Ask Lemmy

Yelled "toilet" three times in the corridor, just outside of the classroom as school was ending. Ended up into nearly two hours of detention, which ended when my parents came to look for me.

Apparently the teacher had another class and forgot about the detention. I was in the first grade.

On 9/11 we were told something bad was happening in the US, but no details. The teachers decided there would be no class for the rest of day, instead we'd have in-class recess until school ended. We were not informed about what was actually going on, just told to play.

I got in trouble for having fun while playing, because it was disrespectful.

Me and another kid got detention for fighting.

At my house.

On a Saturday.

Got a negative report because some students were being loud in the corridor before the teacher came in. I (and a few others) were doing my homework, but the entire class got punished 🙃 If I had more courage back then, I would have marched straight to the assistant head's office and refused to get it signed by my mum. It was only 5 points, but I hate when quiet people minding their own business get unfairly blamed because they happened to be in the same group as those causing chaos.

I beat a teacher at a typing test (speed, which is raw speed with mistakes subtracted; aka WPM, words per minute). He said it wasn't fair that I found a "better" way. Right fingers on Shift and Enter (and maybe right thumb on Space), and left hand doing the rest of the work. He said that's not the right way to type, even though he couldn't type as fast as me. So he took me to the office and said I cheated on the typing test. To pass the class, he made me learn the "normal" way of typing. So I did, and I beat him again, this time with office staff watching.

This was in the early to mid-1990s. No computers, no phones, no Google. I don't envy today's kids.

I asked my French teacher what a comment he’d written at the bottom of one of my test papers said, because I couldn’t read it.

Apparently it said: “Your handwriting is atrocious.”

He refused to believe I wasn’t taking the piss out of him and I ended up having to ‘explain myself’ to the head.

We discovered our teacher had a secret water bottle that was actually full of alcohol and called her out on it. She couldn't write us up for anything 'official' but we were suddenly getting written up for dozens of incredibly ridiculous things.

I got written up for looking bored in class.

I already knew how to read when going to the first year of school. My parents were worried I'd be bored during classes, so they convinced the teacher to allow me to bring a book to read for myself when I'm done with any reading work. She probably thought I'd bring some fairy tales, and agreed.

When the class came, I finished the reading exercise and pulled out the book I was allowed to. It wasn't fairy tales though - it was a dinosaur encyclopedia. The teacher got very angry and took the book away, as "it's not an appropriate reading material for a first grader".

I refused to speak with the teacher for the rest of the semester.

The reason isn't really silly, I get it, but the punishment was.

In high school I spent a lot of time reading. Basically every lunch, every study hall period, etc. I read a fairly significant chunk of the library.

Problem was that I also tended to read during boring lectures in class, which pissed off a couple of my teachers and resulted in not great grades.

But all of their punishments were designed to punish people who hated to read. So my math teacher finally snaps and sends me to in school suspension... where I sit in a room and the monitor on duty is absolutely delighted that I sat there the entire day to read and even lets me go early for such good behavior.

I was later kicked out of honors courses and put into a remedial study hall situation. Again with a monitor who was supposed to make sure people were actually studying. Only way to get out of this was ... a library pass. Where I could freely read whatever I wanted. Never did spend much time in study hall.

Grade 6. I had the correct info on a book report (from the World Book Encyclopedia) but my teacher refused to accept them as correct. I "disrupted class" by telling her she was incorrectly giving me a D, and read the relevant passage from the encyclopedia.

Sent to the principal, who said "You're right, we'll have your grade changed, but go have a seat out there for a bit and wait so she doesn't feel insulted"

One of my truly radicalizing moments about speaking truth to power.

I was caught making out with my girlfriend.

I should mention that this was an all-girl Catholic ~~cult~~ school in the early 80s. Not only was I expelled but my parents moved us to a different country because they were so ashamed.

4th Grade - my friends and I used to fold up pieces of paper into 'guns' that we would play with. They basically looked like a big L. It was right when zero tolerance policies started to get implemented, so of course I got 3 days suspension for my paper. That same year another kid got the same for an action figure gun.

11th Grade - in computer science class all of our exams were written only. I finished my test early, then went to a computer to work on my coding project for that week. The teacher I guess first thought I was cheating on the test, so called me to the front to make an example of me. When she learned I had already turned in my test she changed the charge to using the school computers for non school activities. When I demonstrated that I was working on my project she changed again to say that using the computer was against the agreement we all signed at the start of the year regarding appropriate use of the school computers. I asked to see what part of the agreement I had violated, and she pulled out the sheet to show me. When that didn't back her up she again changed her approach, this time writing me up for Saturday detention for "not bringing my book to class". I went to the Vice Principal to contest the entire issue, but he just told me to go to the detention anyway. I ended up spending an hour cleaning marker off of the walls.

I was disciplined for 'disturbing' the class by correcting my teacher when she said the elephant was the largest mammal in the world... And no, I did not say 'yo mama'...

In the sixth grade I got my first detention ever because I picked up my baseball cap.

We were on a field trip and we went to visit some museum in the capital by train. While we walked back to the train station, our teacher stated that "no one is to step out of the train before her permission or they will get detention". I was the last to get on the train and my cap hit the backpack of the classmate in front of me and fell out of the train doors. I instinctively turned around, leaned out whist holding onto a safety bar and picked my cap. And stepped back on board.

I was a calm kid and had never broken any school rules or gotten into any trouble whatsoever. So when my classmates saw me putting one feet outside the train they simply flipped: "TEACHER, LORINDÓL STEPPED OUT OF THE TRAIN! YOU'RE GETTING A DETENTION!"

I was utterly dumbfounded. My "friends" had betrayed me and the teacher was approaching and looking angry. With tears in my eyes I explained what had happened and reminded her that we still had more than 10 minutes until the train doors would even close. Her face went from angry to sad and she silenced my heckling classmates with a few strict words. She told me that we would discuss this when we were back at school.

When we got back, everyone else got to go home and the teacher asked me to our classroom with her. "Lorindól, I'm very sorry. I have to give you detention because you did step out of the train, even if it was for all the right reasons. I understand you acted instinctively and did not mean to break any rules. But I must keep my word or it will lose it's meaning. As stupid as this sounds, the purpose of this detention is not to punish you. It's purpose is to show the others that my word is the law in this classroom, with no exceptions. I hope you can understand why I must do this." I thought about it for a while and said that I did.

When I told my parents about the detention my dad couldn't stop laughing. "You finally get a detention and it's for NOTHING!"

Mom was so angry that she wanted to call the teacher and make her call the detention off. I managed to talk her out of it and didn't hold any grudge against the teacher. I learned a lot about the world of adults that day.

It's a universal thing I think. So many little injustices that stay with us well into adulthood!

I have two. One goes way back to when I was 6, some 42 years ago.

We were on a field trip to a beach in the summer, which, given we live on a group of small islands, wasn't exactly imaginative, but I guess the teachers just wanted out of the classroom.

Anyway, the task was to collect seaweed. I came back with a bit of kelp, with the 'leaves' missing, so I guess it looked a bit like wood.

The teacher seems to think so, and insisted that it was just a wooden stick. It clearly wasn't, as anyone who paid the blindest bit of attention would know. My dog could tell the difference. Proof:

But she dismissed my weak protest and that was that. It was at that point, I guess, I learned a valuable lesson: some adults are fucking stupid.

The other incident was when I was 9. I was a good, polite boy in school and was never cheeky. Anyway, at the end of each day, we had to stand and be quiet for 30 seconds before we could leave class.

On this occasion I had the hiccups. The teacher held me back for half an hour and lectured me on respecting authority. She genuinely thought my hiccups, which are involuntary by definition, we're put on deliberately to provoke her. Needless to say, that reinforced the lesson I'd learned with the seaweed.

I needed to pee. I had to bring a doctor's note saying that, yes, I needed to pee.

I got in trouble for wearing a trenchcoat while it was raining shortly after the whole columbine thing. There are some absolute morons working in schools.

It's a rain coat, asshole.

It's raining.

Do the fucking math!

Calling my teacher a dog after he called me a horse. This is no joke, my mother was called in.

Somebody set fire to a wall mounted bin with a firework inside it.
The deputy head went to put the fire out, the firework went of almost blowing his face off, allegedly, I didn't see it as I was already in detention for an unrelated incident.
The deputy head storms straight into where I'm sat on my tod for detention and asks what do I think I'm playing at almost killing him.
The headmaster gets called in and everyone's grilling me to confess for setting the bin on fire while I was in detention the whole time!

Called the kid who groped me in music class (and also liked to harass and try to dry-hump my friend at recess) a baboon, and before that I moved from the chair onto the floor so he couldn't touch my ass with his feet, but the teacher of course bitched at me for that. Fun times. (:

Eating chips in a class we were allowed to eat in. Other kids were eating when I got sent to the office and I got in more trouble for pointing that out. Painting my nails. I was told to stop, asked to go to the bathroom, and got in trouble when I came back with my nails fully painted. And in a situation where the whole class was told to be silent, but the teacher refused to look at any of us, I noticed someone (who was the type that never got in trouble) was pretty impatiently waving her hand around, so I told the teacher she needs something and was sent to the office. OH now that I'm writing I'm thinking of more. Some kid groped me in the middle of the cafeteria and I was scolded for pushing the issue because "he's a good kid who was just "being silly" and these kinds of things can really follow someone ya know." He later spent time in prison. And there was a girl who was a huge bully that I told to stop picking on someone who was afraid of getting hurt (I truly had a death wish, the girl was 3x my size) and she threatened to jump me in the bathroom. She harrassed me for weeks and I definitely aggravated the situation because I refused to be intimidated. I'd announce when I was going to the bathroom, tell her nows your chance etc. I was asked to leave her alone bc if she were to get into another fight she would be sent to juvie. She is currently in prison. Really backwards logic in that school

I once got detention for not getting a practice test signed by my parents. I'd scored a 92, but apparently everyone else bombed, so they wanted everyone to get theirs signed, I figured that since I'd done well that it wouldn't apply to me. Oops.

In the fifth grade we were doing some group project thing where we had our desks grouped together while we were working on it. There were probably four of us in each group. One of the girls (we will call her Ashley) in my group was acting wildly, and I blurted out loudly "Ashley is having an orgasm!"

There was a pause of silence and an eruption of laughter and a scolding cry from the teacher calling me to her desk and out into the hall. She marched me to the principals office. I am utterly confused at this point. I sat outside the principals office for what felt like an eternity while my teacher and her were discussing what to do with me.

They called me into the office and had my mother on the phone and handed the phone to me and made me tell her what I said. I am still so confused, and I asked them and they all told me what I said was highly inappropriate and I received a three day suspension for sexual harassment. You see, I did not know what this word I had said actually meant, what I was trying to say and mean was "spasm" but neither authority figures nor my mother believed me. If you're wondering if this was too harsh, this was in the bible belt south in the mid 90s. Not in an exactly progressive state in the US. Fuck those bitches, im still bitter about that!

• Got in trouble for painting, or rather inking, a still life assignment in art class in black and white.
• Was threatened with a zero and write up for "lack of effort" for handing in a typed book report at the end of the same class period in which it was assigned. Don't get mad at me because you assigned a book I'd already read and refused to allow me to choose another.
• Threatened with expulsion after being called onto the carpet in the principal's office for a Very Stern Talk with a policeman present and everything for having a doodle of a benzene ring on the cover of my chemistry class notebook, because this was apparently "bomb making plans." A demonstration that the school issued textbook for this very same class was just chock-a-block full of not only this but illustrations of similar molecules was not received well by the administration ("backtalk") but ultimately I escaped unscathed.
• Sent to detention for my first and only time for gainsaying my biology teacher during a tirade delivered to the class early in the semester on the topic of, "Microscopes are important because you can't see no cells with just your eyes [sic]," and I responded by not raising my hand per se, but rather holding up a hard boiled egg from my lunchbox.
• Subsequently determined undetentionable during that selfsame detention due to the mandatory assignment therein, which was a photocopied form letter thing which was obviously designed to make you feel very very sorry and very very guilty about what you did with a writing prompt at the top demanding a minimum of three full paragraphs on the topic of, verbatim: "Explain why you are here." No further instructions. I started with the big bang and worked forward from there, and I got to about page four of meticulous blackletter script on both sides of each sheet of paper before the teacher supervising the detention room finally noticed (probably due to the bold text) and whisked one off of my desk, briefly skimmed it, and then threw me out. I was not allowed to keep what I had written. For all I know it's still pinned to the wall in the staff room, decades later.
• The reason for the blackletter script was because I wrote everything with a mildly customized vintage Sheaffer fountain pen specifically to annoy that same teacher. I imagine this also annoyed several others, although one or two were appreciative. For instance, my 11th grade math teacher bribed me with extra credit by having me hand letter titles on things for her that she'd photocopy and use as handouts, or whatever. Numerous attempts were made to bring the hammer down on me for this in some form or another, none of which were successful.

I have more. These are the most amusing ones.

Yes, I was an incorrigible little shit when I was in school, mostly because I won't countenance bullies of any stripe. Being bullied by other kids is bad enough; If you're a teacher, do better.

This isn't my story it was a friend, but I think about it often and it still makes me laugh. It was high school English class and the teacher asked "does anybody know the famous quote from 'The Elephant Man'?" and without missing a beat my friend put his arm in front of his face like and elephant trunk and made a loud and accurate elephant noise while slowly waving his arm up. Everybody thought it was hilarious except for the teacher who sent him to sit in the hall for the rest of the period. So he's sitting out there and 5 minutes later the door opens and another kid comes out and my friend is like "what did you do wrong?" and the other kid goes "I couldn't stop laughing"

Which is fucking great. Gets me every time.

I don't know how stupid it was but I started taking the bulb out of the overhead projector. The lady teaching put it right next to me everyday and the fan was going bad. The noise it made was driving me crazy and she just ignored me when I asked her to turn it off. I got caught taking one and they went ape shit over it in admin. Finally after one of them went down to the room and listened to the POS running inquired to the teacher how she expected anyone to be able to concentrate with that in their ear everyday they backed off a bit. Still got in trouble but I was smiling the whole time. For years after I was out of school I flipped that old biddy the bird every time I ran into her.

During band, I left my trombone on the stand, and went into the instrument room to get something out of my case. When I returned and tried to play my horn, it was badly muffled. I tried to open it up with a blast, and a bunch of paper fell out. While I was gone, my section mates had torn up a piece of paper and stuffed it in my bell.

It wasn't what they were hoping, the paper more fell out than blasted out, but I got the detention anyway, even though I was the innocent victim of a vicious prank.

I survived. It was the trombone section, I was guilty of numerous other infractions I was never punished for.

we were building a snow fort and I was punching a hole into a snow block

next thing I know, a teacher is telling me I have to go inside because I punched a kid in the face

I had to sit in detention, as like a first grader, and have the older kids guide me through it. I was so confused. pretty sure I was crying. no adult helped me, that I can recall.

either this kid hated me and made some shit up, or they were so fucking stupid and enough of a little bitch that they walked right behind and stuck their face where I was repeatedly punching the snow and got hurt without me feeling the impact.

and on that day, my mistrust of authority was born. no amount of insistence would sway them. I must be punished.

High school bathroom during lunch. 15 or so guys, handful smoking. Saw a guy making a smiley face on the ceiling with a cigarette lighter. It just leaves a soot mark that wipes away easily.

No sooner do I attempt to do the same thing, the principal walked in and saw me...

"YOU!" he yelled. "You're going to HQ!" Like he was a cop or something.

Cops came, he said that he wanted me charged with attempted arson. He took the cops to the bathroom. When they came back, the cops were kind of laughing at the principal.

Got charged with criminal damage to property, but it got dropped, because the mark could be wiped off easily.

I got a detention for looking at a teacher "weird" in 9th grade. I was the only one in detention and he stared at ME weird the whole time, then tried to block the door on my way out. I slugged him in the stomach to get by and he never reported it, so that confirmed the creepy.

I got sent out to the hall whenever I had hiccups in 8th grade. They were too loud, apparently, and the teacher thought I was faking in order to disturb class.

I was in 5th grade during George W. Bush's stint as governor of Texas in the 90s. He did a bunch of "education reform" there that was the predecessor of the No Child Left Behind Act he championed as President. I was in a relatively good school but despite that, we were learning about nouns and verbs for the first time that year.

The teacher was an idiot and we would get dozens of worksheets that covered the same topic. For the nouns and verbs section, we would read through a paragraph and had to write all the nouns in one column and all the verbs in the other column. When the test came, it was the same as the worksheets but the teacher changed the columns to verb/noun, which I didn't read and I got a 0 for the test.

I went to the teacher and told her that it was an honest mistake and showed her how I aced all the other assignments, so I obviously understood the concept. She was insistent though that I got a zero despite that. However, because of the new Bush educational policies, students had the right to retake any assignment for the minimum passing grade.


So I asked her to retake the test, she said ok, and I crossed out Noun and wrote Verb and and same to Verb to Noun and handed it back. She immediately wrote another large zero on the page because I couldn't change that part and I lost recess privileges for the rest of the week for being "rude".

Revenge came though several weeks later when she was hanging black plastic sheeting on the suspended ceiling to create a makeshift planetarium in corner of the room. She was on a tall ladder and when she was putting up the last sheet, she lost her balance and fell through the sheeting and off the ladder and broke her arm. She was crying out for someone to help her but me and the other kids just let her struggle for a few minutes before she freed herself by tearing through the plastic sheet like Ace Ventura escaping from the rhino, crying.

1st to 2nd grade so this was what my parents relayed to me after I grew up a bit more

Apparently I was so aggressively autistic (and relatively smart) that I not only did close to perfect on all my exams, I once did the calligraphy/writing homework so well that my teacher had to talk to my parents to know if I cheated by having them do my homework for me... FYI: my handwriting now is as bad as a doctor's

Sweet tap-dancing christ, this whole thread. If there's anything I've learned today, it's that some teachers are the most petty dictators that cannot tolerate being proven in the wrong, nor can handle having their decision making skills challenged. They're out there doing real lasting damage to people and their ability to think critically.

It's almost enough to make me want to go into education, just to displace one of these tyrants.

Sincerely, I'm sorry all of you had to go through any of this. Here's hoping you have support and find closure.

I've told this story before and I'll tell it again.

4th grade Teacher of the Year winner and current sitting member of the school board Mrs. S. had a strict rule when lining up after recess:

"Straight line, no talking, no touching."

The bell would ring, and we'd all run to our respective, numbered spots on the playground, in a straight line, without talking, and certainly not touching, one another. Then, Mrs. S. would walk out to us, and we'd recite the line:

"Straight line, no talking, no touching."

And she'd lead us inside.

One day, returning from recess, the kid in front of me, Joe, was crying while standing on his number. Foolishly, I set my hand on his shoulder, and asked, "Are you alright?" Mrs. S. arrived just in time to rectify the situation. I watched as she strode up to me, staring daggers into my soul, and I yanked my hand off of my fellow student's shoulder, but the damage was done. Towering over me, inches away, she shouts to the class, "Class, what is the rule?"

"Straight line, no talking, no touching."

"Papalonian, what is the last part?"

"No touching."

"No... Touching."

I received my first and only citation for the rest of my elementary school years. Ever thankful will I be for learning the lesson that empathy (towards someone I didn't even like) shall never be tolerated when the rules forbid it.

Changing a monitor's resolution from 1024x768 to something useable.

Catholic school with uniform including khaki pants. I started my period and bled thru. I swapped to sweatpants. Most teachers just figured I must have some reason and didn't bother me. A couple asked after it, one accepted my reason and offered to to let me out of class to have a little more time to cleanup or call home or whatever I needed to feel comfortable. The last one gave me detention for being out of uniform.

School administration reversed it when they heard why I was being sent to detention. I was advised to just go to the main office if it ever happened again so they could help me instead of having to deal with each teacher myself.

I got detention multiple times for reading in class before they basically gave up. I was getting good grades and paying just enough attention to the classes I read through that if called on I could participate, but it was boring and slow, and books kept me from being disruptively bored. I barely stopped reading all day and would burn through 1,000 page books in under 2 days (the public library gave me a second card to use for inter library loan to not use my normal checkout slots on shipping days :). Thing is, detention didn’t have a no reading rule, because in a school that would be silly, so I’d just… keep reading. So they called my mom who was like yep, they just read all day here too, so they stopped trying to punish me for it. My English teacher had the right idea and didn’t care if I read the assigned books or paid attention in class as long as I did the vocab tests and wrote up a one-page report on every single book I finished. Far more work, but much better suited to what I was going to do anyway.

I also got in trouble multiple times for wearing absolutely nothing other than pj pants (like yea shirts and stuff too but never jeans). I contested them giving me detention for it, and got off because it wasn’t an official rule in the handbook, something I’d explicitly checked prior to my wardrobe shift to comfort and giving no fucks. They changed the handbook the next year and I switched to solid color athletic pants in obnoxiously bright colors, and I again got in trouble, and contested, and same thing got off because it wasn’t explicitly mentioned.

Infamously hated student dean at an otherwise pretty normal HS was known for sitting in her office and watching students on the security cameras so she could dole out punishment for incredibly minor stuff like being late to class, running in the halls, and covering your face (was seen as an attempt to thwart the cameras or security) etc.

However, she was visibly in a more angry mood when on physical rotation like watching the Cafeteria during lunch, so people would avoid any interaction with her like the plague.

Anyways, one day during a very cold winter lunch one of my friends entered into the cafeteria from outside with his hood up, hands in pockets, and visibly covered in snow from walking outside. Rest of our friend group was already sitting at our usual table as he's rolling up. Student dean has already clocked him and within maybe 10 seconds of entering the building, is asked to remove his hood.

Buddy replies with "oh sorry, I was cold"

We watched as the dean proceeded to tear into him for "talking back" and "insubordination" before he got hauled off to the main office and was given a weeks worth of after school detention.

Funniest thing was we were warned about the atrocious Dean by the previous year's Valedictorian. No one liked her.