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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

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Re: School or Prison

#251

Post by ineedasername »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #163
ineedasername wrote: post #100

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"

Yes, meal times for kids in school are also poorly structured, often dictated by over-crowded facilities that can't hold enough people to let everyone eat at a normal lunch time. My kids' school starts at 8:50 am, but one of them has lunch 11:00 a.m. with 4 hours afterwards during which they can't eat. We let him bring a snack and tell him to let his teacher know his parents gave him permission to eat, and they should contact us if there's a problem. Though last year he also had a teacher who recognized the problem and had an unofficial "snack time". Plenty of teachers are not arbitrary & capricious in their rule making.

Re: School or Prison

#252

Post by OJFord »

watermelon59 wrote: post #212
lemonspat wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same college experience. I nearly raised my hand to request permission but saw other kids just leaving class (sophomores I think)

It's so weird because we go from being treated like children one year, to being treated like adults the next. There's no in-between.

In the UK in sixth form (the two years prior to university) - speaking from my own experience only of course - we would generally come and go as at university, the only difference being that the teacher might question it, (in contrast to lecturers never caring, at least not in a disciplinary or educational sense) in which case 'just going to the loo/getting a coffee miss' was fine. That's about as in between as I can imagine.

Re: School or Prison

#253

Post by kube-system »

grecy wrote: post #244
pavel_lishin wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our principal refused to let students leave campus, as a student had gotten in a car wreck over lunch and died at a previous school. So, there's some logic there. They are nominally responsible for you during school hours.

> Our principal refused to let students leave campus, as a student had gotten in a car wreck over lunch and died at a previous school. So, there's some logic there By that logic, we should never let students leave at all, because certainly some have been killed in car wrecks on the way home. There is NO logic in preventing people doing that which they will do later anyway.

No -- common law ascribes different responsibilities to a school during the school day, in comparison to before arriving or after leaving for the day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis

The logic isn't "kids might die in a crash", it is that "schools are responsible for what happens to kids during the school day". The school administration isn't trying to be altruistic, they're trying to avoid liability for a death.

Re: School or Prison

#254

Post by jolux »

leephillips wrote: post #249
dorkwood wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like her. Last time I taught HS I told my students that I would never deny them the right to go to the bathroom, but that if they went more than three times in a week (or something) I would send a note to the nurse so she could discuss a possible health issue with them and their parents.

Why would you do that? That doesn't seem very trusting of your students. People need to go to the bathroom several times a day, there's no reason to think that needing to go to the bathroom in your class is an indication of a health issue.

Re: School or Prison

#255

Post by ineedasername »

hoka-one-one wrote: post #246
input_sh wrote: post #133

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.

"I didn't get into college because I had to use the bathroom during class a lot" - no one, ever Just turn on your voice recorder and go.

I don't know about how things usually are because my kids aren't in HS yet, but I do know that their school district, during distance learning, has a blanket policy that parents are not allowed to record the teaching sessions. So I wouldn't be too surprised if voice recorders aren't allowed in many schools as well.

Re: School or Prison

#256

Post by bshanks »

ineedasername wrote: post #100

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…

In the US, jury duty can have issues with bathroom rights also. In many places everything must stop when any juror is out of the room.

Re: School or Prison

#257

Post by refulgentis »

jolux wrote: post #254
leephillips wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like her. Last time I taught HS I told my students that I would never deny them the right to go to the bathroom, but that if they went more than three times in a week (or something) I would send a note to the nurse so she could discuss a possible health issue with them and their parents.

Why would you do that? That doesn't seem very trusting of your students. People need to go to the bathroom several times a day, there's no reason to think that needing to go to the bathroom in your class is an indication of a health issue.

Kids abuse this, I went to an upper middle class Catholic school for middle school, and even there, bathrooms breaks were used as an excuse to go hang out in the bathroom and ultimately culminated in what amounted to a daily fight club, where there was a sense of honor if you got knocked out

Re: School or Prison

#258

Post by WoodenChair »

This reminds me of an essay that Paul Graham wrote that compares schools to prisons: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

> Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.

> In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric.

Re: School or Prison

#259

Post by allenu »

GuB-42 wrote: post #27
ThePadawan wrote: post #9

I did quite well by measuring "overall area of ground level windows".

It was my criteria as well and the only one that failed me was https://www.holmesmiller.com/project/hmp-grampian Which looks really nice for a prison. I suspect it is an administrative building, or just the entrance. Not the place where inmates actually live.

It does look really nice. Based on the photos, it does resemble a school, or at the minimum, a library.

Re: School or Prison

#260

Post by leephillips »

jolux wrote: post #254
leephillips wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like her. Last time I taught HS I told my students that I would never deny them the right to go to the bathroom, but that if they went more than three times in a week (or something) I would send a note to the nurse so she could discuss a possible health issue with them and their parents.

Why would you do that? That doesn't seem very trusting of your students. People need to go to the bathroom several times a day, there's no reason to think that needing to go to the bathroom in your class is an indication of a health issue.

Good question. I tried to treat my students as adults, to the occasional chagrin of the administration, as much as possible. I definitely did not trust them—I knew too much—but I tried to pretend that I did. So my ploy was to discourage the students who would otherwise go hang out in the bathroom every single class. Of course one needs to go several times per day. But that does not translate to every time my class meets.
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