Who doesn’t remember drinking milk with their pizza or burgers in the cafeteria? When you’re in high school, you don’t question a lot of the things that happen around you. It’s only when you leave that you start to realize what a weird place it really was! Some of the things are a bit peculiar, while others are positively bizarre.
Bored Panda has collected some of the best examples of weird school things, so scroll down to see exactly what we mean. For those of you still in high school, maybe this list will open up your eyes to all the weirdness. Remember to upvote your faves and leave a comment about other weird high school things you’ve noticed, dear Pandas!
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I had to do square dancing in 4th grade with a boy and the teachers wouldn't let us bring wipes or gloves. This was the time when cooties was a thing. It was gross.
We had a class called civics and the teacher taught us everything from how to balance a check book, to buying a car, to understanding credit, to taxes. This was all in addition to the citizen responsibilities like voting, etc.
I did that in high school. Best class I ever took!
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I have to do a line dancing unit every year while half of us dance and the half sits on the floor laughing
When we did square dancing in I think third grade, the girls in my class outnumbered the boys by two, so I got roped into dancing as a boy. I was unbelievably humiliated the entire time, but then the last girl I danced with, a popular girl who was actually kind of a b***h to me most of the time, told me she thought I was lucky because I didn't have to dance with any boys. So that helped.
Umm ... This makes no sense. Schools should not teach one thing if there is something else that is also worth teaching? How dare they teach science when there is also such a thing as history! Perhaps square dancing specifically isn't something you will ever do after school, but learning to interact with other people socially seems like something worth learning.
Yea my school did that in 6th grade- and I remember doing the cha cha slide in elementary school at one point but I don’t remember when 😅
In the US, mid-'90s, for middle school (ages 12-14), the required 'Home Economics' class: 'Sew a pillow!' 'Make a pie! That way you can make your own pillows and pie one day! It'll save you money when you don't have to buy them!' (Our district was fairly well off btw - had a very consumerist culture - almost everyone had Abercrombie, The Gap, - all the latest trendy b.s. from the malls). But did we learn about the costs of college, about mortgages, about retirement accounts, investing? Not really. But pillows! Lots of coverage of how to sew your own pillows!
I always got out of square dancing using the excuse that it was against my religion. We are Sikhs and have no such restriction. But, they didn't know that! :)
I hated square dancing. For some reason, I always got paired up with the weird kid and he seemed to enjoy it too much.
It’s not just former students who think that high school is incredibly strange—some teachers are flabbergasted, too. For example, Michael De Main has been teaching in secondary schools for 16 years and he thinks that a lot of teachers accept things that are downright weird.
In Michael’s opinion, it’s bizarre that different high schools can choose to start and end classes at different times. So while one school might open at 8 AM, another might decide to start classes 15 minutes later. The same weirdness extends to periods that can last for 40, 50, or even 75 minutes, depending on school policy. Don’t even get us started on how breaks are not the same length, either.
If we started packing up before the teacher asked us to we would have to stay back after the bell went for about 2 mins or so.
Teacher Michael also questions whether we still need roll call—isn’t that time better spent, you know, actually learning things? Not to mention playground duty where a teacher has to stand around, watch the students play, and make sure that they don’t get into any trouble. And who can forget about toilet duty? Sure, teachers need to make sure that students aren’t getting into any trouble, but all of this seems a bit over the top, don’t you think?
So far this is the only one I can relate too. I only discovered about 5 years ago that this wasn't true.
My chemistry teachers solution to people stealing her calculators.
However, according to Michael, the weirdest thing about high school might just be the students themselves who are hard to figure out even with all the experience in the world. Finally, let’s not forget about the basics: furniture. Some students still have to sit on uncomfortable chairs and use tiny desks, so it’s no wonder that some of them can’t pay attention!
When you look at everything, high school sure is a weird place. But I sure could go for some chocolate milk and a slice of pizza right about now.
I had one of those hair thingy's, had it in for ages. I didn't get mine on a cruise or holiday though.
We just got to smell the home ec class burn another batch of cookies every day, the teacher was too stupid to know to adjust cooking times etc for higher altitudes and couldn't figure it out, we literally begged our English teacher to let us go show them what they were doing wrong, she laughed and told us to go ahead because that teacher had been driving her nuts for years
The kids who bit into Bubble Tape like this.
Note: this post originally had 38 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Is this an American thread? Public schools really aren't that bad in Australia. Really, the only difference is they put education first, whereas private schools put money and status first.......and their buildings have a fresher coat of paint on them.
I guess I'm very American because almost every one of these was extremely relatable.
Finnish schools had a game for kids called kuka pelkää mustaa miestä, which translates to Who's afraid of the black man. One of the kids was selected as the black man, then we shouted "who's afraid of the black man?!" and started running in the gym class while the black man tried to catch us. This was considered a normal activity at the time. Naturally not played anymore.
The concept sounds kind of fun, but the name tho haha
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Is it surprising that children sometimes behave in infantile ways? Especially during puberty?
I went to a catholic school in Ireland. You don't know what weird is until you have a 70 year old nun trying to give a sex education class. This happened when I was 15 years old. And yes, we did already know where babies came from. So did a certain girl in the class who at the time was already 4 months pregnant.
Every now and then I think about Americans as actually the unwitting participants of something akin to The Truman Show. What if there is another reality outside the borders? Distraction with a horrible thing to keep them from knowing about a hellish thing. An experiment by the rest of the world to see how people retain their humanity under certain conditions, recorded now and available in live streaming, engendering scorn and pity by turns in its viewers.
Eh my current high school isn’t so bad, but a lot of these are relatable from my old district
The stupidest thing that I remember people doing when I was at school was "Smileys" using a lighter.
The author of this post is Lithuanian. Just saying.
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Is this an American thread? Public schools really aren't that bad in Australia. Really, the only difference is they put education first, whereas private schools put money and status first.......and their buildings have a fresher coat of paint on them.
I guess I'm very American because almost every one of these was extremely relatable.
Finnish schools had a game for kids called kuka pelkää mustaa miestä, which translates to Who's afraid of the black man. One of the kids was selected as the black man, then we shouted "who's afraid of the black man?!" and started running in the gym class while the black man tried to catch us. This was considered a normal activity at the time. Naturally not played anymore.
The concept sounds kind of fun, but the name tho haha
Load More Replies... Is it surprising that children sometimes behave in infantile ways? Especially during puberty?
I went to a catholic school in Ireland. You don't know what weird is until you have a 70 year old nun trying to give a sex education class. This happened when I was 15 years old. And yes, we did already know where babies came from. So did a certain girl in the class who at the time was already 4 months pregnant.
Every now and then I think about Americans as actually the unwitting participants of something akin to The Truman Show. What if there is another reality outside the borders? Distraction with a horrible thing to keep them from knowing about a hellish thing. An experiment by the rest of the world to see how people retain their humanity under certain conditions, recorded now and available in live streaming, engendering scorn and pity by turns in its viewers.
Eh my current high school isn’t so bad, but a lot of these are relatable from my old district
The stupidest thing that I remember people doing when I was at school was "Smileys" using a lighter.
The author of this post is Lithuanian. Just saying.
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