AIBU to think challenging school rules can harm children’s resilience?

I one hundred percent agree. Follow every rule without question. Always.

After all, it's not like there's ever been any instance of "i was only following orders" in the entirety of human history.

Also, nobody has ever been accused of doing something they didn't do. Nobody ever took their bad mood or shitty personality out on people the held power over.
Everything is always fair. People don't shit on each other for fun. Petty bureaucracy doesn't exist. Justice is assured at all times.

Let us all be the expendable worker drones we can be and teach our children to be the same. Timmy, Jimmy..."bend over and take it. Now say thank you to your betters".

Yes. I'm being sarcastic.

Even the shoes example is a shitty one, if you're the one with a foot health problem that means the regulation shoe puts you in so much pain you can't think straight enough to learn a damn thing.

I had a teacher put his hands on me in rage for rule breaking, talking in class, when I was in fact not doing so. I'm salty about it still decades later.

Rules is rules always seems to be hardest pushed by those who make them or who personally benefit from their existence.

Rules are also often used and abused by those tasked with ensuring they are being followed.

I'm not for there being no rules but I am for standing up against them if they are wrong, stupid, discriminatory or unfair. I'm also for standing up in a constructive manner if you disagree.

I think that's a double-edged sword. Certainly some of those were caused by "evil is good people keeping silent". Many of the "hugely successful" people in the world were indeed those who refused to accept the status quo: think of the big historical names in science, such as Galileo, who was imprisoned. But equally, and very recently, we have seen the other extreme, those who have tried to do things their own unique way, with chaotic results: Trump, Truss. Also, Thatcher very much had her own ideas about how to do things, for better or worse, on which opinion is very divided. Boris Johnson was an "interesting" case: he would have loved to be a radical revolutionary, eventually becoming world king, but he also wanted to be the most popular man in the world. He tried to argue against lockdown, but once it was in place, he found it was "easier" to go along with it (rumour has it that his own heavy mob visited him in hospital, saying "you will endorse lockdown, or else!") Gavin Williamson tried to argue against closing schools, but was silenced by groupthink.

Agreed. It’s promotion of group think the same conformity that caused the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the Enron collapse, the 2008 financial crash, cancel culture, addiction to social media, etc

An IQ above 80 is sufficient.

Children want less of this. Parents want less of this. Most teachers want less of this, surely?

Then you do you keep insisting blind obedience is the only way and generalising so much?

School rule: hair must be tied up or just up with a hair clip . No half up , half downs.Fair enough actually.

Lesson time, kids are all working , no messing about no issues. Teacher circulates and notices X has her hair up with a clip but no hair bobble. Stops x from her work, asks her to remove the hair clip to “prove” the absence of the hair bobble. Not good enough, find a hair tie and reclip it or get a red mark. Everyone has already stopped working to watch and listen. Some faffing about while some of the girls look for a spare hair tie for X. Who actually disrupted that lesson , and for what?

Ironically, the school changed the rules just a few months later and hair can be worn down(other than lessons where it’s a H&S issue, again , fair enough).Obviously not essential or necessary for children’s wellbeing, education and lack of distraction.

For sure. What job requires an employee to wear a certain shade of grey socks, without it being a uniform that's provided. Do bank managers have to wear a certain shade of grey socks, or doctors or MPs? What's wrong with black socks, or dark grey socks? It's not even Adrian Mole's red socks.
And as for shoes honestly my son inherited my wide feet and getting a pair without a tiny logo on was so very hard. Not talking great big logos, coloured soles, just black shoes with a tiny label on and no, covering it with black Sharpie wasn't good enough
My school all those years ago only has u ifirm.for surname and spring terms, sixth formers never wore uniform . But most of us went on to uni and ended up with food jobs, and isn't school about getting an education. For sure there was no sock code
We need to raise children who will stand up to injustice, like the suffragettes did or the Dagenham ladies or the Grunwick ladies. The suffragettes did take care of how they dressed, they deliberately dressed respectably but again weren't hung up on a certain sort of shoe
And as for hearing only half of the story at school, when .we found out the whole story once, it honestly was the teacher who had lied and it was acknowledged by the school that she has behaved wrongly.

Do you really believe that teachers can do no wrong ever?

A teacher’s profession is to teach, not dictate the colour of socks they can wear or refuse my child their right to an education because of the colour of socks they are wearing. Challenging these sorts of decisions is not challenging the professional opinion of a teacher, it is challenging an egotistical power trip that is infringing on my child’s right to an education.

This is why teachers are leaving - in a nutshell - all about rights and not responsibility.

Absolutely. My ds has ADHD and his grammar school hand out punishment willy nilly and if we don't hold them to their discipline policy then it would be demoralising for him.

Not being allowed to wear uniform socks with uniform tights is a stupid rule, nothing at all in the actual rule book either

dd rolled her skirt for a while, got in trouble, didn't get support from me so decided to wear trousers instead. All decisions made by her all by herself

I repeat the previous poster, what qualifies you to know whether a school rule is "stupid" or not?

The problem is you are looking at this through the prism of just your own child. Yes, one child wearing non uniform socks would not be an issue. The problem is that in an environment with maybe 1000 +kids rule breaking escalates like wildfire. One kid wears white socks, then half their class is wearing coloured socks, then half the school are wearing novelty i socks with pictures and slogans and then it's a distraction. Then this extends into shoes , skirts, bags and the school has lost control of its uniform policy. This leads to more distraction, more time wasted arguing about inappropriate clothing, kids feeling pressured to wear expensive brands. The kids , see one policy eroded and start bending the next one. It is much better to uphold clear boundaries from the getgo!
Every parent seems to think owning a child makes them experts on running a school. Dunning Kruger epitomised!

And what are your qualifications to decide what is and what isn't a "stupid policy"?

All you are advocating is blind obedience to authority even when that authority is clearly over-reaching beyond their remit or engaging in tyranny.

You don’t need a special qualification to know certain school policies are stupid. You keep comparing school rules to laws, which is disingenuous, as even a 7 year old knows that rules are nothing like laws. Refusing to comply with a stupid rule doesn’t cause lawlessness.

If the rule is so "petty" (some people have mentioned sock colour in that vain) just follow it - what harm does following it do? It's absolutely ridiculous for parents to push back against such trivial matters and they do their children absolutely zero favours introducing the idea that observance of school rules is at the parent's / child's discretion. Where does it end?
Too many parents forget that teachers are professionals. In what other profession do people believe they have the right / knowledge to question the professionals to the extent people do with teachers?

A teacher’s profession is to teach, not dictate the colour of socks they can wear or refuse my child their right to an education because of the colour of socks they are wearing. Challenging these sorts of decisions is not challenging the professional opinion of a teacher, it is challenging an egotistical power trip that is infringing on my child’s right to an education.

I disagree. Conformity isn’t resilience, it is blind obedience. Resiliency is the inner core of strength to stand up for what is right and to problem solve difficult situations such as unreasonable rules, or an undeserved demerit/detention.

Here’s an example of someone wearing the wrong shoes

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/schoolboy-12-threatened-isolation-wearing-23840606

I have a personal example about shoes. I and some other parents were called aside by the teacher. The school allowed standard school shoes or plain black or white trainers. In juniors, it was black shoes or trainers only. I hadn’t appreciated this. I apologised and said I hadn’t realised there was a change, would it be alright if DD wore the trainers I’d just bought and I’d make sure I bought black in a few months when her feet grew again. If it was a problem, I’d replace them. The school told me not to waste money on another pair and to just get black next time.

They could have said no and let me get another pair on the weekend. They could have been really unreasonable and called me to take her out of school and disrupt my work and her education until I corrected my error, as some schools would, but they prioritised education. They didn’t behave in a batshit way and they modelled the resilience to cope with the wrong coloured trainers.

Schools that lose the plot over things like this aren’t providing children with a resilience building opportunity. Those types of schools are modelling the opposite, by showing they don’t have the tiniest bit of resilience to cope with really trivial things, freaking out over everyday events, whilst giving the message that education isn’t that important. That frustrates people who do think education is important and who understand that sometimes things happen that require a bit of flexibility, rather than rigidity for its own sake. Children do some things they don’t want to every day, just like adults.

Those that disagree probably saw the rise in far right fascisim coming long before anyone who believes in unquestioning conformity did. After all, fascism is a staunch advocate of conformity.

So they don’t have to wear uniforms, but they need to BE uniform? I wouldn’t mind my kids being required to wear uniforms. I would mind them being brainwashed to believe anyone with a job description or title is always right. Even as a child myself, I had no respect for a person just because of their position. I generally went along with it as it was easier. But I respected people for who they were, not because of their job title. Plenty of teachers and instructors who are in positions of authority are terrible at their jobs and do not deserve any respect beyond what one shows for expedience, or basic human courtesy. I don’t encourage my children to break rules or cause trouble. I do encourage them to know the difference between what and who has value and what and who does not. I am a teacher myself. I am under no illusion that all teachers, administrators, rules are always right. I know better.

Sounds like Red China. Paradise for bureaucrats.

Um, no, we just disagree.

This is all far too sophisticated an idea for many, clearly

its really really not