Just something I’ve always wondered. In American tv shows going back to Happy Days and even My Three Sons, when the bell rings there is a great heave of movement as children erupt and leave the classroom.
Never mind that the teacher might be in the middle of an announcement or teaching something - everybody just leaves.
When I was at school (NZ) in the 1970s nobody dared move when the bell rang. That was simply a signal for teachers to wind down and dismiss the class when they were ready.
My own children were at school over the last decade and that rule still holds firm. To try to leave before the class was dismissed was an effective way to get a detention.
Edit - same at university - you don’t leave until the lecturer has finished although there is no punishment if you quietly exit - its assumed you have a reason.
My high and middle schools officially had a rule that you had to wait to be dismissed, but in practice, yes, everyone moved when the bell rang. Very rarely a teacher would get crotchety about it, but there really wasn’t time for it to work any other way. There were only 3 or 4 minutes between classes.
It was in the teacher’s interest to just let us go too. It was easier to finish the sentence the next day than write passes for all the late kids. And the bell also meant that there was another classload of students hurtling towards the door.
Related question: in NZ, do students generally move to another room between classes, or not? In Spain it’s the teachers who move, so it’s them who are in a hurry to get out and hop to the next class (there’s a few courses which have their own classrooms, but it’s because they require special setups).
In grade school yeah, it was absolutely like that. If the teacher had anything else to say like “remember your papers are due Thursday!” they would basically just shout it quickly as the kids are leaving the room. Of course, the bells being on a fixed schedule meant both teachers and students were pretty aware of when they were coming, and class is rarely engrossing enough that you just lose track of the time.
Keep in mind they usually only give a couple of minutes between periods and that often involved a trip to one’s locker, which might be in a completely different wing of the school from where your egressing class is, to change textbooks, and then get to your next class which might also be in a completely different wing of the school from that. So because of that teachers were never encouraged to detain students past the bell for any length of time whatsoever, and it was pretty much seen as the student’s right to leave immediately when the bell rings.
University is completely different because there are no bells. And the students are adults who can leave any time they want anyway, whether class is over or not.
Mine had bells in the older buildings. They’d go off several times during a longer class, though, since they signaled every possible starting and ending time.
Also, on reflection, I think I probably did have a prick teacher or two (talking high school) on a little micro power trip who insisted on the idea of “class is dismissed when I say it is, damnit, and not when the bell rings!” But this was absolutely not the norm and not encouraged by the administration, because of the aforementioned extremely tight windows for class changes. Any teacher who did that was basically robbing you of the ability to get to your next class on time and prepared, so other teachers didn’t like him either.
The teachers in my (non-American) high school had a saying: “The bell is for me, not for you!” We weren’t allowed t get up until the teachers said so, although we would start shuffling loudly if the they took more than 30 seconds or so to wrap up.
We didn’t dare bolt at the bell. But teachers wouldn’t keep us more than a matter of seconds - they knew how things worked. They just wanted us to know that we were dismissed by teachers, not bells.
My kids have four minutes between classes in a large high school. If they are tardy to their next class seven times, the teacher can fail them. Haul passes are limited to three for each trimester - so you can’t just go to the bathroom with a haul pass every day on a whim. You bet that they haul ass once the bell rings. A teacher who can’t watch the clock is one that endangering their ability to pass their next class - or putting 17 year olds in Depends.
“The bell is for me, not you!” is also a bit of a cliche in the UK. I remember that even if the lesson had effectively finished by the time the bell rang most teachers wouldn’t let you leave until they dismissed you.
I remember a couple of teachers who would shout “We’re not done yet!” when the bell rang, but generally everyone knew it was coming and the disruption from all the students grabbing their books and heading for the door the instant the bell rang meant the class was effectively over no matter what the teacher might have wanted.
My middle and high schools didn’t have bells, but at the time for class to end, we’d start rustling. Especially so if the next class was a long walk away or you needed to get to your locker or just had something that you wanted to do in the five minutes between one class and the next. If this happened mid-lecture or demonstration, the teachers would almost universally say “The clock does not dismiss you. I do.” And they’d keep us in the room until they were done.
Luckily, it was an open campus (do they still have those these days?), so it was ok to be in the hall between classes, and so long as you weren’t egregiously late, most teachers understood the commute between rooms issue. Also, without a bell, there was no universal signal that the next class was to start.
I had a teacher or two who’d keep the class sitting after the bell, because they were on a power trip or because a large portion of the kids had misbehaved, but it generally didn’t happen. People needed to get to their next class, and other kids needed to get into that classroom and get settled in before the lecture. A teacher who held the students late would be throwing off the schedule of his or her next class and inconveniencing himself/herself, the students and several other teachers.
At my high school we left when the bell rang. It was a large school, but I don’t remember ever having to hustle to get to the next class on time.
On the other hand, my locker was generally very far away from any of my classes, so I had to carry all my books with me wherever I went. My back did not appreciate that.
We had to leave the classroom in an orderly fashion , we couldn’t just pick up our books etc and run out of the classroom into the hallway . This was in the 50’s
have no idea what kids do today .
This was my high school Physics teacher. I can still hear him say “Stay with me a minute!” as the bell rings. He’d then go on to talk for four more minutes and give us some bit of critical information we needed for the assignment that he couldn’t manage to fit in during the normal class time. We only had a five minute passing period. Fortunately there were several of us that went from that class to the next class together and the teacher of that class was mostly understanding of our situation. I don’t think that teacher liked the Physics teacher much either.