As a teacher, part of your job is making sure that the students are following all of the rules.
What would you do if your vice principal demanded that you enforce every rule, even the ones that are outdated?
That is what happened to the teacher in this story, so she got very strict.
Let’s see how the story plays out…
A few years ago, I retired from teaching (UK) and I particularly love the stories of malicious compliance (MC) from schools and colleges.
The recent threads about MC by students which teachers had to take on the chin brought back many memories so I thought I’d share one which involve me AND my students and which happened in my first year of teaching (1981).
I was fresh out of college and went to teach science in a secondary (11-16) school in a rural town in which a lot of the students were the children of farmers and could be quite a challenge.
I was only a few years older than some of them and I was walking a very fine line between wanting to be liked and having some level of respect / authority; something which every new teacher will remember.
Here are some of this story’s important players…
I had replaced a popular teacher and had been given his tutor group (home group) and they weren’t making it easy for me (to be fair I probably deserved it).
One of the main protagonists was a boy whose father was a successful farmer who happened to be chair of the governors and who was always keen to protest when he wasn’t happy with something (we’ll call him SH as those were his initials and this was 40 years ago!)
The other person involve in this story is the head of year (I’ll call him Geordie) was an old timer who had been unsuccessful when applying for the deputy headship and so there was a fair amount of resentment bubbling away which he tended to take out on children (and occasionally staff).
I think uniforms are good for students.
Our school had a uniform policy, I didn’t have a problem with this as such as it does act as a bit of a leveller, especially when families can’t afford the latest fashion and as tutor, it was my job to make sure my children were appropriately dressed which I was doing to the best of my ability.
Anyway, many of the children were in basic uniform but they sometimes pushed the limits of what was acceptable (a common problem was whether footwear was trainers or shoe) but as long as their appearance was within the spirit of the rules I was pretty much OK with it.
Geordie however was not.
At a team meeting, he went on a rant about how standards were being allowed to slip and that we were not being vigilant enough.
Enforcing rules is important.
He reminded us that it was our job to maintain standards and ended with the demand that the next day we send to him “any child who was not in proper uniform” he waved the school handbook at us and told us if we didn’t know what that was, we could find it in there.
I was well angry, I was walking a fine enough line with these students and this wasn’t going to make my life any easier….cue the malicious compliance.
I checked the school handbook very carefully and the next morning I was ready.
A lot of students were sent to Geordie.
After I had taken the register, I announced that anyone not in proper school uniform would be reporting to Mr Geordie (groans and protests!).
First of all I sent a couple of kids who were always pushing things too far but then I began the malicious element. The regulations said black v neck jumper.
Yours has a round neck, down you go!
Is that a logo on your shirt?
It says plain white here off you go!
The regs also specified plain black socks (they had been written some years earlier and never reviewed) in the early 80s, many children wore white socks (I know!) so down went all the white socks and the atmosphere in the classroom got distinctly more hostile towards me.
SH got in his face.
Then I singled out SH, the class mouthpiece. “down you go” I insisted.
He was furious and came right up to me and was almost in my face.
He demanded to know why, so I told him.
He was wearing black socks but I had noticed they had 2 coloured bands around the top; I explained that the rules specifically said plain black socks and that his were not plain.
He was mad and our eyes locked and then it happened.
Good thing he figured it out.
To this day I remember how his face changed as he realised that this was not me against him, it was us against Geordie.
He then went round the class helpfully pointing out all the minor infringements that I had missed and we ended up sending every child in the class apart from 3 or 4 who were in full uniform and who were frankly disappointed not to be sent down.
He must have had to give everyone detentions.
Geordie had gone hard on the first few children who went down and then couldn’t treat the others differently so he got it in the neck from parents who didn’t appreciate being contacted about stripy socks.
Shortly after this, the rules were re-written to be more flexible as long as the spirit of the uniform was upheld.
From that day on, I had a fantastic tutor group, SH became head boy and was a credit to the school and worked as hard for me as any child I taught since.
And in 40 years of teaching despite many instances of MC, I never managed to top the time my students collaborated with me in an act of MC.
Sometimes the only way to get rules changed is to strictly follow them.
Let’s read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say.
This person is glad the guy never got promoted.
Great advice from this substitute teacher.
What does a cult haircut even mean?
Hey, they weren’t toys.
This was really funny.
That is one way to get the rules changed.
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.
