To Pee or Not to Pee
That is the question.
But it shouldn’t be.
Check out the discussion at Joanne Jacobs’ blog about bathroom breaks in school. Here’s the USA Today article that prompted the blog post.
Bathroom bullying and vandalism are real problems that schools must obviously address, but that doesn’t mean kids shouldn’t be allowed to use the restroom when they need to. Want to get rid of bullying and vandalism in the bathrooms? Keep a limited number of bathrooms open at any time (depending upon the size of the school and the age range of the kids) and have an adult sit in the hallway nearby to check hall passes and to make sure nobody’s doing something they shouldn’t be doing in the bathroom. Problem solved.
Unfortunately, the tone of some of the quotes in the article and the blog comments make my head spin. Not only do some teachers not care that students are waiting too long to use the bathroom because of idiotic teacher and/or school policies, but some teachers (and I emphasize “some”) just really don’t like their students.
One commenter at Jacobs’ site brags about telling students that if they want to use the bathroom during his class period, they have to stay after school for ten minutes. He claims he never really makes them stay, but that doesn’t make his blatant power play and humiliation of the students any less despicable.
debra said,
June 11, 2007 @ 9:50 am
When I was in kindergarten ( a few short years ago), a girl asked the teacher of she could go to the bathroom. But she didn’t use the correct words, so she was told, “No”. So the girl asked about the rest room, the toilet, and the potty. Still the ?wrong” word. The girl couldn’t wait so she pee’d in frnt of the class. The teacher admonished her for making a mess and told her to sit on the heater in the classroom until her pants dried. I have often wondered whatever happened to that 5 year old child who never knew to ask about using the Ladies Room.
To this day, I can still remember how mortified I felt for her.
lori said,
June 11, 2007 @ 10:04 am
Unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon story. I know someone who was also denied use of the bathroom when he was a first grader. He was told to hold it until later, but he couldn’t. The teacher was more concerned with some sort of authoritarian display than she was about the child’s physical and emotional health.