Everyone has had bad experiences in school. Whether it’s the teachers, students or just the atmosphere of authority, it can be a miserable place. But in some cases, teachers and administrators are so out of touch that they implement rules that just ruin everyone’s chance at having a good time.
Here are some of the strangest rules that Reddit users had implemented in their schools.
[Source at the end of the article.]
At my elementary school, we had a rule that you could never wave to someone. I’m not joking, the only thing you could do was called “pinkie-waving.” Pinkie-waving is only waving to someone with your pinkie finger, and it got so frustrating because I would wave to friends and no one, and I mean NO ONE would see it.
On top of that, you weren’t allowed to call someone’s name to get their attention. I can remember, as a kid I thought it was silly but now I think it’s UNBELIEVABLY silly.
Source
The rule at our school was, no skirts/shorts that didn’t fall past our fingertips.
My problem with this was as an athlete. I played volleyball through most of high school and on game days, we were expected to dress nice. Still, girls were always getting yelled at for their dresses and skirts being too short on the basis that it would distract the boys. Most were threatened with not being allowed to play or being made to go home and change before they could get on the bus to go if we had to travel.
But as soon as we had to play, we were stuck wearing tiny, tiny spandex shorts that suction-cupped to your butt cheeks and when worn, barely reached my wrist if I attempted to apply the fingertips test.
We can’t wear revealing clothes to school, but you expect us to spend a couple hours on the court with our butts hanging out for the whole school and town to see?
mybunsarestale
My high school spent a ton of money remodeling their gymnasium over one summer. When the next school year began, students were not allowed to use it because the administration didn’t want to ruin the floor or the new bleachers.
So, no PE class inside, no indoor basketball/volleyball, no indoor running, no indoor activity. Period. I live in a state with brutal winters. It was awful.
bludop
My last year of middle school (8th grade) the school outlawed Silly-Bands. Don’t really remember why, but we were forbidden from wearing them.
The following year the school banned backpacks. Literally banned. No one was allowed to have them. A few kids got around it by carrying briefcases.
Kellett47
You aren’t allowed to call die “dice.” They have to be called “number cubes” because the name “dice” is associated with gambling.
cold-iced-tea
SHOES MUST BE ALL BLACK.
Now you’re probably thinking, huh, normal rule
This was implemented on the first day back from summer, we had no prior warning.
On that day, I wore some black shoes, with white laces and detailing.
So, as punishment, I had to spend all day coloring in my shoes with a sharpie, as the white on my shoes would disrupt my learning.
IamEclipse
You can’t wear solid Blue or Red shirts.
They didn’t want people to start gangs in our small Midwestern town.
A group of people rebelled and started wearing leather jackets and slicked back hair and played up the “greaser” stereotype to show how silly it all was.
They all got in trouble and threatened with detentions and In School Suspensions.
Couch_Licker
Asking someone to the school dance was considered sexual harassment, and carried all the requisite penalties.
RustedAetheon
“Lunch detention” meant standing next to a wall with your nose touching the wall for 15 minutes. Eventually, there was not enough wall to go around so they had us lined up behind each other essentially just standing in formation for 15 minutes.
Toejamer
If you walk into class late your grade drops a letter, but if you skip class there is no penalty.
katweed420710
If you leaned back on your chair, even slightly, you had to pay all of your lunch money to the teacher.
ChikiChar
Not being allowed to take your blazer off without permission.
I tried to abide by this rule, it was about 35 degrees out and humid so I asked, the teacher said no because she wasn’t too hot and I threw up later in the lesson because I have a very low tolerance to heat. After that, I never asked but got put on a report and had a load of detentions.
AGirlNamedAsh
Teachers were no longer allowed to use red ink to correct test because it demoralizes us.
pryos1
At lunch in Texas, we had colored cups for talking rules. Red was no talking and yellow was whispering. I can’t remember when they ever used green cups to allow actual conversation. They still do it with my little sister too. They are kids, not prisoners, let them talk jeez.
HotDinnerBatman
Zero tolerance. If a kid defended himself from attackers, he would get the same punishment as the attackers.
HylianGains
My school closed all boys bathrooms for 3 weeks because someone broke a mirror in a fight. The girls’ bathrooms remained open. Mind you we had about 7 bathrooms for boys and all were locked.
HyperionMB
No visible cell phones on school property, even when school is over. I got chased down the hall by a teacher demanding I give him my phone because I called my dad for a ride home ten minutes after school was over.
lsterit
No hats whatsoever. My middle school was afraid of gang affiliation or something like that. I once wore a hat that literally said “Alaska” on it and they made me take it off. What kind of gang did they think I was part of?
maadcity_13
In my primary school, there was a rule for a while that if one child wanted to go and use the bathroom, the entire class had to go with them.
In the best cases, a single kid had the power to disrupt a particularly boring lesson so that everyone could get up and walk literally twenty meters to the toilet block. (Small school.)
In the worst cases, kids would wet themselves in their chairs because they were too afraid and embarrassed to ask. I remember seeing a classmate get up out of their plastic chair and leave a puddle behind…
pmmeyourlocalscenery
A couple of years after I started my school white out was banned because a girl was chewing a white-out pen and it exploded in her mouth.
She was fine but had to go to the hospital for chest X-rays and stuff, so yeah we weren’t allowed to use that anymore in case anyone else decided to chew on the pens.
deadrosesandfire
Girls could wear skirts, guys could not wear shorts.
jurassicbond
No exposed armpits. It would make sense if they said this was for health purposes, but they told us it was because we might distract opposite sex classmates with our sexy sexy armpits.
lgian72
The word “Boring” was banned. You got in trouble for using it. The teachers wanted to make school seem fun…by introducing ludicrous rules that make basic conversations a bit trickier.
ltyph
If any of the guys tried to skip the showers, they had to show up after school for supervised “shower practice” with the gym teacher. As an adult, it sounds so much creepier now.
maldio
Year 11, in the middle of summer. I left my blazer at home because it was hot. I showed up for my exam and…
“You can’t sit this exam unless you are wearing a blazer”
I was like what? This is gonna set me back a year if I don’t sit it. The teacher tells me that, “you have a problem, so solve it. 2 minutes” He says this with a bit of a wink and nod to a group of year 7’s who were playing football in the yard. I had to run over to them, grab one of the poor little guys, “Give me your blazer, I’ll get it back to you in an hour – don’t ask questions.” and ran back to the exam hall having squeezed into this kid’s tiny blazer.
What was this supposed to teach me? That when push comes to shove, look after number one and take what you need from those who are smaller than you?
zaraths
We were not allowed to stand in circles at recess. Some teacher was afraid we would get up to something while standing in a circle.
In protest, we stood in a giant circle but made sure we were all at least several meters away from the next closest person. When the teacher who initiated the ban on circles noticed what we were doing (after 20 minutes) she threw a fit and demanded we stop standing in a circle.
We argued that we were all just individuals standing around and turned in different directions. The ban was not enforced after that day.
krilldor_magnifico