Schools are like their own little universes. A whole mini-society, complete with its own specific rules and customs, some of which make absolutely no sense whatsoever. You can't help but wonder what the faculty was thinking in some of these cases, or why no one stopped to think about why they were so weird.
While schools are a place of learning, they can also be places of absolute stupidity.
U/SoLe123456 asked:
What's the dumbest rule your school ever enforced?
It really makes you stop and think, what event led to these weird rules being put into place?
Seems counterproductive.
"My school had 3 staircases along a very long corridor. We were banned from using the middle staircase because it got overcrowded. The ban was lifted once they realised it only made the other two staircases just as crowded."
"This road has too much traffic. We should close it."
How did they get to be principal?
late school GIFGiphy"The new Principal made a "morning round-up" rule where anyone arriving to class after the last bell had to go to the cafeteria and listen to a lecture about not being late for class. This took about an extra 15 minutes, making the students even more late to class than they would have otherwise been. Needless to say, everyone hated it, even the teachers. That principal didn't last long..."
"Lmao this sounds similar to a rule at my high school. If you weren't in your 1st period class before O Canada played, you had to head to the cafeteria, miss class (yup cuz THAT's smart) and "sit in silence". The first day it went into practice, I walked in just as the principal was telling everyone over the PA to stand up for the national anthem, so technically O Canada hadn't started yet. Regardless, my teacher said I was late and I had to head to the cafeteria AFTER the national anthem had finished playing (Again, I'm already in the class so what was the f*cking point?)."
"The cafe was FULL with other stragglers and the teachers on duty couldn't have given less of a sh!t. I sat with some friends who were also late and spent the entire time playing cards. The next day the rule was cancelled. Go figure."
No drinking water allowed.
"I was sent to the principal in elementary school for getting a drink of water out of line (as in we walked down the hall in a formation and we had designated water drinking stops). To this day I still remember the principal asking angrily well what if every one started getting water without permission? And I still don't have an answer."
Doesn’t the dean have better things to do?
"Toilet paper rationing. This was in 1997/98, btw. Apparently the high school girls room was going through too much toilet paper so the dean, a woman, stood outside the door and distributed a few squares of 1-ply institutional toilet paper to us as we went in. If she noticed toilet paper on the floor, our ration got cut down. If we asked for more for...bigger jobs...we were told to save it for home."
"There were several episodes of girls stuck in stalls until friends could beg for more TP because of period messes or unexpected bowel incidents. The dean wouldn't even hand it over--she would go in the bathroom and pass it a few squares at a time over the door. If you didn't catch it as it fell and it landed on the floor, well, that's your fault and you're not getting more. If you used more than she thought necessary, tough luck, go to class with blood/sh!t on your body."
"It took about a week of extremely angry parents coming to the school and calling both the school and the school board, but we finally got our toilet paper back, unlimited."
"How did we celebrate?"
"By TPing her car, of course."
It’s incredible how far some schools go to enforce the zero tolerance rule. It’s like they don’t fully understand what it means to be bullied.
Best Excuses For Late Assignments That Were Actually True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
A bit of the ol’ ultraviolence.
stop it science fiction GIF by FilmStruckGiphy"After 9/11, my school instituted a zero-tolerance policy on bullying and violence. What 9/11 had to do with bullying, I don't know. Anyways, Halloween 2001, I dressed up as the guy from Clockwork Orange. He carries a cane around."
"The principal pulled me aside, told me walking around with a cane could be a weapon, therefore just walking with it is an act of violence, and suspended me for a couple of days, telling me that after 9/11, "we don't mess around with that kind of stuff"."
Neither of these rules make and sense.
"That if you say/do anything back to your bully it becomes a mutual conflict and isn't bullying, so if they start calling you slurs and making you feel bad every day and you call them stupid once or twice the school probably won't help."
"Also dress code required school branded hoodies... they were 50 dollars. If you wore a non school hoodie you got in school suspension."
What kind of gang would that be?
"No beads. Apparently, they thought beaded jewelry was gang-related?"
"Nothing says hardened criminal like matching bead bracelets that say "BFFs <3" ."
And of course, we can’t forget the truly bizarre rules that were put into place by clueless adults.
This is just sad.
Bored Fun GIFGiphy"My school was in a poor area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Not a lot of schools here have money for anything. Because of a huge donation of books at the time I was in school, my school got an absurd number of books, including expensive ones."
"There were a few dumb rules, but the dumbest of them all?"
"We basically couldn't touch the books in the library without permission. It might sound reasonable at first, but check this out."
"The library was huge, and there were lots of books, including contemporary classics, non-fiction like The Last Problem, English Literature like Infinite Jest, How to kill a Mockingbird and whatnot. Dude, there was so much there, that place was probably the most valuable place in the entire school."
"I mean, it was awesome, there were enough books there for each student to lend about 100 every day."
"Here's the problem, the library went all but untouched for the entirety of my time there. Why? The amount of work it took to read one of those books was ridiculous and pretty much made sure not a single student bothered to try."
"First, you couldn't take any of the books home, period. Forget the fact that they had your address and all your parents info, so in the case that someone took it and didn't return it, they could just get it back - it had happened before at least once before the rule was made."
"Second, you couldn't leave the library with them, no matter what."
"Third, if you wanted to read the book, you'd have to do it in the library at the lunch break, which was about 45 minutes, so unless you weren't hungry ever, you had only a few minutes to go to the library. It was only open for a few hours around the break and not at all at any other time, so unless you stayed there for hours until the break for the afternoon classes, you just wouldn't have another chance. (Those hours around the break could be used for you to be tutored by a teacher, which almost never happened)"
"Fourth, once you went through all of that, you could only read the book under the observation of the people that volunteered to work in the library for credit, which was never more than two or three people, sometimes no one. Which means that if you got there and there were already three people there, forget it. Unless you were willing to read it standing up close to where the book was kept and even then they'd check on you every minute or so."
"Fifth, you couldn't get inside the library with a backpack, with food, in groups, speaking, without the appropriate uniform - you couldn't get in with the gym one, for instance -, with other books, earrings, necklaces or anything that could make noise while you were walking. Some were reasonable, but the issue was that one simple mistake and you would get banned."
"Sixth, any banishment from it was permanent. I complained about it once in the second year and was never allowed inside ever again. I even tried to get some teachers to help me, but it didn't work."
"Seventh, and probably the dumbest, only the students that had a certain amount of high grades could get any book at all. If you got something like 4/10 on your last biology exam, you couldn't even get inside the library. The standard was so insane, only six other students and I in my classroom had enough good grades to get books."
"In all my time there, the library was basically deserted for the majority of it. I tried to go there many times, but it was too much work. Out of all the books I only managed to read two Brazilian ones "A guerra do lanche" (The lunch war) and "Blecaute" (Blackout) which I remembered to this day in details. There were times where I legit thought about straight up ditching class to read some of them."
"I tried to get more, like The Last Problem, Kafka's Metamorphosis, Ulysses - which I know I wouldn't have been able to do it, but I was just curious -, A brief history of time, Withering Heights, etc."
"But the amount of work it took was so much that it was just almost impossible to be able to read more than one or two books a year, and even that took dedication, because I basically had to sacrifice part of my lunch time."
"The rumor was that the principals* - we had more than one - basically saw us as "savages" who would destroy the books if we were allowed to touch them and even though they had no reason to believe so - the library worked well without those restrictions a year before I had gotten there, with only minimal incidents and even those didn't result in the books getting destroyed."
The principal did WHAT?
"We were not allowed to have facial hair at all."
"Like to the point where the principal would walk around during lunch with razors and shaving cream and do "Stubble checks"."
"Absolutely ridiculous and he would send tons of us to the bathrooms to shave during lunch, no matter how small the stubble was."
Unnecessary precautions
"It wasn't really the rule that was dumb but the reason for it. In my last year of high school, the school issued a rule that all students had to wear student IDs. If you didn't, you had to immediately go and pay for another ID. While you can see how many students may have saw this a way to skip class, the reason for this was the school shootings that happened the previous year."
"The reasoning was that it would be easier to spot who is a student and who is not a student to then see who has malicious intent.....except that most shooters were students....so..."
It's safe to say that every single one of these rules were entirely unnecessary. Like, worse than the "two finger" rule when it came to wearing tank tops (to prevent girls from, god forbid, wearing spaghetti straps). These rules are completely absurd, and it makes you wonder how the adults in charge got their jobs in the first place.
To all the kids stuck in schools like this- stick it out, because I promise that the real world is nothing like this.
They asked:
"Native Americans of Reddit, what are your or your tribes ghost stories, legends, or supernatural occurrences?"
Here are some of the interesting legends and superstitions of North America's First Nations and Indigenous tribes.
Uktena
Brice Cooper on Unsplash
"Uktena. It's a legend about a horned snake in Tsalagi [Cherokee] legend. Uktena is said to be very large and round like a tree trunk, with horns on his head."
"The only way to wound him is to shoot at a singular spot on his forehead that emits bright light. It's similar to a diamond. If you defeat Uktena, you become a miracle worker."
"A great warrior. Yet, once you see the light of his forehead, you run toward it instead of trying to escape."
"Even to see Uktena sleeping is death. Not to the hunter, but to his family."
~ Faith-Hope-TacoBell
Dog Tails or Why They Sniff Each Other
gotdaflow on Unsplash
"Lenni Lenape story about why dogs sniff each other's butts."
"When the humans slept, dogs would get together and party, but not before taking their tails off. They'd dance the entire night, put their tails back on and return home."
"But one time a wolf found them and all the dogs had to scramble away to their homes for safety, but a lot of them grabbed the wrong tail."
"They never danced again at night because they were afraid of the wolf, so they were stuck with weird mismatched tails for the rest of their lives."
"This is the reason that dogs sniff each other's butts; to see if the other dog has their tail."
~ ChurroChick
Haida Raven Brings Light to the Earth
Cristina Glebova on Unsplash
"In the beginning there was no light in the world, because an old magician kept it hidden in a box inside his house. Raven, who was always hungry, didn't like the darkness because it was difficult to find food."
"One day he was looking for food near the old magician's house. He heard a voice saying, 'I have a box, and inside this box is another box, and inside this there is another box, and inside the smallest box is all the light in the world'."
"Raven decided to steal the light."
"Raven waited until the old man's daughter went down to the river to collect water. Just as she was dipping her basket into the river, he changed himself into a hemlock needle."
"The needle floated into her basket. When the girl drank some water, she swallowed Raven too."
"Inside the girl's belly Raven took the form of a human baby. He grew and grew, and in time she gave birth to a funny looking child with black eyes and a big nose."
"The old man loved his grandson so much that he gave in to the child's every wish. Raven became spoilt and greedy. He was bored with all his toys, and wanted to play with the box that held the light."
"Finally the grandfather opened the box and tossed the glowing ball of light to Raven."
"As soon as Raven caught the light, he immediately changed into his bird form. Holding the light in his beak, he flew up the chimney hole into the dark world."
"The magician was angry. He wanted to get the light back into his box."
"He flew after Raven."
"The light was heavy in Raven's beak, and he was getting tired. The magician was coming closer."
"Raven broke off some pieces of the light and threw them into the sky. They became the stars."
"The magician was still coming closer, so Raven broke off another piece of the light and threw it into the sky. It became the moon."
"Finally Raven became so tired that he tossed the last and biggest piece of the light into the sky. It became the sun; and that is how daylight came to the world."
~ deviety
Nakani
Oliver Roos on Unsplash
"Dené from northern British Columbia here, my mom used to always tell me stories of the Nehgunni [Nakani], or bushmen/wild-men when I was young."
"They were people who lived in the forest and took away people who wandered too far out, specifically children."
"I always figured these stories were created by my people to serve two purposes, first to teach young children to not wander far off, and second to give explanations to kidnappings or missing people."
~ spanishLION
See-at-coh
green trees near lake under blue sky during daytimePhoto by Jasper Gronewold on Unsplash"See-at-coh (don't know the translation in English) is a Cowlitz legend. Lived at this lake and it was his spot."
"We DO NOT go there or he will kill you. Used to have nightmares about him based on what I was taught as a kid."
"Like how you could stand at the edge of the water and be looking in and he would come out of it and just grab you. No whistling at night and keep windows covered."
"But then the mountain blew up [Mt. Saint Helen] and filled in the lake so don't know if he's still around or not."
~ kalimah1
Nahual of Mexico
Joshua Wilking on Unsplash
"I live in rural Mexico. There are many, many different Indigenous peoples in what's now Mexico."
"The ones who settled here speak Nahuatl—the language of the Aztecs. This legend took place in the early 1900's."
"One of my favourite Nahuatl myths is the Nahual."
"Some people were thought to be able to turn into an animal. Most of them could only turn into one, but the most powerful Nahual could turn into different animals."
"There was a man who owned a hacienda where my town is, and he had a sort of overseer that everyone was afraid of."
"Said overseer could take a message all the way to the next state (think hundreds of miles) and bring back a sealed response in a single day."
"He also seemed to know everything everyone did, all the time. He was rumoured to be a Nahual that could turn into a coyote and an eagle."
"His quarters were heavily warded in his absence, which only added fuel to the rumor. You can only kill a Nahual if you find the human skin he sheds to transform and burn said skin."
~ CTalina78
Yamǫ́rıa & Yamǫǫ̀zha
Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
"Yamǫ́rıa & Yamǫǫ̀zha—the giant twins [of the Dené]."
"There are landmarks all around the territory I live in that is exhibited as 'proof' they were alive."
"In the middle of the Mackenzie river( biggest river in the NorthWest Territories) there is a large stone sticking out of the river which looks like the petrified guts of a beaver, there is a giant branchless, leafless tree sticking out of the top of this stone."
"It is said that Yamǫǫ̀zha had hunted a giant beaver and gutted him there in the river. He used his spear to anchor down the cuts so fish may feed on them. They are still there to this day."
"Yamǫ́rıa's body can be seen laying down, it is essentially a mountain range that looks like a giant human laying on his back, completely with face and feet. This can be seen from the peak of the hill as you enter a town called Ft. Liard, the southwestern most town in the NWT."
Walking Sam of the Pine Ridge Reservation
Boston Public Library on Unsplash
"'Walking Sam' skulks in the shadows of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and convinces people to take their own lives, especially young people."
"He's 7 feet tall, very thin and has no mouth. When he stretches out his long arms, nooses hang down with Lakota children hanging from them."
"Walking Sam finds you when you're alone and puts thoughts in your head until you feel worthless and kill yourself.
"Sometimes Walking Sam is depicted looking like Abraham Lincoln, complete with the stovepipe hat. 'Walking Sam', 'Uncle Sam', I don't know if that's where the name came from."
"But Walking Sam is an evil infected upon the people when the Oceti Sakowin were forced onto the reservations; he isn't a legend of the people before Pine Ridge Reservation existed."
"Lincoln was President when the Lakota were being forced onto reservations. Lincoln also ordered the execution of 38 Lakota men the day after Christmas in 1862. It's the largest mass execution in U.S. history."
"I always thought Walking Sam was Lincoln. They carved his face onto Ŝa´kpe Tuŋkaŋŝi (Mount Rushmore was called Six Grandfathers) in the Paha Sa´pa (Black Hills)
"My Father attended Holy Rosary boarding school at Pine Ridge in the 1940s & 1950s, but our people didn't live on the reservation. My Grandmother said evil stalked the people there."
"My Father never wanted us to ever even visit any of our cousins or his Uncles there."
~ LakotaGrl
Este Lopocke or Este Lubutke
Morgane Perraud on Unsplash
"Miccosukee [Seminole] tribal member here (South Florida) and for us it's the little people."
"Essentially really small people (like barbie doll sized and smaller) that live in the trees. They play jokes and stuff mainly, unless you piss them off."
"Had family members get tricks played on them that couldn't be explained."
"And then we have our fair share of stories that circulate our reservation like a tribal member being taken by the little people."
"All on the reservation in the Everglades (like 40 mins west of Miami)."
~ SSBMBabyCakes
Haudenosaunee Rules
Chris Chow on Unsplash
"I know the Haudenosaunee [Iroquois Confederacy] rules."
"1. If you hear someone you know calling your name, but you also know they are not supposed to be there, DON'T respond. Especially if they are out of sight and insisting you come to them."
"2. Always play group games in counter-clockwise order, otherwise your playing with the dead."
"3. Also don't eat in the dark, this is considered inviting the dead to eat with you. If you can extend your hand all the way out and still see it clearly then your fine."
"4. Don't play card games past midnight. If you do, and someone knocks at the door, don't answer it."
"5. Try not to drop your cards, if you do then don't bend down to pick them up, or you will see hooves under the table. That's bad."
"6. Say thank you after meals, even if you're the one that made it. Even better if you say it in native tongue."
"7. If someone finishes their meal and says thank you, you say 'you're welcome', even if you didn't give it to them. Even better in native tongue."
"8. After someone dies, you should gather family as quickly as possible to have feasts for 10 days. The first dinner is large, then every meal after that is a smaller feast meant for portions of the family to come at different times to help.
"The last feast on the 10th day is the closing dinner, which is the largest, with the entire family expected to show up and help. For every meal of these 10 days, put out a plate of the deceased's favorite foods first."
"Contrary to rule 6, you do not say thank you at any time during these 10 days. This is because it is believed that it takes the dead 10 days to relive their lives before they pass on, so this is your last chance to eat with them."
"Saying 'Thank you' during this time will make them stop before they're done because you're saying you're done. This will have bad consequences."
"9. Don't try to contact spirits, especially with board games. This is not a tribe custom, it's more of an unspoken common sense among the Rez people."
"10. If a bird flies into your house, someone's going to die."
"11. Pregnant woman should not hold any child that isn't theirs."
"12. It's accepted that if you actually try to curse someone, literally going through all of the steps with the intention of harm, not accidentally wishing them bad luck, then your family will also be cursed horribly."
"13. If you play with fire you'll wet the bed."
~ kinda-always-hungry
To learn more general information about Indigenous mythology of the United States, visit the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian website.
For Canada, visit the First Nations in Canada website.
For information about specific tribes, visit their tribal government website for recommended resources.