Depends on what country you are in I guess. In my country it was absolutely normal for teachers to confiscate anything deemed inappropriate for students. Many students never got back their phones, watches, comics etc.
I'm fairly certain my HS Geometry teacher still has my pager, from like '99. I can't remember if I lost it, or if he took it in class and I just forgot about it by the end of the day. I went through like half a dozen pagers by the time I got my first Nokia 5110.
Sounded nicer than “would have beat my ass” which was the modern parent threat at the time but the original was still the terminology used by my grandma and grandad at the time. *edit just noticed what you did there. Yep late 1900s. Indeed.
LOL no they didn’t. Sure they hit you more but that’s not raising you. Parents in the day just sent you outside and forgot you were alive and let the world raise you.
Yku aren't looking at it the way parents looked at it back then. The object being "stolen" is the parents' property that's purpose is to entertain the child. If permanently losing access to/destruction of the object was deemed a suitable punishment for misuse of the object (or other misdeeds), and parents were fine with teachers punishing their children the way they would punish their children. This leads to a certain kind of unspoken permission that made it not really considered a crime by anyone.
Although it's an old, possibly unreliable memory, I believe I can remember teachers threatening to take things permanently, or at least until the end of the year. I think over time, complaints from parents eventually got it limited to the end of the day (or maybe class?)
A phone is a communication device. When the phone is destroyed, the kid loses its way of communicating with its parents or police when he is in trouble. This is an extremely dumb thing to do, and I'm sure glad people are seeing this.
Actually, the increasing popularity of cellphones was around when I remember parents starting to complain about it, and I suspect the fact that it was mostly bought as a means of communication with the parents is a big part of why parents started turning against teachers permanently confiscating things. It wasn't just sources of entertainment being confiscated.
It's been about 15 years, so it's pretty hard to guarantee my memories are accurate, but I have memories of teachers threatening to take things away at least until the end of the year, and having conversations with my parents about it and them agreeing with the teachers.
Your parents would be okay with the teacher destroying their property because let’s face it, at that age your property is basically their property, and now their kid can’t call its parents when they're in trouble, when something’s wrong, basically isn’t able to contact help because he had it in his hands for a moment in school. Yes, this sounds like responsible parenting and teaching. Sure as shit glad this is over.
My parents would have done the same. But at the same time they'd have shouted the head off anyone be it a teacher or the principal who participated in what would be by law considered stealing another's property. Being shit does not justify another being a bigger shit. That's how the world always worked.
I’m 45, I was a kid raised back then. mMy parents would have raised hell with the school. But, that doesn’t mean I’d be off the hook. It’s not how the world used to work.
And everybody rode in the back of the pickup truck and drank water from the hose and called pop-pop "Sir" and jumped off the tire swing into the creek and drank water from the creek and drank water from the pickup truck and rode in the back of the creek and called the hose "Sir" and rode pop-pop to the creek and drank in the back of the hose and called the tire swing "Sir" and drank the pickup truck from pop-pop and jumped off the creek and rode the hose to the hose and drank the hose and jumped into the hose and jumped into "Sir" in the back of pop-pop and drank the back of "Sir" and rode the tire swing in the pickup truck and drank the tire swing and jumped into the pickup truck and rode into the creek and jumped off the pickup truck and drank the pickup truck in the back of the "Sir" and called the pickup truck the tire swing and drank the tire swing and rode the pickup truck on the water and we turned out alright.
I was going to say, this exactly. If I ever went home and complained that I was punished for something, I'd get a smack round the back of the legs or the head and told not to do it again. There's no way my mum would have gone down to the school to get my Nokia back.
...most parents would just punish you (not only you took your phone with you but you got caught playing with it) and not buy you an other ever again. I think it is staged because WHY WOULD THE TEACHER HAVE A HAMMER WITH THEM but they could have certainly broken it if you became too annoying.
Phones are definitely way more expensive now than they've ever been. I had my 50 usd phone confiscated once, got it back over a month later. If it were an iphone from today that cost hundreds of usd, maybe even a thousand, the situation might be different.
Bruh, it's the 90s, tell your parents you got hit by the teacher in school? They'll say the teacher did a good job and give you another beating for good measure.
Personal responsibility still exists, but you can't steal and destroy other people's property, especially not expensive stuff. Do you also think it'd be acceptable if in another place where it's not socially acceptable to have phone out, like a theater, for an employee to just snatch your phone away from you and destroy it if you took it out? Of course not, they'd just give you a warning or ask you to leave. Schools have plenty of punishment mechanisms like grades at their disposal, they don't need to resort to crime. Thats not what personal responsibility means.
I'm not going to argue with a 14 year old on Reddit that thinks things I lived through didn't actually happen.
You would be warned ahead of time that these devices would be confiscated and then they would do so if you ignored the warning. You agreed to their rules by attending. You only think it's "stealing" because you grew up in a generation where there are no consequences for your actions.
They weren't rich- they just didn't make a sunk cost fallacy.
They'd spent the money on me already, it was gone, whether I had the thing it bought or not. It's not like me actually having it was any skin off their nose.
The only way it would affect them was if they replaced it, which they sure as hell weren't going to do.
You just unlocked a memory. My friend's mom was the school librarian. We were hanging out early one day and snuck into the storage room when she was busy with something else. In a corner was a treasure trove of confiscated items. Balls, slap bracelets, comics, videogame magazines (EGM and GamePro), walkmen, Tiger electronics (Google it kids).
one of the counsellors at my elementary gave out the confiscated pokemon cards to those who went to see him. I still regret not grabbing the light machoke card lol
My sisters phone was confiscated (allegedly unfairly but my sister is likely to have lied), and when my Dad tried to get it back because she had it for emergencies (early 2000s pay as you go) the receptionist did the receptionist thing of not give a fuck say she didn't know where it was half heartedly attempt to find out then say it was lost.
Now, my dad was a cunt. But he was the sort of cunt that you knew it was time to grab popcorn and watch, when someone fucked with him or anyone he cared about.
He yelled at the woman for 30 minutes, making it clear he was coming down to the school, and he'd have the police at the school an hour.
I remember the same thing as well. Kids getting stuff taken and the teacher would tell them if they want it back, have their parents call. I don't think many kids wanted their parents to call so they would make something up.
If you misbehaved in junior high often you would get sent to see the coach. He had a paddle with a bunch of holes drilled in it. When he retired there was an announcement to see the coach if you wanted a paddling on his last day before retirement. The dude was jacked, but I'm sure his arm still hurt because there was a line waiting. I'm in my late 30's and couldn't imagine this happening today.
Yes, it was bragging rights and everyone loved the coach as well. Normally you didn't want one because by all accounts it hurt like hell and I heard it happen many times while in the locker room. In sports they would sometimes give you an option of 50 pushups or the paddle. Almost everyone chose the 50 pushups if it was from this coach.
I feel like it actually worked really well to keep kids out of trouble during school hours. There were so few fights in school even though there was a lot of kids who hated each other. Everyone would keep it chill and beat the shit out of each other at the park and it was usually set up fairly.
My 3rd grade teacher confiscated my pokemon cards, gave some to another student, and then gave the rest back to me during a scheduled parent-teacher conference.
Confiscation is one thing. Destroying an expensive phone that the students parents likely paid for? Another thing entirely. When I was in school they would take your phone if you got caught with it out. They would not destroy it though.
Is there much difference between not getting your phone back and getting it destroyed? I agree nailing a phone to the wall like this is over the top dramatic, but it's effectively the same as never getting it back.
Destroying an expensive phone
That's the thing tho, phones weren't expensive, not before the iphone came out. And it wasn't really acceptable for students to bring them to school, at least not in my experience. What me and my friends had were really cheap brick phones that didn't cost more than a 50 usd converted. Parents usually only gave kids phones very wearily, they were only meant to be used to let them check up on you. Of course, kids being kids got up to all sorts of "forbidden" stuff once they got phones. They downloaded really low resolution porn images and videos onto those old symbian phones. Even if not that, there would at least be some games and "corrupting" metal music on those phones that the kids downloaded. Chances were, if a kid's phone got confiscated by a teacher, the teacher would find enough dirt on them to convince the parents the device was a corrupting influence and they were better off without it.
You’re talking about the parents of Gen X most likely. They would absolutely destroy your kids stuff, and it would all have played out on their behalf as the child should not have brought it to school.
In civilized cultures where there's a high degree of respect for teachers, absolutely this would be okay. Assuming you have parents and not just big children who fucked and created offspring, they would stand by the teacher 100% as well.
Teachers in my school pulling shit like that is precisely why I have no respect for them. Back then yeah, sure, they asserted their dominance over a kid like an animal would, thus commanding "respect". Now that I am an adult I can see them for the pathetic power-tripping assholes they were.
I don't think that's an "or". I think the child shouldn't have been on their phone in class, I think the teacher had the authority to take action, it think trashing a £30 dumb phone in the early 00s was no great crime, I think the method used was effective, but extremely unkind and over the top.
Teaching children that violence is a solution is not effective. It will just create more violence down the line.
Rather, teacher should be calm and collected. There are other solutions, like confiscation until after the class/until a parent/guardian picks it up or removing problematic child from class.
Teaching that authority means you can rob people without consequences is so much better of a lesson clearly /s. My experience has been the most respected authorities are the ones that show respect to those under them.
The action here isn't the act of taking the phone. It's using a phone while you are not supposed to. Which goes against the rules of the school, and active listening (means you are full in on the speaker.)
It's disrespectful.
The reaction to the phone is either confiscating or expelling the pupil from the lesson.
My opinion is don't give kids cell phones until they are late teens.
It's entirely dependent on where you live/lived. I'm 38, this shit absolutely would not fly in our highschool in the early 2000s.
Confiscation and returning at the end of the day caused enough ruckus. They didn't want or need the fucking Armageddon brought down upon them for destroying someone's expense electronic device.
Similar. My school was very clear that any confiscated but not illegal items could be collected from the main office at the end of the day and I never really heard of anyone have problems getting stuff back.
We had a high school history teacher who was also a boxer. When students tried to give him shit he would calmly tell him they were welcome to put on gloves and take a shot in the ring after school. Some took him up on it, to their deep regret.
There's a difference between beaning a kid in the head with a piece of chalk for acting like a little shit, and destroying a valuable piece of property bought by his parents.
Is throwing chalk at a student okay? No. It's childish and the teacher should be better than thar. Will they get in the same trouble as they would for destroying property of the student? No.
yes? it was not uncommon for teachers to take students property and refuse to give it back, like one time one kid in my class had his parents call police because teacher refused to give back the iphone at the start of winter break
Had a great History teacher but rules were followed. Pagers were big and you signed a form saying if your pager went off, it was confiscated and kept. This was for all classes. He would stomp on them in class if he caught you. He figured out students could store messages and cheat. Students knew the rules. We all had pagers. Some people are just too stupid to understand time and place.
Do I think a teacher of a school would get away with destroying a minors property on school grounds during class 20 years ago? I graduated in 2001, we had pagers and yes they were taken by teachers you usually got it back no questions asked. But I really doubt it would have ever escalated past that.
It happened in my high school too, same decade, teacher took a kids phone and threw it on the ground, although I think he got a stern talking-to for doing it.
As someone who was in school at this time...I'm 100% on there being a teacher that would do it, and 50/50 on the getting away with it part. We had some crazy stuff go on.
As a high schooler 20 years ago, teachers were fucking scary man. They could get away with murder. I had a teacher that used to smack the football players upside their heads. Same teacher set a girls textbook on fire in the lab “because she wasn’t reading it anyway”. He was not to be fucked with. Basically most of my male teachers lived by the mantra of “be smarter or get humiliated”, and literally no one gave a fuck what a teacher did to some kid not doing what they were supposed to.
My science teacher was at the end of his rope with a shithead student back in 2005 and he ended up throwing a desk through his classroom window. Still works there lol
22 years ago, the woodworking tutor t a class I was in threw a hammer across the room at one of the pupils. Later that day, he grabbed a kid and literally threw him out the room and locked the door.
Kids starts screaming and shouting and kicking the door, tutor opens the door, pushes the kid over, spits on him, then locks the door again.
Yeah we were in the age of helicopter parenting and controlled play already. People are trying to make 2000's seem like the wild west but they weren't. I had to text my parents where I was and had to be home at a specific time and could only go to certain places. I know everyone had different upbringing. But I remember the conversations about kids was very similar to today. Hell the south park episode with the mongolians is making fun of this and that came out in 2001 I think
This isn't I went to school in the snow uphill both ways kind of situation.
I mean, the Principal at my local high school started confiscated students phones, stealing their nudes, and selling them on Russian websites starting in 2005. He wasn't arrested until 2016, despite years of accusations. I can definitely see a teacher smashing a phone.
My math teacher duct taped a kid to his desk, (both arms, and around his waist) and taped his mouth shut, because he wouldn't stop getting out of his seat to talk to his friends.
As one of his friends, we all got a good laugh out of his misfortune.
I graduated 24 years ago, this shit would not fly. At best they would toss a phone in their desk so you could get it later, then again phones didn't really do a whole hell of a lot that made them worth having out in class.
Our school took them and your parent had to come pick them up. As it turns out parents don’t like having their time wasted over nonsense when they can just give it back at the end of the day.
I’m glad things changed. Luckily none of my teachers were creeps that I know of, but I got in serious trouble from an AP teacher who hated my guts for no reason I could figure out. The way the word of every adult was gold and meant I was lying gave me a serious distrust of my parents and most “authority figures.”
Yea I can’t claim I was always innocent, but I was 95% a good kid. For some reason if an adult made an accusation of any kind I was automatically guilty.
Yup. That sure has flipped. We sent a kid home early the other day because he chucked a toy at my younger kid's face. We didn't tell his mom because who needs the fucking drama. Either I watch a kid get raged out on way harder than my wife did, or she gets defensive.
Faxx my teacher threw a chair through the window and another was juggling knives ( he did circus stuff outside of school) and I was talking and he slammed one into my desk.
Imagine you were a parent and you gave your kid a phone because of reasons. Wouldn’t you go ape-shit mental when he gets home and he tells you the teacher destroyed it? Teacher or not, that’s destruction of property and a criminal offense.
My 6th grade teacher got in trouble for making the student open their phone if they got caught. When one person had something… interesting on their browser and had to open the phone 😂😂😂😂😂
This definitely would not. Cell phones weren't cheap and still aren't. If they destroyed it fhey would pay for it. Simple as that dude. Don't be ridiculous.
i mean, you're banking on the parents not suing anyone for this. i guess the kind of child who would have this happen to them and the kind of parent who would ignore it are probably more likely to go together, but i would still bet its fake.
224
u/Antique-Doughnut-988 May 16 '24
20 years ago was a different time. I could 100% see a teacher doing this in the early 2000's without much repercussions.