35 Unethical Practices That Are Surprisingly A Thing In Some Schools, As Pointed Out By Folks Online
Now, school ought to be a place of learning where eager minds would try to soak in every bit of knowledge and experience they can before they hit the real world.
Alas, schools are also a place where certain decisions beg more questions than they could possibly answer and, in some cases, it has reached unethical levels.
People of Reddit have been listing unethical practices that schools do, and nobody is really batting an eye about it. The discussion generated nearly 11,000 comments with over 24,000 upvotes.
Bored Panda has collected the most upvoted responses to this question and compiled a list which you can find below. Vote and comment on the answers that you think are the biggest problems, and why not also share some of your observations in the comment section below!
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Harassing teenage girls for "dressing inappropriately" when a millimeter of their bra strap is showing (or some other bulls**t like that). Telling them it distracts the boys and invites unwanted attention.
When they actually get harassed (or worse) the school does nothing.
It also perpetuates the notion that girls are responsible for controlling boys’ behavior!
Lowering a school's funding if the SAT scores are low. If the scores are low, there should be more funding to help kids learn!
Bullied and harassed students having the same repercussions as their bully for defending themselves.
I've never understood this...even as adults...in our country if someone is trying to kill you and you defend yourself, you can be charged with assault...like what?!?!
How sports programs have way more money than any other programs at the school… because school is a business not education.
Sports are focused on FAR too much at the schools by me. Whenever I drive past there are ALWAYS notices about games and whatever. School should be focused on education, not sports
Awarding “perfect attendance.” Encouraging kids to go to school while sick is pretty unethical if you ask me.
firing lunchroom staff for serving food to poor students whose families can't afford to pay
We've got school lunches in primary and secondary schools here...which are free and for low income families. A few years back they also instituted breakfast.
Collective punishment; one or two pupils misbehave and the entire class gets punished for it.
Too much homework. Let kids be kids. A little homework is good but god don't drown the kids in it.
I hear that...we used to have hours of homework. Sometimes I just want to relax and sleep.
I have NEVER believed in "homework." Kids are in class all bloody day doing Work, once School is over, that should be it.
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Yeah, homework was bullcrap. Six teachers who think 45 minutes to an hour of homework is ok...so, homework is ALL you do after a full day of school. Most homework was just busy work...Why do I have to copy the question out of the book and also answer it? It's in the damn book, right there. Why make it take longer?
Yes. And teachers would assign dozens of the same math problem with different values. If you understand the concept, you don't need to to do it over and over and over. If you don't, you're not getting it on the 20th repetition.
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We have very little or no at all homework in Finland and we still manage to be in top countries when it comes to education, kids need to be allowed to be kids, and you know they actually might learn something when they dont need to do hours and hours of mandatory tasks. I dont do tests or read work related literature after working hours, why should small kids.
Note, I teach high school. Most of my students read on a third to fifth grade level. At the end of the day, I don't care what they read, as long as they read. Instead of figuring out the HW balance, we need to figure out the intervention balance. How do we help kids master basic skills instead pushing them through our industrial education system and spitting them out with information but no knowledge?
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I couldn't do most of my homework, because by the time I got home, I'd just collapse. I was so tired. I have chronic fatigue, and it started in middle school. Of course, we didn't know what was causing it back then, so the teachers just told me I was being lazy e__e I also had to sit at my desk with my head on my arms, which the teachers assumed meant that I wasn't paying attention. I was.
Oh no! A friend of mine had chronic fatigue in year 11 & 12. Thankfully she was able to graduate with only two subjects as she wasn't planning on going to uni anyway. I hope you are feeling better now.
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It also sets the wrong precedence for when you're an adult. This is why so many people feel like they should still be available to work outside of office hours. It's ingrained in us from childhood.
I remember seeing a picture of someone's child's syllabus, that said the only homework would be any unfinished work from class. That teacher has the right idea.
I used to get so much homewrok once that it felt like a fuse broke and i stopped doing it for a very long time which caused my grades to slip. I am still getting a lot of homework and it’s difficult to keep doing each and every page
I would ne in classes 8 hours and homework for 3 or 4 hours. Also, our evening chores . Walking home was my exercise and fresh air.
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My older girls are 3 and 5 and get homework. Fair enough they get a couple of sheets of it and were meant to pick off things to do from it and hand it in by the end of half term but it's a flat no in this house. Both kids are massively ahead. Outside school is their time to be children. They learn loads outside school, but they learn along things they're interested in and want to learn about. The school have been told neither will be doing it. 🤷
That is very young for homework. I taught preschool with 3 year olds and there was no homework (except in place of learning during covid). 5 year olds generally just had nightly reading too.
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In the school district here in the city I live in they have a no homework rule for elementary schools. I think it's awesome. Let's the kids be kids. They also have limits on how much homework is allowed for Jr and Sr high school. The point of school is to learn at school. Studying at home for tests is a good thing but if you can't get your work done at school during the day that's on the teacher and their planning!
No homework is good. Nobody should learn that it's acceptable to bring their work home with them. Kids already spend eight hours at school, plus they probably have chores or extracurricular afterwards.
It's proven homework has no effect on a kids performance in school until middle school. Small children now get homework because the teachers are forced to teach things in class that are not what should be taught ("equity" LGBTQ issues, "new" math etc) so there's just not enough time to go through all the material properly.
When I started middle school, my parents led a crusade about homework amounts. We were having to bring home 3-4 textbooks a day on top of all of our normal binders and folders. I was in all honors classes and one of the top grade wise. I always started my homework at school but I’d still have another 2hrs at least to do at home. My classmates had up to 5hrs of homework and often got in trouble for not completing all of it despite being ‘the smart kids’. It took kids not in honors even longer. There were days when their entire class had silent lunch because no one had done all of the homework. Other parents immediately joined with mine to address the issue. They ended up having around 300 people at a school board meeting demanding the superintendent intervene. A lot of us kids were there too so we could show exactly how outrageous the amount of homework was. Once he picked his jaw off the floor, he said immediate action would be taken. And it was thankfully.
Or not even a little. School is for school. It's 8 hours a day. That's more than enough time to teach. I'm not expected to do job related work at home, nor is it healthy to.
That kid needs to be retaught how to hold a pencil. That configuration cramps the hand and the kid gets exhausted very easily. You hold a pencil the way you hold chopsticks.
Just wait till you get to high school! You go from one teacher handing out homework to 4 or 5 of them!
Our kids last school had homework as optional, theory being they work so hard at school they should have the break, that, and the stress levels it can add to family dynamics can make things even harder! (This is under 10 year olds)
I always felt that homework was a sign of the teacher not being able to adequately plan their lessons. The “mandatory” X number of hours of homework that we were told by teachers to expect did not go down well, especially for not being in the IB or AP program.
Too much is 3 hours every day. But 10 to 15 minits of WORK for every subject is ok. I see the consequences of too little homework with my children. They simply don't master the stuff they should learn. Some day, they'll have to know it. Too little homework is just making a huge debt for the future. I'm worried.
I can remember in Parochial school. Minimum two to three hours of Homework!
There are countries where they never give homework and the kids do better than our kids in the United States.
Loads of homework is very common in Hong Kong. Funny part is that if children aren't getting extra homework, Chinese parents feel that teachers aren't teaching anything. *sigh*
So agree!! After a day running class to class - forced to study things u will NEVER use in ur life!!!! That is enough. None of this school time teaches life SKILLS. People are commonly unfulfilled in life as to the complete dysfunction of their schooling
In Italy my son's school starts at 8 am and finishes at 13.50. He comes home, eats and starts homework at 15.00. we have dinner around 20.00 and often he continues doing homework 'till 22.00 afterwards when there are any tests the next day. He does sports for an hour once during the week and twice in the weekends, 'cause he doesn't have other free time during the week. He's got no time to develop interests/hobbies nor friendships, 'cause when he finishes a little bit earlier, it still is too late to do anything outdoors. It's just ridiculous. All because he wants to have good grades, but at what cost. And because of all this he doesn't like most of the subjects.
One of the reasons why we sent our son to Waldorf school for his elementary- middle school years. He arrived at high school fully ready to learn and engaged with the subject matter. It's not for everyone, I know, but for us, Waldorf school was the best thing for our kiddo(now at University)
I should probably clarify- as a philosophy Waldorf doesn't give homework for elementary grades and only minimal work for middle school
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No this is why so many people are ok working off the clock so school stuff at school
I currently (seventh grade) have an average of 15 minutes of homework not including projects, which is part of the program I opted for so I can’t complain
This is teach kids that when they are grown and have a job it is normal to work 40 hours a week and then take home another twenty hours if unpaid work.
My 3 year old just got homework. His teacher told me he needs to practice writing his numbers because he "still" has trouble with it. I told her this was a developmentally unrealistic expectation and that we would not be doing homework at 3. Ridiculous.
Lol I’m absolutely drowning in my homework because I have hours of work every day with little time to do it because of extra curriculars and I’m falling behind and constantly stressed. It’s great /s
In Bavaria kids can easily earn homework passes which can be traded in to skip a days homework anytime they want.
I'm in favor of banning homework entirely. Yes, education is important, but when you pile so much work onto the kids that they have no time for anything else, they resent it, and that's counter-productive.
I came across a really interesting practice, where the teacher assigns "the lesson" as a video, and that's the 30 minutes that the student watches as homework. Then in the actual lesson, they do the practice elements and exercises that is normally homework, but it's in the lesson with the teacher there to help and support.
Should get rid of homework completely. Nobody clocks off work to come home and do more work...oh wait.
I don't give homework at all, I just don't believe in it. All assignments are done in class, students get 8-week deadlines for 120 minutes of work (if it counts towards their grades), and almost all my tests are duo work (because I'd rather have them score 90% with their partner, than 45% individually). They can also use any source they like (like Google). They do know however, that if they miss the deadline, they fail that particular test, and they'll need to work harder on the other tests.
Homework is useless. The school time is sufficient enough to make kids learn. You just need competent teachers
The studies show that homework does improve learning (although not nearly as much as some people would have you think). In my experience, two main problems - (1) a lack of coordination. 4,6,8 lessons a day - each teacher sets their own homework, regardless of what the other is doing. (2) most parents EXPECT it and will complain if their kids don't get it. Responding to them that 'you kid is clearly under a huge amount of stress and seems to live to work so I though I'd cut them some slack for one night in their miserable childhood' doesn't always go down well..
I have always advocated for minimal homework in Primary School, but the school I worked for required certain things unfortunately. High school teachers should also work with each other more so that the homework and assignments are spread out more. There are other ways to assess learning anyway.
I have a horrible work ethic from last year when I was doing school
Virtually and was able to finish in 4ish hours. Now my mindset is once school is done, it's done for the day unless I need to work on a big project or something 😅 this has really screwed me up
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Requiring you to purchase textbooks brand new from the college's bookstore because that's the only way to get the access code to complete the required assignments on the publishers website.
I remember the problem of buying school books when we were poor. But actually some college books are only purchased by a few dozen people on that particular course, so would not be produced without those purchases. So SOME people purchasing the book is important. However you acquire the book should not be anything to do with the college though.
I was a decently misbehaved third grader. Told my teacher I had a stomach ache and I needed to go to the nurse. I asked a number of times. She thought I was just trying to get out of individual reading time. My appendix burst on the bus ride home.
I was never one to ask to go to the nurse. Just a hyperactive kid my teacher apparently had enough of. Denying medical attention to an 8 year old seems unethical. This is not a "boy who cried wolf" story for all those saying "I told ya so".
I remember one time in digital technology class I developed a splitting pain below my stomach. I think it was trapped gas in my bowels or something. Anyway, I asked my teacher if I could go to the nurse, but she told me no because class was "almost over" and that I have to wait until it was finished before I could go. Except that class was over in an hour, so I had to stay seated in my chair, in agony, for an hour. Did I mention that digital technology was my last class that day? So school was over by the time class ended and I couldn't stay behind because then I'd be late and I can't be late because my mum had to pick up my brothers from their schools as well so I never got to the nurse. And then there was that other time where I nearly fainted in the mandatory religion class and I did have to go to the nurse and while my friend was leaving my schoolbag in the nurse's office, she told me that the substitute teacher was pissed at me for missing class.
Bullied students are told to leave because it's easier to kick out a quiet victim than a loud bully
Or when they call the bully and say "bullied kid said you did X" and when they deny it they just leave it there...like thanks for now increasing the bullying that already existed.
This is probably very specific to my home country but period checks
I'm from Malaysia and yes sadly this is a thing and I've witnessed it firsthand. Mostly to make sure girls aren't lying about their periods just to get out of prayer activities.
zero tolerance policies.
Oh that kid hit you for no reason? both suspended zero tolerance!
Zero tolerance sometimes meant Zero Effort or Zero Intelligence.
Less severe but limiting kids access to water, I.e. you can’t have your drink bottle at the table. Which sucks when you live in Australia and at summer the temperature gets up to 36c and school is during all the hottest hours of the day.
Tormenting socially awkward /introverted students
I hinestly believe that some teachers enjoy making their kids suffer. I speak very fast and because of that i stutter if I read out loud. One of my teachers loved making me read all the time and kept smiling while some of the students laughted. Once i got so tired that i shut up and sat in the middle of a sentence and refused to ever read in her classes. Bitch
Passing students that aren't ready for the next grade because they need to pad their passing rates to keep funding. It's setting the kids up for failure down the road.
Treating special needs kids subhumanly because they can’t speak up for themselves…then belittling/reprimanding the staff who do advocate for them.
Giving preference to kids that parents donate money and fratranise with teachers/ headmasters.
I've seen this time and time again...the systems is way to broken.
Our assembly room/gymnaisum had the fire escape doors chained shut, and the police department was aware of it.
C9Juice says:
7 am classes
S_thyrsoidea replied:
7am classes in complete disregard for what the science says about adolescent development and sleep schedule, and the effect of early classes on academic success.
My school: you should sleep at least 9 hours a night Also my school: you must wake up at 6 in the morning
Making hair part of the uniform and dictating what hair styles and colours students are allowed to have. Also letting girls wear short skirts in summer but not letting boys wear shorts. I've seen quite a few schools in the news where the boys have had to protest and wear skirts in the summer because they weren't allowed shorts.
"Also letting girls wear short skirts in summer" while at the same time cry out loud in case of shoulder free top or barely visible bra strap, I presume.
Present opinions as facts.
I had a Social Studies asshole teacher/coach who told the class that if a girl is getting raped, she should relax and enjoy it. I got up and walked out. I spoke up, and nothing was done, since he was a coach. I was 14. The good old 70's.
Not care about students's mental health
Yup. I was really depressed at school and it was widely known. There was exactly one teacher who talked to me and tried to help. Everyone else just ignored me, obviously wasting away. I OD’d at school (like an idiot, I’d read that death would occur after 10-12 hours, so I did it at lunchtime thinking that 12 hours later I’d be in bed -, not realising symptoms would kick in a lot sooner than that) and literally started sliding off my desk during maths a few hours later. The teacher ignored it, until the guy sitting next to me suggested he should take me to the nurse because I didn’t look well…
Convincing kids that a 4-year institution after graduation is the best choice for everyone.
I think Boomers were the last generation to not be required by society to have a college degree in order to get a job!
Keeping bad teachers in their positions. Not the same as a good teacher with poorly performing students with bad home life etc.
People talk about students being able to grade and review teachers as a joke but it would actually be a great idea (especially if it can be done anonymously)
Humiliating and/or calling out students in front of the whole class
also saying things like "you'll never pass my class/get into Harvard/get into college" to the entire class for some reason always with a stupid, arrogant smirk on their face... The first two are true stories, the first from my Honors Algebra II teacher to a class of 15/16-year-olds and the second from my HONORS SCHOOL to a class of 14/15-year-olds which was supposed to prepare me for that exact thing!! What makes the second even worse is that the person who said it was... wait for it... THE SCHOOL COUNSELOR!!!
School counselors are actually just stuck up baboons who expect bullies to obey you by telling them to stop. WTF?
Only having one bathroom for open in a high school. There are 1000’s of kids.
The pledge of allegiance, confiscating kid's phones, withholding graduation ceremonies because they've labelled kids troublemakers, zero tolerance policies, ignoring and covering up bullying
Ripping off a Kids insulin pump and yanking out the IV line because you are too stupid to see it isn’t a phone
Professors selling their own books for their class
For us it's textbooks that have "amendments" every year. Like, why should I trust you if you keep making mistakes. lol
Over the top dresscode making girls feel like s**t because of it
Dress codes that are really different for boys and girls make no sense
Making kids sell magazines or whatever. Should be 100% illegal and I dunno what kind of parents stand for that bulls**t.
Diagnosing kids who aren't interested in the curriculum with ADHD. Still don't understand how I get diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school just for it to magically disappear halfway through middle school, for it then to reappear freshman year of high school just to disappear again sophomore year.
And then kids who actually have ADHD get told they're faking it. Misdiagnosis doesn't benefit anyone.
Not letting kids take part in a test because their parents havent paid.
Put make up exams during lunch. I’m running on no food for the past 21 hours because I had to skip lunch to do a makeup exam. Thank god the school day is almost over
Side note, I exercise a lot so I generally eat a lot so this s**t is really annoying
Selling 2x the number of parking passes than spots actually exist for, then imposing steep parking fines.
Yeah, that sucks.I guess they have to discourage students driving on campus somehow.
Note: this post originally had 40 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
How about NASTY lunches? I know some kids who only eat school lunch (it's free here) and eat hardly any of it bc it is sooo bad and then end up hungry the rest of the day.
The funding of schools should be a massive priority, and it should be a massive vote winner for politicians. It isn't and it doesn't, and it completely baffles me. Why would you not pump a sponge like brain with everything you can. Maybe that kid becomes an engineer who solves a massive problem, a scientist who cures the common cold. I just don't know why you wouldn't throw everything at educating kids. School should be free, school lunches should be free, teachers shouldn't have to buy supplies (and they should get paid well), school trips should be free, there should be no fundraisers.... The US defense budget is $715 billion... There's about 50m kids in school. That's $14,300 per student. Imagine what they could do with that.
Maybe if kids were educated they wouldn't make the same mistakes the adults keep making as they actually learned history adequately.
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I had a teacher who would verbally abuse kids. One time he showed us an animated porn thingy. Everyone told the teachers, no one believed us. Until some kids got video proof and he was finally fired.
Being a nerd in school, I didn't friends up until seventh grade so I was really quiet and stumbled over words. The biggest bullies always end up being teachers, I only had a handful that took my anxiety issues seriously and eased me into talking in front of the class. The other teachers would punish kids with issues like me and it's absolutely NOT right. A child, even a teen, should not be punished because they're nervous, scared, have impairments, etc. It makes me wonder if any of those teachers were ever kids and not some kind of robot.
My kid is in kindergarten and we're already dealing with a class bully. I spoke to the teacher and apparently this girl pesters multiple classmates: hitting, scratching, biting, etc. One time she tried to kiss my son. We're in a freaking pandemic! Teach your kid to keep their slobber to themselves. And the response? Every parent got a message from the teacher reminding us that the kids need to keep their hands to themselves. But we all know the reason behind that message. Makes me wonder about the girl's home life.
“One bad apple ruins the whole bunch”/ collective punishment. My elementary school did this and I bet they were hoping we would forget. It was not just no recess it was you must walk these laps for recess/exercise punishment. I brought it up back then but no one will take a 9 year old seriously. They legit said that it was so “The good kids would pressure the bad ones to be better.” Like … that’s called bullying and isn’t that your job? Tbh my high school does this too with our lunches.
Almost all of these examples seem to occur only in the States. I work at a school and we don't have to deal with most of these problems.
They wonder why the obesity rates are so high. And give you 30 minutes for lunch; including the time it takes to walk to the cafeteria and to your next class, and the time taken to stand in line to get your food. Teaching kids to wolf down their meal as quickly as possible will get you overweight adults.
A bunch of these are just reality. Like you need to be prepared for reality.
If you're at a private, paid, or a religious school then some of these things are expected. And no one's forcing you to go.
How about NASTY lunches? I know some kids who only eat school lunch (it's free here) and eat hardly any of it bc it is sooo bad and then end up hungry the rest of the day.
The funding of schools should be a massive priority, and it should be a massive vote winner for politicians. It isn't and it doesn't, and it completely baffles me. Why would you not pump a sponge like brain with everything you can. Maybe that kid becomes an engineer who solves a massive problem, a scientist who cures the common cold. I just don't know why you wouldn't throw everything at educating kids. School should be free, school lunches should be free, teachers shouldn't have to buy supplies (and they should get paid well), school trips should be free, there should be no fundraisers.... The US defense budget is $715 billion... There's about 50m kids in school. That's $14,300 per student. Imagine what they could do with that.
Maybe if kids were educated they wouldn't make the same mistakes the adults keep making as they actually learned history adequately.
Load More Replies... I had a teacher who would verbally abuse kids. One time he showed us an animated porn thingy. Everyone told the teachers, no one believed us. Until some kids got video proof and he was finally fired.
Being a nerd in school, I didn't friends up until seventh grade so I was really quiet and stumbled over words. The biggest bullies always end up being teachers, I only had a handful that took my anxiety issues seriously and eased me into talking in front of the class. The other teachers would punish kids with issues like me and it's absolutely NOT right. A child, even a teen, should not be punished because they're nervous, scared, have impairments, etc. It makes me wonder if any of those teachers were ever kids and not some kind of robot.
My kid is in kindergarten and we're already dealing with a class bully. I spoke to the teacher and apparently this girl pesters multiple classmates: hitting, scratching, biting, etc. One time she tried to kiss my son. We're in a freaking pandemic! Teach your kid to keep their slobber to themselves. And the response? Every parent got a message from the teacher reminding us that the kids need to keep their hands to themselves. But we all know the reason behind that message. Makes me wonder about the girl's home life.
“One bad apple ruins the whole bunch”/ collective punishment. My elementary school did this and I bet they were hoping we would forget. It was not just no recess it was you must walk these laps for recess/exercise punishment. I brought it up back then but no one will take a 9 year old seriously. They legit said that it was so “The good kids would pressure the bad ones to be better.” Like … that’s called bullying and isn’t that your job? Tbh my high school does this too with our lunches.
Almost all of these examples seem to occur only in the States. I work at a school and we don't have to deal with most of these problems.
They wonder why the obesity rates are so high. And give you 30 minutes for lunch; including the time it takes to walk to the cafeteria and to your next class, and the time taken to stand in line to get your food. Teaching kids to wolf down their meal as quickly as possible will get you overweight adults.
A bunch of these are just reality. Like you need to be prepared for reality.
If you're at a private, paid, or a religious school then some of these things are expected. And no one's forcing you to go.
