5 ms·

One plausible explanation: school is as bad for teens' mental health as quarantine, so going from one to the other has been a wash.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Well, duh. You have to ask someone to use the bathroom. A typical office is stocked with snacks and drinks. You can step away for a walk. We treat kids in school way worse than adults in the white collar working world (we basically treat them like blue collar workers).
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Blue collar workers... surrounded by sociopaths with incompletely developed impulse control and self reflection.
- enditruu 6y ago
  The fact that there are teachers out there who will sometimes just refuse to allow kids to go to the bathroom is just insane. What good does treating students like that actually bring?
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    At least in my urban high school experience, some teachers were of about equal maturity level to their students. Also, students would go to the bathroom and then just not come back and roam the halls and enter random classrooms and say hi to all of their friends in the middle of class.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      And why do kids do that? Either because school is miserable and/or because saying hello to a friend isn't a moral travesty
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        > school is miserable absolutely, agreed. > saying hello to a friend isn't a moral travesty I'll be honest: if you didn't grow up in a school like this, you don't understand how disruptive it is for a student to burst into the classroom in the middle of the teacher explaining something and go around high-fiving everyone in the classroom with the teacher powerless to stop them. This was not an infrequent occurrence.
        leetcrew 6y ago
        I went to a school where football was an extremely big deal and we actually had a school sanctioned spirit squad that would do this before big games. five to ten highschool juniors/seniors would barge into classes yelling, shaking desks, high-fiving people, etc. the teachers hated it, but the administration thought it was good for school spirit. tbh I kinda enjoyed the chaos, but looking back I don't understand how someone in their right mind could allow that.
        vkou 6y ago
        If you assume that the primary purpose of the school is to produce compliant nationalists (Or people who are easily distracted by circuses), as opposed to education, this makes sense. The pledge of allegiance is another one of those things, that were it taking place in a hostile country, would be mocked incessantly - as brainwashing.
        leetcrew 6y ago
        it was actually a private school, so it's primary purpose was to satisfy its customers (the parents). in a way, that makes it even more baffling.
        asdff 6y ago
        Why not punish the disruption instead of banning bodily function breaks?
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      You can deal with that on a case-by-case basis. It is better to have the chance of someone skipping class than it is to tell a girl that thinks her tampon is leaking (because of surprise heavy bleeding) that she can't go to the bathroom and instead, has to hope that she didn't leak through her pants onto the chair. Or that someone has to risk soiling themselves because they have to go. I'm really happy my mother made sure I knew she'd fight for me if a teacher wouldn't let me use the toilet. I didn't need her to, but my sister did.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        I'm explaining why teachers in some schools do this, I still think it is stupid and ridiculous. Worth noting though: no, I don't think you can deal with it on a case-by-case basis at the level at which this occurs. What the better teachers seemed to do is find a way to set up a system with students who would lock & unlock the classroom door for students who needed to go to the bathroom. (the door was never locked from the inside, just the outside)
        Broken_Hippo 6y ago
        Teachers know when a student doesn't return to the classroom, though. Simple enough to take report that to whoever in the school handles discipline: Usually, the same person that would get involved with other sorts of skipping class. I don't really see the issue: It can't be that many kids doing it every class and having teachers and staff monitor halls, if you have well-funded schools, shouldn't be an issue. I'm opposed to locked bathroom doors as well: Again, all it takes is one teacher saying, "no", and suddenly, the same student is out of luck. Or we could be more lenient on students and not worry so much about attendance so long as they hand in their work and get decent enough grades.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        > teachers and staff monitor halls I mean, my school tried that - they implemented a hall sweeping program where teachers locked their doors and security would try to catch all the students in the halls. It didn't really prevent it because they couldn't constantly hall sweep all of the halls during the entire school day (and it increased the number of students entering other classrooms randomly to try to hide from the security guards) and it was also super racially biased in its enforcement. > It can't be that many kids doing it every class and having teachers and staff monitor halls No, it is quite a few students. You underestimate the dysfunction in the typical inner city school. > Simple enough to take report that to whoever in the school handles discipline And do what to discipline them? Kick them out of school? > not worry so much about attendance so long as they hand in their work and get decent enough grades. In an urban environment, "not worrying about attendance" translates to a. to very upset parents (esp. among working-class parents who are not at home and view education as a route to success), b. failing low-income students, c. more crime. Urban schools are hard to fix!
  - kiliantics 6y ago
    Nothing of course. But when you give people power over others, they will inevitably abuse it.
    - devenblake 6y ago
      Don't know why you were downvoted because you're correct. There are some teachers that, for one reason or another, were hit very hard over their years of teaching and have become hardened old coots whose only pleasure comes from limiting others.
- classified 6y ago
  A classmate of my sister's was once denied permission to go to the bathroom. The negotiations ended with him peeing in the classroom's waste bin. That teacher didn't make the same mistake again.
- rland 6y ago
  Isn't that more an indictment of how we treat blue collar workers?
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    Sure, humans are bad bosses. We find ways to devalue others prolifically. Pyramids got built for free right?
gizmo686 6y ago
Ask any room full of adults: * When was the last time you had a nightmare about school? * When was the last time you had a nightmare about work? Regardless of the average age, I would be surprised if you found that work nightmares are more common than school nightmares. The recurrence of school nightmares even seems to be something of a running joke in our society.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y ago
  FWIW, I've never had any nightmares where I dreamed I was back in secondary school. I've had many about undergrad and grad school, though. It's been more than a decade since I graduated from grad school. However, I've also had plenty of nightmares about my first job. It's never about my performance or my co-workers, mind you, but about my immigration status back then. Currently, in my (virtual) room of co-workers, many are also immigrants; I wouldn't be surprised that they've had similar nightmares.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >It's never about my performance or my co-workers, mind you, but about my immigration status back then. Not gonna lie, the part about immigration status hit me very strong. I keep getting those nightmares about once a month, despite all of my actual immigration-related fears in real life being completely gone after becoming a citizen. The nightmare is always about me somehow ending up in my old country (but at the present time, not me back then) without being able to escape. It always starts as just a minor inconvenience situation (e.g., flight got canceled, just gotta reschedule it, no big deal) and rapidly escalates to the most impossible situations to get out of (e.g., got arrested at a random place and stuck in a cell without being able to leave), while my normal life in the US going on as normal, just without me present, and nobody notices my absence. In addition to that one, the only other one I often get is the very typical one about waking up to me being my college-aged self and realizing it is the final exam day, and it is for a class that i signed up for and completely forgot about until today.
  - Enginerrrd 6y ago
    Same re university nightmares! I still occasionally get nightmares that I'm deep into a class, and I realize I haven't been doing any homework or even going to the class and I start wondering how I'm going to fix that mess and how the heck I let it happen.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Well, duh. You have to ask someone to use the bathroom. A typical office is stocked with snacks and drinks. You can step away for a walk. We treat kids in school way worse than adults in the white collar working world (we basically treat them like blue collar workers).

ethbr0 6y ago
Blue collar workers... surrounded by sociopaths with incompletely developed impulse control and self reflection.
enditruu 6y ago
The fact that there are teachers out there who will sometimes just refuse to allow kids to go to the bathroom is just insane. What good does treating students like that actually bring?
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  At least in my urban high school experience, some teachers were of about equal maturity level to their students. Also, students would go to the bathroom and then just not come back and roam the halls and enter random classrooms and say hi to all of their friends in the middle of class.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    And why do kids do that? Either because school is miserable and/or because saying hello to a friend isn't a moral travesty
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > school is miserable absolutely, agreed. > saying hello to a friend isn't a moral travesty I'll be honest: if you didn't grow up in a school like this, you don't understand how disruptive it is for a student to burst into the classroom in the middle of the teacher explaining something and go around high-fiving everyone in the classroom with the teacher powerless to stop them. This was not an infrequent occurrence.
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        I went to a school where football was an extremely big deal and we actually had a school sanctioned spirit squad that would do this before big games. five to ten highschool juniors/seniors would barge into classes yelling, shaking desks, high-fiving people, etc. the teachers hated it, but the administration thought it was good for school spirit. tbh I kinda enjoyed the chaos, but looking back I don't understand how someone in their right mind could allow that.
        vkou 6y ago
        If you assume that the primary purpose of the school is to produce compliant nationalists (Or people who are easily distracted by circuses), as opposed to education, this makes sense. The pledge of allegiance is another one of those things, that were it taking place in a hostile country, would be mocked incessantly - as brainwashing.
        leetcrew 6y ago
        it was actually a private school, so it's primary purpose was to satisfy its customers (the parents). in a way, that makes it even more baffling.
      - asdff 6y ago
        Why not punish the disruption instead of banning bodily function breaks?
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    You can deal with that on a case-by-case basis. It is better to have the chance of someone skipping class than it is to tell a girl that thinks her tampon is leaking (because of surprise heavy bleeding) that she can't go to the bathroom and instead, has to hope that she didn't leak through her pants onto the chair. Or that someone has to risk soiling themselves because they have to go. I'm really happy my mother made sure I knew she'd fight for me if a teacher wouldn't let me use the toilet. I didn't need her to, but my sister did.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      I'm explaining why teachers in some schools do this, I still think it is stupid and ridiculous. Worth noting though: no, I don't think you can deal with it on a case-by-case basis at the level at which this occurs. What the better teachers seemed to do is find a way to set up a system with students who would lock & unlock the classroom door for students who needed to go to the bathroom. (the door was never locked from the inside, just the outside)
      - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
        Teachers know when a student doesn't return to the classroom, though. Simple enough to take report that to whoever in the school handles discipline: Usually, the same person that would get involved with other sorts of skipping class. I don't really see the issue: It can't be that many kids doing it every class and having teachers and staff monitor halls, if you have well-funded schools, shouldn't be an issue. I'm opposed to locked bathroom doors as well: Again, all it takes is one teacher saying, "no", and suddenly, the same student is out of luck. Or we could be more lenient on students and not worry so much about attendance so long as they hand in their work and get decent enough grades.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        > teachers and staff monitor halls I mean, my school tried that - they implemented a hall sweeping program where teachers locked their doors and security would try to catch all the students in the halls. It didn't really prevent it because they couldn't constantly hall sweep all of the halls during the entire school day (and it increased the number of students entering other classrooms randomly to try to hide from the security guards) and it was also super racially biased in its enforcement. > It can't be that many kids doing it every class and having teachers and staff monitor halls No, it is quite a few students. You underestimate the dysfunction in the typical inner city school. > Simple enough to take report that to whoever in the school handles discipline And do what to discipline them? Kick them out of school? > not worry so much about attendance so long as they hand in their work and get decent enough grades. In an urban environment, "not worrying about attendance" translates to a. to very upset parents (esp. among working-class parents who are not at home and view education as a route to success), b. failing low-income students, c. more crime. Urban schools are hard to fix!
- kiliantics 6y ago
  Nothing of course. But when you give people power over others, they will inevitably abuse it.
  - devenblake 6y ago
    Don't know why you were downvoted because you're correct. There are some teachers that, for one reason or another, were hit very hard over their years of teaching and have become hardened old coots whose only pleasure comes from limiting others.
classified 6y ago
A classmate of my sister's was once denied permission to go to the bathroom. The negotiations ended with him peeing in the classroom's waste bin. That teacher didn't make the same mistake again.
rland 6y ago
Isn't that more an indictment of how we treat blue collar workers?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Sure, humans are bad bosses. We find ways to devalue others prolifically. Pyramids got built for free right?

gizmo686 6y ago

Ask any room full of adults: * When was the last time you had a nightmare about school? * When was the last time you had a nightmare about work? Regardless of the average age, I would be surprised if you found that work nightmares are more common than school nightmares. The recurrence of school nightmares even seems to be something of a running joke in our society.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y ago
FWIW, I've never had any nightmares where I dreamed I was back in secondary school. I've had many about undergrad and grad school, though. It's been more than a decade since I graduated from grad school. However, I've also had plenty of nightmares about my first job. It's never about my performance or my co-workers, mind you, but about my immigration status back then. Currently, in my (virtual) room of co-workers, many are also immigrants; I wouldn't be surprised that they've had similar nightmares.
- filoleg 6y ago
  >It's never about my performance or my co-workers, mind you, but about my immigration status back then. Not gonna lie, the part about immigration status hit me very strong. I keep getting those nightmares about once a month, despite all of my actual immigration-related fears in real life being completely gone after becoming a citizen. The nightmare is always about me somehow ending up in my old country (but at the present time, not me back then) without being able to escape. It always starts as just a minor inconvenience situation (e.g., flight got canceled, just gotta reschedule it, no big deal) and rapidly escalates to the most impossible situations to get out of (e.g., got arrested at a random place and stuck in a cell without being able to leave), while my normal life in the US going on as normal, just without me present, and nobody notices my absence. In addition to that one, the only other one I often get is the very typical one about waking up to me being my college-aged self and realizing it is the final exam day, and it is for a class that i signed up for and completely forgot about until today.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  Same re university nightmares! I still occasionally get nightmares that I'm deep into a class, and I realize I haven't been doing any homework or even going to the class and I start wondering how I'm going to fix that mess and how the heck I let it happen.