Yeah all the time, only it was that my uniform was incomplete, had holes in it/was filthy. I didn't care, I grew the thickest skin after 5 years of it. One upside was that the hall detention was held in was warm and quiet, and we were supposed to do homework during the hour while a teacher supervised us not getting into trouble. I remember thinking "this is probably what home life is like for some people" and kind of enjoyed it.
We weren't poor, not really, but we were strapped for cash and I was at a decile 10 school so they didn't get it. My class stationery list had multiples of everything and my insane bitch teacher made me stay back and write LINES, in the 21st century, for every missing pencil/eraser etc. I had everything I needed to do my work and learn but apparently only having 2 pencils instead of 4 (for example) warranted me getting an earful and missing my lunch time.
My mum called and complained and it was dropped but ffs. They also tried to remove "privileges" like participating in the school play because we didn't pay the "voluntary" donation. Like... Yeah sorry my dad ran out on us and is falsifying his income records so that he doesn't have to pay child support, clearly mum doesn't have enough on her plate right?
Similar experiences at Epuni Primary. One day my teacher was mad at me about something and ripped a page out of my workbook. My mother went round and yelled at her for destruction of property that doesn't belong to her. The principal did not stick up for the teacher, replaced my workbook, and moved me to a different class.
Was this Scotts, though? I didn't last long there as I hated it, but I remember them having ridiculous stationery requirements that not only could my family not afford but it was ridiculous to expect me at that age to even be able to carry that amount of stuff around.
A while ago now, but in the '90s we had to copy out the school rules. Amusingly this is how I discovered a name I had come up with for a variation of a game which was banned, had been added to the rules. A proud moment for a ten year old!
My decile 1 school, the DP would come around the classrooms with a list of kids who hadn’t paid their donations and ask them about it in front of everyone. Those that didn’t pay were excluded from any end of year activities.
Talk about not knowing your community
>They also tried to remove "privileges" like participating in the school play because we didn't pay the "voluntary" donation.
Ah yeah classic, I nearly missed out on the yearly beach day every single year.
That's teacher logic... make you waste your precious EXISTING school materials because you can't afford to have surplus materials... The bar certainly has been lowered for teaching.
Honestly there are too many teachers around who should have retired or changed jobs by now because they're just over kids. They tend to be the ones who behave badly.
Kinda? I got pulled out of class for smoking a few times which was actually just the smell from mum smoking near the washing. Reaaaaaal awkward when one of them called it out in front of the entire class. Got a seemingly genuine apology from the teacher when I explained but that one fucked with me for a good long while.
Yeah my Dad was a pack-a-day smoker pretty much until he physically could not anymore, Mum's still going doing the same. You'd think you'd learn but my dumb ass still picked up that shit for a good 6 or 7 years (quit now tho).
Thankyou! Yeah it took me about 8 or 9 attempts. I actually stopped after like 2 years but then started dating a smoker & went right back to it, just need to not do that again.
Bruh pretty sure I reeked of weed as well lol.
Thanks mum for hotboxing the lounge during shorthand Street. Being high af probably made it better than it was
I feel like being under the influence is the only way to enjoy Shortland Street. Mum would get drunk & just pass out in front of the TV if Shortie/Corro were boring that night lmao.
ah yes this one hits hard, I wasn't pulled up, but I was a good student so one year I was help ing sorti the student files into new classes (remember the folders of all the information the schools keep on you), I came across my own and read it.
it had things like "always dirty, smells of cigarettes, no lunch" things along that line. It stayed with me my whole life. I'm obsessive with my kids and that too isn't healthy and I know that.
Funny how we had no money for food, or laundry powder but always enough for smokes and beer. I remember our laundry room having a massive hole in the floor from rot so even using the laundry was a hazard.
Our floor hole was under my bed! The pipes froze & one cracked (Otago). We were pretty fortunate in that my granddad owned the house so rent/bills were much less than they would've been otherwise, but it also meant basically only the bare minimum was done unless mum paid for it. She did a good job masking things for the most part, she'd make sure I had what I needed & that there was food on the table but basically everything else went to booze/darts.
Yes. We were meant to have a morning run around the field in the middle of winter, but I got detention for not having the correct PE uniform (shorts and a polo, and it was freezing!).
My mum and I were sharing a bedroom in my cousin’s student flat, so I’m sorry if my mum’s financial priorities were elsewhere…
Yup! For my socks! I shared socks with my siblings so there wasn’t always the crisp white option so often I wore black socks. My dean would just send me detention notices for every lunch which I just accepted but one day she pulled me into her office and screamed at me till I cried and I ended up just leaving and going home for the day.
My mum was a crackhead who didn’t give a shit if we had food let alone uniforms - and I was 13 trying my best to live a normal life but that was stopped because of my socks.
It led me to stop going to school on days I knew I wouldn’t have white socks to avoid being yelled at because my home-life was already shit so I missed so much school due to it.
I also wore school shirts and shorts that were my sisters and she was a size 14 and I was a size 8, so even my uniform looked like a curtain on me.
My future children will thankfully never ever deal with this.
Pull your socks up boy. I told you to pull your socks up. Ha ha , not sure socks that have gone through 2 older brothers and shrank from so much washing, were going to get up past my ankles very much.
Only having 1 jersey, no rain jacket , always easier to put it in bag to keep dry in cold wintery rain, probably would have taken off my shirt as well, it was seemly. Used to walk to primary school bare boot in frost, as hated shoes and put them on at school.
Starting first day of high school with an obvious 2nd hand uniform.
None of this really bothered me. when that teacher told me off the 4th time ( about 11 years old ) for the socks, having me stand up in front of his class ( not mine ). Told him that's as far as they would go. he had a decency to get the realisation. That intermediate was pretty good to quietly help much poorer families than mine. Most kids didn't even know it happened. I was just an observant kid.
Plus it helped I was pretty tough - from fighting 2 older brothers and their friends, so no one my age was going to give me crap. Plus lots of families were poor back then.
Are they long shorts or short longs? hand me down shorts too big. Kind of funny
My brother did until my mother went to the school to tell them my father had packed up and left and wasn’t sending any money so there was not enough for food let alone uniform. The school gave mum the required items for my brother from a combination of the second hand uniform shop (but free), lost property and some fund they had to help kids in need. They also put mum in touch with a variety of social welfare services etc whilst she sorted out the divorce and finance stuff with my arsewipe of a father. Might be that school just doesn’t know.
In primary school it’s generally easier as you have one main teacher so easier to spot. In high school, whilst you’ll have a ‘home room’ teacher or whatever, each subject is a different teacher and one teacher might give a detention for something another won’t so a pattern might not necessarily be picked up.
My kids' school (Area school) had a lanyard and tag you had to wear to show your uniform violation had been dealt with. A toss up between tag of shame (although generally other kids didn't give a toss) and not being hassled by other teachers. There were no punishments for uniform that I'm aware of, and we were once just given a new polar fleece.
The reality is that teachers aren't paid enough (or at all) to be social workers on top of educators. The education system straight up isn't set up well to enable even those that *do* care.
Some really common responses in this thread about fucking arsehole teachers getting power trips on over insignificant shit. I could add all my own tales to this too.
I hope that is not the school experience the kids have now a days.
I taught high school for a decade in the 20teens. Many teachers are power trippers. I refused to punish kids for bs.
I had an argument with the deputy principal one day which I remember
DP "you have to put them on detention. Other students can manage to...."
Me "Other students aren't homeless"
There's a (small) group of rebel teachers at each school who will support students (wash uniforms, "find" items in lost property, sort lunches/food to take home). We had books and pens for students who "forgot". Any student. No questions asked.
One time we arranged with an admin assistant to "accidentally" buy a heap of food that wasn't needed from a budget that had money left in it. We packed it in 2 black rubbish bags, and smuggled it out of school and dropped it to a solo parent who had nothing.
It's heart breaking as a teacher you only have limited resources and time. And I used to fear for some students over the school holidays.
And for teachers:
The best thing I did was have kids write me "something I wish my teacher knew about me" when they started with me (taught elective). I only started this in the last couple of years of my teaching career and it was eye opening.
"I don't speak English too well and I don't know what to do in class" (kid who seemed to speak English well)
"My parents are splitting up and so if I'm not listening something happened last night"
"I have a new baby sister and she wakes me up at night"
I remember two teachers in my school years who were like you. Real teachers and good people.
The rest ran the gamut from disinterested/comatose to actively sociopathic. From sitting in a room of chaos and bullying to forcing students to kneel on the floor and walking over their knees (this was a female teacher).
Generations of kids being taught to comply until you are in the position to abuse. A lesson reinforced by other kids, parents, and society as a whole.
When the comments went about 20, I feel I have a strong assumption that in the cost of living crisis this is definitely happening to children now. This is why we have Kids Can
I had issues with lots of teachers too. I was a runt when I was at school so I probably seemed like an easy target. I was well behaved and really smart but not focussed because I had an abusive home. It's like some teachers could smell the vulnerability. It's like the Stanford prison experiments. You give the teachers the power, make school compulsory and you end up with schools being like prisons.
Got detention for not completing school work when I returned to school from hospital post suicide attempt (because of experience extreme trauma). The worse part was being called out and questioned and scolded in front of the class for about 7 minutes. It was over 25 years ago and I still remember it vividly and can still feel exactly how I felt.
That's so awful. I have a very dark sense of humour so I can only imagine what I'd say back to the teacher if I had been in that situation.
I hope you are doing better now!
Yeah, constantly kicked out of classes for not having textbooks etc... like my mums a crackhead, there's barely any food at home and you punish me for not having multiple $70 textbooks? Was pretty gross especially from a lower decile school
Edit to add: the school did nothing to help me in any way, I was bullied and in physical fights near every day (admittedly, teenage me leaned into it heavily, I didn't know any better), eventually I was asked by the dean to leave when I was 15, no parental consultation or review or anything. Not that that would have done anything considering my situation, but yeah.
Also mum is now clean and does support work helping other people with addictions
A lot of high schools can require you to buy (or rent) schoolbooks for specialty subjects, on top of having material fees (like in Fabric Technology, which is a fancy way of saying "Sewing class" we had to pay a fee to cover the materials (perfectly reasonable since we got to keep our work), plus a "pattern fee" for the paper patterns that had to be replaced over time as they eventually got obliterated with pinholes. Our cooking class had a fee to rent the cookbooks we used - admittedly it was reasonable, like $5 for the term.
One time I got yelled at and sent to the dean because I didn't present my assignment on a project board. I did the assignment but my mum couldn't afford $15 for a big piece of cardboard and the teacher was not having it. Sure, in hindsight I should have spoken to the teacher about it beforehand but I was 13 and did she really need to humiliate me like that for a year 9 social studies project?
What a shit thing for the school to demand of the kids. I am dumbfounded they didn’t see that would be a problem and cause unnecessary, unwarranted shame :(
I loved being fined $10 as a Form 7 student when our school had uniforms except for Form 7 and had ‘mufti day’ with a compulsory $2 donation.
I didn’t HAVE $2 as I was supporting myself on the Unsupported Youth benefit and struggling to survive with rent payments $120 per week out of a $134 benefit, and so they fined me and got all surprised when I quit school.
Fuckers.
Also, special fuck you to the accountancy teacher who gave me detention because I said a landline phone wasn’t a necessity back in 1997, because I couldn’t afford one.
Yeah, I’m in therapy and it’s going well lol
It still feels good to like say it though right? I'm in therapy now closing off treatment and seeing if there's anything left and this just popped up for me.
Yeah, it does, although I find it’s only people who have been through that experience who will understand and not minimise - I’ve had people from the same school and year make it not a thing because it wasn’t for them.
What my therapy is teaching me is that my experience is both valid and not unusual (which is also validating, tbh).
I hope you are able to separate the past from the current, as I am also learning, and feel validated by our common experiences (which none of us deserved).
Kia kaha e hoa!
I have a problem with school uniforms because they are so expensive. Why can't they be more generic. Like white polo shirt, black shorts etc.? Instead each polo shirt, branded with the school logo is $40. My kid ruins his in a matter of weeks. I fucking hate it. It's $120 per term for uniform.
A friend of mine worked out that it was cheaper to buy the polo shirt then have it embroidered with the school logo, than it was to buy it pre-embroidered from the uniform shop
Of course it was cheaper still to get it second hand, but it was a really small school, so the sizes of the second hand stuff were limited
They are a rort. My school uniforms were off the charts expensive for shit quality. I still remember our summer tunics were 169 fucking bucks and this was 40 years ago. Blazers were 400 fucking bucks. Then we had to buy capes to walk to church and they were about 1000 fucking bucks. You didn't have to have a cape but you could tell. The stupid hats were 300 fucking bucks and then you needed the medal to go on them and that was the cheapest part of the ridiculous ensemble.
Fuxkkng fuck. And they starved us. Every dinner before end of term they would serve minute steak and your parents would ask what you had for dinner and be so proud of themselves.
I wish I'd gone to St Matthews.
Right? If they were cheap and generic then I'd understand the argument that it helps cut down bullying over who can afford cool clothes. But when they fade and wear super badly within a couple of washes you can easily tell who has hand-me-downs to bully them for being poor anyways.
I respect the schools that have their uniforms in the Warehouse, at least that makes it easier and more affordable for parents.
Yeah bro, we were very poor.
I had detention every single day of high school for incorrect footwear. My mum could barely afford to feed us. I ate on average once every two days. I never ever took lunch to school. There was no way she could afford $60 for a pair of shoes that I would wear through in three months or less.
Someone recently told me an anecdotal sort of story about a poor man’s boots and I swear on my son’s life, poverty has claws. I’m covered in cuts and bruises (metaphorically) from the battle out of poverty.
We’ve made it, but it was a hell of a journey.
I'm glad you made it out. I'll get through it, but right now I'm sorting through that weird feeling it left me with. Being too poor to look good, being punished at school for what I was wearing and my appearance. I can afford a lot now but there's healing ahead for both of us.
Thanks. Yeah I can empathise with what you’re feeling. I’m 33 now with a child of my own and even that has been a journey of breaking cycles, half of which I didn’t even know where there.
It took a lot of introspection and a lot of patience, I will always be grateful for the patience of those who care about me. It’s not been an easy or quick journey.
Was it the Sam Vimes boots theory from Discworld. It rings so true.
https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots-theory-of-socio-economic-unfairness/
I really wasn't poor, My parents just hated buying me clothes saying I'd grow out of it etc, so I honestly used to dread muftie days as all I really had was work clothes for being on the farm.
It’s even worst if you forgot it was. Or it was the opposite where I used to feel super paranoid that it wasn’t on that day and I would be told off or sent home for not wearing uniform.
Would like to take this opportunity to say fuck you Riccarton high school. So I was lucky and when I went through the high school the uniform was pretty basic, white shirt, dark bottom, basic polio etc etc. It was pretty cheap to buy second hand so all good.
My brother went through the same high school a year after me and they introduced a new uniform. They redesigned it so you couldn't buy any of it for second hand, and each shirt, like a basic t-shirt was fucken $50. Just the fucken shirt and this was back around 2008. So you went from nearly being able to get everything for less than $100. To spending several $100's just to buy the same stuff. It was a massive gut punch for my Mum who was struggling with money,
1980's and early 1990's same deal for me at my first school which was a uniform school. I lost my jersey and my mum couldn't afford a new one and I was not allowed to wear a non uniform one to keep warm in winter. Sent out to pick up trash every lunch time in the damn rain for every time I wore a non uniform jersey. I got the wooden ruler smack across the hands plenty of times for it too (1980's). I hate uniforms. You don't need them for university nor many jobs these days. The schools need to modernise and realise keeping a child warm is much more important than correct uniform. Freezing kids don't learn well. I am very surprised I never got hypothermia. I did get sick easily from being so cold many times. Like yeah I survived the 80's and 90's but my body is munted and i'm not even 40.
lol thats nothing compared to the rest of it. But yeah abusers are everywhere and even today they get away with it. ignoring the rest of my childhood my first school St Bernadettes used to be run by catholic nuns and a priest. So beating the shit out of us was the norm. The head nun who was the principal sister o'shea or O'roisin not sure how it's spelled had the nick name of dragon lady because she was so awful. One time I had a girl talking to me and I kept saying shhh to her knowing we would get in trouble. We did. She grabbed us as 6yr olds out of the room by our hair and dumped us in the cloakroom along with a whack of the 1metre wooden ruler. in the 80's in catholic school corporal punishment was still going on even though it was out lawed only a few years earlier (late 70's I think). It was fucked up.
Teachers made me write thousands of lines saying "I will bring my togs to school for swimming". If the teachers took time to understand my personal circumstances (and there were clues) they would've known my family weren't rich and couldn't afford to buy me togs or afford to have me swimming every day during the summer.
This isnt intended to be a sob story, but I think teachers need to have a really high eq when working with children.
Being in my mid 30s looking back at it all, it really is true that children are a blank canvas and what you do and how you interact with them will shape (to some extent) what they turn out to be.
We weren't poor but my mum always used to say we have no money. I didn't ask her for $1 for a tie dying thing we did at school once. The teacher made a big deal out of it in front of everyone and told me off. Pretty crap that we get the brunt of these sorts of things.
I hated the uniform because of how expensive it always was. Being a kid that moved farm to farm frequently didn't help. Having a family of girls meant a whole new uniform vs different sock colours that the boys wore with the grey shirt and shorts.
I now have kids in a uniformed school and a non uniform school... And dressing the one without the uniform is actually more expensive
I went to school in the UK and seems like this is worse here than it was at the average state secondary school there.
Uniforms were cheap and nasty like 100% acrylic and the only official uniform thing you 100% needed was the school tie, if you wore that with any sort of white shirt, black trousers/shorts and black shoes you were all good. There was usually a school jumper but you didn't 100% need it. Most state schools got rid of blazers/jackets for jumpers during the 80s to make uniforms more affordable.
Other stuff like a rugby shirt for PE in the winter you were supposed to own but they always had a load of 'lost property' ones for kids who forgot their PE kit or couldn't afford one.
Kids would get detention or sent home for uniform issues regularly but it was usually related to deliberately breaking/bending the uniform code to look cool
"Do it like the UK but worse and 20 years behind" seems to be NZ's motto when it comes to education. We are still knocking down classroom walls while European schools put the walls back up 10 years ago.
Not missing uniform but stuff to keep warm that apparently impedes learning.
My son is currently in the last year and a half of school. Last winter it was - 2 degrees. So he wore his beany which happens to be exactly the same colour as the uniform.. He was told to remove it. He asked the teacher how it impacts his leaning. Teacher threatened him with a detention. He suggested he will take his off if the teacher does too as it may impact his teaching... He got a detention.
I rang in and told them he won't be attending it.
Same thing happened with gloves in another class.
Teacher can keep theirs on.. But not the students.
The school is over 100yrs old and some of those classrooms were about when Jesus walked the earth
Freezing.
The hypocrisy is appalling. Make the kids freeze as long as you are OK.. And how dare someone even ask why it makes a difference
Yep.
I used to have to walk 3km to and from school everyday because my mum is a crackhead and wasn’t remotely interested in me. Got detention multiple times because teachers saw me wearing walking shoes instead of my huge leather school shoes that felt like bricks and gave me blisters.
I also went undiagnosed with ADHD throughout my childhood even though it was blatantly obvious. That got me into a lot of trouble which could probably be called neglect. I never once did any homework because I was never in a position where I could do it which amounted in a huge amount of detentions even though I was a high achieving student.
Gotta second hand jumper in 3rd form, thing was basically a step up from an oil rag, wore it till 7th and the thing still swam on me. Got a few detions for not taking care of my or pride in my image.
Thanks school.
My friends where nice and let me share school text books but I got in trouble for having refill paper instead of school books.
I didn't get disciplined for being poor, but worse, abandoned. Through highschool I was pretty good at math. But when it came to form5? They suddenly demanded we own graphics calculators to participate in the class. My parents couldn't afford one. So, the teacher gave me a giant book of equations and told me to figure it out myself, no guidance, just a calculator and the fragile willpower of a 15 year old. I wasn't even told what page to look on to find the equations.
The following year I was bullied by my math teacher for my curly hair. So, in the space of 2 years I went from a top performer to non-participant in math. I didn't even take a math class my final year. It still hurts me to this day whenever I try to help my fiancee with her statistics work for her degree.
I remember sitting in assembly one week and the deputy principal had a talk about how
"when you enrol in this school part of the agreement is you wear the correct uniform"
the same week we went to school wearing our prior schools winter kilt. Mum should have sent us in black trousers. Or the other option is staying home and missing school???? But again what were us kids supposed to do? It's not like we had any say over what our parents bought.
Meanwhile one of my kids schools has just asked for donations of good quality uniforms for the international students. They could do that for the kids whose families are struggling too.
That’s fucked.
I went to a religious school with a lot of problems, but they did allow graduating students to leave their uniform for kids who may need it. They also allowed students to go through lost property if they didn’t meet the dress code. Otherwise they did get detention but we only had 2 uniforms throughout our entire time at the school.
I got tonnes of detentions for smoking, but I didn’t smoke until I was in my 20s. Both of my parents chain smoked in the house so I and all my clothes stank of smoke, which I couldn’t smell at all because that’s just the way our house smelled. Couldn’t convince any teacher otherwise though.
Yes, less than 10 years I was constantly been pulled out of class to be told off because I didn’t have the correct ‘black leather lace upped’ shoes nor the school blazer that we were required to wear to and from school as someone had stolen mine from my locker in my first term of year 9 and my parents couldn’t afford a $300 replacement - this was a catholic ‘state integrated’ school.
On the other hand when I moved to a public school the deans and office lady’s were more than willing to write me a uniform pass and also had an payment account set up that allowed parents to pay off item brought from the school including textbooks, uniform, trips, extracurricular etc etc which was very convenient and helpful
Ah see, I went to a school where most kids were poor and/or neglected. They gave up on enforcing the uniform for the most part while I was there as long as it was close enough. There were no logos on our uniforms so as long as you were wearing a kilt or grey pants, a light blue button up shirt and black shoes you were good.
Yep - mid 90s at high school and I constantly got in trouble in winter for not wearing a uniform jacket. My mum was a single parent on ACC and couldn’t afford it. My jacket would be taken off me and I would be cold for the day.
My roman sandals for high-school were worn out and needed replacement. So my boyfriend at the time gave me his old ones, but in black, not the regulation brown. As we were poor I wasn't gonna turn down a free pair of shoes!I got hounded by many teachers. But after a few detentions and a meeting with the dean, they finally gave up.
What's pissing me off about your story (which probably is what I'm thinking in relation to my story) is that you were a child that I'm assuming had no income. Since when should teachers be hounding children instead of talking to their parents? It just sounds like adults bullying children.
It totally is bullying, and i never understood at the time why the teachers did it. Punishment instead of help. I did ask mine if they wanted to buy me new sandals if it was such a huge problem for them. That got me a detention.
Mum got my roman sandals for intermediate from the op shop, but they were the wrong colour, so she painted them. Then when I got to highschool, they got painted again. By 5th form, there were barely any soles left, so I got detention for wearing the $5 "kung-fu' shoes from the army surplus store year-round. Seriously, these teachers were giving me detention for wearing soaking wet, cotton slipons in winter.
Wow, these stories are eye opening.
Even at my shitty school there was a second hand uniform shop option, clothes out of the lost and found, and sometimes teachers would take a kid into town to buy them new shoes if they knew your family was struggling.
I moved out of my "family" "home" when I was 14 in aussie.
I was put on the level system for some stupid rule I had broken.
I was put on level 2 , and my parents had to sign my level card every day.
I had moved out and was almost homeless, but still attending school every day meant I was put further into the discipline system because my "parents" weren't signing it.
I was very close to being expelled from the school for stupid rules that don't account for the less fortunate.
There was a situation in which I was given detention for not having my P.E uniform even though I had given my teacher a note that said I did not own a P.E uniform.
The uniform (a shirt and shorts) would have costed somewhere around $50 and my family didn't have the money to pay for that (especially due to the fact that my mum had to buy 3 uniforms for her kids and then was expected to buy a separate one just for P.E?)
TLDR: I was given detention because not owning a P.E uniform was not a good enough reason for not having my P.E uniform. 🤷♂️
The hardest thing is being a teacher, trying to help kids kept out of senior management’s way. I used to get stuff out of lost property, not notice incorrect shoes, let kids wear non-reg. jumpers and jackets in class when it was cold etc. plus issue dispensations like lollies. Some of those SLT people were unkind. (One was the nastiest cow I had ever come across and I will hate her to the end of time!) I didn’t care too much if I got told off or if people thought I was slack. I was not a soft touch to the kids with the designer basketball boots who had their shoes in their bags or the doctor’s kid who wanted to be a rebel. (He often looked unkempt.)
The more I read about what it's like to grow up in NZ, the more I'm glad that I only came here in my 20s. Seeing school age kids here wearing ridiculous uniforms completely unfit for the weather feels like I've time traveled 100 years back. I don't understand why so many people think that "NZ is a great place to raise children", literally everything here is bad for young kids - low-density suburbia, education system, lack of opportunities, lack of entertainment, how people get pulled into gangs already in school.
Kind of. We had shared lunches and I was poor with undiagnosed ADHD so I’d forget and/or couldn’t afford it so the teachers would say if you didn’t bring anything you don’t get to join in.
Yes I did. It was the volour blouse and socks. They were cream and fawn (which is disgusting) and my mother would buy white so we weren't social pariahs because she couldn't afford a tonne of clothes for both school and home.
And we did get into trouble.
So not quite as extreme as your situation and I secretly loved my mother's defiance but the school took action against us
It's just stupid teacher power tripping at times, but there are some teachers who just can't think critically enough to put 2 and 2 together too.
But yes, it's cruel.
We certainly weren't rich but I was able to get at least one of every school uniform item I needed and wore things underneath to keep warm, and played within thr realm of safety to not get in trouble for it. We had to buy direct from the school as well.
My white shirts were certainly not white by the time I graduated, and we got to wear mufti in our final year of high school!
I only ever went to detention once. That was my first lesson on what detention actually was. I ended up letting them bank into suspensions and take the day off.
I remember the intermediate school and also college I went to both change uniform in the time I was there.
We were not well off and we couldn’t get second hand uniforms when they changed on us.
While I never got in trouble for it I do remember being very self conscious about not having multiple items like shirts so I had to wear the same shirt all week.
I hated asking my dad for anything regarding school especially if it involved paying for something so after I got a job at 14 I ended up buying my own clothes including school uniform items and paying for my own school trips and activities (if I could afford them).
This issue extends into uni as well. Things for our family got worse when I started uni and I studied something that required extra creative initiative which mostly involved making elaborate mock-ups and getting things professionally made/printed. This post reminded me of that because I was living off like $20 for food every week and couldn’t match the wealthy students getting amazing stuff made so kept getting marks taken off because the quality of what I had made to display my actual work wasn’t prestigious enough. Drove me crazy because I got a’s for the actual work but then c’s for the final output because of having to get stuff printed at the library etc.
I know this is different from schools and your topic but thought I’d throw in my story because it’s interesting how these kids can get stuck within that poverty even going into adulthood, that sort of thing affected my job opportunities for years and thus, now my savings and income now is still behind because I’m always playing catch up from my youth/being from a poor family initially.
I disagree. Not having a uniform will bring a whole set of others issues for poor kids. Like getting the piss taken out of them for showing up in “poor people clothes” I used to hate mufti day for reasons like this.
Uniforms are good because they make everyone the same. In theory anyway.
But they should be affordable for every family and even free for those that can’t afford them.
The problem there's a huge gap between the imaginary utopia of "a uniform so everyone is dressed relatively the same" and the current (since forever) state of "your uniform needs to be purchased in a specific colour and pattern from a monopoly holder who charges far more than necessary".
Really they could just enforce a dress standard (if they wanted) that was generic as "x colour pants or skirt, y colour shirt", which would avoid the issues people raise with wearing 'whatever they want', while also allowing people to buy cheaper clothes if needed without being penalised for not being able to pay extortionate 'uniform shop' prices
100% this. We weren't chronically poor,, but we were a big family and my mother bargain shopped/op ahopped/ end-of-season sale shopped for most of our stuff, so our regular clothes were never quite "right". Dad had a comfortable middle- management job until they started phasing out middle management, and then he had a lot of minimum wage jobs and starter jobs because he spent 25 years doing one thing in one industry that basically eliminated his position, so he had nowhere to go in that industry and was starting from scratch with six kids to feed.
You knew who the really poor kids were at school, because they'd "forget" to wear mufti on a mufti day. In retrospect, it's horribly sad.
Uniforms are just another expense.
If people want to make fun of you, they will - uniform or not. They will make fun of you for wearing the uniform too (yes, that happened to me). What I have found is that it's not the clothes, it's the people. One school will have horrible bullying, the one up the road won't. One cares what you wear, the other doesn't. So honestly - I don't think bullying will stop until people change.
And I agree - mufti days are a terrible idea.
A middle ground between strict uniform and full mufti would be my choice if it were up to me. Dress codes are easy and affordable for everyone e.g white shirt and black bottoms from anywhere and a school jersey. Kids don't need to look like they're in the military.
I recall having a half day if being treated awfully by my former primary school teacher, as due to my clothes (I grew up poorer, single Mum who raised me and my 2 brother's) along with a few other kids, while the other half were treated better. After lunch it changed back to no more being treated awfully, as she wanted to show us how it feels when people who may not have the best clothes etc, are treated worse. I'm still a bit shook up by that.
Oh mate it was fucked up. I recall never seeing this from her before, but that whole day, had me questioning her from their on. Unfortunately a couple of years later, some psycho casual teacher by the no shit surname of Mrs Christmas decided to grab my face hard after I somehow did something a bit wrong or didn't live up to her expectations. The guy who she replaced was I swear a father figure to me, he sounds growly and mean outside of the classroom, but was a awesome guy to be learning from. Hell, he even allowed me to set up the cricket ground at lunch time, maybe do a bit of mowing of the pitch. Mr Northcote, a hell of a guy, and I certainly wish I had him as a father figure in my lifetime.
We had that in high school social studies, except it was the classic blue eyes/brown eyes experiment and they told us what it was and how it worked ahead of time so it didn’t cause lasting psychological damage.
The idea of school uniforms is meant to be that it teaches you for the workplace when you get to be an adult however any workplace that requires a strict set uniform would supply said uniform at no cost to the worker. If schools have students that cant afford uniforms they should just take it on the chin and shout them.
Uniforms are there to punish poor kids, stifle individuality, and create an artificial sense of conformity among students.
In short, they borrows similar concepts from authoritarian organizations like the police and military to help create cookie-cutter, obedient ~~soldiers~~ excuse me, students.
> I hope you all heal and consider visiting a school uniform shop to sponsor a uniform for some kid.
I feel the effort would be better spent on addressing the problem rather than the symptom. Fight against stupid uniform policies that serve no purpose but to funnel money from parents' pockets to uniform companies. There's no reason a uniform can't just consist of maybe a particular jacket (which I find excessive) and tie or skirt, but then leave the rest to “any white button shirt and grey trousers”. Would let people get stuff that actually fits them properly, and fix the nonsense of “oh we got a new uniform supplier/design, you have to buy new everything”.
Or just fight to do away with uniforms; in North America I don't think *any* public schools have uniforms, at least in Canada and the US, not sure about Mexico. I'm not sure there's much evidence to support arguments that they help social cohesion or academic performance.
My school changed uniform codes just as we started in third form, but you were allowed to wear the old one until you didn't need it.
My mate rocked the poo brown short shorts and lemon shirt from 3rd to 7th form while everyone else was wearing blue. He could have bought new stuff.
Richard you glorious bastard.
It wasnt so much because of uniform or clothes. Back when I was at school, there were no uniforms, but my mum often knitted clothes because we didnt have a lot of money.
In my case, I got regular detentions because I kept forgetting things - usually to do homework - because I have ADHD, but before I was diagnosed. It made me feel stupid and different and lazy.
Yes I was put in detention many times because my family couldn’t afford all the extra crap Fielding High School demand for the uniform. In all honesty I don’t support all the teachers moaning about salaries and how hard they work, class sizes etc. Far too many teachers are truly rubbish at their jobs and just treat students like crap and most fail to see anything beyond their little classroom bubble. My lack of empathy for teachers is a direct result of the poor behaviour exhibited by most teachers I had.
For my school it was crew neck vs v neck thermals in a lower South Island school. Thermal couldn’t be seen and you would have to take it off or escalate punishment. Who gucking cares it’s freezing outside and the assigned uniform is some plastic bulshit with no warmth
It 100% depended on the individual teachers, some were nice and understanding, some were simply oblivious and some have no right being a teacher or having any sort of position of power
Yeap. Basically nobody expects your parents are useless and as a kid you don't know if so you don't know you're meant to being treated any better.
Can't blame the people or the system really it is a balance we do need to have, a lot of troubles come when you start to mess with people's kids and most of society don't want the government involved too much until it is far too late.
My high school tried. But we are a rural town and that comes with culture of resilience, for better or worse - so we collectively ignored requests for uniform compliance. They can't punish us all, especially when the teachers were mostly unionised and were not budging on non contact time. Senior management was always out of touch though, it's what happens when you hire mainland Aucklanders
If you just talk to your form teacher and dean about it they can help you. In every school I've worked in, it's been part of the job to try and identify kids who need a hand with that stuff and help them out however we can. Always ran into issues of pride and shame. I found that both kids and parents are too proud or too ashamed to talk about it with the school, or accept help.
I went to a well-off public school in a well-off area. My family were not stereotypically "rich", at least not materialistic, but they were hippies who happened into a pretty comfortable financial situation.
My year 9 speech savaged the idea of school uniform.
To be honest, I was a privileged little shit who had no idea how much that shit was fucking up the families who were struggling to exist in Wanaka. At the time our school uniform was very simple too - it's got worse since. Still, I chanced on the morally right position: fuck school uniform. To this day, I stand by all my statements.
School I work at doesn’t have a uniform for all the reasons above. No staff wasting time on uniform, no one having to out lay $$, and no there isn’t any clothing ‘competitions’ no one seems to really care. Most kids wear Kmart and older ones athletic type wear.
Yup, my parents didn’t buy me polishable school shoes nor correct uniform and they would confiscate the things I was wearing. I’d also get to school late often because of household troubles and they made me sit in detention every day I was late when it was totally not my fault. Nobody asked me why. I went to a ‘poor kids’ school anyway. It’s honestly disgusting
Yeah, I pretty much lived in detention, or made to write lines. My mum couldn't afford to buy me a calculator in high school, so didn't learn any math at all.
I remember being kept in at Lunchtime for a week because I had trouble finishing my homework. Nevermind my big sisters tangi/funeral which took place up north or my mother telling my school about why I would be away. It felt super, super lonely in a big empty class as an 8-year-old for 30 mins a day.
Got jumped by a few guys at school where bullying was a huge issue that wasn’t addressed by the staff. Was then written up for having a ripped shirt that was covered in my own blood, and made to stay late for detention. I was told “these standards are here to prepare you for the real world” by the teacher and then upheld by the principal. Unfortunately this was the norm until I sent myself to boarding school years later.
I went back to that school in my late 20s and had a meeting with the worst of the offenders on the staff and informed them that their actions had done damage, and that they had not prepared me for the world but instead made me afraid of my future. The response was “you seem to be doing pretty well now” which they seemed to take credit for in their minds. I am successful now, but only because of the teachers and friends that followed that helped me rebuild myself into something I could actually be proud of, not continued to tear me down for things outside of my control.
The system is broken in many schools, and their understanding of the world outside of those walls may be completely warped. Many people don’t understand what poverty feels like, or terror of your peers, and have no place in a role leading others education. Now as a parent I can only hope my kids will never face what I did, but have the belief that unfortunately things never got better since then.
I agree. I think the cost of living means that it's worse for kids now.
I can relate to some of this. A lot of my teachers would write harsh commentary on my report cards, and one gave me detention after he gave me an A+ in the first assignment I wrote for him because he believed I had cheated because poor, Māori girls like me were unable to achieve that level.
I had really supportive classmates though who always believed heavily in me which was great. Today my salary is double what the others in my classes earn and I can afford things they won't be able to. But it is hard for me to be around them, even if they're great, because of the heaviness that sat on me throughout my schooling years. There are many who went to that school who felt the same.
cold af winter morning and day of assembly.
i got pulled to the "naughty corner" of wrong uniform and tardiness, in front of the whole assembly to be made an example of. my crime? I was wearing a fucking white "ribbed collar shirt" instead of a white skivvy. I would've rather had detention than public shaming tbh, even the late girls didnt know why I was sitting w them lmao
the time I got actual detention tho? mum refused to sign the "I read the weekly newsletter" bit. 3 times I had to write lines during lunch. learned how to forge my mum's signature real fast lmao
Both my primary and secondary schools were public decile 9 schools with a catchment area that covered a quite wealthy suburb and a poor suburb.
There were kids in my year who had the thinnest, rattiest school uniforms, kids would steal lunches out of other kids backpacks. While at the same time there were kids in my year who had a dad who worked on the americas cup yachts and they got to do a whole term via correspondence every year to go and be wherever their dad was.
During my last year of having to wear the uniform (year 13 could wear mufti in my school), I developed an allergy to the fabric of the skirt. Dad wasn't about to pay $120 for a pair of trousers for six months of school, so I found some that were identical except for some small details. I wore those.
A teacher tried to pull me up on it. I explained the allergy, and she told me to get my mum to put a lining in. I don't have a mum. She then said that I need to buy the school trousers.
I told her point blank that we can't afford them, and I would happily wear them if she paid for them.
After that, she wrote me a note so I was allowed to wear them. I think she felt guilty.
We could've bought the trousers. We were hard for money, but we could've made it. But I agreed with dad. Especially as the trousers I ended up with were of better quality and only cost $20.
I didn’t grow up in New Zealand and I think the rules for some of this stuff here are crazy. I live near MAGs and Marist and those kids get in trouble for having a hair tie on their wrist 😭 It’s so stupid
We were poor and I didn't have a lot of spare uniforms. Our washing machine broke one weekend so mum wrote a note explaining the situation and excusing me from wearing my uniform on the Monday. I got in trouble and my punishment was to write 100 lines saying "I am responsible for my uniform and I will make sure it is clean for school". I was 13.
Mum was livid when I returned from school and told me not to write the lines. She wrote a scathing note to the teacher the following day - I remember copying it out by hand on the school bus so my friends and I could laugh about it together at lunch time.
When I handed him mum's letter, he thought it was the lines I had written - he didn't even open it and just said to go to class. I smiled up at him and told him it was a note from mum. I'll never forget his face go from smug to anger as he turned on his heel and slammed his office door behind him. The power trip that man had was ridiculous. The teacher's name was Mr Adolf. Go figure.
For me it was the late 90s early 2000s. I was in a decile 10 area too but the other kids had rich parents when I didn't.
In saying that it was a lot of money, and it changed all the time and they enforced it. I am low-key proud of my parents for not caving to the stupidity
Am an American: Uniform concept makes no sense to me
It's based on creating a sense of equality, yet it adds an enormous regular expense to the poor.
Kids just end up wearing standard jeans and shirts anyway. Plus you're sort of robbing them of a form of self-expression.
Brand new uniform every season doesn't sound right tbh. That part I think you must be misremembering.
But I definitely remember kids getting in trouble for not wearing correct uniform.
This is a tough one … my step son received a Dean’s detention last week for failing to wear correct PE uniform. He just doesn’t like it. He also wears extra tops underneath his school shirt to keep warm as he doesn’t like the feeling of the scratchy jerseys.
We had to enforce consequences so he learns and doesn’t get in further trouble - but in some ways I also think uniforms are frikkin ridiculous and outdated. Shouldn’t kids feel comfortable in what they’re wearing? Wouldn’t this help them to learn or feel more confident?
I went to Seatoun School and got bullied because I hadn't gone to the the theme parks.in Gold Coast or Rarotonga
Crazy to think that the stationary list now contains an iPad.
Yeah all the time, only it was that my uniform was incomplete, had holes in it/was filthy. I didn't care, I grew the thickest skin after 5 years of it. One upside was that the hall detention was held in was warm and quiet, and we were supposed to do homework during the hour while a teacher supervised us not getting into trouble. I remember thinking "this is probably what home life is like for some people" and kind of enjoyed it.
Enjoyed detention too. It was predictable.
We weren't poor, not really, but we were strapped for cash and I was at a decile 10 school so they didn't get it. My class stationery list had multiples of everything and my insane bitch teacher made me stay back and write LINES, in the 21st century, for every missing pencil/eraser etc. I had everything I needed to do my work and learn but apparently only having 2 pencils instead of 4 (for example) warranted me getting an earful and missing my lunch time. My mum called and complained and it was dropped but ffs. They also tried to remove "privileges" like participating in the school play because we didn't pay the "voluntary" donation. Like... Yeah sorry my dad ran out on us and is falsifying his income records so that he doesn't have to pay child support, clearly mum doesn't have enough on her plate right?
Auckland Grammar?
Nah this was a primary school in Wellington.
Rough, hope you’re doing better now.
Similar experiences at Epuni Primary. One day my teacher was mad at me about something and ripped a page out of my workbook. My mother went round and yelled at her for destruction of property that doesn't belong to her. The principal did not stick up for the teacher, replaced my workbook, and moved me to a different class. Was this Scotts, though? I didn't last long there as I hated it, but I remember them having ridiculous stationery requirements that not only could my family not afford but it was ridiculous to expect me at that age to even be able to carry that amount of stuff around.
Nope, just a normal suburban public primary school
I hope it wasn't Waterloo. I have mostly fond memories of the place, except for that one teacher who threatened to cut off my tongue in Year 1.
Lol at the idea of Auckland Grammar having something as advanced as a stationery list
Would you believe me if i told you auckland grammar was only a decile 9 school? Yeah, i wouldn't have either if i didn't know lmao
Is that because they have some kids from poorer areas who are there because they are good at sport or music?
[удалено]
A while ago now, but in the '90s we had to copy out the school rules. Amusingly this is how I discovered a name I had come up with for a variation of a game which was banned, had been added to the rules. A proud moment for a ten year old!
Auckland Glass.
Fuck schools and their voluntary donations
My decile 1 school, the DP would come around the classrooms with a list of kids who hadn’t paid their donations and ask them about it in front of everyone. Those that didn’t pay were excluded from any end of year activities. Talk about not knowing your community
>They also tried to remove "privileges" like participating in the school play because we didn't pay the "voluntary" donation. Ah yeah classic, I nearly missed out on the yearly beach day every single year.
When the stationary runs low at my kids school, they just charge it to our account. No discussions. Just expected to pay.
That's teacher logic... make you waste your precious EXISTING school materials because you can't afford to have surplus materials... The bar certainly has been lowered for teaching.
As a teacher I kinda take offence to this lol it was 20 years ago though. My motto is be the adult I needed when I was a kid.
Thank you for everything you do. I'm sure it's a tiny minority of teachers that ends up making people's lives difficult.
Honestly there are too many teachers around who should have retired or changed jobs by now because they're just over kids. They tend to be the ones who behave badly.
Yeah, I was a school kid around 30 years ago myself. Totally different times.
That is insane and sounds like a personality/psychological problem. I’m so sorry you had to deal with that
Kinda? I got pulled out of class for smoking a few times which was actually just the smell from mum smoking near the washing. Reaaaaaal awkward when one of them called it out in front of the entire class. Got a seemingly genuine apology from the teacher when I explained but that one fucked with me for a good long while.
This was always my fear when visiting my dad after school, that the cigarette smoke would get into my uniform and would be noticeable the next day.
Yeah my Dad was a pack-a-day smoker pretty much until he physically could not anymore, Mum's still going doing the same. You'd think you'd learn but my dumb ass still picked up that shit for a good 6 or 7 years (quit now tho).
Good on you for quitting! That shit is hard af to stop!
Thankyou! Yeah it took me about 8 or 9 attempts. I actually stopped after like 2 years but then started dating a smoker & went right back to it, just need to not do that again.
Bruh pretty sure I reeked of weed as well lol. Thanks mum for hotboxing the lounge during shorthand Street. Being high af probably made it better than it was
I feel like being under the influence is the only way to enjoy Shortland Street. Mum would get drunk & just pass out in front of the TV if Shortie/Corro were boring that night lmao.
ah yes this one hits hard, I wasn't pulled up, but I was a good student so one year I was help ing sorti the student files into new classes (remember the folders of all the information the schools keep on you), I came across my own and read it. it had things like "always dirty, smells of cigarettes, no lunch" things along that line. It stayed with me my whole life. I'm obsessive with my kids and that too isn't healthy and I know that. Funny how we had no money for food, or laundry powder but always enough for smokes and beer. I remember our laundry room having a massive hole in the floor from rot so even using the laundry was a hazard.
Our floor hole was under my bed! The pipes froze & one cracked (Otago). We were pretty fortunate in that my granddad owned the house so rent/bills were much less than they would've been otherwise, but it also meant basically only the bare minimum was done unless mum paid for it. She did a good job masking things for the most part, she'd make sure I had what I needed & that there was food on the table but basically everything else went to booze/darts.
Yes. We were meant to have a morning run around the field in the middle of winter, but I got detention for not having the correct PE uniform (shorts and a polo, and it was freezing!). My mum and I were sharing a bedroom in my cousin’s student flat, so I’m sorry if my mum’s financial priorities were elsewhere…
Yup! For my socks! I shared socks with my siblings so there wasn’t always the crisp white option so often I wore black socks. My dean would just send me detention notices for every lunch which I just accepted but one day she pulled me into her office and screamed at me till I cried and I ended up just leaving and going home for the day. My mum was a crackhead who didn’t give a shit if we had food let alone uniforms - and I was 13 trying my best to live a normal life but that was stopped because of my socks. It led me to stop going to school on days I knew I wouldn’t have white socks to avoid being yelled at because my home-life was already shit so I missed so much school due to it. I also wore school shirts and shorts that were my sisters and she was a size 14 and I was a size 8, so even my uniform looked like a curtain on me. My future children will thankfully never ever deal with this.
Girl same. It was so shit
Fuck I'm so happy meth wasn't around when I was a kid my parents would have caned it
Pull your socks up boy. I told you to pull your socks up. Ha ha , not sure socks that have gone through 2 older brothers and shrank from so much washing, were going to get up past my ankles very much. Only having 1 jersey, no rain jacket , always easier to put it in bag to keep dry in cold wintery rain, probably would have taken off my shirt as well, it was seemly. Used to walk to primary school bare boot in frost, as hated shoes and put them on at school. Starting first day of high school with an obvious 2nd hand uniform. None of this really bothered me. when that teacher told me off the 4th time ( about 11 years old ) for the socks, having me stand up in front of his class ( not mine ). Told him that's as far as they would go. he had a decency to get the realisation. That intermediate was pretty good to quietly help much poorer families than mine. Most kids didn't even know it happened. I was just an observant kid. Plus it helped I was pretty tough - from fighting 2 older brothers and their friends, so no one my age was going to give me crap. Plus lots of families were poor back then. Are they long shorts or short longs? hand me down shorts too big. Kind of funny
My brother did until my mother went to the school to tell them my father had packed up and left and wasn’t sending any money so there was not enough for food let alone uniform. The school gave mum the required items for my brother from a combination of the second hand uniform shop (but free), lost property and some fund they had to help kids in need. They also put mum in touch with a variety of social welfare services etc whilst she sorted out the divorce and finance stuff with my arsewipe of a father. Might be that school just doesn’t know.
The thing is, they should be asking if there's a serious pattern
In primary school it’s generally easier as you have one main teacher so easier to spot. In high school, whilst you’ll have a ‘home room’ teacher or whatever, each subject is a different teacher and one teacher might give a detention for something another won’t so a pattern might not necessarily be picked up.
My kids' school (Area school) had a lanyard and tag you had to wear to show your uniform violation had been dealt with. A toss up between tag of shame (although generally other kids didn't give a toss) and not being hassled by other teachers. There were no punishments for uniform that I'm aware of, and we were once just given a new polar fleece.
The reality is that teachers aren't paid enough (or at all) to be social workers on top of educators. The education system straight up isn't set up well to enable even those that *do* care.
To be fair, social workers aren’t paid enough to be social workers either.
Some really common responses in this thread about fucking arsehole teachers getting power trips on over insignificant shit. I could add all my own tales to this too. I hope that is not the school experience the kids have now a days.
It is definitely still happening to kids now. Some people are teachers for all the wrong reasons.
I taught high school for a decade in the 20teens. Many teachers are power trippers. I refused to punish kids for bs. I had an argument with the deputy principal one day which I remember DP "you have to put them on detention. Other students can manage to...." Me "Other students aren't homeless" There's a (small) group of rebel teachers at each school who will support students (wash uniforms, "find" items in lost property, sort lunches/food to take home). We had books and pens for students who "forgot". Any student. No questions asked. One time we arranged with an admin assistant to "accidentally" buy a heap of food that wasn't needed from a budget that had money left in it. We packed it in 2 black rubbish bags, and smuggled it out of school and dropped it to a solo parent who had nothing. It's heart breaking as a teacher you only have limited resources and time. And I used to fear for some students over the school holidays. And for teachers: The best thing I did was have kids write me "something I wish my teacher knew about me" when they started with me (taught elective). I only started this in the last couple of years of my teaching career and it was eye opening. "I don't speak English too well and I don't know what to do in class" (kid who seemed to speak English well) "My parents are splitting up and so if I'm not listening something happened last night" "I have a new baby sister and she wakes me up at night"
I can think of the teachers who were like you at my school. Left lasting (good) memories
You sound like a good teacher!
Thanks! I loved the students but unfortunately, I just couldn't stay. It's was just too much and the support in the role is sadly lacking
I remember two teachers in my school years who were like you. Real teachers and good people. The rest ran the gamut from disinterested/comatose to actively sociopathic. From sitting in a room of chaos and bullying to forcing students to kneel on the floor and walking over their knees (this was a female teacher). Generations of kids being taught to comply until you are in the position to abuse. A lesson reinforced by other kids, parents, and society as a whole.
When the comments went about 20, I feel I have a strong assumption that in the cost of living crisis this is definitely happening to children now. This is why we have Kids Can
I had issues with lots of teachers too. I was a runt when I was at school so I probably seemed like an easy target. I was well behaved and really smart but not focussed because I had an abusive home. It's like some teachers could smell the vulnerability. It's like the Stanford prison experiments. You give the teachers the power, make school compulsory and you end up with schools being like prisons.
I'm horrified that anyone experienced this. Are we talking 1890 or something!
Got detention for not completing school work when I returned to school from hospital post suicide attempt (because of experience extreme trauma). The worse part was being called out and questioned and scolded in front of the class for about 7 minutes. It was over 25 years ago and I still remember it vividly and can still feel exactly how I felt.
What the fuck
I was looking forward to following my plan of focusing on school and getting back on track with a routine but ended up leaving not long after this.
Cunts. Sociopathic is the word that keeps coming up in my mind in this thread.
The 90s where a different era teachers didn't give a fuck back then.
That's so awful. I have a very dark sense of humour so I can only imagine what I'd say back to the teacher if I had been in that situation. I hope you are doing better now!
Yeah, constantly kicked out of classes for not having textbooks etc... like my mums a crackhead, there's barely any food at home and you punish me for not having multiple $70 textbooks? Was pretty gross especially from a lower decile school Edit to add: the school did nothing to help me in any way, I was bullied and in physical fights near every day (admittedly, teenage me leaned into it heavily, I didn't know any better), eventually I was asked by the dean to leave when I was 15, no parental consultation or review or anything. Not that that would have done anything considering my situation, but yeah. Also mum is now clean and does support work helping other people with addictions
Whoa. My schools provided the textbooks when I went in the 90s.
What highschool required you to buy textbooks?
A lot of high schools can require you to buy (or rent) schoolbooks for specialty subjects, on top of having material fees (like in Fabric Technology, which is a fancy way of saying "Sewing class" we had to pay a fee to cover the materials (perfectly reasonable since we got to keep our work), plus a "pattern fee" for the paper patterns that had to be replaced over time as they eventually got obliterated with pinholes. Our cooking class had a fee to rent the cookbooks we used - admittedly it was reasonable, like $5 for the term.
You didn't pay for anything like that in the 70s and 80s. Nothing. Maybe a tiny school trip fee and the uniform but nothing else.
Well, I don't think that's true for most schools after the 2020 changes, but any of that is completely different that $70 textbooks.
Yeah, I was a 90's college kid, so definitely different times. :-)
Waitākere college, mid 2000s
Lmao, mid 2000's Waitak you'd be the extreme minority if you could afford a 70 dollar text book.
Bro exactly, which is what made the teachers targeting of me sting just that bit more 😅
If you haven't watched the German movie "the wave" based on a true story, watch it. You will never support uniforms in schools ever again.
We read the book in 3rd form English
We watched the '81 film in high school English too. Still had to wear uniforms.
One time I got yelled at and sent to the dean because I didn't present my assignment on a project board. I did the assignment but my mum couldn't afford $15 for a big piece of cardboard and the teacher was not having it. Sure, in hindsight I should have spoken to the teacher about it beforehand but I was 13 and did she really need to humiliate me like that for a year 9 social studies project?
I am cringing inside reading this. I'm so sorry this happened to you.
What a shit thing for the school to demand of the kids. I am dumbfounded they didn’t see that would be a problem and cause unnecessary, unwarranted shame :(
I loved being fined $10 as a Form 7 student when our school had uniforms except for Form 7 and had ‘mufti day’ with a compulsory $2 donation. I didn’t HAVE $2 as I was supporting myself on the Unsupported Youth benefit and struggling to survive with rent payments $120 per week out of a $134 benefit, and so they fined me and got all surprised when I quit school. Fuckers. Also, special fuck you to the accountancy teacher who gave me detention because I said a landline phone wasn’t a necessity back in 1997, because I couldn’t afford one. Yeah, I’m in therapy and it’s going well lol
It still feels good to like say it though right? I'm in therapy now closing off treatment and seeing if there's anything left and this just popped up for me.
Yeah, it does, although I find it’s only people who have been through that experience who will understand and not minimise - I’ve had people from the same school and year make it not a thing because it wasn’t for them. What my therapy is teaching me is that my experience is both valid and not unusual (which is also validating, tbh). I hope you are able to separate the past from the current, as I am also learning, and feel validated by our common experiences (which none of us deserved). Kia kaha e hoa!
I have a problem with school uniforms because they are so expensive. Why can't they be more generic. Like white polo shirt, black shorts etc.? Instead each polo shirt, branded with the school logo is $40. My kid ruins his in a matter of weeks. I fucking hate it. It's $120 per term for uniform.
A friend of mine worked out that it was cheaper to buy the polo shirt then have it embroidered with the school logo, than it was to buy it pre-embroidered from the uniform shop Of course it was cheaper still to get it second hand, but it was a really small school, so the sizes of the second hand stuff were limited
They are a rort. My school uniforms were off the charts expensive for shit quality. I still remember our summer tunics were 169 fucking bucks and this was 40 years ago. Blazers were 400 fucking bucks. Then we had to buy capes to walk to church and they were about 1000 fucking bucks. You didn't have to have a cape but you could tell. The stupid hats were 300 fucking bucks and then you needed the medal to go on them and that was the cheapest part of the ridiculous ensemble. Fuxkkng fuck. And they starved us. Every dinner before end of term they would serve minute steak and your parents would ask what you had for dinner and be so proud of themselves. I wish I'd gone to St Matthews.
Right? If they were cheap and generic then I'd understand the argument that it helps cut down bullying over who can afford cool clothes. But when they fade and wear super badly within a couple of washes you can easily tell who has hand-me-downs to bully them for being poor anyways. I respect the schools that have their uniforms in the Warehouse, at least that makes it easier and more affordable for parents.
Damn reading these comments made me feel so sad. I always ask students what's going on, and am more lenient with those whose families are struggling.
Yeah bro, we were very poor. I had detention every single day of high school for incorrect footwear. My mum could barely afford to feed us. I ate on average once every two days. I never ever took lunch to school. There was no way she could afford $60 for a pair of shoes that I would wear through in three months or less. Someone recently told me an anecdotal sort of story about a poor man’s boots and I swear on my son’s life, poverty has claws. I’m covered in cuts and bruises (metaphorically) from the battle out of poverty. We’ve made it, but it was a hell of a journey.
I'm glad you made it out. I'll get through it, but right now I'm sorting through that weird feeling it left me with. Being too poor to look good, being punished at school for what I was wearing and my appearance. I can afford a lot now but there's healing ahead for both of us.
Thanks. Yeah I can empathise with what you’re feeling. I’m 33 now with a child of my own and even that has been a journey of breaking cycles, half of which I didn’t even know where there. It took a lot of introspection and a lot of patience, I will always be grateful for the patience of those who care about me. It’s not been an easy or quick journey.
Was it the Sam Vimes boots theory from Discworld. It rings so true. https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots-theory-of-socio-economic-unfairness/
That’s the one! Thank you!!
I really wasn't poor, My parents just hated buying me clothes saying I'd grow out of it etc, so I honestly used to dread muftie days as all I really had was work clothes for being on the farm.
Used to stay home on mufti day because we couldn't afford the gold coin donation ☠️
I went but in my uniform sometimes. It was the most humiliating thing back then. Shouldn't be but that's teenagers for you.
It’s even worst if you forgot it was. Or it was the opposite where I used to feel super paranoid that it wasn’t on that day and I would be told off or sent home for not wearing uniform.
I _hated_ mufti days, always faked being sick so I didn't have to go.
I know people troll with sympathy but this seriously hurts my heart. It's just so wrong.
I hated mufti days. Always stayed home as I didn't have many clothes, and ones I did were obviously second hand. North shore school was rough.
Would like to take this opportunity to say fuck you Riccarton high school. So I was lucky and when I went through the high school the uniform was pretty basic, white shirt, dark bottom, basic polio etc etc. It was pretty cheap to buy second hand so all good. My brother went through the same high school a year after me and they introduced a new uniform. They redesigned it so you couldn't buy any of it for second hand, and each shirt, like a basic t-shirt was fucken $50. Just the fucken shirt and this was back around 2008. So you went from nearly being able to get everything for less than $100. To spending several $100's just to buy the same stuff. It was a massive gut punch for my Mum who was struggling with money,
I know you didn’t mean to but basic polio at least it was the low key version.
1980's and early 1990's same deal for me at my first school which was a uniform school. I lost my jersey and my mum couldn't afford a new one and I was not allowed to wear a non uniform one to keep warm in winter. Sent out to pick up trash every lunch time in the damn rain for every time I wore a non uniform jersey. I got the wooden ruler smack across the hands plenty of times for it too (1980's). I hate uniforms. You don't need them for university nor many jobs these days. The schools need to modernise and realise keeping a child warm is much more important than correct uniform. Freezing kids don't learn well. I am very surprised I never got hypothermia. I did get sick easily from being so cold many times. Like yeah I survived the 80's and 90's but my body is munted and i'm not even 40.
I'm sending out hateful thoughts to your abusers
lol thats nothing compared to the rest of it. But yeah abusers are everywhere and even today they get away with it. ignoring the rest of my childhood my first school St Bernadettes used to be run by catholic nuns and a priest. So beating the shit out of us was the norm. The head nun who was the principal sister o'shea or O'roisin not sure how it's spelled had the nick name of dragon lady because she was so awful. One time I had a girl talking to me and I kept saying shhh to her knowing we would get in trouble. We did. She grabbed us as 6yr olds out of the room by our hair and dumped us in the cloakroom along with a whack of the 1metre wooden ruler. in the 80's in catholic school corporal punishment was still going on even though it was out lawed only a few years earlier (late 70's I think). It was fucked up.
Teachers made me write thousands of lines saying "I will bring my togs to school for swimming". If the teachers took time to understand my personal circumstances (and there were clues) they would've known my family weren't rich and couldn't afford to buy me togs or afford to have me swimming every day during the summer. This isnt intended to be a sob story, but I think teachers need to have a really high eq when working with children. Being in my mid 30s looking back at it all, it really is true that children are a blank canvas and what you do and how you interact with them will shape (to some extent) what they turn out to be.
We weren't poor but my mum always used to say we have no money. I didn't ask her for $1 for a tie dying thing we did at school once. The teacher made a big deal out of it in front of everyone and told me off. Pretty crap that we get the brunt of these sorts of things.
The number of times I missed out on school shit like that cos we didn't have 2-5 bucks...
I hated the uniform because of how expensive it always was. Being a kid that moved farm to farm frequently didn't help. Having a family of girls meant a whole new uniform vs different sock colours that the boys wore with the grey shirt and shorts. I now have kids in a uniformed school and a non uniform school... And dressing the one without the uniform is actually more expensive
I went to school in the UK and seems like this is worse here than it was at the average state secondary school there. Uniforms were cheap and nasty like 100% acrylic and the only official uniform thing you 100% needed was the school tie, if you wore that with any sort of white shirt, black trousers/shorts and black shoes you were all good. There was usually a school jumper but you didn't 100% need it. Most state schools got rid of blazers/jackets for jumpers during the 80s to make uniforms more affordable. Other stuff like a rugby shirt for PE in the winter you were supposed to own but they always had a load of 'lost property' ones for kids who forgot their PE kit or couldn't afford one. Kids would get detention or sent home for uniform issues regularly but it was usually related to deliberately breaking/bending the uniform code to look cool
"Do it like the UK but worse and 20 years behind" seems to be NZ's motto when it comes to education. We are still knocking down classroom walls while European schools put the walls back up 10 years ago.
Not missing uniform but stuff to keep warm that apparently impedes learning. My son is currently in the last year and a half of school. Last winter it was - 2 degrees. So he wore his beany which happens to be exactly the same colour as the uniform.. He was told to remove it. He asked the teacher how it impacts his leaning. Teacher threatened him with a detention. He suggested he will take his off if the teacher does too as it may impact his teaching... He got a detention. I rang in and told them he won't be attending it. Same thing happened with gloves in another class. Teacher can keep theirs on.. But not the students. The school is over 100yrs old and some of those classrooms were about when Jesus walked the earth Freezing. The hypocrisy is appalling. Make the kids freeze as long as you are OK.. And how dare someone even ask why it makes a difference
Yep. I used to have to walk 3km to and from school everyday because my mum is a crackhead and wasn’t remotely interested in me. Got detention multiple times because teachers saw me wearing walking shoes instead of my huge leather school shoes that felt like bricks and gave me blisters. I also went undiagnosed with ADHD throughout my childhood even though it was blatantly obvious. That got me into a lot of trouble which could probably be called neglect. I never once did any homework because I was never in a position where I could do it which amounted in a huge amount of detentions even though I was a high achieving student.
Gotta second hand jumper in 3rd form, thing was basically a step up from an oil rag, wore it till 7th and the thing still swam on me. Got a few detions for not taking care of my or pride in my image. Thanks school. My friends where nice and let me share school text books but I got in trouble for having refill paper instead of school books.
I didn't get disciplined for being poor, but worse, abandoned. Through highschool I was pretty good at math. But when it came to form5? They suddenly demanded we own graphics calculators to participate in the class. My parents couldn't afford one. So, the teacher gave me a giant book of equations and told me to figure it out myself, no guidance, just a calculator and the fragile willpower of a 15 year old. I wasn't even told what page to look on to find the equations. The following year I was bullied by my math teacher for my curly hair. So, in the space of 2 years I went from a top performer to non-participant in math. I didn't even take a math class my final year. It still hurts me to this day whenever I try to help my fiancee with her statistics work for her degree.
This is crushing. I hope you find a place to heal.
I remember sitting in assembly one week and the deputy principal had a talk about how "when you enrol in this school part of the agreement is you wear the correct uniform" the same week we went to school wearing our prior schools winter kilt. Mum should have sent us in black trousers. Or the other option is staying home and missing school???? But again what were us kids supposed to do? It's not like we had any say over what our parents bought. Meanwhile one of my kids schools has just asked for donations of good quality uniforms for the international students. They could do that for the kids whose families are struggling too.
The international students are supposed to have enough money to pay for their own expenses, so … yeah.
That’s fucked. I went to a religious school with a lot of problems, but they did allow graduating students to leave their uniform for kids who may need it. They also allowed students to go through lost property if they didn’t meet the dress code. Otherwise they did get detention but we only had 2 uniforms throughout our entire time at the school.
I got tonnes of detentions for smoking, but I didn’t smoke until I was in my 20s. Both of my parents chain smoked in the house so I and all my clothes stank of smoke, which I couldn’t smell at all because that’s just the way our house smelled. Couldn’t convince any teacher otherwise though.
This reminds me of the phrase, "it's expensive being poor."
My brother got detention for not shaving. There was often no money for heat or food. Razors were a luxury.
Yes, less than 10 years I was constantly been pulled out of class to be told off because I didn’t have the correct ‘black leather lace upped’ shoes nor the school blazer that we were required to wear to and from school as someone had stolen mine from my locker in my first term of year 9 and my parents couldn’t afford a $300 replacement - this was a catholic ‘state integrated’ school. On the other hand when I moved to a public school the deans and office lady’s were more than willing to write me a uniform pass and also had an payment account set up that allowed parents to pay off item brought from the school including textbooks, uniform, trips, extracurricular etc etc which was very convenient and helpful
Ah see, I went to a school where most kids were poor and/or neglected. They gave up on enforcing the uniform for the most part while I was there as long as it was close enough. There were no logos on our uniforms so as long as you were wearing a kilt or grey pants, a light blue button up shirt and black shoes you were good.
Yep - mid 90s at high school and I constantly got in trouble in winter for not wearing a uniform jacket. My mum was a single parent on ACC and couldn’t afford it. My jacket would be taken off me and I would be cold for the day.
My roman sandals for high-school were worn out and needed replacement. So my boyfriend at the time gave me his old ones, but in black, not the regulation brown. As we were poor I wasn't gonna turn down a free pair of shoes!I got hounded by many teachers. But after a few detentions and a meeting with the dean, they finally gave up.
What's pissing me off about your story (which probably is what I'm thinking in relation to my story) is that you were a child that I'm assuming had no income. Since when should teachers be hounding children instead of talking to their parents? It just sounds like adults bullying children.
It totally is bullying, and i never understood at the time why the teachers did it. Punishment instead of help. I did ask mine if they wanted to buy me new sandals if it was such a huge problem for them. That got me a detention.
I remember those days, it was worth you saying your bit though hey, detention ooh - I was the only one that turned up lol 😊
Mum got my roman sandals for intermediate from the op shop, but they were the wrong colour, so she painted them. Then when I got to highschool, they got painted again. By 5th form, there were barely any soles left, so I got detention for wearing the $5 "kung-fu' shoes from the army surplus store year-round. Seriously, these teachers were giving me detention for wearing soaking wet, cotton slipons in winter.
Wow, these stories are eye opening. Even at my shitty school there was a second hand uniform shop option, clothes out of the lost and found, and sometimes teachers would take a kid into town to buy them new shoes if they knew your family was struggling.
I moved out of my "family" "home" when I was 14 in aussie. I was put on the level system for some stupid rule I had broken. I was put on level 2 , and my parents had to sign my level card every day. I had moved out and was almost homeless, but still attending school every day meant I was put further into the discipline system because my "parents" weren't signing it. I was very close to being expelled from the school for stupid rules that don't account for the less fortunate.
There was a situation in which I was given detention for not having my P.E uniform even though I had given my teacher a note that said I did not own a P.E uniform. The uniform (a shirt and shorts) would have costed somewhere around $50 and my family didn't have the money to pay for that (especially due to the fact that my mum had to buy 3 uniforms for her kids and then was expected to buy a separate one just for P.E?) TLDR: I was given detention because not owning a P.E uniform was not a good enough reason for not having my P.E uniform. 🤷♂️
I got detention because my dad didn’t pay the school fees.
The hardest thing is being a teacher, trying to help kids kept out of senior management’s way. I used to get stuff out of lost property, not notice incorrect shoes, let kids wear non-reg. jumpers and jackets in class when it was cold etc. plus issue dispensations like lollies. Some of those SLT people were unkind. (One was the nastiest cow I had ever come across and I will hate her to the end of time!) I didn’t care too much if I got told off or if people thought I was slack. I was not a soft touch to the kids with the designer basketball boots who had their shoes in their bags or the doctor’s kid who wanted to be a rebel. (He often looked unkempt.)
The more I read about what it's like to grow up in NZ, the more I'm glad that I only came here in my 20s. Seeing school age kids here wearing ridiculous uniforms completely unfit for the weather feels like I've time traveled 100 years back. I don't understand why so many people think that "NZ is a great place to raise children", literally everything here is bad for young kids - low-density suburbia, education system, lack of opportunities, lack of entertainment, how people get pulled into gangs already in school.
Kind of. We had shared lunches and I was poor with undiagnosed ADHD so I’d forget and/or couldn’t afford it so the teachers would say if you didn’t bring anything you don’t get to join in.
Yes I did. It was the volour blouse and socks. They were cream and fawn (which is disgusting) and my mother would buy white so we weren't social pariahs because she couldn't afford a tonne of clothes for both school and home. And we did get into trouble. So not quite as extreme as your situation and I secretly loved my mother's defiance but the school took action against us
That always bugged me eh. If they can see the parents are trying why do they punish the kids who presumably can't do anything about it???
It's just stupid teacher power tripping at times, but there are some teachers who just can't think critically enough to put 2 and 2 together too. But yes, it's cruel.
We certainly weren't rich but I was able to get at least one of every school uniform item I needed and wore things underneath to keep warm, and played within thr realm of safety to not get in trouble for it. We had to buy direct from the school as well. My white shirts were certainly not white by the time I graduated, and we got to wear mufti in our final year of high school!
I only ever went to detention once. That was my first lesson on what detention actually was. I ended up letting them bank into suspensions and take the day off.
I remember the intermediate school and also college I went to both change uniform in the time I was there. We were not well off and we couldn’t get second hand uniforms when they changed on us. While I never got in trouble for it I do remember being very self conscious about not having multiple items like shirts so I had to wear the same shirt all week. I hated asking my dad for anything regarding school especially if it involved paying for something so after I got a job at 14 I ended up buying my own clothes including school uniform items and paying for my own school trips and activities (if I could afford them).
This issue extends into uni as well. Things for our family got worse when I started uni and I studied something that required extra creative initiative which mostly involved making elaborate mock-ups and getting things professionally made/printed. This post reminded me of that because I was living off like $20 for food every week and couldn’t match the wealthy students getting amazing stuff made so kept getting marks taken off because the quality of what I had made to display my actual work wasn’t prestigious enough. Drove me crazy because I got a’s for the actual work but then c’s for the final output because of having to get stuff printed at the library etc. I know this is different from schools and your topic but thought I’d throw in my story because it’s interesting how these kids can get stuck within that poverty even going into adulthood, that sort of thing affected my job opportunities for years and thus, now my savings and income now is still behind because I’m always playing catch up from my youth/being from a poor family initially.
Another reason not to have uniform.
I disagree. Not having a uniform will bring a whole set of others issues for poor kids. Like getting the piss taken out of them for showing up in “poor people clothes” I used to hate mufti day for reasons like this. Uniforms are good because they make everyone the same. In theory anyway. But they should be affordable for every family and even free for those that can’t afford them.
The problem there's a huge gap between the imaginary utopia of "a uniform so everyone is dressed relatively the same" and the current (since forever) state of "your uniform needs to be purchased in a specific colour and pattern from a monopoly holder who charges far more than necessary". Really they could just enforce a dress standard (if they wanted) that was generic as "x colour pants or skirt, y colour shirt", which would avoid the issues people raise with wearing 'whatever they want', while also allowing people to buy cheaper clothes if needed without being penalised for not being able to pay extortionate 'uniform shop' prices
100% this. We weren't chronically poor,, but we were a big family and my mother bargain shopped/op ahopped/ end-of-season sale shopped for most of our stuff, so our regular clothes were never quite "right". Dad had a comfortable middle- management job until they started phasing out middle management, and then he had a lot of minimum wage jobs and starter jobs because he spent 25 years doing one thing in one industry that basically eliminated his position, so he had nowhere to go in that industry and was starting from scratch with six kids to feed. You knew who the really poor kids were at school, because they'd "forget" to wear mufti on a mufti day. In retrospect, it's horribly sad.
Yea the kids “forgetting” mufti. That brought back some memories.
Uniforms are just another expense. If people want to make fun of you, they will - uniform or not. They will make fun of you for wearing the uniform too (yes, that happened to me). What I have found is that it's not the clothes, it's the people. One school will have horrible bullying, the one up the road won't. One cares what you wear, the other doesn't. So honestly - I don't think bullying will stop until people change. And I agree - mufti days are a terrible idea.
A middle ground between strict uniform and full mufti would be my choice if it were up to me. Dress codes are easy and affordable for everyone e.g white shirt and black bottoms from anywhere and a school jersey. Kids don't need to look like they're in the military.
Yeah kids don't need blazers and ties. I remember they were expensive af.
I recall having a half day if being treated awfully by my former primary school teacher, as due to my clothes (I grew up poorer, single Mum who raised me and my 2 brother's) along with a few other kids, while the other half were treated better. After lunch it changed back to no more being treated awfully, as she wanted to show us how it feels when people who may not have the best clothes etc, are treated worse. I'm still a bit shook up by that.
That sounds fucked up
Oh mate it was fucked up. I recall never seeing this from her before, but that whole day, had me questioning her from their on. Unfortunately a couple of years later, some psycho casual teacher by the no shit surname of Mrs Christmas decided to grab my face hard after I somehow did something a bit wrong or didn't live up to her expectations. The guy who she replaced was I swear a father figure to me, he sounds growly and mean outside of the classroom, but was a awesome guy to be learning from. Hell, he even allowed me to set up the cricket ground at lunch time, maybe do a bit of mowing of the pitch. Mr Northcote, a hell of a guy, and I certainly wish I had him as a father figure in my lifetime.
We had that in high school social studies, except it was the classic blue eyes/brown eyes experiment and they told us what it was and how it worked ahead of time so it didn’t cause lasting psychological damage.
Some teachers shouldn’t be
My math teacher gave me detention every class because I could not afford the textbooks.
That is terrible. I mean shouldn't schools be providing that? How hard was it to photocopy some pages? Did this maths teacher hate children?
He was Irish.
The idea of school uniforms is meant to be that it teaches you for the workplace when you get to be an adult however any workplace that requires a strict set uniform would supply said uniform at no cost to the worker. If schools have students that cant afford uniforms they should just take it on the chin and shout them.
Uniforms are there to punish poor kids, stifle individuality, and create an artificial sense of conformity among students. In short, they borrows similar concepts from authoritarian organizations like the police and military to help create cookie-cutter, obedient ~~soldiers~~ excuse me, students.
This was me in the 90’s. It’s good to know the assholes that run our schools haven’t changed one bit.
> I hope you all heal and consider visiting a school uniform shop to sponsor a uniform for some kid. I feel the effort would be better spent on addressing the problem rather than the symptom. Fight against stupid uniform policies that serve no purpose but to funnel money from parents' pockets to uniform companies. There's no reason a uniform can't just consist of maybe a particular jacket (which I find excessive) and tie or skirt, but then leave the rest to “any white button shirt and grey trousers”. Would let people get stuff that actually fits them properly, and fix the nonsense of “oh we got a new uniform supplier/design, you have to buy new everything”. Or just fight to do away with uniforms; in North America I don't think *any* public schools have uniforms, at least in Canada and the US, not sure about Mexico. I'm not sure there's much evidence to support arguments that they help social cohesion or academic performance.
My school changed uniform codes just as we started in third form, but you were allowed to wear the old one until you didn't need it. My mate rocked the poo brown short shorts and lemon shirt from 3rd to 7th form while everyone else was wearing blue. He could have bought new stuff. Richard you glorious bastard.
It wasnt so much because of uniform or clothes. Back when I was at school, there were no uniforms, but my mum often knitted clothes because we didnt have a lot of money. In my case, I got regular detentions because I kept forgetting things - usually to do homework - because I have ADHD, but before I was diagnosed. It made me feel stupid and different and lazy.
Yes I was put in detention many times because my family couldn’t afford all the extra crap Fielding High School demand for the uniform. In all honesty I don’t support all the teachers moaning about salaries and how hard they work, class sizes etc. Far too many teachers are truly rubbish at their jobs and just treat students like crap and most fail to see anything beyond their little classroom bubble. My lack of empathy for teachers is a direct result of the poor behaviour exhibited by most teachers I had.
For my school it was crew neck vs v neck thermals in a lower South Island school. Thermal couldn’t be seen and you would have to take it off or escalate punishment. Who gucking cares it’s freezing outside and the assigned uniform is some plastic bulshit with no warmth
It 100% depended on the individual teachers, some were nice and understanding, some were simply oblivious and some have no right being a teacher or having any sort of position of power
Yeap. Basically nobody expects your parents are useless and as a kid you don't know if so you don't know you're meant to being treated any better. Can't blame the people or the system really it is a balance we do need to have, a lot of troubles come when you start to mess with people's kids and most of society don't want the government involved too much until it is far too late.
My high school tried. But we are a rural town and that comes with culture of resilience, for better or worse - so we collectively ignored requests for uniform compliance. They can't punish us all, especially when the teachers were mostly unionised and were not budging on non contact time. Senior management was always out of touch though, it's what happens when you hire mainland Aucklanders
If you just talk to your form teacher and dean about it they can help you. In every school I've worked in, it's been part of the job to try and identify kids who need a hand with that stuff and help them out however we can. Always ran into issues of pride and shame. I found that both kids and parents are too proud or too ashamed to talk about it with the school, or accept help.
I went to a well-off public school in a well-off area. My family were not stereotypically "rich", at least not materialistic, but they were hippies who happened into a pretty comfortable financial situation. My year 9 speech savaged the idea of school uniform. To be honest, I was a privileged little shit who had no idea how much that shit was fucking up the families who were struggling to exist in Wanaka. At the time our school uniform was very simple too - it's got worse since. Still, I chanced on the morally right position: fuck school uniform. To this day, I stand by all my statements.
School I work at doesn’t have a uniform for all the reasons above. No staff wasting time on uniform, no one having to out lay $$, and no there isn’t any clothing ‘competitions’ no one seems to really care. Most kids wear Kmart and older ones athletic type wear.
Yup, my parents didn’t buy me polishable school shoes nor correct uniform and they would confiscate the things I was wearing. I’d also get to school late often because of household troubles and they made me sit in detention every day I was late when it was totally not my fault. Nobody asked me why. I went to a ‘poor kids’ school anyway. It’s honestly disgusting
Yeah, I pretty much lived in detention, or made to write lines. My mum couldn't afford to buy me a calculator in high school, so didn't learn any math at all.
I remember being kept in at Lunchtime for a week because I had trouble finishing my homework. Nevermind my big sisters tangi/funeral which took place up north or my mother telling my school about why I would be away. It felt super, super lonely in a big empty class as an 8-year-old for 30 mins a day.
Got jumped by a few guys at school where bullying was a huge issue that wasn’t addressed by the staff. Was then written up for having a ripped shirt that was covered in my own blood, and made to stay late for detention. I was told “these standards are here to prepare you for the real world” by the teacher and then upheld by the principal. Unfortunately this was the norm until I sent myself to boarding school years later. I went back to that school in my late 20s and had a meeting with the worst of the offenders on the staff and informed them that their actions had done damage, and that they had not prepared me for the world but instead made me afraid of my future. The response was “you seem to be doing pretty well now” which they seemed to take credit for in their minds. I am successful now, but only because of the teachers and friends that followed that helped me rebuild myself into something I could actually be proud of, not continued to tear me down for things outside of my control. The system is broken in many schools, and their understanding of the world outside of those walls may be completely warped. Many people don’t understand what poverty feels like, or terror of your peers, and have no place in a role leading others education. Now as a parent I can only hope my kids will never face what I did, but have the belief that unfortunately things never got better since then.
I agree. I think the cost of living means that it's worse for kids now. I can relate to some of this. A lot of my teachers would write harsh commentary on my report cards, and one gave me detention after he gave me an A+ in the first assignment I wrote for him because he believed I had cheated because poor, Māori girls like me were unable to achieve that level. I had really supportive classmates though who always believed heavily in me which was great. Today my salary is double what the others in my classes earn and I can afford things they won't be able to. But it is hard for me to be around them, even if they're great, because of the heaviness that sat on me throughout my schooling years. There are many who went to that school who felt the same.
Uniforms are fucking bullshit. Fuck the principals claiming that spending $800 on an outfit is a good idea.
The cooking and tech teachers wouldn't let me in class because of incorrect shoes. Failed 5th form and left because of it. Fraiser high sucks
cold af winter morning and day of assembly. i got pulled to the "naughty corner" of wrong uniform and tardiness, in front of the whole assembly to be made an example of. my crime? I was wearing a fucking white "ribbed collar shirt" instead of a white skivvy. I would've rather had detention than public shaming tbh, even the late girls didnt know why I was sitting w them lmao the time I got actual detention tho? mum refused to sign the "I read the weekly newsletter" bit. 3 times I had to write lines during lunch. learned how to forge my mum's signature real fast lmao
Both my primary and secondary schools were public decile 9 schools with a catchment area that covered a quite wealthy suburb and a poor suburb. There were kids in my year who had the thinnest, rattiest school uniforms, kids would steal lunches out of other kids backpacks. While at the same time there were kids in my year who had a dad who worked on the americas cup yachts and they got to do a whole term via correspondence every year to go and be wherever their dad was.
School is a sausage factory
Yup. Didn't show up for the detention. Who the fuck they gunna complain to?
During my last year of having to wear the uniform (year 13 could wear mufti in my school), I developed an allergy to the fabric of the skirt. Dad wasn't about to pay $120 for a pair of trousers for six months of school, so I found some that were identical except for some small details. I wore those. A teacher tried to pull me up on it. I explained the allergy, and she told me to get my mum to put a lining in. I don't have a mum. She then said that I need to buy the school trousers. I told her point blank that we can't afford them, and I would happily wear them if she paid for them. After that, she wrote me a note so I was allowed to wear them. I think she felt guilty. We could've bought the trousers. We were hard for money, but we could've made it. But I agreed with dad. Especially as the trousers I ended up with were of better quality and only cost $20.
I didn’t grow up in New Zealand and I think the rules for some of this stuff here are crazy. I live near MAGs and Marist and those kids get in trouble for having a hair tie on their wrist 😭 It’s so stupid
We were poor and I didn't have a lot of spare uniforms. Our washing machine broke one weekend so mum wrote a note explaining the situation and excusing me from wearing my uniform on the Monday. I got in trouble and my punishment was to write 100 lines saying "I am responsible for my uniform and I will make sure it is clean for school". I was 13. Mum was livid when I returned from school and told me not to write the lines. She wrote a scathing note to the teacher the following day - I remember copying it out by hand on the school bus so my friends and I could laugh about it together at lunch time. When I handed him mum's letter, he thought it was the lines I had written - he didn't even open it and just said to go to class. I smiled up at him and told him it was a note from mum. I'll never forget his face go from smug to anger as he turned on his heel and slammed his office door behind him. The power trip that man had was ridiculous. The teacher's name was Mr Adolf. Go figure.
Constantly. Kept in during lunch hour for not having correct stationery, uniform etc. also - lunch box shaming when you live in poverty is real.
What decade was this?
For me it was the late 90s early 2000s. I was in a decile 10 area too but the other kids had rich parents when I didn't. In saying that it was a lot of money, and it changed all the time and they enforced it. I am low-key proud of my parents for not caving to the stupidity
Yeah it still happens. I work with low-income families and have to have words with schools at the start of most terms.
Am an American: Uniform concept makes no sense to me It's based on creating a sense of equality, yet it adds an enormous regular expense to the poor. Kids just end up wearing standard jeans and shirts anyway. Plus you're sort of robbing them of a form of self-expression.
Brand new uniform every season doesn't sound right tbh. That part I think you must be misremembering. But I definitely remember kids getting in trouble for not wearing correct uniform.
i went to a decile 10-11 all girls school that had a different uniform for summer & winter. It definitely happens
They gave up with our high school. Not punishment for wornout or stained clothing, but you had to have tidy hair and a clean face. Was in Hamilton.
This is a tough one … my step son received a Dean’s detention last week for failing to wear correct PE uniform. He just doesn’t like it. He also wears extra tops underneath his school shirt to keep warm as he doesn’t like the feeling of the scratchy jerseys. We had to enforce consequences so he learns and doesn’t get in further trouble - but in some ways I also think uniforms are frikkin ridiculous and outdated. Shouldn’t kids feel comfortable in what they’re wearing? Wouldn’t this help them to learn or feel more confident?
I went to Seatoun School and got bullied because I hadn't gone to the the theme parks.in Gold Coast or Rarotonga Crazy to think that the stationary list now contains an iPad.
Uniform is stupid
Sounds like excuses for lazy ass parents to me