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.

You've quoted one line of my post, if you have read what I posted, you would understand why I think it is OTT, detention for no ruler is, "To shoot mosquitoes with a cannon." IMO, it is my opinion, you don't have to agree, you do what you 'have to' do...

@IsthisthereallifeIsthisjustfantasy I love this idea! Although at my school, if someone found a shoe/trainer they habitually threw it out of the window when the teacher wasn’t looking. So that policy might have created all sorts
of havoc at my school!

“I think parenting in general has fallen off a cliff.”

I expect that’s something every generation says from one to the next… but I’m inclined to agree.

Forgotten rulers are not all about ADHD.

I have a teen who might forget hers because she took it out for another purpose at home - and then next morning was more bothered about sorting out fake eyelashes (shoot me) that checking her school bag. Over time, she has got into a habit of checking, and matured - and I’ve supported that. As a parent you go (over time) from “right, you just told me to stop bothering you but look - no ruler” to realising that it’s pointless you checking, they’ve got it nailed.

Knowing there could be a detention helps to push a teen like her into prioritising a school bag check over eyelash adjustment.

I believe that the vast majority of forgotten ruler teens are like her. Not ADHD.

And they’re the ones “spoiling” it for kids who do deserve reasonable adjustment.

But I think there are more and more parents who’d rather complain and say, “you don’t have to do the detention”. Instead of saying “harsh, but that’s the rule, now - let’s check your bag in future.”

The more detentions the better. Also included should be ‘looking at me in a funny way’ & ‘walking on the cracks in the pavement’. Can see why kids bunk off school.

@Nicelynicelyjohnson and @Spendonsend ,

This rule is about time management within the school.

If you put the boot on the other foot and imagine 5-10 minutes of your child’s learning time being disrupted every single lesson by equipment checks and warning to other pupils, you might be very grateful for this being done once a day in form time.

It is really important to remember that there is no perfect school system or behaviour management policy, and these these are regularly discussed within schools.

It would annoy me because secondary schools are so hard on kids but in adult life if you forget something you just get on with your day, regardless, no one punishes you. It’s inconvenient sure Eg. If you forget your purse you can’t buy lunch, but that’s a natural consequence, you don’t get put into time out at work because you forgot your purse

In my experience parents now want more and more tasks that would have been well within their remit in the past farmed out to the school. I think they have compelling reasons for this, everything has gone to pot under our current government and they, like everyone else, are more overworked, underpaid and stressed than ever so child rearing as it was is too expensive and too time consuming. But yes I think parenting has fallen off a cliff along with school budgets, our standard of living, the NHS and a whole load of other things. It's a terrible shame.

At my school if you hadn't got equipment you just borrowed your mate's, no drama, no wasting teacher's time with pointless detentions.

Detentions were only for seriously disruptive behaviour.

@shearwater2 Exactly.

Except that in your example, the school would be expected to give a free lunch to the child otherwise they’d be accused of child cruelty

I have voted YABU because I don't think your voting makes sense. Yes repeat offenders should be given a detention. Things like rulers are basic equipment that should just live in school bags all the time. Organisation is a skill that needs to be learned as early as possible and will impact their whole lives.

It’s really outrageous that primary age kids are being asked to bring in their own school equipment. Why on earth aren’t they given proper funding? There should be enough pens, rulers, scissors for each kid. Expecting young children to make up for govt shortfall is disgusting. (This country, not you personally!)

You have to keep them up for them to work. The repeating reminder on the phone is pretty foolproof to be honest, it requires very little from the user.

Yeah but it’s not about the purse is it, you’re being too literal, adults don’t take a ruler to work so I was just trying to think of an adult equivalent. If you forgot your ruler at work you’d just do your job anyway or borrow a ruler or whatever. You wouldn’t get your time taken away from you as punishment by your boss.

A far more realistic scenario these days is that the child does have money for lunch but the school runs out of lunch, or they spend so long queuing that they don't get to eat it.

Bless you 😢 it can be so cruel can't it

I mean does that really matter, getting worked up about food for some kid who is probably genuinely poor as many of the country are now! A child not having food and an adult are two different things. I have funded some meals via the food card for a couple of DD's classmates as they didn't have any money left, big deal, it's not a massive deal to me and in glad DD wants to help others out and share her food.

@Testina actually I agree with you, I think.

The interesting part at my dd’s school is that they told us that by half term of Y7 we should NOT be checking our kids have done their home learning or got their bags packed. It was expected NT kids would be totally independent and if not, no biggie they would do detention and know better for next time.

So I have faithfully tried to stay (mostly) out of it and just do a quick mental checklist of the unusual things (ingredients for cooking, or umbrella if there’s going to be a downpour in her journey home).

honestly the end result is my dd just carries EVERYTHING she might need in order to avoid getting caught out (she has a massive backpack and it weighs a tonne). I don’t think it is making her organised, just extremely cautious!

Schools basically need to familiarise themselves with the 21st century and stop behaving like a half-arsed workhouse in a Kafka novel.

Or, queuing for ages and eating a roast dinner in a disposable plastic tray (great for the environment) sitting on the floor outside or some dirty hall as seemingly no canteen tables and chairs are needed beyond year 7! Again, we didn't seem to have this issue in my school in the 90s.

Not really, for example, for a child a pen is their important equipment.

For a tradesperson their tools are their important equipment, if they forget their tools they will waste time and money, they could get a bad reputation and potentially lose clients if it continues.

If a lawyer forgets important documents (their important equipment) before court that would affect them negatively professionally, etc, etc.

Forgetting important equipment (for the child this is a pen or other stationery or PE kit, musical instrument or whatever) is going to have a negative consequence for every person in every job, that consequence will compound if the behaviour continues. Much better to learn a way to cope with taking responsibility for certain items in childhood.

Our school issues a behaviour point for forgetting equipment - protractor in our case … two in a row. I don’t know whether three turns into a detention as I told mine to get his act together (15) and so far no more points.

It’s still stricter than my school days - you would just have been told to remember it next time or shared your mate’s .

That is what you implied. Your first post, and this subsequent one, both imply that a system has not already been implemented. Indeed, your assumption is that "a system" has not even been considered. That if only some bright spark would come along and explain to people that they need "a system" everything will be right and the aspect of their neurodiversity that makes them disorganised will be solved. It's just breathtakingly ignorant.

Now undoubtedly, if you are neuro-diverse in a way that means you find organising yourself difficult, there may be methods that you can adopt that can help mitigate the effects of that disorganisation. Almost everyone who either finds organising themselves difficult or who struggles to help a child to get themselves organised will have tried countless "systems" already. What was wrong with your post was your simplistic assumption that that had not been thought of before and that it is a simple thing to do.

But forgetting stuff isn't "negative behaviour" and it seems a bit shitty towards anyone with ADHD for example. Punishment for how your brain works.

The usual excuses being trotted out with no indication of its veracity! I suppose also you would defend the odd ones who come into an examination Hall and expect to be supplied with pen, pencil, ruler, rubber, calculator, in fact everything because their 'parent' says it's not the parent's responsibility! When they were given one item at a time, the invigilator returning to the front each time for the next thing, the 'parent' complained!

I was an anxious child and am an anxious adult too. And quite disorganised. Thankfully for me I was at school before this sort of regime came in and we don’t punish adults for forgetting minor things, so I’ve never been penalised for this sort of nonsense. I can well imagine how it leads to situations like a pp’s child refusing to borrow books because that would have been me.

I can put my organisational energies into getting the big stuff right / organised / on time safe in the knowledge there’ll be a workaround for the more trivial things.

I can’t see why children should be treated more harshly.