School detention for forgetting a ruler?

[Wizardo]

Just interested - how many people have secondary school aged kids whose school gives a detention for forgetting basic equipment like a ruler?

I wonder does it really teach kids to be organised. Surely it just means disorganised people get lots of detentions? And feeds anxiety?

My schooling in the 90s felt pretty strict but this seems borderline bonkers. My dd currently “can’t borrow a school library book for the rest of the year” as she’s so anxious about getting a detention because she handed her last book in two weeks late. So now we are visiting our local library instead to provide her with books to read! I have obviously told her to just get the detention over and done with but she is adamant and determined to avoid it.

vote Yabu for No detention given
and Yanbu for Detention given.

DS got a detention as his compass broke!
I did complain about that one..

Respectfully, buying a few spare rulers is surely not going to impact hugely on the budget. Could the PTA do a fund raiser.

The outcomes of the constant surveillance and punishments over minor things is surely eating in to the budgets of schools more coping with the huge increase in mental health issues, school avoidance etc. It is short sighted and schools need to use their imagination on these issues, look at the bigger picture and the damaging impacts such cultures are having. I work with schools so I am not unaware of the budgetary constraints but many of the rules I see in the schools I work for our as ridiculous and time consuming as this! It is the same in my DD's school. Teenagers/children are human beings not just an assessment figure or a behaviour/reward mark!

I was dreadful with library books. We'd get a fine of something like 5p a day, but the lady was always nice and capped it at £1 (gives you an idea of how bad I was...). At the end of each term they'd leave a box out for an amnesty and you could put late library books in with no fine and no telling off.

We didn't get detention for forgetting equipment either. It does seem to me that schools have gone a bit nuts on discipline, especially as my school had no behavioural issues whatsoever.

This will be a bit of a rant, but I'm starting to feel like I'm all for a detention for forgetting equipment. I'm a secondary school teacher (on my day off) and yesterday in one Year 8 lesson there were 5 students who arrived without pens (after lunch, so not the first lesson of the day), 3 who wanted to borrow a ruler to underline the date and title, 2 who asked to borrow a pencil. Each of these asked me at separate points. Two of the pen students had just sat there and not even bothered to ask for ten minutes until I noticed they hadn't done the title, date and first task at which point they said "I don't have a pen" - one of them in a tone that heavily implied this was my fault.

Each time it roughly took me around 30 seconds to pause what I was doing, locate a spare piece of equipment (we lend out so bloody much and I share a classroom so things aren't always where I would leave them!) and give it to the student. So that was around 5 minutes of a 60 minute lesson just dealing with equipment issues.

Later on we self marked in green, and I got the pot of green pens out and then we spent two minutes all getting those handed out too. Students are meant to have their own, but I gave up that battle a very long time ago.

It drives me absolutely mad because something to write with is ESSENTIAL, and yet so many students just don't bring one. Or they do, but leave it somewhere. And we obviously have to give them one to write with, because otherwise they can't do anything! The rulers and pencil I suppose could have said no to the borrowing requests - but I do want them to do their work neatly, and until there's a big push on equipment and organisation again at my school, it's like swimming against the tide. We loose loads of equipment each week as students don't give it back. I can write down names as they borrow it, but that takes even more time...

Basically much as I would really dislike enforcing it, I feel that the super punitive 'detention for one missing piece of equipment' would probably improve things hugely as I strongly suspect most learners would organise themselves far more effectively than they are doing currently in my school!!

(Should add that I never begrudge lending a pen to a child who is clearly having an off day and has forgotten something for the first time ever, and always give students with SEND the benefit of the doubt...)

@Chocolatebuttonns there may well be a supply of spare rulers, pens, pencils, whatever. Or, at least, there may have been in the past. Unfortunately, as you alluded to, budgets don’t stretch to accommodate endless supplies of stationery.

For example, ten children in a class of thirty have no pen. Ten pens are handed out. In the next class, five are and so on. Teachers buy glue sticks and stationery out of their own money, but it’s not sustainable. It’s also indicating that the pupils don’t need to worry about bringing equipment to school, because someone will provide it.

Some pupils will genuinely have forgotten, or their pen has broken or whatever. No one minds helping out. But it’s not on to keep supplying equipment day after day that doesn’t get returned.

As @FluffyDiplodocus says, it’s the disruption to learning and teaching time that’s so annoying. If someone always hands out replacements for forgotten items, what encourages people to remember their own stuff.

As you say, it’s basic equipment. If it’s needed that day and the child knows, then it’s a fundamental part of their school kit. It needs to be in school.

Yep, there's no gradation of punishments. Forget a ruler: detention. Beat the shit out of another kid: detention. I suppose if all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail.

I totally agree. It really discriminates against the neurodiverse.

What I don't get about nowadays is that kids are supposed to have more anxiety than ever but that anxiety never helps them develop any systems that would reduce the anxiety and help them out.

I was an anxious child and am an anxious adult still at 36 but that led me to become very organised and to have a whole pencil case of pens, pencils and rulers with spares of each that I kept in my school bag and to check that I had all my equipment and books and homework for school every day before leaving the house (I would usually pack my bag the night before with things in the order I would need them) as I didn't want to be put in the situation of having to tell the teacher I didn't have something. As it was I ended up being the lender of items most of the time.

What changed? Why is anxiety different now and is seemingly an excuse for everything but never leads to any behaviour change?

Why wouldn't you help your anxious child to have a system whereby they check their planner to see what lessons they have each day, and check if they have the relevant equipment ready in their bag the night before, preferably in the order they will need it?

Why is every problem now one for the teachers/school to solve? I would also agree that a few detentions might focus the mind for the "forgetful".

Here's a clue. Anxiety isn't a blanket thing that affects everyone in the same way. It can present in different people in very different ways. Anxiety isn't a bloody tool for organisation FFS it's a mental health condition.

You can't just say yes i know it's a funding issue like that doesn't matter.
It is a funding issue.
And unless the teacher uses learning time giving them out and collecting them in, the kids are not just going to put them back and they'll disappear.
Someone upthread said multiply that by ten. I say multiply that by ten per class and most secondary schools have about 5 lessons in a day. That's fifty kids without a piece of equipment. When working in a secondary school I could easily get through a box of pens in a couple of days if i didn't count them out and count them back in. To one kid it's just a pen but when you've got it over and over again it's very disruptive

But writing notes in the planners of all those children and administrating detentions isn't disruptive?

I think it does sound nuts, but I can see why it is a problem in cash strapped schools where teachers are even sometimes buying such basic equipment out of their own money. It still often goes walkabout too, as others have explained, which would be very frustrating.

If this is an isolated incident from your DD then I think a detention is unreasonable and the benefit of the doubt could have been given. If not, and she regularly forgets her stuff then maybe that is different and it is reasonable.

Would the neurodiverse not be better helped by developing a system?

They could check what lessons they have each day the night before at a specific time, they could use a timer on their phone or be reminded by their parent, and then put together the relevant books, homework, etc in the order they will need them in their bag. They could also keep a pencil case in their bag with at least two of each item they will need for all lessons and try to keep that in the bag at all times at home so it doesn't get mixed in with the general house stuff. I mean I also kept pads and tampons in my school bag all the time so I was never caught short so I wouldn't limit this to only stationery but a whole school day kit if you see what I mean, kept in the school bag. Again I would expect a parent to help with this, remind and prompt each day.

What about this new anxiety means that a child with it wouldn't be helped by their parent helping them to develop a system that would help practically and alleviate their anxiety?

Tell me you don't understand neuro diversity without telling me you don't understand neuro diversity.

That might help some people yes. Won't help all.

What would your answer be?
Put a box of equipment out?
What happens when there's no equipment left?

Why not?

We keep going back to lack of ownership by kids on their own education. If they have lost their ruler etc then they need to communicate this to their parents and sort out replacing it etc.
Every evening DD goes through her school bag and checks that she has eventing for the next day ie books/stationary etc. That is her taking responsibility for ensuring she arrives at school correctly equipped etc.
I know things get lost/go missing so at the end of every half term I ask her make a list of what she needs and we then go and buy them. We make sure she has multiple items of everything to cover losses.
There is just no excuse for not making your children take responsibility for all of this.

Because people with neuro diversities aren't carbon copies of each other?

Not all strategies work for all people. Id have thought that was pretty obvious?

DD2 has diagnosed dyspraxia and autism. The combination of her having horrendous challenges with organisation and executive functioning; plus her autism meaning she's desperate to follow rules, anxious about not doing so properly and wanting to please her teachers means I'm dreading secondary next year for her.

I'll happily buy a fucking ruler for every classroom she goes into in the school if it helps - but if we end up in a cycle where she's hammered by sanctions for her cognitive difficulties - she's the sort of kid whose mental health would plummet and we'll end up with the sort of situation that leads to school refusal.

We've picked secondary choices based on the schools around here less likely to behave in such a way and that we know have a good SEN department who will do things like make sure she has a locker and mentors to support her in learning to use it and develop strategies for managing her belongings as she moves around the school and I pray to God we bloody well get her in there or we're fucked. In primary we've provided extra equipment for her so she can keep multiple sets in different classrooms and have things that help her (things like rulers with handles on etc) and we're happy to do that for secondary since a misplaced pen is a source of massive hardship - just need the school to buy into that and work WITH us.

This is a child whose executive functioning is so bad she's tried to go to school and forgotten her skirt before.

During my teacher training, one of my placements was in a school where if a pupil forgot a pen or ruler they could borrow one, but they had to give the teacher one of their shoes. That meant they didn't walk out of the classroom with the pen, because they had to get their shoe back. Otherwise pupils just walk out of the classroom with pens and rulers endlessly and your supply is drained every day, which schools can't afford.

It did make the classroom quite stinky, though.

But why couldn't they do it with help from their parent either at first or forever? I mean if they really can't manage it, why can't their parent do it? I think the vast majority could manage it themselves, be helped to manage it by their parent or have their parent do it for them surely?

Just follow the rules

Or get a detention

It's not that hard. When your child is an adult there will be rules, laws and consequences - time to start understanding that now

My son is very forgetful and has had detention for forgetting a calculator, and reading book. The irony being they make them do silent reading once a week because so many teens don't read. But my son loves reading and does loads of it!

Anyway, rather than complaining about it I'm trying to put in place things to help him remember eg an Alexa reminder early in the morning to put a book in his bag.