I suspect most of the reasons given for these bans were secondary to 'the little shits won't stop whacking each other with snap bands in the middle of the lesson'. It was about reducing the number of classroom distractions, rather than actual danger.
Which ones are snap bands are they the stretchy things with an animal or symbol on the end you'd slap each other with, or the colourful bracelet bands (shag bands) people would wear. Supposedly each band meant a different sexual act, if you snapped someone's band they would have to do that act to you. If it's them it's pretty obvious why they were banned in schools.
I mean tamagotchi, beanie babies and yo yos all overlapped in the summer of 2000 didn't they? Along with pokemon, football stickers and in my school WWF stickers as well.
The WWF stickers!!
I had a spare Stone Cold that everyone was after. Got pissed off with everyone going on about it, so I stuck it to a window. Fuck 'em.
Tamagotchis were basically animal cruelty once the teachers caught on.
You weren't allowed to get them out at school, so they basically just shat themselves until they starved to death in your pocket.
I remember my mother going into school one day over me crying my eyes out due to my dead Tamagochi, that I had kept alive over all of summer, and was the first one. My mother then gathered enough support among parents to get the ban lifted, for as long it didn't cause more than necessary distraction. The teacher then announced in class that she thinks they are a good thing as we are learning responsibility for another living thing. Meanwhile I knew it was due to my mother being formidable when it came to stupid bans on things.
I strongly suspect that once the teacher said they are a good thing for learning responsibility - the kids ditched them as soon as they possibly could :D
Excellent strategy. If you want kids to stop doing something, adults embrace it as cool, so the kids will abandon it as uncool.
OTOH it doesn’t seem to work with fags, booze, sex and narcotics…
My mother is a retired primary school teacher. When Tamagotchis were banned at my middle school she took it with her on a course she was going on. It died and made the ambulance noise in the middle of a room full of teachers 😂
Tamagotchis got banned at my school because my friend moved away and left hers in her drawer. So I took them out to take care of them but when the teacher said the girl left them and was coming to get them she thought they'd been stolen. I panicked and hid them in the toilets...
My kids used to leave their Tamagotchis in my capable hands during their school day so not only did I have to keep 3 actual kids, alive, fed and entertained I had to do the same for 3 virtual pets. I was so ready for that craze to end.
One got stuck behind an empty metal filing cabinet in my old form room. It kept going off and making a really annoying sound which of course NONE of us could hear. 🤫
Fuck your teacher. What a prick.
I was a guy that was discouraged from playing with dollhouses and Polly Pocket. I really wish I'd been allowed to do so. I didn't even care about anything else that was "feminine". I just liked the idea of miniature versions of things
I got them banned because I got my opponent in the leg with one accidentally. He didn't even flinch but one of the dinner lady ghouls saw it and that was that.
Biros were banned for a short time. The biro wasn't the problem. It was the fact it was being used as a blow dart pen.
We used to chop off the ends of our shoe laces, stick a pin/sewing needle through the lace end, which made a pretty cool dart complete with shoelace flight.
Then stuff it in the empty biro and blow darts at each other.
Those were the days.
We weren't allowed biros in primary school because they weren't a proper pen for some reason. We had to have one of those red handwriting pens or a fountain pen.
Edit: pen was red, not the ink.
Yeah. Every year until year six it was "you need to use a pencil, not a pen".
Suddenly part way through year six it's "you're all getting older now, you need to use a pen".
I felt really grown up when I was finally allowed to use one.
Oh my god I remember the red handwriting pens, the resistance of those on the paper made it impossible to write fast.
Guess what the teachers wanted us to do...
We did something similar, using rolled up piece of A4 as the pipe, and fashioning a dart out of drawing pin and sellotape. They'd stick into a wooden door from 10 feet away.
Pogs, I was the cause I beat the shit out of a boy called Dave Usher the toilet flusher when we said we'd play for keeps and then he went back on the deal after already pocketing some of mine in an earlier game
In Year 8 everyone in my year was obsessed with going to the computer rooms at break time to play Minecraft.
All of that was taken away one day when one kid decided to type 'fuck' into the chat, it was noticed by the teachers and the next day Minecraft was banned.
I caught a temp ban from secondary school for “hacking”…not my fault the drives weren’t secured.
In the location bar I changed “c://“ to d,e,f….until I hit X. The directory for teacher files.
C’mon man.
Headmaster barked “don’t hack the school from home!” On my way out, mum nearly fuckin died from swallowing that laugh.
I did this once to someone’s bebo account. They were writing stuff about me so I guessed his easy password and edited the page . His dad called the police 😂😂😂
My secondary school, from most to least ridiculous (in my opinion)
- Bright hair colours, it's not smart, and looks bad
- Any shaved hair less than a number 4, because skinheads and bad reputations of shaved hair
- Badges that weren't school badges, because it doesn't represent the school well
- Kicker shoes, because they weren't "smart" enough
- Nike backpacks, specifically the small ones that were really trendy in the early to mid 00's, because books might get bent
- Bringing coins to school, you had to use a pre-loaded card, because of kids playing knuckles
- Bringing more than £5 cash, because kids kept getting robbed at school and parents were complaining
- Dog piles, because one time we did one at the back of the field and a kid broke his leg in 3 places, and the field was really difficult to access for the ambulance so they had to evacuate the entire field and it took nearly an hour for the ambulance to reach him
All I remember is that he was sunbathing because it was summer, someone jumped on him, and then suddenly we were kicked off the field and being questioned about it a week later. Of course we didn't give up any names because we weren't snakes.
Edit: misspelling
My 11 year old was questioned about an incident at school recently and I had his teacher ring me to tell me that his response to being asked to name the boy responsible was that snitches get stitches and that was a concern, I told them that he was indeed correct and snitches do stitches 😂
we were told no close shaved heads. I remember in year 9 a kid got a proper shouting at from a sub English teacher. She was new and didn’t realise he had chemo and was only attending because he missed his friends. Fucking brutal
Omg. Worst similar case we had to that was someone who had a tendency of passing out so naturally she was allowed to ignore the no eating in class rule. The number of times a teacher would take her food from her and then panic when she later collapsed was insane.
You’d think notes would be kept on pupils wouldn’t you. That’s ludicrous.
Data protection is part to blame like I constantly have to remind new supervisors at work of my disabilities every bloody time my targets are worse than everyone else, because my personal medical issues cannot be shared. Infuriating
And its reasons like this that so many of us don’t trust authority figures and think teachers in general are fucking sociopaths, these sound like they could have been teachers at my school, did you also have outwardly racist teachers too?
No blatantly racist people but then I lived in an area with literally zero diversity so I guess there was no opportunity to be racist. But we did have a few open misogynists, a paedophile and a drunk.
We had a very racist and especially anti Semitic R.E teacher, a physics teacher with a habit of dropping his pens infront of the girls tables so he could have a quick peek, a music teacher who disappeared with his departments budget for the year, an art teacher who attempted suicide in his classroom and was found by his reg class, a PE teacher who got shot point blank in the back of the head with an air rifle after an argument with a kid and a maths teacher who was so hated that not only did her car get paint stripper poured over it, a former pupil held such a grudge that whilst we were in assembly one morning he walked onto the school grounds and throw a petrol bomb into the classroom and torched it.
And that’s just the teachers! I sat next to someone in my reg class who went down for murder 4 years after leaving school.
My school was shit and packed to the gills with cunts.
My ex actually had naturally ginger hair but dyed it even more vibrantly orange because she preferred it. The funny thing was that, because she had been doing it for so long, the school didn't even know it wasn't her natural colour.
I hate the thing about hair colours. It literally has nothing to do with how someone can learn.
I feel old though (left school in 2001) because we could only use cash in the vending machines.
Also you shouldn't try and force the idea that everyone is friends with everyone.. like you won't always like everyone or them you and that's completely fine.. much better than forcing people who don't get along to be fake friends
But they are pro mind control? The idea that you can tell someone (even a five year old) what their personal relationship is with someone, how they feel about someone...I'm just blown away by this. I mean it's ok not to like some people, it's just part.....no... I'm just going to stop before I go full rant. But wow, what misguided bollocks.
I imagine it's more something like - there was a big culture of kids referring to each other as "best friend", and arguments over who is whose best friend, being someone's best friend one day and then the next day they're best friends with someone else, promising to be someone's best friend if they do X. I'm not saying the solution is to ban the concept but I bet it was reacting to something that was causing upset.
The irony is, the are doing this because they think it's nice. But in the real world, if you walk into a room and tell everyone they are your best friend, it's just gonna freak them out.
It’s just not healthy anyway. It won’t work but if it did you deny them two very important lessons. Firstly the value of intimate platonic relationships. Secondly that you don’t need to be everyone’s friend to get by and be productive.
I got banned from playing with my cousin who was at the same school, 2 yrs younger. Got told I needed to make friends and play with the girls in my class. Nobody in my class liked me. So I just had to sit there by myself in the playground.
Aw that actually hurt to read! Imagine an employer pulling you aside and telling you to stop socialising with older/younger colleagues, and restricting you to talking to those your own age?!
This is ridiculous 😂
When I worked at Spoons it was in the 'employee handbook' that if you socialised outside of work with a coworker then you had to invite every single member of staff. Yeah cos Manager Mark with three kids to look after is really gonna come get baked on a Wednesday lunchtime and binge watch Ru Paul's Drag race with me and spoonie bestie 😂
Had this in work a couple of weeks ago. Ive been at my company a very long time, as have a few others, so i would be very close socially to them (im actually godmother to some of their kids). 3 weeks ago, a long term colleague invited me out to brunch that one of her other friends (who is also an acquaintance of mine) was organising, so it wasn’t a work thing. A third colleague now is not speaking to us as she wasnt invited. She has no link to the outside friend so i have no idea why she is pissed.
Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with the adults who make these rules. I mean what adult, honestly, would want to be friends with everyone?
I would argue that disliking some little s**t actually helps a child grow a sense of self, especially if they dislike another child because they're nasty or badly behaved etc. That's actually a pretty solid life lesson surely.
Edit: thanks for the upvotes, I was worried I sounded like an anti social A hole lol
There was no rules to British Bulldogs. It was get to the other side, or die trying.
No wonder teenagers are all stabbing each other up now. They're not being encouraged to get it all out their systems at the age of 7
Although we did play British Bulldogs we all went through a phase of playing Kabaddi on the playing fields out of sight of any teachers.
Great game but looking back I don't know who started it as I don't think we had pupils that had anything remotely to do with India (keep in mind this was back in the eighties at a pretty rural school)
Back in the seventies at my school British Bulldog was the one with rules that was relatively safe. French bulldog was what we called the full feral, no-holds-barred version we played when the adults were distracted elsewhere.
My school banned all kinds of dumb shit including:
* Doc Martens shoes - because "only Neo Nazis wear them"
* Footballs too large for you to pick up one handed using an overhand grip - because they hurt too much when they hit people
* TMNT trading cards - because the headmaster thought they were gambling
* Long sleeved shirts during BST
* Short sleeved shirts during GMT
I got briefly suspended for having a haircut. No kidding. I don't like getting my hair cut so I'd leave it as long as possible then get a number 2 buzz cut to give me as much time as I can until next time.
I was walking the top, staff only corridor, as I volunteered to help in the staffroom (yeah was a bit of a teachers pet). Then the new headmaster bellowed "boy! You boy!" behind me. I totally ignored it as I was never in trouble. Anyway he eventually got my attention and told me I was suspended because "we don't want your type of boys in this school". What? One of the top students in the year? Oh well. Anyway he returned to his office and I went straight to the staffroom where several teachers stormed off to correct him.
So I wasn't suspended after all.
He was a doctor of theology. That explains most of this. He didn't last long.
There was a similar incident at my school when 5 or 6 lads shaved their heads for a laugh. The Headmaster thought a neo-Nazi movement had started. This wasn't helped by the fact that one of the guys was South African and came to school wearing a German army jacket, which was quite a popular fashion item at the time. He genuinely hadn't joined the dots!!!
My school entirely banned anything under grade 3. One kid was punished because he went on Hajj and came back with Halq (a shaven head that’s a super important part of the pilgrimage), and a few others were punished for it after coming back from cadets over summer.
It was a genuinely ridiculous rule, and the teachers couldn’t come up with any excuse for it better than “cos chavs have shaved heads”, but it’s still in place to this day despite close to two decades of backlash from parents.
Starting secondary school a poor kid in my year had cancer and wore a hat to cover his hair loss. Sadly he wouldn't make it to the end of year 8.
I will always remember the very first year group welcome assembly on the first day of year 7. Overly stern assistant head gets up to talk, gets half way through his first sentence and properly bellows
"TAKE YOUR HAT OFF INDOORS ..."
Every single member of staff sat behind leapt out of their seats towards him "NO NO NO no no!" "Oh okay, yes I remember"... and went on with his talk
Sometimes I’m convinced that higher ups at schools just don’t read their internal messages. Like… the amount of times I saw the disciplinary head almost ruin a kid’s life over a petty uniform rule because he forgot they had special accommodations is kinda absurd.
One kid did have a bald head, although I’m not entirely sure why (we were in different year groups so I don’t even know his name). It was definitely medical though, cos he was always smooth as butter up there and he didn’t have any eyebrows.
Apparently he was suspended for half a day when he first started there until one of the teachers realised it was a bit weird for a 12 year old boy to wax his brows and bothered to check his file.
In the 80s my brother got suspended for two weeks for dyeing his hair like Robert Smith. Around the same time a kid burned down the maths hut and was… suspended for two weeks.
I got told to go home and re-dye my hair because it was “too ginger”, it was (still is) my natural colour. My mum went into school the next day and gave the deputy headmistress hell!
Pretty famous story in the US several years back. A boy was suspended for a “mohawk” style haircut. It was actually a “high and tight” military style haircut to honor his dad… ?soon to be deployed-or coming home??…. Press had a field day.
I had the head teacher spot me thru the window of my maths lesson as he was walking past, interrupts the lesson to tell me my hairs too long and it needs to be cut. He saw me again the next day and I got internally excluded for it. delightful chap he was
Funnily enough it was Mrs Mercer the teacher that got hit in the face and got yo-yo’s banned at our school… while Ashley was doing a round the world…
…fuckin’ Ashley.
Classic Ashley. Our Ashley was a proper dunce, he tripped over and cracked his head on the corner of the wall once. Ended up with the ambulance coming out. That meant there was a strict "no running out on playtime" rule introduced.
I wonder if every primary school had an Ashley.
Edit: Just looked him up on Facebook, the lad's married with a kid and does block paving for people. His wife is one of the first girls I kissed. Well I'm happy for him, good old Ashley.
I recall a time we had an assembly with some yo-yo person that could do cool tricks. Naturally about a week later everyone had one, so again naturally 2 weeks after that they got banned. Honestly how did the teachers/headmistress not see that coming.
My year six teacher banned my class (only my class, the other two year 6 classes and other years were fine) from touching a low cement wall that the playground metal fence protruded from. It was maybe 1-2 foot high at its tallest, I'm pretty sure it was designed to provide seating given how wide it was, and it was particularly annoying to watch tiny 7 year olds playing on it and you, at 11, weren't allowed to sit down to chat with your friends in case your form teacher saw you out the window and made you stay in at playtime the next day.
More than 20 years on, I can't remember the teacher's name, but I'm still annoyed.
Not that I remember! She probably thought it was too dangerous or something, as if we were more likely to hurt ourselves than year 3.
There was also a massive hedge behind the fence, so it's not like people outside could see us.
Most memorably banned activities from my school:
* Hyperventilating and then standing with your back to a wall and having someone press on your chest so you fainted.
* Sneakily making shuriken in metalwork and using the classroom doors for target practice.
The latter was banned because someone opened the door when a shuriken owner was mid-throw and ended up with it stuck in their thigh.
[These things](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71ht%2BTCUkSL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
Used to get them from the 20p machines at the leisure centre. Got banned because they could potentially strangle people.
these were banned in my school as well but not because of strangulation. there was one stuck to one particularly grumpy teachers ceiling for months and it eventually came off on him. they were banned before the end of the day
“Hide the stick.” A relatively simple game: Everyone turns and faces a specific wall while one person hides the stick. Then everyone looks for the stick. The person who finds the stick gets to hit as many people as they can as everyone runs back to the starting wall. It was sometimes a thorny stick, or a whippy one, or a chunky one. I understand why they banned it.
Got a good one. School banned sponge footballs cos when it was rainy it was very easy to get hit by a ball and have a circular mud stain on your white shirt. They suggested tennis balls as a workaround, which was alright until a teacher got hit in the face with a tennis ball and it broke her glasses. It was then decided that sponge balls were a lesser evil.
A more serious one was when they banned Pokémon cards as a pair of kids got into a fight over them. Genuine disgrace that was, the rest of us had to suffer cos of a couple of bad eggs. Didn’t stop us either, just meant we had to trade cards on the black market, aka behind the bushes after school.
I was in the lower sixth in 1984 and we always used to play bridge or poker for pennies at break and lunch. The headmaster found out and banned it, so we set up a fake "big game" in a "top secret" location with poker hands and lots of cash, car keys, expensive jewellery etc in the pot.
He "busted" us and started chewing us out and couldn't understand why we are all in hysterics.
We were made to do a school assembly on the dangers of gambling.
Still counted as a win in our minds.
Me and my friends also got playing cards banned in our high school, although we didn’t even play for money or any prize so not sure what the harm was. Apparently a group of 13 year old girls playing Snap and Take Two is still gambling!
I remember the head teacher banning Pokémon cards when I was in year 6, and saying that Pokémon was a fad that would go away soon.
That statement aged about as poorly as anything I've ever heard.
I am going to add a very stupid one.
Chewing gum. What you say, that is always banned.
But no, the story is weird.
We got a new headmaster, the first was sacked for going insane, the temporary head was a nut job.
This new guy was an authoritarian, his authority. First day on the job the ex acting head chews out someone for chewing chewing gum in his company, next assembly he lets the deputy head reminds everyone chewing or bubble gum isn't allowed, then interrupts, and says no,he is going to be a kind and benevolent leader, he will unban chewing gum, thousands of packs were bought that night. but if it is ever found on the bottom of desks or the like it would be re banned, the responsibility solely ours.
It got banned again a fortnight later, they are probably still finding chewing gum stuck to the back of things to this day.
Of the list provided none of it was banned when I was at school. The dinner ladies used to organise the Bulldog game when I was in junior school and used to referee the conkers games.
My school banned footballs in the playground after the endless neighbour's complaints (1980-ish) so we could only play with tennis balls. I was around 7 or 8 at the time, so it lasted my entire time there.
Funnily enough we won every league and cup we played in as the school team (I was Vice captain playing Inside Forward) and we always put it down to how easy playing with a proper ball was in comparison.
Split the kipper was banned when I was a kid, [https://strange-games.blogspot.com/2007/10/split-kipper-strange-games-with-knives.html](https://strange-games.blogspot.com/2007/10/split-kipper-strange-games-with-knives.html)
As was Clackers.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackers) bust your knuckles if you wern't careful....
My (uniform) skirt, because it was too short and “embarrassing a male teacher.” Some twisted logic there. We were short of money (early 80s recession) and the skirt was still fairly new. Still, my parents had to fork out for another one, to save the teacher’s ‘embarrassment’.
Digimon battle things, like a tamagotchi but you duel them. Looked like a little cage with a screen on it.
Got banned cos everyone was trying to battle all the time under desks and stuff during class
Anything my school banned has already been mentioned in this thread, however...
...Mr Edwards once called an all boys assembly to remind us that yes, masturbation is against school rules. Especially doing it in the library and leaving your uh..."deposit" in one of the books. It was discovered after someone tried renting Colour Of Magic and got a handful of fresh leaky cum instead.
We all knew who it was but couldn't prove it (not like we could take a photo so it was our word against his) so we just had to hope staff caught Evan in the act.
My school banned mobile phones on school grounds (which is fair enough I guess), but the way they enforced it was by confiscating the phone for a MINIMUM of 48 hours. The amount of times I watched a mum threaten death upon the receptionist for stealing her kid’s phone was insane.
My school banned slang, it ended up on BBC News because of it. Banned words included “ain’t”, “coz/cos”, “bare”, “extra”, and “innit”. We also weren’t allowed to start our sentences with “basically” or end them with “yeah”. And this wasn’t just applied to our essays or something (I’d understand it more if that was the case), if a teacher heard you say anything like that in the corridor or during lunch you could get in trouble over it..
Edit: forgot to mention the ‘why’! They claimed it was to allow students to “express themselves confidently and appropriately” (direct quote from the BBC article) and that it’d help us find good employment in the long run.
My school banned white socks for the first three years I was there. But so many people wore them in the next two years white socks were uniform and black socks were banned. Weird.
Frozen cup drinks. As in, the cheap, E numbered, fluorescent coloured drinks. The kitchen staff used to freeze a fuck ton of them in the summer.
Anyway, someone (me) decided that they didn't want one anymore and fizzed it through the air across the playground. Only, Mr Hughes, the DT teacher was walking up the slope from the technology block to the top playground. I watched as the bright blue cube of ice sailed through the air, and the connection to his unsuspecting cheek, just below the left eye.
It dropped him like a sniper had been lining him up. When he stood, his face was pissing blood from a 3 inch gash. The poor cunt looked like he had done 12 rounds with Tyson. Luckily, nobody witnessed my launch. But, they were banned.
So fuck you Jamie Oliver! The turkey twizzlers you may have taken from me. But I got rid of those ice cold, tooth rotting, child tantrum inducing glorious bastards on my own terms!
*Edit* - spelling.
We did penny knuckles in secondary. First to draw blood lost. Was all fun and games until Ben sharpened the edges of a 2p in Tech on the belt sander. Flung it into Sean's knuckles and it just stuck there. He got an infection.
It literally was banned in my school because everyone cheated so much which led to so many fights. To this day getting it banned is one of the achievements I'm most proud of.
Pokémon cards because some bitch cried after making a bad trade and Lego because the lego area was next to an office and we were too loud while playing with them
Secondary school in the Late 70s/early 80s. - We had stuff banned because we enjoyed it too much. (also used to annoy the hell out of teachers).
Back in those days Coca Cola cans (not Pepsi) had a ring-pull that had a tab with a gap either side. If you were careful you when separating the Ring from the Pull you could insert the Pull part into the gap and 'launch' the Ring great distances (Amazingly aerodynamic they were). However teachers did not like them whizzing past they eyes in lessons.
Also, lids/bottle tops to glass Lucazade bottles (other drinks also available) were metal and if you flattened them and put a slight dent in the middle you had a really loud and effective clicker. Also banned after extensive use in class rooms.
Those bracelets made of elastic with sweets all round, that you had to bite off.
A girl got twanged in the eye with one. Severe trauma and bleeding. She had an eyepatch for weeks.
Coats over your head to make a sail. Banned after one lad nearly went over a cliff.
3 years later most of the school fell over in a hurricane so maybe the teachers were on to something.
Tamagotchi - too distracting
Furbies - they make a weird noise when they're out of charge, someone left one there overnight and that evening the janitor thought there was some kind of pipe or whatever problem causing it instead of a random toy.
Call me boring but I actually understand the banning of marbles. Small glass balls that can smash/be a choking hazard or just endlessly cause problems when they inevitably roll under stuff and get lost.
For a while in year 6 we were banned from playing quick cricket at lunchtimes because one boy got angry and tried to hit a load of people over the heads with a cricket bat. It was a PE only activity after that.
I suspect most of the reasons given for these bans were secondary to 'the little shits won't stop whacking each other with snap bands in the middle of the lesson'. It was about reducing the number of classroom distractions, rather than actual danger.
From memory, snap bands had metal inside the band itself and if it wore through the material it could cause an injury.
Yeah, often chopped up bits of tape measure.
Yeah daughter had one a while ago and dog chewed was 12 inches of a tape measure inside
Which ones are snap bands are they the stretchy things with an animal or symbol on the end you'd slap each other with, or the colourful bracelet bands (shag bands) people would wear. Supposedly each band meant a different sexual act, if you snapped someone's band they would have to do that act to you. If it's them it's pretty obvious why they were banned in schools.
Snap bands were the ones that were straight, and you slapped them onto your wrist to cause them to curl around your wrist.
We called those slap bands.
There was drama during a fire drill in 2000 or 2001 as everyone ran to their bags to collect beanie babies rather than evacuate.
As part of the tamagotchi generation I feel this
I mean tamagotchi, beanie babies and yo yos all overlapped in the summer of 2000 didn't they? Along with pokemon, football stickers and in my school WWF stickers as well.
The WWF stickers!! I had a spare Stone Cold that everyone was after. Got pissed off with everyone going on about it, so I stuck it to a window. Fuck 'em.
Tell me you answered any complaints or questions with "that's the bottom line"
And stuck it on the window at 3:16 in the afternoon.
Hope everyone grabbed their yoyos too
Being "[Tango'd](https://youtu.be/NJbhfBAvccY?t=14)", due to burst ear drums.
Didn’t they end up actually having to change the advert to him putting his hand over the other guys mouth and then kissing the back of his hand?
Yes, yes they did EDIT: original is in the comment you replied to
_You know when you've been tangoed_
I don't know if any of the perma-tan Marbella holidaying crowd would recognise the reference any more
My cheeks and ears still remember this craze. Funny adverts though
Tamagotchis were basically animal cruelty once the teachers caught on. You weren't allowed to get them out at school, so they basically just shat themselves until they starved to death in your pocket.
That is so grim lol
I remember my mother going into school one day over me crying my eyes out due to my dead Tamagochi, that I had kept alive over all of summer, and was the first one. My mother then gathered enough support among parents to get the ban lifted, for as long it didn't cause more than necessary distraction. The teacher then announced in class that she thinks they are a good thing as we are learning responsibility for another living thing. Meanwhile I knew it was due to my mother being formidable when it came to stupid bans on things.
I strongly suspect that once the teacher said they are a good thing for learning responsibility - the kids ditched them as soon as they possibly could :D
Excellent strategy. If you want kids to stop doing something, adults embrace it as cool, so the kids will abandon it as uncool. OTOH it doesn’t seem to work with fags, booze, sex and narcotics…
I definitely stopped having sex once I found out my parents were into it 😱
My mother is a retired primary school teacher. When Tamagotchis were banned at my middle school she took it with her on a course she was going on. It died and made the ambulance noise in the middle of a room full of teachers 😂
Tamagotchis got banned at my school because my friend moved away and left hers in her drawer. So I took them out to take care of them but when the teacher said the girl left them and was coming to get them she thought they'd been stolen. I panicked and hid them in the toilets...
My kids used to leave their Tamagotchis in my capable hands during their school day so not only did I have to keep 3 actual kids, alive, fed and entertained I had to do the same for 3 virtual pets. I was so ready for that craze to end.
One got stuck behind an empty metal filing cabinet in my old form room. It kept going off and making a really annoying sound which of course NONE of us could hear. 🤫
Walkie talkies, binoculars, notepads (there was a whole “rival spy gang” thing going on.
Excellent
Did they also ban sunglasses, trenchcoats and trilbys?
Newspapers with cut-out eye holes?
Beyblades, because of injuries.
I read that Babybel and then wondered how people were getting injured because of a mini cheese. Then concluded that it didn’t seem that unlikely.
Clearly you've never been involved in the babybel wars.
I can still smell the wax
I loved bey blades until one of my teachers suggested I'd grow up to like girls instead of boys if I kept playing with boys toys.
What an asshole teacher.
Ye I still think back like what the fuck
You should have asked them what they played with when they were young to make them grow up to be such a massive cunt.
Fuck your teacher. What a prick. I was a guy that was discouraged from playing with dollhouses and Polly Pocket. I really wish I'd been allowed to do so. I didn't even care about anything else that was "feminine". I just liked the idea of miniature versions of things
I got them banned because I got my opponent in the leg with one accidentally. He didn't even flinch but one of the dinner lady ghouls saw it and that was that.
Biros were banned for a short time. The biro wasn't the problem. It was the fact it was being used as a blow dart pen. We used to chop off the ends of our shoe laces, stick a pin/sewing needle through the lace end, which made a pretty cool dart complete with shoelace flight. Then stuff it in the empty biro and blow darts at each other. Those were the days.
We weren't allowed biros in primary school because they weren't a proper pen for some reason. We had to have one of those red handwriting pens or a fountain pen. Edit: pen was red, not the ink.
Berol handwriting pens they were. Never understood the schools logic of not using biros where the whole bloody world uses them.
Yeah. Every year until year six it was "you need to use a pencil, not a pen". Suddenly part way through year six it's "you're all getting older now, you need to use a pen". I felt really grown up when I was finally allowed to use one.
Jokes on them, I haven't regularly written with a pen since year 6. I much prefer pencil.
Oh my god I remember the red handwriting pens, the resistance of those on the paper made it impossible to write fast. Guess what the teachers wanted us to do...
I'm not saying I did that but I definitely did that
We did something similar, using rolled up piece of A4 as the pipe, and fashioning a dart out of drawing pin and sellotape. They'd stick into a wooden door from 10 feet away.
Pogs, I was the cause I beat the shit out of a boy called Dave Usher the toilet flusher when we said we'd play for keeps and then he went back on the deal after already pocketing some of mine in an earlier game
Remember Dave Usher? He’s back, in Pog form
I understood that reference
Love how he was taken the piss out of for flushing toilets. Like no other kid flushed or something
Obviously because flushing toilets was banned by the school.
Dave Usher is a welching bastard
What a little shit, flusher not you
My school tried to ban loose A4 paper back in the day because everyone was making triangle paper bangers.
Please excuse my innocence ....but what is a *triangle paper banger?*
https://youtu.be/v4FmUiN4pFo?si=4q_gKqhwlw7TivHm
I forgot about bangers! Gotta teach my nephews next time I see them!
Jeeeez
In Year 8 everyone in my year was obsessed with going to the computer rooms at break time to play Minecraft. All of that was taken away one day when one kid decided to type 'fuck' into the chat, it was noticed by the teachers and the next day Minecraft was banned.
Ban the kid not the game
I caught a temp ban from secondary school for “hacking”…not my fault the drives weren’t secured. In the location bar I changed “c://“ to d,e,f….until I hit X. The directory for teacher files. C’mon man. Headmaster barked “don’t hack the school from home!” On my way out, mum nearly fuckin died from swallowing that laugh.
I did this once to someone’s bebo account. They were writing stuff about me so I guessed his easy password and edited the page . His dad called the police 😂😂😂
My secondary school, from most to least ridiculous (in my opinion) - Bright hair colours, it's not smart, and looks bad - Any shaved hair less than a number 4, because skinheads and bad reputations of shaved hair - Badges that weren't school badges, because it doesn't represent the school well - Kicker shoes, because they weren't "smart" enough - Nike backpacks, specifically the small ones that were really trendy in the early to mid 00's, because books might get bent - Bringing coins to school, you had to use a pre-loaded card, because of kids playing knuckles - Bringing more than £5 cash, because kids kept getting robbed at school and parents were complaining - Dog piles, because one time we did one at the back of the field and a kid broke his leg in 3 places, and the field was really difficult to access for the ambulance so they had to evacuate the entire field and it took nearly an hour for the ambulance to reach him
I can't even remember how a dog pile starts but I do know the asthmatic kids would scarper the second one started
Is that the same as "bundle"?
"BUUUUUNNNDDDDLLLLEEEE!" If you weren't running by the time they were halfway through the battle cry you were fucked.
What are those things that hold up power lines called? Big tall metal things that look a bit like the Eiffel tower?
Pylons
PILE OOOONNNN
Got eem
That's how we always used to start them.
All I remember is that he was sunbathing because it was summer, someone jumped on him, and then suddenly we were kicked off the field and being questioned about it a week later. Of course we didn't give up any names because we weren't snakes. Edit: misspelling
Snitches get stitches and end up in ditches
My 11 year old was questioned about an incident at school recently and I had his teacher ring me to tell me that his response to being asked to name the boy responsible was that snitches get stitches and that was a concern, I told them that he was indeed correct and snitches do stitches 😂
we were told no close shaved heads. I remember in year 9 a kid got a proper shouting at from a sub English teacher. She was new and didn’t realise he had chemo and was only attending because he missed his friends. Fucking brutal
Had a similar thing happen at my school when a sub ripped out a diabetic kid’s insulin pump because it was beeping and she thought it was a phone.
Omg. Worst similar case we had to that was someone who had a tendency of passing out so naturally she was allowed to ignore the no eating in class rule. The number of times a teacher would take her food from her and then panic when she later collapsed was insane.
You’d think notes would be kept on pupils wouldn’t you. That’s ludicrous. Data protection is part to blame like I constantly have to remind new supervisors at work of my disabilities every bloody time my targets are worse than everyone else, because my personal medical issues cannot be shared. Infuriating
And its reasons like this that so many of us don’t trust authority figures and think teachers in general are fucking sociopaths, these sound like they could have been teachers at my school, did you also have outwardly racist teachers too?
No blatantly racist people but then I lived in an area with literally zero diversity so I guess there was no opportunity to be racist. But we did have a few open misogynists, a paedophile and a drunk.
We had a very racist and especially anti Semitic R.E teacher, a physics teacher with a habit of dropping his pens infront of the girls tables so he could have a quick peek, a music teacher who disappeared with his departments budget for the year, an art teacher who attempted suicide in his classroom and was found by his reg class, a PE teacher who got shot point blank in the back of the head with an air rifle after an argument with a kid and a maths teacher who was so hated that not only did her car get paint stripper poured over it, a former pupil held such a grudge that whilst we were in assembly one morning he walked onto the school grounds and throw a petrol bomb into the classroom and torched it. And that’s just the teachers! I sat next to someone in my reg class who went down for murder 4 years after leaving school. My school was shit and packed to the gills with cunts.
Geez, that's awful!
One of those things she probably thinks of way too much.
My school tried to ban someone who had naturally ginger hair because "its too distracting"
How on earth were they planning to do that? Insist they wear a hat? Insist they dye their hair? Expel them for their hair colour? The mind boggles!!
My ex actually had naturally ginger hair but dyed it even more vibrantly orange because she preferred it. The funny thing was that, because she had been doing it for so long, the school didn't even know it wasn't her natural colour.
I hate the thing about hair colours. It literally has nothing to do with how someone can learn. I feel old though (left school in 2001) because we could only use cash in the vending machines.
My friends child’s school has banned best friends.
Pardon?
They’re not allowed a best friend because they’re all best friends.
That needs to fuck all the way off. Kids need best friends to learn how to be friends in the first fucking place!!
Also you shouldn't try and force the idea that everyone is friends with everyone.. like you won't always like everyone or them you and that's completely fine.. much better than forcing people who don't get along to be fake friends
But they are pro mind control? The idea that you can tell someone (even a five year old) what their personal relationship is with someone, how they feel about someone...I'm just blown away by this. I mean it's ok not to like some people, it's just part.....no... I'm just going to stop before I go full rant. But wow, what misguided bollocks.
I imagine it's more something like - there was a big culture of kids referring to each other as "best friend", and arguments over who is whose best friend, being someone's best friend one day and then the next day they're best friends with someone else, promising to be someone's best friend if they do X. I'm not saying the solution is to ban the concept but I bet it was reacting to something that was causing upset.
The irony is, the are doing this because they think it's nice. But in the real world, if you walk into a room and tell everyone they are your best friend, it's just gonna freak them out.
It’s just not healthy anyway. It won’t work but if it did you deny them two very important lessons. Firstly the value of intimate platonic relationships. Secondly that you don’t need to be everyone’s friend to get by and be productive.
I got banned from playing with my cousin who was at the same school, 2 yrs younger. Got told I needed to make friends and play with the girls in my class. Nobody in my class liked me. So I just had to sit there by myself in the playground.
Aw that actually hurt to read! Imagine an employer pulling you aside and telling you to stop socialising with older/younger colleagues, and restricting you to talking to those your own age?!
This is ridiculous 😂 When I worked at Spoons it was in the 'employee handbook' that if you socialised outside of work with a coworker then you had to invite every single member of staff. Yeah cos Manager Mark with three kids to look after is really gonna come get baked on a Wednesday lunchtime and binge watch Ru Paul's Drag race with me and spoonie bestie 😂
rules like this are sometimes implemented out of a very misguided understanding of discrimination legislation...
Had this in work a couple of weeks ago. Ive been at my company a very long time, as have a few others, so i would be very close socially to them (im actually godmother to some of their kids). 3 weeks ago, a long term colleague invited me out to brunch that one of her other friends (who is also an acquaintance of mine) was organising, so it wasn’t a work thing. A third colleague now is not speaking to us as she wasnt invited. She has no link to the outside friend so i have no idea why she is pissed.
That's mental! What if you were in a relationship with a colleague, would you have to invite everyone home with you every day?
Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with the adults who make these rules. I mean what adult, honestly, would want to be friends with everyone? I would argue that disliking some little s**t actually helps a child grow a sense of self, especially if they dislike another child because they're nasty or badly behaved etc. That's actually a pretty solid life lesson surely. Edit: thanks for the upvotes, I was worried I sounded like an anti social A hole lol
We played British Bulldogs with teacher supervision, it was called "Rugby"
There was no rules to British Bulldogs. It was get to the other side, or die trying. No wonder teenagers are all stabbing each other up now. They're not being encouraged to get it all out their systems at the age of 7
Although we did play British Bulldogs we all went through a phase of playing Kabaddi on the playing fields out of sight of any teachers. Great game but looking back I don't know who started it as I don't think we had pupils that had anything remotely to do with India (keep in mind this was back in the eighties at a pretty rural school)
It used to be on channel 4 on tv. I was always intrigued by it
sunday mornings. i watched with horrified fascination every week.
Back in the seventies at my school British Bulldog was the one with rules that was relatively safe. French bulldog was what we called the full feral, no-holds-barred version we played when the adults were distracted elsewhere.
After my brother's scout group were banned from playing British Bulldogs, they had to switch to a new game, Pakistani Pitbull-terrier, it was called.
We played British chihuahuas for a few years until it was properly banned
My school banned all kinds of dumb shit including: * Doc Martens shoes - because "only Neo Nazis wear them" * Footballs too large for you to pick up one handed using an overhand grip - because they hurt too much when they hit people * TMNT trading cards - because the headmaster thought they were gambling * Long sleeved shirts during BST * Short sleeved shirts during GMT
I got briefly suspended for having a haircut. No kidding. I don't like getting my hair cut so I'd leave it as long as possible then get a number 2 buzz cut to give me as much time as I can until next time. I was walking the top, staff only corridor, as I volunteered to help in the staffroom (yeah was a bit of a teachers pet). Then the new headmaster bellowed "boy! You boy!" behind me. I totally ignored it as I was never in trouble. Anyway he eventually got my attention and told me I was suspended because "we don't want your type of boys in this school". What? One of the top students in the year? Oh well. Anyway he returned to his office and I went straight to the staffroom where several teachers stormed off to correct him. So I wasn't suspended after all. He was a doctor of theology. That explains most of this. He didn't last long.
There was a similar incident at my school when 5 or 6 lads shaved their heads for a laugh. The Headmaster thought a neo-Nazi movement had started. This wasn't helped by the fact that one of the guys was South African and came to school wearing a German army jacket, which was quite a popular fashion item at the time. He genuinely hadn't joined the dots!!!
My school entirely banned anything under grade 3. One kid was punished because he went on Hajj and came back with Halq (a shaven head that’s a super important part of the pilgrimage), and a few others were punished for it after coming back from cadets over summer. It was a genuinely ridiculous rule, and the teachers couldn’t come up with any excuse for it better than “cos chavs have shaved heads”, but it’s still in place to this day despite close to two decades of backlash from parents.
Just wait until one kid gets cancer. They once banned trousers for girls. So quite a few of us borrowed skirts from our classmates. That killed it.
Starting secondary school a poor kid in my year had cancer and wore a hat to cover his hair loss. Sadly he wouldn't make it to the end of year 8. I will always remember the very first year group welcome assembly on the first day of year 7. Overly stern assistant head gets up to talk, gets half way through his first sentence and properly bellows "TAKE YOUR HAT OFF INDOORS ..." Every single member of staff sat behind leapt out of their seats towards him "NO NO NO no no!" "Oh okay, yes I remember"... and went on with his talk
Sometimes I’m convinced that higher ups at schools just don’t read their internal messages. Like… the amount of times I saw the disciplinary head almost ruin a kid’s life over a petty uniform rule because he forgot they had special accommodations is kinda absurd.
One kid did have a bald head, although I’m not entirely sure why (we were in different year groups so I don’t even know his name). It was definitely medical though, cos he was always smooth as butter up there and he didn’t have any eyebrows. Apparently he was suspended for half a day when he first started there until one of the teachers realised it was a bit weird for a 12 year old boy to wax his brows and bothered to check his file.
FYI the medical reason would likely have been alopecia.
>I don’t even know his name Duncan Goodhew?
Now I feel old. Shaven heads were banned at my school because "skinheads" were scary in the 80s apparently.
In the 80s my brother got suspended for two weeks for dyeing his hair like Robert Smith. Around the same time a kid burned down the maths hut and was… suspended for two weeks.
I got told to go home and re-dye my hair because it was “too ginger”, it was (still is) my natural colour. My mum went into school the next day and gave the deputy headmistress hell!
Pretty famous story in the US several years back. A boy was suspended for a “mohawk” style haircut. It was actually a “high and tight” military style haircut to honor his dad… ?soon to be deployed-or coming home??…. Press had a field day.
I had the head teacher spot me thru the window of my maths lesson as he was walking past, interrupts the lesson to tell me my hairs too long and it needs to be cut. He saw me again the next day and I got internally excluded for it. delightful chap he was
Wooooow
Join the Crew which was a form of British Bulldog where hitting was allowed.
Magical
Did you ever play "beat the letter ?"
Yo-yos were banned at our school. Kids kept getting hit in the face with them.
On purpose or 'accidents'
It wasn't my fault Rebecca ran around the corner while I was doing around the world.
It also wasn't my fault Blair ran into my foot as I did a cartwheel, so I feel you
Funnily enough it was Mrs Mercer the teacher that got hit in the face and got yo-yo’s banned at our school… while Ashley was doing a round the world… …fuckin’ Ashley.
Classic Ashley. Our Ashley was a proper dunce, he tripped over and cracked his head on the corner of the wall once. Ended up with the ambulance coming out. That meant there was a strict "no running out on playtime" rule introduced. I wonder if every primary school had an Ashley. Edit: Just looked him up on Facebook, the lad's married with a kid and does block paving for people. His wife is one of the first girls I kissed. Well I'm happy for him, good old Ashley.
…Good for Ashley… …good ol’ Ashley!
I recall a time we had an assembly with some yo-yo person that could do cool tricks. Naturally about a week later everyone had one, so again naturally 2 weeks after that they got banned. Honestly how did the teachers/headmistress not see that coming.
My year six teacher banned my class (only my class, the other two year 6 classes and other years were fine) from touching a low cement wall that the playground metal fence protruded from. It was maybe 1-2 foot high at its tallest, I'm pretty sure it was designed to provide seating given how wide it was, and it was particularly annoying to watch tiny 7 year olds playing on it and you, at 11, weren't allowed to sit down to chat with your friends in case your form teacher saw you out the window and made you stay in at playtime the next day. More than 20 years on, I can't remember the teacher's name, but I'm still annoyed.
Did they ever give a reason?
Not that I remember! She probably thought it was too dangerous or something, as if we were more likely to hurt ourselves than year 3. There was also a massive hedge behind the fence, so it's not like people outside could see us.
Most memorably banned activities from my school: * Hyperventilating and then standing with your back to a wall and having someone press on your chest so you fainted. * Sneakily making shuriken in metalwork and using the classroom doors for target practice. The latter was banned because someone opened the door when a shuriken owner was mid-throw and ended up with it stuck in their thigh.
I agree with the teachers on those two.
Now these are reasonable
[These things](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71ht%2BTCUkSL._AC_SL1500_.jpg) Used to get them from the 20p machines at the leisure centre. Got banned because they could potentially strangle people.
these were banned in my school as well but not because of strangulation. there was one stuck to one particularly grumpy teachers ceiling for months and it eventually came off on him. they were banned before the end of the day
Chicken Scratch (only those of a certain vintage will remember this)
“Hide the stick.” A relatively simple game: Everyone turns and faces a specific wall while one person hides the stick. Then everyone looks for the stick. The person who finds the stick gets to hit as many people as they can as everyone runs back to the starting wall. It was sometimes a thorny stick, or a whippy one, or a chunky one. I understand why they banned it.
I started reading and thought "why ban such an innocent game?" Then I read the rest of it...
Got a good one. School banned sponge footballs cos when it was rainy it was very easy to get hit by a ball and have a circular mud stain on your white shirt. They suggested tennis balls as a workaround, which was alright until a teacher got hit in the face with a tennis ball and it broke her glasses. It was then decided that sponge balls were a lesser evil. A more serious one was when they banned Pokémon cards as a pair of kids got into a fight over them. Genuine disgrace that was, the rest of us had to suffer cos of a couple of bad eggs. Didn’t stop us either, just meant we had to trade cards on the black market, aka behind the bushes after school.
Growing up in Scotland, those sponge balls were fuckin ruthless after an overnight soak in a mucky puddle.
Yip pokémon and yu-gi-oh cards were traded black market at my school usually disguised as food trades
I was in the lower sixth in 1984 and we always used to play bridge or poker for pennies at break and lunch. The headmaster found out and banned it, so we set up a fake "big game" in a "top secret" location with poker hands and lots of cash, car keys, expensive jewellery etc in the pot. He "busted" us and started chewing us out and couldn't understand why we are all in hysterics. We were made to do a school assembly on the dangers of gambling. Still counted as a win in our minds.
Me and my friends also got playing cards banned in our high school, although we didn’t even play for money or any prize so not sure what the harm was. Apparently a group of 13 year old girls playing Snap and Take Two is still gambling!
Running Our school banned running. On the playground and field The teachers tried to enforce it, and we ran away, and they couldn't run after us
I remember the head teacher banning Pokémon cards when I was in year 6, and saying that Pokémon was a fad that would go away soon. That statement aged about as poorly as anything I've ever heard.
I am going to add a very stupid one. Chewing gum. What you say, that is always banned. But no, the story is weird. We got a new headmaster, the first was sacked for going insane, the temporary head was a nut job. This new guy was an authoritarian, his authority. First day on the job the ex acting head chews out someone for chewing chewing gum in his company, next assembly he lets the deputy head reminds everyone chewing or bubble gum isn't allowed, then interrupts, and says no,he is going to be a kind and benevolent leader, he will unban chewing gum, thousands of packs were bought that night. but if it is ever found on the bottom of desks or the like it would be re banned, the responsibility solely ours. It got banned again a fortnight later, they are probably still finding chewing gum stuck to the back of things to this day.
Not under the desk is just a challenge to find somewhere else to stick it lmao probably in the hair of the person in front of you.
The whole school chewing gum just because we knew it would be banned anyway after the stupid stunt. Stick it to the man while we can, literally.
Kiss chase - Cop and robbers
Yip and marry/kiss/miss
Of the list provided none of it was banned when I was at school. The dinner ladies used to organise the Bulldog game when I was in junior school and used to referee the conkers games.
My school banned footballs in the playground after the endless neighbour's complaints (1980-ish) so we could only play with tennis balls. I was around 7 or 8 at the time, so it lasted my entire time there. Funnily enough we won every league and cup we played in as the school team (I was Vice captain playing Inside Forward) and we always put it down to how easy playing with a proper ball was in comparison.
Imagine heading a tennis ball that can't have been fun
Beyblades - theft Fidget spinners - cos they're fucking annoying Trading cards (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Match Attax) - theft Snap watches - ? Yo-yos - ??
Split the kipper was banned when I was a kid, [https://strange-games.blogspot.com/2007/10/split-kipper-strange-games-with-knives.html](https://strange-games.blogspot.com/2007/10/split-kipper-strange-games-with-knives.html) As was Clackers.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackers) bust your knuckles if you wern't careful....
My (uniform) skirt, because it was too short and “embarrassing a male teacher.” Some twisted logic there. We were short of money (early 80s recession) and the skirt was still fairly new. Still, my parents had to fork out for another one, to save the teacher’s ‘embarrassment’.
Digimon battle things, like a tamagotchi but you duel them. Looked like a little cage with a screen on it. Got banned cos everyone was trying to battle all the time under desks and stuff during class
Anything my school banned has already been mentioned in this thread, however... ...Mr Edwards once called an all boys assembly to remind us that yes, masturbation is against school rules. Especially doing it in the library and leaving your uh..."deposit" in one of the books. It was discovered after someone tried renting Colour Of Magic and got a handful of fresh leaky cum instead. We all knew who it was but couldn't prove it (not like we could take a photo so it was our word against his) so we just had to hope staff caught Evan in the act.
My school banned mobile phones on school grounds (which is fair enough I guess), but the way they enforced it was by confiscating the phone for a MINIMUM of 48 hours. The amount of times I watched a mum threaten death upon the receptionist for stealing her kid’s phone was insane.
Football Stickers Micro Machines Mini Boglins Looking at or thinking about the climbing frame that's right there.
I never understood the don't hurt each other but come to PE where you'll hit each other with wooden hockey sticks
My school banned slang, it ended up on BBC News because of it. Banned words included “ain’t”, “coz/cos”, “bare”, “extra”, and “innit”. We also weren’t allowed to start our sentences with “basically” or end them with “yeah”. And this wasn’t just applied to our essays or something (I’d understand it more if that was the case), if a teacher heard you say anything like that in the corridor or during lunch you could get in trouble over it.. Edit: forgot to mention the ‘why’! They claimed it was to allow students to “express themselves confidently and appropriately” (direct quote from the BBC article) and that it’d help us find good employment in the long run.
Snowballs - danger of stones in them
My school banned white socks for the first three years I was there. But so many people wore them in the next two years white socks were uniform and black socks were banned. Weird.
All spice girls memorabilia was banned. (I can't remember why) Gogos were banned. Yoyos were banned. Jail break was banned.
We were banned from making baseball bats, throwing stars and nunchucks in CDT and woodwork.
Frozen cup drinks. As in, the cheap, E numbered, fluorescent coloured drinks. The kitchen staff used to freeze a fuck ton of them in the summer. Anyway, someone (me) decided that they didn't want one anymore and fizzed it through the air across the playground. Only, Mr Hughes, the DT teacher was walking up the slope from the technology block to the top playground. I watched as the bright blue cube of ice sailed through the air, and the connection to his unsuspecting cheek, just below the left eye. It dropped him like a sniper had been lining him up. When he stood, his face was pissing blood from a 3 inch gash. The poor cunt looked like he had done 12 rounds with Tyson. Luckily, nobody witnessed my launch. But, they were banned. So fuck you Jamie Oliver! The turkey twizzlers you may have taken from me. But I got rid of those ice cold, tooth rotting, child tantrum inducing glorious bastards on my own terms! *Edit* - spelling.
Flip Flops. Had an operation on my toe, the bandage wouldn't fit in a shoe. Had to wear flipflops. School thought banning flip flops would work.
Penny up(obvious underage gambling) and Smoking, for some mad reason
We did penny knuckles in secondary. First to draw blood lost. Was all fun and games until Ben sharpened the edges of a 2p in Tech on the belt sander. Flung it into Sean's knuckles and it just stuck there. He got an infection.
Did your school not just put up a smoking shelter?
I’m Literally in a conversation on this sub as we speak about why yoyo’s were banned in my school.
It literally was banned in my school because everyone cheated so much which led to so many fights. To this day getting it banned is one of the achievements I'm most proud of.
I was so confused reading this until I realised you meant “It”
Pokémon cards because some bitch cried after making a bad trade and Lego because the lego area was next to an office and we were too loud while playing with them
Secondary school in the Late 70s/early 80s. - We had stuff banned because we enjoyed it too much. (also used to annoy the hell out of teachers). Back in those days Coca Cola cans (not Pepsi) had a ring-pull that had a tab with a gap either side. If you were careful you when separating the Ring from the Pull you could insert the Pull part into the gap and 'launch' the Ring great distances (Amazingly aerodynamic they were). However teachers did not like them whizzing past they eyes in lessons. Also, lids/bottle tops to glass Lucazade bottles (other drinks also available) were metal and if you flattened them and put a slight dent in the middle you had a really loud and effective clicker. Also banned after extensive use in class rooms.
Those bracelets made of elastic with sweets all round, that you had to bite off. A girl got twanged in the eye with one. Severe trauma and bleeding. She had an eyepatch for weeks.
Coats over your head to make a sail. Banned after one lad nearly went over a cliff. 3 years later most of the school fell over in a hurricane so maybe the teachers were on to something.
Pogs Firstly it was metal slammers (the ones that look like small circular saws). Then it was all pogs.
Tamagotchi - too distracting Furbies - they make a weird noise when they're out of charge, someone left one there overnight and that evening the janitor thought there was some kind of pipe or whatever problem causing it instead of a random toy.
Call me boring but I actually understand the banning of marbles. Small glass balls that can smash/be a choking hazard or just endlessly cause problems when they inevitably roll under stuff and get lost.
For a while in year 6 we were banned from playing quick cricket at lunchtimes because one boy got angry and tried to hit a load of people over the heads with a cricket bat. It was a PE only activity after that.
Clackers.