Why Silly School Rules Backfire: What Student Stories From Reddit Taught Me As A Teacher
It was 10:20 PM on a Tuesday, my peppermint coffee had gone lukewarm, the dog was curled on my feet, and I was actively avoiding grading 27 7th-grade persuasive essays. I ended up scrolling through an old AskReddit thread that popped up on my feed: “Students of Reddit, what is the dumbest rule your school has actually tried to enforce?” I expected silly jokes, maybe a rant about dress codes, but I stayed up an hour reading, and most of the stories weren’t even funny. They were just infuriating, in that quiet way that comes from seeing logic flipped on its head.
There was the student whose school banned all passing notes, so a 14-year-old got three days of in-school suspension for passing a note to the office alerting them that a classmate was having a seizure. Another had a rule banning hoodies, so a student with alopecia who wore a hoodie to cover his scalp got sent home three days in a row until his mom could dig up a doctor’s note. One high school banned all food in the hallways, so a girl got detention for sharing a granola bar with her diabetic classmate whose blood sugar dropped mid-pass between classes. I kept scrolling, and I kept seeing the same pattern: rules written for the worst case scenario, applied to everyone, no exceptions, no room for common sense.
Reading that thread hit close to home, because my school tried to roll out a total no-phones-on-campus rule three years ago. The admin team presented it at a faculty meeting, pulled data about phone distractions in class, said one-size-fits-all was the only way to make it work. We’d collect every phone first thing in the morning, lock it in a cabinet, return it at dismissal. I asked what about kids who walk home alone after soccer practice, or kids who need phones for medical updates, and the head of discipline said any kid with a special case could get an exception, they just needed a doctor’s note and a meeting with admin.
That worked in theory, until Mia, one of my quiet 7th graders, got her third write-up in two weeks for keeping her phone in her backpack. I pulled her aside after class, and she sat in the chair by my desk twisting her backpack strap, crying, and told me her mom was 32 weeks pregnant with a high-risk condition. Her mom’s doctor said she could go into labor at any time, and Mia needed to have her phone on her in case she got the call to head straight to the hospital. Her mom couldn’t take off work to come to a meeting with admin to get an exception, and they wouldn’t approve it over the phone.
We got that sorted out, eventually, but it made me think about all those Reddit stories. We make rules to simplify our jobs, right? It’s easier to say “no hoodies ever” than it is to check if a kid needs one for a medical reason or sensory processing stuff. It’s easier to ban all phones than it is to address the specific issue of phone use during class. But the cost of that convenience is that we end up punishing kids for being kind, for taking care of themselves, for living lives that don’t fit the neat box we created.
After that thread, and the Mia situation, I started talking to other teachers and parents I know about small, concrete changes we can make to avoid these useless, hurtful rules. It doesn’t require overhauling the entire school handbook, just a few small steps before you lock a new rule in place.
For teachers and admins: before you vote on a new rule, grab 3 to 5 students from different grades and different friend groups and ask them what exceptions they can think of. Last year, when we were revisiting our dress code, we asked three 8th graders what they thought about the “no holes in jeans” rule, and they immediately pointed out that a lot of kids can’t afford new jeans every time they get a hole, and that it disproportionately affects kids from low-income families. We cut that rule out, no fight, no fuss, just because we asked. For parents: if your kid comes home complaining about a rule that doesn’t make sense, don’t just brush it off as “school being stupid.” Ask them to name how the rule affects other kids, then help them draft a short email to the principal or bring it up at the next PTA meeting. A neighbor of mine did that two years ago, when her middle schooler came home saying no one could bring water bottles to class, and several kids were getting headaches during the hot fall months. She rounded up three kids to come to the next school board meeting, and the rule was changed within a month.
We still have silly rules at my school, of course. Last week, my 8th grade class and I made a list of the dumbest ones, and the top vote went to the rule that no one can sit on the floor during lunch. The cafeteria is 80 kids over capacity, so there’s never enough seats, but admin still says sitting on the floor is a “safety hazard.” We’re bringing it to student council next week, and we don’t know if it’ll change. Some admin are still worried it’ll lead to mess or disorder, even though we offered to have the kids clean up any trash themselves.
But that’s the thing, right? Rules don’t have to be perfect forever. They just have to work for the kids they’re supposed to protect. Those Reddit stories didn’t give me some big new revelation, but they reminded me: if your rule punishes a kid for helping a classmate having a seizure, you didn’t make order. You just made a dumb rule that hurts everyone. We’re still working on it, one rule at a time.
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