• Why did a school ban bake sales?
What school bans students from having a best friend?
From ketchup to collarbones, we run down 15 of the most bizarre school rules ever enforced.
15 – No Ketchup • Schools in France have banned ketchup
from school lunches.
It’s long been known that ketchup isn’t really good for you, but that’s only part
of the issue.
• The bigger part of the issue is that France has some serious pride in their food culture.
They don’t want the condiment masking the flavor of the delicious, high-class cuisine
that is school lunches, after all.
14 – No Hand-Holding • This isn’t just a bizarre rule by some
random school.
The state government of Tennessee passed a law about this.
• As of 2012, any classroom instructor that promotes or condones hand-holding or hugging
will be subject to a five hundred dollar fine, as those activities are now considered “gateway
sexual activity.”
13 – No Red Ink • We’ve all seen it before.
Red ink on a paper is pretty much the standard symbol of academic failure.
So one U.K. school just stopped using it.
• The teachers still correct papers, they just do it in other colors, so maybe the concept
of red ink can stop scaring the crap out of all of us.
12 – No Dodgeball • It looks like Dodgeball is on its way
out of most school PE programs.
It has become a hot topic as schools try to address bullying.
• Of course, there’s another issue here, too.
Schools are scared of being the targets of a lawsuit when some jerk in school busts up
some other kid’s glasses in gym class.
11 – No Bikes • In some countries, it’s unheard of for
students to not walk or bike to school.
• Meanwhile, American schools are hard at work making sure kids can’t bike to school.
• Many schools are afraid of the traffic risks involved in letting kids ride their
bikes to school.
• The same school districts passing these bans are also warning parents not to let their
kids walk to school.
10 – No Best Friends • It’s not that these schools – most
of them in the U.K. don’t want kids to have friends.
They just can’t have BEST friends.
• They want kids to have “lots of good friends.”
• There’s something to be said for preventing the kinds of “cliques” that tend to exclude
people from being in on anything fun.
• But chances are, kids will just start calling each other “best friend” in secret,
like they’re smoking in the bathroom or something.
9 – No Backpacks • At Jackson High School in Jackson, Michigan,
students can’t carry bookbags into the classroom because of… safety, apparently?
• The ban forced students to take the five-minute period between classes to go back to their
lockers and grab their books and supplies for their next class.
• Eventually they found a compromise.
Clear and mesh backpacks are now allowed… but hoodies are now also banned.
8 – No Bake Sales • It didn’t last very long, but there
was a time that Massachusetts school actually banned bake sale fundraisers.
• What was the reason for this?
Were they concerned about health code violations, or allowing fundraising for questionable organizations?
• Nah.
They just didn’t think the bake sales brought enough nutritional value to the table.
Because apparently the point of a bake sale is to be part of a balanced diet, not to sell
delicious sweets to raise money for a field trip or something.
7 – No Black Makeup • A 13-year-old goth kid was sent home from
a school in Hamiton, Ohio, for wearing black lipstick, eye makeup, and fingernail polish.
• Now, black makeup isn’t banned by the school, technically.
Neither is makeup on a boy.
• So the school reached deep on the ban hammer on this one and sent him home for a
regulation that bans “extreme or distracting” makeup.
6 – No Braids • Massachusetts strikes again, this time
when they punished two students for wearing braided hair extensions.
• The extensions were technically against the school’s dress code, but it didn’t
take long for people to figure out that those restrictions were extra harsh on students
of color.
• The state’s attorney general and the ACLU had to get involved before the students’
punishments were revoked and the dress code restrictions were revised.
5 – No Yoga Pants • A number of schools in the United States
and Canada are moving to ban girls from wearing yoga pants, unless worn under a skirt or shorts.
• Some schools have tried to justify it by saying it’s trying to prepare students
for the “real world.”
The argument is that it’s important to have students wear clothes that are appropriate
for work.
• Of course, they still allow shorts, soooo…
4 – No Silly Bandz • There was about a two-week period in which
Silly Bandz were a big craze, and everybody wanted them.
• Naturally, schools in New York, Texas, Florida and Massachusetts all jumped on board
banning them almost immediately.
• Apparently, it wasn’t enough to just tell kids to stop playing with them or trading
them during class.
They had to go nuclear with an all-out ban.
3 – No Dinosaurs, Birthdays, or Halloween • It’s not that nobody can SAY the words
“dinosaur,” “birthday,” “Halloween,” “dancing,” or “poverty.”
• But in 2012, the New York Department of Education removed references to all of those
things in all of New York City’s standardized tests.
• The intention was apparently to remove any reference to anything even remotely controversial
to anyone.
This way nobody gets triggered by having to talk about evolution, or Footloose.
2 – No Exposed Collarbones • The dress code for Woodford County Schools
is a bit strict.
Students aren’t allowed to wear any sort of shirt that dips below the collarbone.
• Now, that sounds like the type of rule that’s technically there, but not strictly
enforced.
But no.
• One girl was sent home for wearing this completely nondescript outfit.
She wore the exact same thing again a week later, but with a scarf to cover up her collarbone,
and was sent home again.
• The school superintendent defended the dress code by saying the school was trying
to create “a safe learning environment.”
1 – No Baggy Pants…
OR Tight Pants • Baggy pants haven’t really been a thing
since the 1990s, but that hasn’t stopped schools from trying to regulate them.
• Schools in Florida and Chicago have pulled the “distracting attire” justification
out again to ban baggy pants.
• Meanwhile, North Carolina schools are banning skinny jeans.
So basically, as long as everyone comes to school wearing a big brown sack tied at the
neck, you’ll all be okay.
• Or wait… would that count as “baggy pants?