NEWS: New highschool rule. Only three toilet breaks per semester

EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. — Students at a suburban Chicago high school will have to hold it or risk staying after school.

A policy at Evergreen Park High School allows students to leave class three times per semester to go to the restroom. After that, they have to make up any missed class time after school.

Principal Bill Sanderson tells the SouthtownStar that the policy is designed to make sure that students don't miss valuable class time. He says it deters them from using restroom visits as an excuse to miss class.

Each teacher gets to decide whether to enforce the policy in their classes.

But some students argue that they don't have time to stop at the restroom otherwise because they only get five minutes between classes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44934070/ns/us_news-weird_news/

Seems like a rather ridiculous policy. What if someone uses all three of their breaks and then has to go to the bathroom on another day because they didn't have time in between classes?

If they wanted to prevent kids from using breaks as an excuse to get out of class, they could just set a time limit on toilet breaks, like a 10 minute maximum or something like that. And if a particular student is taking toilet breaks frequently and its obvious its just to get out of class, a teacher could always just say "no, wait till the end of the lesson".

I love these stupid neo-Nazi American idiots.

Well I while it is a very much restrictive rule, I wouldn't blame it on the fact that the school is in America. This isn't a rule being adopted by all american schools, its only one school, obviously run by a principle who is a bit out of touch.

lol, calling them neo-nazis because they restrict bathroom usage. Sounds like someone needs some perspective.

But I understand why they wanted to restrict how many times kids use the restroom, but this is a little too far. Everytime I go to the bathroom, there's at least 4 or 5 kids in there just texting and getting out of class. Still, it's a little extreme.

LordRemington wrote:

Principal Bill Sanderson tells the SouthtownStar that the policy is designed to make sure that students don't miss valuable class time. He says it deters them from using restroom visits as an excuse to miss class.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44934070/ns/us_news-weird_news/

Seems like a rather ridiculous policy. What if someone uses all three of their breaks and then has to go to the bathroom on another day because they didn't have time in between classes?

Tell me about it. This has got to be one of the least reasonable rules to be instituted in an American school in recent memory.

Has this principal even thought that some people may actually go to the bathroom to actually use the bathroom? And the fact he's saying that he doesn't want students to miss "valuable class time" is especially absurd. Humans need to excrete their waste to survive. Does missing five minutes of class that can easily be caught up on really matter so much that these students should defy freaking nature? Rhetorical question, btw.

Metal detectors, hallway passes and now limited bathroom breaks... I bet kids in North Korea have more freedom during school.

TheEmilion wrote:I love these stupid neo-Nazi American idiots.

I understand. I am an American and school teacher to boot. I think it is ridiculous. Most high schools in America do not have school wide rules like this. However, some teachers do. While the 14th amendment ot the US Constitution makes toilet denial by someone in authority over another, teacher/student, employer/ employee, that doesn't mean it is always followed.

Sad some high schools are worse. Students have to go to detention for every restroom visit during class time. I know of no school, but I do know teachers that will deny regardless of the need even if that need becomes a wetting or soiling accident.

But, America isn't far from its roots. The Bog Standard Better Toilets for Pupils gives some really awful stories. Schools that the toilets are locked except for twenty minutes at break and the noon break. Students give stories of wetting an soiling accidents as high as age 17.

One teacher was quoted as saying that he was a history teacher in a secondary school. He went on to say that a 13 year old boy wet his pants during one of his classes last term. This was posted in August I believe. He then stated that no students were allowed out of his lesson to go to the toilet. He then added that children of that age were old enough to know when they needed to go and go when they need to meaning I assume when there was an opportunity saying that it was the student's own fault if they had an accident in class.

I assumed that most teachers would genuinely say that they didn't realize that the student was that serious when they said they had an emergency. I didn't expect to see a teacher stating with boldness that students needing the toilet in his room had to hold on or wet or poo their pants.

One boy posted just in October of being denied and he wet his pants even though he said he begged his teacher to let him go. The teacher replied that at his age he can hold it in. The 17 year old boy didn't tell if the teacher was then apologetic and really believed the boy could hold on or would still refuse a student in the same situation.

I am very much a British isles-American with bloodlines from both Irelands, Scotland, England and Wales. There is some linage traced to mainland Europe as well.

There is no way I am going to deny or give a punishment for needing the toilet. I gave some demerits for misbehavior concerning the restroom including deliberately disrupting the lesson with a request told to the entire class when the procedure was to come ot me and quietly tell me where they needed to go, (not permission)

I have also sent students at the beginning of a lesson as they were asking very often. Once the student realized that going before that lesson solved his needing to go during the lesson, he went then from then on. Problem solved.

This is an issue of child abuse by some adults of students. I'm assuming that this was three restroom visits during the same teacher's class, not the entire school day.

When teachers give enough time, (my students coudl put books on desk and then go ot the restroom and then they weren't tardy if they came back in a reasonable time) before the lesson begins and treat the students with respect, the number of students leaving the room for the toilet usually goes down, not up.

In America toilet issues for high school studnets revolve around either restrooms to so dirty that students would rather risk having an accident than use them or not enough time between classes. Solve those two problems and this principal wouldn't have an issue. All he had to do is add another minute to the passing time to solve the problem!

Hello Mr. Williams

There are two schools of thought here, really.

1) The student uses a toilet break whether they need it or not in order to duck out of a piece of learning they do not want to be there for.

2) The teacher, by not allowing the toilet break, is abusing their power as a teacher. I would bet you all the money in the world that if you are teaching to a student busting for the loo and one not, then test each, the one was busting for the loo would do significantly worse in the test.

Over time, a teacher would get a good idea on who is likely to abuse the toilet break and who is not. If the student actually sits there and wees and poos in their pants, something has seriously gone wrong in the relationship between the student and teacher. I do not care how old or young you are, there will be times when it gets too much, I have gotten to the stage where I am struggling to hold it, and boy is it hard to do so.

You know, it's that as a supposedly sentient and educated species we have to debate the validity of the reasons behind using a toilet.

Also, this so would not work at my school

Seeing as we're on the general topic of bathroom necessities, this'd pale compared to another rule I just saw. In Spain, turns out it's not bathroom breaks they're limiting-it's toilet paper. You're only allowed 25 metres a month there, it seems

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/8938470/Toilet-paper-restrictions-imposed-on-schoolchildren-in-Spain-in-latest-austerity-cuts.html

Lol. That is very funny. I wonder how they manage to enforce that...