and knee socks. (Well, not really, but I can understand what they were thinking.) But WRINKLED SOCKS? Seriously, WTF?

I once had the temerity to wear wrinkled socks to school. They were confiscated and I had to go around in my stockings. I got shit all day from my teachers asking me why I wasn't wearing socks (NOT wearing socks was also against the rules).

[Cicero]

We were given free bottles of milk (small ones) when I was at primary school. Some Govt health idea.

[FordTaurusSHO94]

The elementary school I went to required a doctors note if you wanted to drink anything other than milk. Everyone was always jealous of my orange juice.

[NinjaChick]

Lunch was optional in high school. There were eight periods in the day, and when you were picking your classes you could elect to take eight classes, and have no lunch period. If a student did this, they in theory were supposed to get a note from I think the guidance office on the first day of school, saying that they don't have a lunch, and give this note to either their fourth, fifth, or sixth period teacher, and that teacher was obligated to let the student brown-bag it in class. In practice, they scheduled the classes for the program I was in such that you couldn't have an actual lunch period, so we all just inevitably grazed through the middle of the day.

We were not allowed to have White-Out anywhere in the school, including the teachers.

My middle school once tried to keep kids from skipping out before/after lunch by padlocking all the outside doors in the rear wing of the school. It worked, up until a friend of mine told his dad, who happened to be the chief of the local fire department. As it turns out, you're not really allowed to do that (and for god's sake, if one of the students is the son of the head of the fire department, don't even try it).

[GESancMan]

My junior high school was really screwy. We had six classes, but there were only five periods per day, and the schedule would rotate. So on the first day of school we had periods ABCDE, on the second FABCD, etc.

On top of that, they staggered the lunch period. Each teacher was assigned a lunch: 1st, 2nd or 3rd. So if your fourth class/teacher of the day had "first lunch," you went to lunch before the fourth period; if it was "third lunch", you went to your fourth class and then to lunch. "Second lunch" meant you went to class for half an hour, had lunch, then returned to the same class for another half hour.

Of course, this made it incredibly easy to cut the fourth period - we'd just stay out for all three lunches.

[Sarabellum1976]

My school had One-Way halls. Seriously, they enforced this. Due to overcrowding (they were operating at about 40% more students then the school was designed for.)

Woe was you if your classes were close together (but you had to go the wrong way down the one-way hall to get there.) You had to go around the ENTIRE SCHOOL, during the 5 minute passing period, and it required a very brisk walk. If you got a late start, you had no chance. After 5 minutes, the doors were locked, and the tardy kids were rounded up and sent to in-house suspension, a sort of hour-long detention holding tank. If you decided to circumvent the system and walk the wrong way to save yourself the trouble - the hall monitors would invariably catch you and send you to in-house suspension anyway.

Great system. :rolleyes:

[longhair75]

My senior year of Catholic high school (1970-71) Sister Mary Corona decided that she wanted to use a contemporary novel for English class. She chose Mario Puzo's The Godfather. I am sure she did not read the novel before ordering one for each and every senior. In the first class we were taking turns reading aloud. the third or fourth reader got to the portion of the first chapter featuring Sonny Corleone having wild monkey sex with Lucy Mancini against a door.

I have to admit that the nun carried on, and we read the whole novel.

[Regallag_The_Axe]

Unusual: Men's hair could not touch their collar. If it did (and it often did) they would be called into the dean's office for a little session with the shears by the dean, who was not notably gifted in the area of cutting hair, which was possibly the reason she chose to become a high-school dean in the first place.

It seems unusual (to me at least) that your high school had someone called a 'dean'. What was the person's job (aside from cutting hair)?

I don't recall any unusual policies, but from fifth through mid-seventh grade the school I attended had some odd facilities. I lived in Singapore from third grade until the middle of seventh grade, and I attended the Singapore American School (SAS [more like ASS, am I right?]). When I started fifth grade, SAS opened up their new campus. That is campus, singular, one MASSIVE building, containing ALL SAS classrooms, from preschool to high school. The building did have discrete sections (one for second grade and lower, one for third through fifth, one for sixth through eighth, and another for high school), but it was, in the end, one GIGANTIC building. If that wasn't weird enough, the cafeteria for the High School section had a Burger King and a Pizza Hut within it. I remember that if you were good/lucky you could earn/win a pass to the HS cafeteria and bring back pizza/a burger and fries. Of course the 'ordinary' lunch was made by a private contractor and was pretty damn good... or at least a hell of a lot better than what I got when I moved back to the States for the second half of seventh grade.

[Enuma Elish]

My high school had a Dean of Students. It was a Prep school where the students lived in dorms (because they came from all over the country). I suspect most Prep schools have Deans while most public schools have principals.

[EvilTOJ]

We had a school superintendent fresh from Georgia that once called in a snow day for 4" of snow. Why's this weird? Because I lived in a ski-town that gets 360 inches of snow a year. Yea. After that, there were never any snow days ever ever again. Even with 5' drifts blocking the roads and not even plowed yet.

We had a strict 'no-hat' rule too, I have no idea why. I think it was the in thing to do in the 90's.

[joebuck20]

We were never, EVER allowed to have hats. I never was told why. I knew it to be bull back then, even if I didn't know the term. It apparently was a given. No posters or anything it was just fact, no hats at school.



Yep, same rule at my schools, and they enforced it pretty rigorously too. To this day, if I'm wearing a hat and I go indoors, I'm inclined to take it off.
But during homecoming week, we did one day designated as hat day, and that was the one day of the year that you could wear a hat indoors.

[MsRobyn]

I graduated from high school in 1989 in Texas (suburban Dallas-Fort Worth).

Boys were not allowed to wear shorts to school - period. It became so ingrained that it really felt weird when I went to college - being allowed to wear shorts to class was quite a novelty!

Girls may not have been able to wear short pants, either - I don't recall - but they could wear skirts of some unrecalled minimum length.

I also went to high school in suburban Dallas at the same time you did. Girls weren't allowed to wear shorts, either, but I *think* we could wear capri-length pants. They definitely had to be longer than shorts.

[Regallag_The_Axe]

My high school had a Dean of Students. It was a Prep school where the students lived in dorms (because they came from all over the country). I suspect most Prep schools have Deans while most public schools have principals.

Fair enough, I never attended a private/prep school in the US, so I wouldn't know.

[pravnik]

No shorts. Then, only "walking shorts" that came no higher than two inches above the knee. Then no shorts again.

[Omega Glory]

We had a strict 'no-hat' rule too, I have no idea why. I think it was the in thing to do in the 90's.
We also had a no hat rule, and a 'no coats inside the building' rule.

After Columbine, we had to carry our school IDs at all times during the school day, and they wouldn't let you buy lunch without it. This was supposed to be a safety measure of some sort.

This wasn't a policy, but once the school had the young children sell tongue depressors with the school name printed on it as a way to raise money for a new playground. I guess this was an easy way of letting us feel we were helping out, without actually selling a real product.

[Shirley Ujest]

Another Catholic School Survivor here.

We had segregated playgrounds in elementary school ( 1-8th grade. The entire public school thing still messes me up.)

Boys in the front parking lot.

Girls in the back parking lot.

I've shared this with many people and I've gotten the strangest looks. Look, we didn't know any better.

If you got into trouble in elementary school, it wasn't called Detention. It was called "Jug". I have no idea why. I got Jug once. Can't recall my offenses against humanity, but I spent a Saturday morning in the winter outside with all the other Criminal students and we were suppose to shovel the snow or something. Ended up having a snowball fight over a four lane road.



High School they decided to not have church, which was in our gym, be mandatory one Friday. Having to attend church twice a week was a total drag. So this was a real thrill.

About 5 kids went. The rest were in the cafeteria, hanging out.

After that, it was mandatory.






/Jug

[Shirley Ujest]

My senior year of Catholic high school (1970-71) Sister Mary Corona decided that she wanted to use a contemporary novel for English class. She chose Mario Puzo's The Godfather. I am sure she did not read the novel before ordering one for each and every senior. In the first class we were taking turns reading aloud. the third or fourth reader got to the portion of the first chapter featuring Sonny Corleone having wild monkey sex with Lucy Mancini against a door.

I have to admit that the nun carried on, and we read the whole novel.

This.is.awesome!


Sr. Mary Corona.


They don't make nun names like that no more.

[Shirley Ujest]

Oh, and now I found out from my cousin that my school no longer lets you carry a backpack. I could see that between classes, now that every classroom has its own set of books. (Although I'd hate not being able to get my homework done while I'm waiting on the teacher in my next class to finish telling us stuff we've already learned.) But they can't even bring them to school. So you have to figure out other ways to carry anything.

How about a red wagon?

[Shirley Ujest]

Also, like many other school districts in Illinois, we got a day off the first Monday each March. The occasion was Count Casimir Pulaski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Pu%C5%82aski) Day.

I've never heard of Count Casimir Pulaski until now. Sounds like a hellova guy.

[salinqmind]

We had a school superintendent fresh from Georgia that once called in a snow day for 4" of snow. Why's this weird? Because I lived in a ski-town that gets 360 inches of snow a year. Yea. After that, there were never any snow days ever ever again. Even with 5' drifts blocking the roads and not even plowed yet.

Well, MY high school got itself a principal all the way from Alaska, who didn't believe in sissy snow days for a place with a piddling average of 158 inches of snow a year. Whenever we got walloped by a snowstorm, the morning news would run an alphabetical list of schools closed, from 5 a.m. 5:30 a.m., 6 a.m., 6:30 a.m. - more names added, and at 7 a.m. EVERY SCHOOL WAS CLOSED, except the one lousy holdout who stubbornly felt 2" of snow falling per hour, for 6 hours, was nothing compared to the wilds of Alaska. After enough irate students, rather, parents of students protested loudly, she was made to see the error of her ways.

[apollonia]

Ah, the JUG! Judgment Under God or Justice Under God, in Catholic-school parlance. Usually given for things like having your shirt untucked or shoes with a heel.

[Caveat lector]

Is the G in JUG for God? I always thought it was guard. I went to a quasi-military high school and if you screwed up in regular way you'd get points and detention, but if you screwed up in JROTC you'd get demerits and JUG.

[Meeko]

After Columbine, we had to carry our school IDs at all times during the school day, and they wouldn't let you buy lunch without it. This was supposed to be a safety measure of some sort.

There was rumors that this would happen at our school, that student IDs would have to be out and on your person. IIRC, the teachers already had to follow this rule.

I so wanted this to happen. I thought about what I would have done;

I would have bought a dog collar, attached my ID to the collar, and wear the collar as intended.

I'm the type of person where I would have no problems doing something like that, especially if it would have sent a message.

[FriarTed]

Is the G in JUG for God? I always thought it was guard. I went to a quasi-military high school and if you screwed up in regular way you'd get points and detention, but if you screwed up in JROTC you'd get demerits and JUG.

I remember JUG from Powers' DO BLACK PATENT LEATHER SHOES REALLY REFLECT UP? !!!

Does anybody read that anymore?

[EvilTOJ]

That would have gone over as well as the time I wore a tie as a loincloth in protest of having to wear said tie. Then again I was also wearing my pants, so the impact was probably not as strong as I wanted.

[Wisp00]

We could not play cards at Lunch. Despite that, we got a few games of Magic the Gathering in, anyway. Apparently, all cards mean gambling, even if they don't have Bicycles on them. :confused: (High)


I worked at an elementary school with the no card games rule. The reason is that if you play for keeps (which really is gambling, anyway, so your school's reasoning stands), someone will inevitably get upset about losing, or accuse the other of cheating, or go home and cry about it so that the parents come in all upset because little Johnny wasn't supposed to bring in his expensive card collection full of super rare cards in the first place and demand they get it back somehow.

OR even if you don't play for keeps, the cards themselves are so desirable, and so small, that they get stolen or lost too easily, and mixed up with other kids cards to the point where they can't remember which are theirs, or prove who owns it when two kids claim it.

For all these reasons, it is SO much easier to avoid this drama which has no place in a school anyway, and just ban all cards outright.

[Meeko]

I worked at an elementary school with the no card games rule. The reason is that if you play for keeps (which really is gambling, anyway, so your school's reasoning stands), someone will inevitably get upset about losing, or accuse the other of cheating, or go home and cry about it so that the parents come in all upset because little Johnny wasn't supposed to bring in his expensive card collection full of super rare cards in the first place and demand they get it back somehow.

OR even if you don't play for keeps, the cards themselves are so desirable, and so small, that they get stolen or lost too easily, and mixed up with other kids cards to the point where they can't remember which are theirs, or prove who owns it when two kids claim it.

For all these reasons, it is SO much easier to avoid this drama which has no place in a school anyway, and just ban all cards outright.

The only game I can think of, that "played for keeps" was Magic, and that practice ended long before I entered the game, around 98 or so.

It is sad to me, that the knee jerk reaction is "gambling" over a vehicle for education. Any game improves thinking, and card games, Magic most of all, uses vocabulary that that one will not encounter in everyday life. You can't have 10,000 different cards that are, for the majority, thematically stuck in the Middle Ages, and not get into obscure words. To say nothing of the words the rules themselves bring up.

I've only collected and played Magic and Pokemon.

Pokemon is it's own breed. Yugioh even more.

What I have played of Pokemon, and have seen of Yugioh, I would suggest my general argument exists there as well, but I do not know the game(s) well enough to argue for them. Personal feelings for how inferior the game mechanics are aside.

----

Would the standard 52 card 4 suit deck be allowed?

[Jim's Son]

My high school (40 years ago) had a designated smoking area for the students. Probably made sense since quite a few smoked and they might as well do it in one area. But try doing that today.

My senior year they cut lunch period from 75 to 30 minutes because some dual-low income parents were complaining their kids were coming home during lunch and having sex.

My sophomore year ended with the last period being a study hall. It may have made sense but few kids after spending all day in school want to do their homework immediately. Better go home, play while it's still light, have dinner and then do the math problems, history reading, etc.

[california jobcase]

My first daily teacher duty here in S. GA was morning smoking duty. For six months in '84-'85, I hung out with the kids in the smoking area from 7:45- 8:10.

As soon as the 3:10 pm bell rang, every teacher down my hall stepped into the hall and lit up a cigarette (me included). We couldn't smoke in class, but this was the science wing where we had lots of connecting storage/office spaces between our rooms. I definitely remember telling kids not to make me put out my smoke and come back in there!

The no hats inside thing was enforced then and now. It was harder to enforce at the school I mentioned previously because all the rooms opened to courtyards. Hats outside in the "hall", OK- hats off in the room.

[Wisp00]

The only game I can think of, that "played for keeps" was Magic, and that practice ended long before I entered the game, around 98 or so.

It is sad to me, that the knee jerk reaction is "gambling" over a vehicle for education. Any game improves thinking, and card games, Magic most of all, uses vocabulary that that one will not encounter in everyday life. You can't have 10,000 different cards that are, for the majority, thematically stuck in the Middle Ages, and not get into obscure words. To say nothing of the words the rules themselves bring up.

I've only collected and played Magic and Pokemon.

Pokemon is it's own breed. Yugioh even more.

What I have played of Pokemon, and have seen of Yugioh, I would suggest my general argument exists there as well, but I do not know the game(s) well enough to argue for them. Personal feelings for how inferior the game mechanics are aside.

----

Would the standard 52 card 4 suit deck be allowed?

Well, in my case at least, I don't think the knee jerk reaction was "gambling", I think the reasonable reaction was it created too much trouble that the teachers then had to deal with, taking away learning time. Kids don't need to be bringing toys to school anyway, for most of the same reasons, and certainly should not be bringing valuable things that can be easily stolen or lost.

I'm sure they do provide logic, math, and vocabulary learning opportunities, but no one was discouraged from playing them at all, just from bringing the cards to school. The kids who were into it were playing it at home, anyway.

Perhaps you felt that, as high school students, you'd be better able to handle it. That may be true, I don't know. Maybe it became a district wide policy, maybe the administrators didn't understand, maybe there had been problems in the past.

Yes, a standard 52 card deck would have been allowed, but those are a set, if you get them mixed up with another kid's, it's easy to sort them out again, and it's unlikely another kids gonna steal your ace of spades because it's the best card in the deck. Obviously, students weren't allowed to gamble with them, but I've never known that to be a problem with the little kids, anyway.

[The Flying Dutchman]

My elementary school, kindergarten to grade 8 required all the pupils to line up in class room specific queues outside prior to the start of classes, after lunch and recesses. Once we were given the go ahead by the principal we would march into the class room in orderly files. Unless the weather was severe, we were required to play outside during non class time.

[Wisp00]

My elementary school, kindergarten to grade 8 required all the pupils to line up in class room specific queues outside prior to the start of classes, after lunch and recesses. Once we were given the go ahead by the principal we would march into the class room in orderly files.

I think this is pretty standard, at least in all the schools I've even known.

[Blackberry]

In Catholic middle school (mid '90s), we had indoor hallways but had to go outside instead of using them to walk to different classes (and this is Seattle, lots of rain). We also weren't allowed to talk during this journey. It's not that it was a big deal in itself, just indicative of their complete lack of concern for us as people.

Students were forbidden to hug one another.

We ate lunch in our classrooms and had to sit at our normal assigned seats during lunch.

A coffee shop was nice enough to give the student crossing guards free hot chocolate or coffee on cold winter days, until the school inexplicably made a rule against that.

Of course we had to wear uniforms, and our "reward" for pretty much anything was a "free dress day." How economical for the school.

I'm sure there were a bunch more silly, petty rules that I'm not thinking of. I hate Catholic schools.

Oh yeah, at a different Catholic school in elementary school, our teacher would tell us when to take off our sweaters. The only write-up I ever got was for once not taking off my sweater when told, because I wasn't too hot.

At the Catholic high school that I thankfully did not have to attend, girls were expelled for having abortions. I'm serious! I don't know how the school figured they would even KNOW if a girl had an abortion anyway, but making a damn bit of sense has never been Catholicism's strong point.

The last I knew of this policy being in place was around 2000, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't still policy today.

[Enright3]

at my high school all boys' shirts had to be tucked in. After your daily warning, if you were caught by the principal again with an untucked shirt, you got paddled. With a wooden paddle. On the ass. Probably while bending over and grabbing your ankles.

[5 time champ]

Catholic Boys high school, early 1970s.
Freshman year, can't wear blue jeans
Sophomore year, no blue jeans policy become controversial as some elementary schools have allowed blue jeans
Junior year, "non-faded", "non-holey" blue jeans allowed. Dean of Students [head disciplinarian- not principal], has denim swatch for comparison. If jeans are lighter than swatch, wearer earns detention.

This didn't happen at my school, but some Catholic schools only allowed students to have politically correct first names i.e. saints names. So a Nikki, who was named after her father Nicholas, was called Catherine.

[FallenAngel]

Some of my school's stranger policies have already been touched upon. I graduated from a small NW Ohio public high school in 1987.

Any boy participating in sports had to have hair higher than his ears on the sides and higher than his collar in back.

No shorts except for gym class.

No calculators except for ACT and SAT testing days.

The one that really sticks out, though, is the monthly Campus Life assembly. For those who don't know, Campus Life is an evangelical indoctrination program aimed at high school kids. Every month the regional Campus Life organization would bring in a band or a speaker to give a presentation or performance about how cool Jesus was.

Those who didn't want to attend had the option of going to study hall, but the stigma associated with ducking out on hearing The Word was pretty intense, from the teachers, not the students. Although the students who were already active CL members would make a point to pull you aside and ask you, with genuine concern for your soul, why you chose study hall instead of their super fun assembly.

[FairyChatMom]

I was in high school from 1969-72. My first year, girls were not allowed to wear pants. Period. Ever. When it was really, really cold and snowy one day, we could wear pants if we brought a note from home.

The next year, the dress code was modified so that girls could wear pants if they were part of a pant suit. Jeans - hah! Not allowed. Period. Even for the boys.

Ah, the good old days...

[longhair75]

High school, circa 1967 - 1971, there was no smoking at all on the school grounds. Smoking incurred a five dollar fine. I was caught in the rest room, smoking. I handed the teacher five bucks and tried to finish my cigarette. This earned me an in house suspension for insolence. You just gotta love the Catholic School system.....

[robert_columbia]

There was a big to do in the Fairfax County (VA) public school system circa 1994/1995 about a new revision to the school policies. There was a policy manual named "Code of Conduct" that prescribed penalties for parents. That's right, the school thought they could punish parents. I do believe that the policies basically stated that if a student misbehaved, the parent could be punished, probably by a fine, though I can't exactly remember. I don't think they had gotten so far as to think they could give detention to parents. I'm not sure of the legal theory behind that (e.g. whether they made it a municipal offense to be a parent of a misbehaving child and the fine was your sentence), but there was such a stink about that.

[MsRobyn]

My elementary school, kindergarten to grade 8 required all the pupils to line up in class room specific queues outside prior to the start of classes, after lunch and recesses. Once we were given the go ahead by the principal we would march into the class room in orderly files. Unless the weather was severe, we were required to play outside during non class time.

The sprog's school does this, at least after recess and after lunch. It makes a lot of sense because the queues can be set up to improve traffic flow so you don't have a lot of kids milling around in the common areas.

It also makes sense to have all of the kids together in one place. There are only so many staff who can watch children during non-class time, and children have to be supervised, at least to some degree. It also discourages older kids from sneaking off to cause trouble.

[Wisp00]

The girls' bathroom stalls in our high school were short. If you stood up, they came up to somewhere between your shoulders and chest. If you walked close by, you could see over them without even trying. You had to maintain a squat the entire time you were in there, because you wouldn't want anyone to see you. As far as I can remember, the boys bathroom was not like that, just the girls. The official reason was to prevent smoking, but I never thought that made much sense. Any idea why they did that to us?

[Proudest Monkey]

The sprog's school does this, at least after recess and after lunch. It makes a lot of sense because the queues can be set up to improve traffic flow so you don't have a lot of kids milling around in the common areas.

It also makes sense to have all of the kids together in one place. There are only so many staff who can watch children during non-class time, and children have to be supervised, at least to some degree. It also discourages older kids from sneaking off to cause trouble.

Not to mention, classroom groups (lines) make it easier to count noses or check off names or whatever to make sure all the little ducklings are accounted for and not hiding out under the twirly slide. Also, a mass rush for the entry doors is an invitation for some not-so-gentle shoving and other physical unpleasantness. Any time you can make a huge group of elementary school-aged kids procede in orderly groups, it is much safer for them.

Re the OP: My high school had an invisible one-way barrier between the cafeteria/gym/auditorium area and the rest of the school. It was guarded very strictly by one severely underpaid aide. You could stroll in at any time but you could only get out if you were bleeding or puking. Or if the bell rang.

[The Flying Dutchman]

High school, circa 1967 - 1971, there was no smoking at all on the school grounds. Smoking incurred a five dollar fine. I was caught in the rest room, smoking. I handed the teacher five bucks and tried to finish my cigarette. This earned me an in house suspension for insolence. You just gotta love the Catholic School system.....

My high school, same time as yours, forbade smoking as well, and forbade leaving the school grounds to smoke, but if you got parental permission, you could go to the rifle range in the basement and smoke during lunch period.. It was so packed that the smoke was thick in the air.