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wtf are bathroom passes
In American schools, if students move from one classroom to another during the day, which is the norm in middle and high schools (roughly age 11 to completion of school), the whole school does so at the same set times during the day. Being in the hallways at these times is Passing Classes, which is fine; being in the hallways at any other time is Roaming the Halls. A student who is Roaming the Halls is presumed to be Up To Something, and may be stopped and interrogated by any member of staff who witnesses said Roaming.
Of course, it does occasionally happen that a student has a legitimate reason to be in the hallways outside of designated passing times. In those situations, the student carries a pass (”hall pass”) which can be presented to any member of staff who stops and interrogates said student. Usually, the pass is written on a form that is signed by the teacher who authorized the student’s presence in the halls: at my school, the form had spaces for student’s name, date, time, where the student is going, and from whence the student is leaving.
Filling out the entire form every time a student wants to go to the toilet is a pain in the ass, so some teachers use some other form of pass. In my day, it was either just a regular pass that was pre-filled and laminated, or a block of wood with the classroom number and “Bathroom” written on it. Apparently nowadays, using some cumbersome and humorous object as the bathroom pass is A Thing.
This is all regarded as completely normal, so much so that I have explained it in what may be a tedious amount of detail, because I’m unsure what part of it strikes you as unusual. How is this situation handled where you went to school?
By raising your hand, saying you need to use the bathroom, teacher saying okay and you going. Nothing else.
So if another teacher sees you on your way there, they just…mind their own business?
That would never work here.
Would it never work there because of actual logistical issues, or do you mean people would not accept it as a safe solution?
Over here if a teacher sees you (they’re all in class anyway too so it’s unlikely anyone would be in the hallway during class unless they have a reason) they mind their own business, unless you’re dicking around or actually doing something troublesome or loud, or if they know you and know you’re supposed to be somewhere else, and you’re clearly not going to the bathroom. Or if they’re in a shitty mood and wanna yell at you for sitting on the windowsill which was forbidden in my school but nobody cared anyway.
Otherwise, no, no one’s gonna care. Not in high school, anyway- but in lower grades yeah because the kids are younger, but elementary schools will usually have a custodian walking around the halls. They’re still not gonna question kids going to the loo.
Would it never work there because of actual logistical issues, or do you mean people would not accept it as a safe solution?
Short answer is, the second one. Long answer is, the American school system is permeated with a sense that teenagers are this chaotic force that must be contained at all costs. (I’m right now having this very clear sense-memory of a hall monitor * saying “You can’t just roam the halls any time you feel like it!”** in the same sort of tone in which one might say, “You can’t just stab people any time you feel like it!”) It’s not even so much a matter of what you might do while out in the halls unsupervised; the very idea of teenagers Roaming the Halls (of a school, which is full of both teenagers and halls) is understood as being inherently contradictory to the purpose of a school. It isn’t even that you might go somewhere you’re not supposed to be; it’s that at any given time, there is only one place any given student is supposed to be. A hall pass creates a temporary change in your prescribed location, without undercutting the fundamental principle that your location should always be prescribed.
(*My school had professional hall monitors–grown adults who were paid a salary to keep order in the halls.)
(**At one point one teacher issued me a Permanent Hall Pass, for Reasons, essentially licensing me to roam the halls whenever I felt like it. I forget how long that lasted, but eventually a hall monitor stopped me with it and was, naturally, convinced it was fake. They hauled me to the office and were like, “We’re going to call down TeacherName and show her this,” and I was like, “Please do.” So finally they did, and she was like yes, that’s my signature, yes, I wrote that; what are we doing here?” I ended up getting detention anyway, “because the policy is that if a hall monitor brings you to the office, you get detention.” The teacher was also instructed to never issue an open-ended hall pass again.)
Today’s question: is the USA actually a giant prison?
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WHAT THE HELL????????? What if you have no class in the middle of the day? We’d just hang out in the halls. Not everybody went to the library or sth. I probably spent a year of my life in the halls. It was actually kind of a way to socialise with people.
Yeah, there’s even a stock phrase as Gaeilige which is about the first thing you learn in school (my dad taught it to me before I started Big School, i.e. age of five) asking for permission to go to the bathroom.
If a teacher sees a kid hanging around the corridors instead of being in class, they may ask them what they’re doing and wait to see if they head off to where they say they’re going (the usual dodge is “Miss/Sir, I have to get my books out of my locker”) but there’s no Hall Pass or any of the rest of this.
Dear America, why is your education system so strange?
Well for one, there’s never supposed to be a period where kids aren’t in class. There’s no study hall period, no free period, and you’re carefully monitored when you go to and from class as well as to and from lunch period. The idea is that, if kids are free-roaming, they’re going To Do Something like leave school (truancy) or cause some sort of problem.
But really, its more about training children for future jobs where their employers will treat them exactly the same way. If you are not in class/working, then you are doing something wrong.
Teens in the U.K. and Europe are offered a degree of independence unheard of in the USA, and are expected to behave accordingly. For the most part, amazingly, they actually kind of do. They drink in public at the age of 18; they tie their neckties and keep their uniforms vaguely tidy; they travel to foreign countries on school trips at surprisingly young ages; they navigate public transport and walk to and from school without adults, casually walking for miles; they leave school on their lunch breaks to buy snacks. Cheerful packs of nine year olds in uniform wander major cities unattended by adults, perfectly legitimately.
I picked up a copy of TES, the UK teacher’s mag, and one article by a headmaster at a boarding school explained how he prepared his crops of sixth years (16 year olds) for the business world. He explained that he allows them to wear business casual clothes instead of their uniforms, and gives them access to their own private bar, which allows them to learn how to drink in moderation. (Presumably Slytherin prefects also get this privilege.)
One of our friends was the housemistress of a girls’ House at one of the poshest boarding schools and her front hall had this light up board in it with a map of the house on it, with tiny LED lights for every window and door, which would light up if one of the eleven year old girls in her care effected an escape. I think about that board all the time. At the other end of the socioeconomic scale you get the usual drug deals and underage sex, but there are fewer guns.
It’s considered that one of the best ways to enforce discipline is to ensure that students are dressed in the correct uniform.
With this kind of behavior going on it’s hard for teachers to summon up the fucks needed to police bathroom breaks.
It’s also really fun if those kids decide to continue their education. There’s always one person on the first day of class who’ll need to use the bathroom. They’ll raise their hand and ask to go. Cue the profs eternal befuddlement that this is a thing as well as the magical dawning of understanding on the students that they’re free to pee whenever the fuck they want.
“But really, its more about training children for future jobs where their employers will treat them exactly the same way. If you are not in class/working, then you are doing something wrong.”
But that’s not remotely what the work place is like. Firstly, no adult cares about when another adult needs to pee. Secondly, if you mean in a more general ~attitudes~ sort of way, if I do my work in time and well, no one cares whether I spend time on facebook or scroll through tumblr or go for a fifteen minute walk in the middle of the day.
1) in my school they made it to where we had to make it from one class to the next in a total of 5 minutes instead of the regular 10. In this time we were expected to go to the bathroom of needed and make it to class on time. If we were tardy they raised hell. 3 tardies is equal to missing an entire day of school. So if you are late three times in one day out of four possible times? Pretty much you’ve missed that entire day and eventually you get detention. So most students rush as far as they can to get to class no matter how bad they have to pee. Shai taking in the Halls between classes is often discouraged and teachers yell at you so if I’m not waking with a friend to a class there’s no chance of socializing because stopping to say hello is like a crime. Now, along with this tiny amount of time, we at one time were not ever skied to use the restroom during class. This led to me sometimes going all day not using the restroom (unless I had time before lunch but guess what? If you take too long you get a fucking tardy for lunch too) and this can lead to a urinary tract infection. You could only go if you had a doctor’s note explicitly saying your bladder is unusual and you can’t wait to go. This got so bad my dad suggesting having a “pee in” meaning all of the students at a selected time would literally pee or shit their pants and since the janitors would have to clean it up they’d probably protest too. That never happened but I seriously considered it???
2) it really is a prison. At one time after school hours some kids were drunk at a football game. They were seniors so it wasn’t unheard of. After that night they banned bringing in liquids of your own to school. They set up a police officer at all times to check bottles when kids came in for the day or sometimes in the hall. So if a girl brought is an expensive thing like Starbucks or something because she forgot? Yeah that goes in the trash. I began smuggling water in to school because of I don’t have my water shits going to go down my friend.
3) there are certain hours that teachers are not teaching so they could definitely be walking The Halls and questioning students. Principals do it too. The students have never been trusted.
4) I’m 20 turning 21 soon and I asked on my first day of work if I could go pee in the middle of working or if I had to wait till my first break. She looked at me like I was crazy and that was when I realized high school want preparing is for the real world. It was preparing is for prison because they never expected us to go any further. We never learned how to do taxes or change a tire. We were taught discipline, nothing more nothing less. I don’t remember what I learned in AP English or geometry but to this day I catch myself raising my hand to ask a question or asking to go to the restroom. America is fucked up.

Modern Hogwarts Houses’ Stereotypes

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