I still sometimes think about the guy in my lower secondary school English class in probably 2016 reading the infobox on the Wikipedia article for Tanzania, and saying out loud, “Official languages: none de jure??”, pronouncing it in a heavy singsongy Norwegian accent like “NOO-nuh duh YEW-ruh??”, apparently believing “None De Jure” to be the name of some sort of obscure African language rather than just meaning “no official language”
And then I remember that this was around the same time that the teacher asked what New York was named after, and I raised my hand and answered “the Dork of York”. And then my soul goes nichijou_pencil_stab.mp4 for a bit
Still remember a classmate who peed themselves in class because our horrible head master refused to let him go to the bathroom and he was very shy. This was decades ago now and we were small kids. But the main reason I still remember it is because it was such terrible abuse and shook me quite a bit. I mean our head teacher was a super toxic bully in all the possible ways and when I heard he had died I celebrated.
And of course the boy was bullied because of that by the unchecked bullies in our school do it definitely was not forgotten. Bullying was fully supported by teachers there which checks out considering what this country is like at its core.
I feel like people who say that have never experienced bullying or have forgotten how that works. It can be the smallest of things, it will never be forgotten.
Which country?
Finland. Core “values” are all very fashy.
how so?
To be honest, this is a very common occurrence in all UK schools up to ages ~13. I and at least 10 other students in my year group of ~150 were forced to wet ourselves in the middle of class because our requests to go to the bathroom were denied, not even by particularly ‘toxic’ or ‘mean’ teachers, it’s just a fairly normal attitude. I remember asking to go for like the fifth time, the teacher said “You can wait.”, and in response I showed her my piss-covered hand.
You’d think cleaning up all the piss would be enough to deter that policy, but apparently not.
It is child abuse though, and these really shitty attitudes to the needs of children are not spoken out against nearly as much as they should be.
I am baffled by this
Freud / Reich would probably argue that fascism regarding bodily functions helps to turn people into fascists as they grow up. Think of the Koch brothers being caned by their literal Nazi nanny if they didn’t shit at exactly the same time every day. The Dulles brothers also had a similar upbringing. Denying people basic bodily needs makes us crazy.
lelel… for the record, I do suspect that abusive upbringings can make somebody readier to adopt fascism, but I understand what you mean. The extents to which some thinkers abuse psychology’s explanatory power are pretty ridiculous.
In my entire time at elementary school I think the most newsworthy story was this girl who peed her pants while we were walking around the hallways because she was too shy to ask to go earlier
Then in my entire time at highschool, the most newsworthy story was when this same girl ate out another on a living room table at a party
There was this older long term substitute I had in late elementary for a few weeks who was very anti bathroom and would deny permission. This was an awakening for me, when denied I simply got out of my chair and walked to the bathroom. They aren’t going to physically prevent me from doing so and the only way the school could do anything in response was tell my parents who would say I was correct to do what I did. Detention? Just don’t go. Suspension? Fucking day off. This lifted a weight off me that has stayed off me since. I’m a reasonable dude with a pretty exemplary moral bearing and if I see a rule as capricious or arbitrary I feel very confident in ignoring it if the consequences or more or less null. Measured assertiveness rules, people can ask me to do things but no one can tell me to do things.
Damn, my parents would take the side of the school and hit me. What the hell is up with parenting standards?
EDIT: I did not grow up to be a healthy person regarding assertiveness. I can barely ask people for things, I can mostly express needs and hope that other people address them. Asking feels too aggressive for me, which is unfortunate.
EDIT 2: changed only to mostly, I sometimes ask for things
My parents were and are pretty fucking awesome parents and just absolutely good people. They just didn’t patronize me, I was allowed to ‘talk back’ and stuff and they’d yknow bother to explain stuff though on occasion of course there was a ‘just do the fucking thing, doing shit that makes no sense is part of life and this is one’ and retrospectively it was something my parents were socially on the hook for as well. And they weren’t hippie although parenting guys or anything, I’m 2 generations removed from sharecrop farmers on both sides and I don’t think anyone in my family has gone to college, my family is like if the Sobotka’s in The Wire had their apolitical predilections set on soc dem, just good fucking union people. They returned hogwaets legacy which they wre gonna get my little cousin (once removed) who’s mom is a Harry Potter adult when i told them about Rowling cause even though they’ll only take the most convenient stands, they’re not giving their 12 year old niece a game that gives jk Rowling money cause it’s a bad example to set for children.
Edit: also my grandfather on my dad’s side was fire chief for the region when women were finally allowed to be firefighters and he was merciless to those who opposed it or felt discomfort working with women. He also previously set up a system of mutual aide between rural fire departments so if there was a big fire several towns in the area could be dispatched. He also worked with cops but he was born in 39 and would consider it in the same line of community spirit. They’re libs but like New Deal/Great Society type liva of yesteryear who now count as demsocs
Comparatively, my parents saw what British boarding schools in the 30s were doing and saw that as a model for how to raise quiet obedient children who did ok academically and didn’t have visible bruises. But then complained about our mental health problems constantly and asked why we weren’t ambitious confident go-getters climbing corporate ladders. A lifetime of therapy isn’t enough.
EDIT: To be clear, my parents were the ones complaining about the mental health of their kids. We were not complaining about this, we were just trying to survive with the tools given to us.
Of course, look at how the British adults ofnthe 40s and 50s turned out. Clearly ideal.
This drives me nuts as both someone with a small bladder and as a teacher. I can’t fathom why anyone would ever be that cruel. I always tell my students not to even ask: just get up quietly and go. It’s less disruptive, and I don’t need to police bodily functions.
Yup. When I did substitute teaching I always told the kids that if anyone needs the bathroom mid class they can just go and come back as needed. Nobody “abused” this, funny how that works when you trust people.
Teacher leave those kids alone