In 3rd grade we had a rack of books in the class and we would sometimes be given half an hour to pick a book and read, I was a reader, I got like half way through a book and it was time up and we had to put the books back, well I wanted to finish it so I put it in my bag and went to ask the teacher if I could finish it later, she was busy talking to someone and told me she would talk to me “in a minute” and like a 7 or 8 yo I promptly forgot about it. An hour later she sees the book in my bag, calls me out in front of the whole class for stealing and when I tried to tell her Id tried to ask if it was ok to take it home so I could read it later but she was busy she called me a “liar and a theif” and back onto the shelf it went.

A few days later I took the book and hid it behind a cabinet near the door to our room, at reading time she noticed it was missing, demanded to know what Id done with it, accused me of stealing it again and tipped my bag onto the floor to find it. When she didnt find it, she told me “once a theif always a theif” and when the bell rung that day and she was busy packing up her desk, me the last kid out the door put his bag down to tie his shoe… and I stole the fucking thing.

If you’re going to treat me like I’m guilty anyway, might as well be guilty.

I got suspended once because someone “punched” me as a joke. By the letter of the regulation it counted as a fist fight even though (a) we weren’t fighting and (b) I didn’t do the punching. Good times.

You can’t be late more than x times. Sounds fair till u realise the school bus was always late hence racking up like 200 official warnings. School couldn’t change the rule cos government regulations bus couldn’t get there sooner cos government refused to change the shedule.

Got detention for having the wrong shoe texture.

Texture.

Anyone who ate hot lunch had to eat everything on their tray, and we weren’t allowed to pass on any part of the meal because children in other countries were starving or something. Lunch ladies checked our trays before we were allowed to leave the cafeteria.

On the days when sauerkraut was served, we’d take turns being the sauerkraut smuggler, cramming that dank crap from about a dozen 8 year old kids’ trays into an empty milk carton, so we could toss it all without the lunch lady catching it. One day when I was the kraut smuggler, lunch nazi grabbed my carton and marched me back to the table. She said I had to eat every strand of the milky garbage we’d all stowed before I could leave.

I tried, but kept gagging and retching. I sat huddled with the collective slop at the table, crying for about 3 hours before my teacher found me and released me from lunch jail.

I’ve got 2, both from middle school:

1. No card games: Like, why? I even had a classmate who during one period didn’t exercise on PE. Perhaps due to previous sickness, I don’t remember. As he wasn’t the only one, he played some card game with others. The PE teacher noticed it, took that card deck, AND FUCKING RIPPED IT IN HALF. How much strength does that…? Anyway, I remember he cried, I’d say rightfully so. “You are supposed to pay attention!” Pay attention to what, people running?
   Card games were even banned during breaks, not just free classes. What’s the problem? Teachers didn’t care if someone was beating the shit out of someone else with a chair, they didn’t care if someone was playing with a butterfly knife, but card games? “That’s dangerous for the youth.”

2. No smartphones: I mean, not even during breaks, except for “A” classes. A classes had the “better” students. The weirdest stuff here was that I haven’t taken the phone with me to school. After all, why? I could break it, I’d have no use for it and I lived 2 minutes away from school. But, when it came to collecting them, no one believed me. “Everyone has a phone nowdays, so you’ll either give it to me, or I’ll have to search your bag.” Thankfully, after a week our class teacher finally understood that I in fact do not carry a phone with me.

Or perhaps I could also add something from elementary school. I have no idea what rule it would break though:

Some girl reported me (a boy) for apparently having a mascara. Our teacher then searched my bag, as if it was a grenade. I did in fact not have it.
And no, she didn’t report me stealing a mascara, just me having one as a boy. And the teacher took that seriously.

I was in middle school when the Columbine shooting happened. The following year, they updated the dress code to require everyone to tuck in their shirts with the stated reasoning that it would prevent people from concealing weapons.

During a grade 6 camping retreat, my best friend and I got in trouble for gambling, playing five card draw with evenly dealt chips and no actual money.

It was eventually officially decided that the chips were the problem. We collected rocks from the gravel road and played with those instead. Our roommates who originally complained were pissed, but five card draw with pebbles instead of chips was apparently allowed

Where I live, the winters get very cold. Not like Canada cold, but cold by my country’s standards - think a top of 9°c during the day. My city also has an odd culture where no one remembers how cold it gets, given our summers are so hot, so we’re all left confused and freezing come winter - no one has proper clothes for it. It’s like a citywide, seasonal amnesia.

That was certainly the case when I was in highschool 20 years ago. At lunch/recess time, the only time students were allowed inside the building was if it was raining. I understand that this was for the teacher to student ratio of supervision. Everyone outside or everyone inside - much easier to manage.

But it meant that every time it got really, really cold, half the student class would go inside to huddle against the radiators to keep warm. Periodically a teacher would come in and kick us out. You’d repeat this process a few times over recess/lunch.

So while it wasn’t a stupid rule, given I understand the teachers need to not be spread too thin, it was also ridiculous to expect kids to hang around outside in the freezing cold, in a place where people act like wearing a beanie is being dramatic.

Not allowing to go to the toilet whilst in your lessons and only during break/lunch time.

This was such an issue since needing a toilet is a natural thing and it’s not something we can control/control for very long and it’s very bad if we do so, yet teachers would literally send out detentions/warnings if we even attempted, which was so idiotic of itself.

The reason we couldn’t use the toilet whilst we were in our lesson, was cuz to the teachers, they though it was an excuse for us to skip lessons, which already caused many ppl inc myself to immediately lose trust in our teachers and therefore internalise our problems, which was a huge case at my secondary school.

I hid so much shit from people at the time cuz of teachers behaviour like this but also didn’t help that coming from a toxic household, just made things ten times worse due to it.

I went to a religious highschool, and at the time I was (shocker) a teenager. You could sign up either for religious education, or for Christian classes. Me being an atheist (and, I stress again, a teenager), went for the least terrible option.

After the first guest teacher came in to talk about their own religion, we got a new rule.

“Students are not allowed to ask more than 5 questions each to guest teachers”.

One class later that was changed to

“Students are only allowed to ask 3 respectful questions to guest teachers”

That rule was then dropped, and I get a stern talking to explaining that I, personally, was allowed to ask only a single question during religious education classes.

And then I didn’t have to follow those classes anymore, which was nice. But with a couple of years of maturity on me, I feel like I could have been nicer to the poor guest teachers.

My math teacher one year made a rule that if you skipped more than 3 problems on the homework you got a zero on it. This was because she was assigning 80-100 problems a night and I had only been completing just doing enough to get a passing grade because I didn’t have an hour to spend just on math every night.

I got in trouble for doing homework at school. Because it was meant to be done at home.

not really a school rule but it is one they tried to push on my mom when i was in elementary school.

i was the tiniest kid in class and my mom wanted me to take karate lessons. to give me some self esteem. the teachers tried to tell her the only thing it would do would make me want to get into fights. but somehow playing football would have been completely ok. so a high impact physical sport where you grab people and throw them to the ground is ok… as long as there is a ball involved. but giving a little kid some self esteem in an environment that encourages restraint and self control is not ok.

this was sometime around 1982-1985 i forget exactly what year.

moronic way of thinking.

I was punished for missing mandatory dorm meetings by washing the same car that multiple other people had already washed.

I missed said meetings because I was doing night classes and workstudy.

All of the content of said dorm meetings could have been taken care of with a paragraph email, hut apparently I was supposed to hunt down the RA whenever they felt like giving me their time, when I was already taking, like, 18-25 hours, doing extracurriculars and workstudy, and also regularly puking my brains out from the uncontrolled migraine disorder.

I stopped caring about their authority after that.