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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

161–170 of 497 posts

Re: School or Prison

#161

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

> meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of time. In grade school, every time someone asks permission to use the bathroom they stop the flow of the lesson and valuable time is lost. In college the idea is that most of the students are responsible enough to handle the bathroom and food.

When I was in elementary school, we were told to try to use the bathroom after lunch, or during recess. This was teaching how to plan for what you needed to do and use the opportunities you had to get it done. You had four or five times a day when you could go to the bathroom without needing to be excused from class.

It was actually harder in high school because other than lunch, you had minimal passing time between classes (just a few minutes) so if you stopped to go to the bathroom there was a good chance you'd be late to your next class. And of course no recess. Lunch and P.E. were the two chances you had per day to use the bathroom without having to ask.

Re: School or Prison

#162
In one of the largest high schools in Texas, we weren't allowed to leave campus, we couldn't even take our lunch out of the double doors and eat our sandwich outside.

It's something I absolutely despise about our contemporary culture.

I live in Latin America now and envy the kids for getting 45 minutes free at lunch time to hang out outside, socialize, buy from the street vendors that will gather at that time, maybe run a quick errand.

My parents point out that they had a high school experience in the US more like the Latin American one. Something is changing about the US, and it's rotten.

There's a book that presents a good overview of some of these changes: "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" (by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt).

Re: School or Prison

#163

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

One of my favorite memories of high school was making guacamole in my physics class. I finished the exam early and had some spare time. Lunch was at 1:30pm and I had breakfast 5:40am most mornings. The teacher walked over, grabbed a chip, scooped up some of the guac, and munched on it. "Luck for you, that's really good. Otherwise I'd kick you out of class"

Re: School or Prison

#164

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

I remember sitting in third grade class, red in the face, hand patiently up in the air for minutes straight, simultaneously crying and pissing myself in my chair while Tiffany pointed and laughed at me with her bright red cheeks!

I was a good kid!

If I had of robbed or killed someone and been to Juvenile Hall, my pants would probably have been dry.

Re: School or Prison

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I got kicked out of class once in high school (affecting my attendance) because I couldn't hold it until the end of the class, the teacher said no, and my choice was between disobeying or whipping my dick out and peeing on the floor. I of course chose disobeying, but I'm pretty sure that the teacher would be far less strict in the future if I went the other route.

The latter could have gotten you in some serious trouble. Better and more effective to just go in your pants.

So could the former because where I'm from there's a certain amount of times you can not be in a class (without a doctor's note that justifies it) before you face expulsion. IIRC that number is around 20 classes per school year, so that alone brought me to 1/20th of an expulsion.

And being the teen that I was, it's not like I had an otherwise perfect attendance in any of my high school years.

Re: School or Prison

#166

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

When I was eight years old I had a teacher who told us that if we needed to use the bathroom, rather than ask "can I use the bathroom?" we should instead say "I'm going to the bathroom". She said she would never stop us from going, but that we should at least let her know why we're leaving the room. I never got to experience that again at school after I left the second grade.

Hell, in second grade I peed my pants in my desk as the witch wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom.

Re: School or Prison

#167
post #117
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

d/

Sure, there's no inevitability, but there can also be ways that make sense. It might be possible to make a space launch vehicle that's short and squat, or operate a factory without any regular worker hours, but it's going to have some costs compared to our current equilibrium

The definition itself of cost and equilibrium is ideologically defined, but otherwise your point is correct.

Re: School or Prison

#168
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of time. This is a fairly reductive statement. Dealing with children is incredibly taxing and difficult. Teachers are [in my country] underpaid and under-appreciated and I believe this…

The stress level and difficulty of teaching (while accurate statements) are not relevant to this issue. You can't excuse poor treatment of the biological needs of students simply because you have a very difficult job. My comment was also not a reductive statement when I've been told "no" when I ask to go to the bathroom, or told "3 people have already gone to the bathroom, you'll have to wait until next period." Both…

> I watched a classmate pee their pants once when they were denied access to the bathroom.

I wish that had resulted in a lawsuit.

Re: School or Prison

#169

In the UK our prisons often look nicer than our (state) schools. Many of our prisons are quite ancient, whereas many of our state schools are 1960s monstrosities. For example: * https://hidden-london.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/geograp... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/James_Ho... * https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1185483.ece/ALT... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com…

monstrosties is a strong word, they're cheap and functional (and anything but pretty, everybody agrees). I grew up in these (both kind, classical and industrial actually) and nobody really cared.

Re: School or Prison

#170

In the UK our prisons often look nicer than our (state) schools. Many of our prisons are quite ancient, whereas many of our state schools are 1960s monstrosities. For example: * https://hidden-london.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/geograp... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/James_Ho... * https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1185483.ece/ALT... vs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com…

The outside of prisons look nicer. Visitors entrances often look pretty so non-incarcerated people and local officials are presented with an inoffensive facade that's not dissimilar to a modern business or institutional reception area. Conditions in the rest of the building may be appalling, but generally nobody is allowed to take pictures of that.
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