It depends.  I like my Algebra II but it's not the easiest...I guess least favorite are classes with teachers I don't like, which currently aren't any. I like a lot of classes many don't...like Civics.  I never cared for World History though, but only because they always start off in the BCs and never get into even the 20th century.  I'd be more interested in the last 100 years or so.

Doing homework in lunch hour was frowned upon but not forbidden although teachers used to say don't let me catch you doing it so I was careful not to get caught.

Why is it their business to ensure that we actually waste home time for the homework ?

I would of question that in the open

Our teachers don't care. We are given study halls every morning and on A days for 40 extra minutes in the afternoon. Some people also just do their homework on the picnic table outside during recess.

Hiya all

Cool, that's one subject I've never heard about (biblical literature) it must be similar to Religious Studies/ Education, abbreviated as either RS or RE. RE was another subject that I've stopped doing when I started my GCSEs in year 10 and apparently some schools made RE/RS as a compulsory subject for GCSE. Don't know exactly why some schools make RE as a compulsory subject?

The subject is officially classified as RE, but what we study in it actually is best described as biblical literature

It is compulsory in Israel for all schools for what i know, including the most normal secular schools. Schools that belong specifically to non Judaic religions study their own equivalents for the subject



There is a difference between what they teach in the subject in lower and high school

In lower it is more of "teach what's in the book", starting right from the beginning - world creation, Noahs boat and such. Imagine teacher walking in and reading from 1st page of Old Testament (literally, it is the same book after all), the same way a history teacher would walk in and read from a hystory book. 7 year old kiddies believe of course. It is only a few years later that the geography teacher will walk in with a book and burst the creationist bubble.... No description can substitute seeing the room of shocked faces first hand

In higher it is a "read the author's mind" thing, same as with the "normal" literature. It is funny to consider how they claim to read the mind of who was just a year ago supposed to be ipso god



But the real fun was back in the lower school. Among running into people, walls and off stairs due to staring up at awesome early 90s fluorescent lighting (which is a theme on its own), there was not much special about the school, just ordinary secular school....

In early classes, on top of the biblical stories being read to kids like facts, by coincidence or not, the subject teachers (and couple others) were incredibly superstitious. Many superstitions were ridiculous even to us 7 year old kids, or atleast to me. And it was "that other" sort of superstitions there....



Biblicl literature

Teacher : "Who will read the next verse ? Oh Ash come on you read it"

Little Ash : "And then said Jehova to...."

*looks turn to Ashy. waiting for a thunderbolt entering through the window ?*

"ASH!! YOU DONT SAY THAT !"

"That is what is written in there"

"You cannot say that"

"I just said it what is wrong with it ?....."



(Not biblical literature subject, but same teacher)

Teacher hands out some exercise sheet. There is an word of 3 letters in the top of the page

(There is a thing with religious people, they have a superstition that every page you write is by default condemned and you have to bless it when you write on it. There is a blessing abbreviated down to 3 letters that they write in the top corner for the job)

Little Ash : *Does not know what those letters are* *blanks it with correction fluid*

Techer : *Walking between desks sees how students do* *Gets to Ash, sees the blob of white, writes the 3 letters back on the sheet*

"I dont need this" *Correction fluid*

"Thats how i handed it out, do you want your work to be condemned ?"

"It is just a story" *Correction fluid*
....
....



We also had this sort of stuff with :

Writing any 2 of the letters J H V (the letters that make the word Jehovah, in Hebrew it is just 3 letters) in the same word next to each other. We had teachers that would put a quote mark between them to break them up. Reason : To not call god's name or part of it "for no reason" while not meaning that

In Hebrew it is very noticable when this happens, as the letters appear together in a LOT of everydey words. When you see text that is written by somebody who follow this superstition, you can see right away that it is filled to the top with quotation marks in the middle of words



Writing the + sign in math. The superstitious teachers would avoid it, they had their own "addition" sign (that is + missing the bottom stick), and would frown on us kids for using the + symbol. The new sign had a name "add" rather than "plus". It is in fact a standardised Unicode symbol :

Character: ﬩ U+FB29
Name: HEBREW LETTER ALTERNATIVE PLUS SIGN
Annotations and Cross References
Approximate equivalents:
<font> + U+002B PLUS SIGN plus sign
General Character Properties
Block: Alphabetic Presentation Forms
Unicode category: Symbol, Math
Various Useful Representations
UTF-8: 0xEF 0xAC 0xA9
UTF-16: 0xFB29
C octal escaped UTF-8: \357\254\251
XML decimal entity: &#64297;

The real fun part began when in 5th grade we got a new math teacher, she would write everything with the normal + sign and not give a damn. Or maybe she actually did. There too, one have to really see the faces of the kids

The + sign fuss was, for what i know, exclusive to lower schools (and not only mine). I almost never seen adults use it anywhere else - the normal + is virtually allways used. Looks like the "add" is disappearing from lower schools as well - In the mid 2000s (when i was in high school) i was assistant for teachers of lower school, and i seen a mix of + and "add" in use, but the days of the "add" were numbered already then



And how not, putting stuff (ie other books) on top of the bible book. Teachers would really frown upon that

In America, we are arguing about whether to keep religion from public schools or not. Unless you go to a private school (catholic, etc…)

Yeah I've heard that controversy too.  Have you heard the one about school uniforms being mandatory? I'm neutral on that one...I don't care either way.

Yeah I've heard that controversy too.  Have you heard the one about school uniforms being mandatory? I'm neutral on that one...I don't care either way.

yes. In exploratory we were doing debates and that was one of the topics. I see how making uniforms can prevent bullying because someone haveing a "poor taste" in fashion.

In my high school they introduced uniforms during my time there, so i seen how it went before and after. The motivation stated to us was bullying as you mentioned, as well as "dressing which is distastefull for school"

The bullying didnt change dramatically. There was little clothing related bullying before, and about same after (bullies just found something else not included in the uniform to bully at), so no big change known to me. If you bring the point of poor families who cannot afford clothing, well, the uniform cost about as much as any non-uniform equivalent grade clothes, so its the same in cost. The school did help out students who could not afford basic clothing, both before and after the introduction of the uniforms

The "distastefull"ness. My high school was in the middle of the road in liberality of student appearance. some things were accepted without problem, some not, some frowned but not much done about them. Few times they chose odd places to draw the line at. The one thing that the uniforms really eliminated is girls with short (exposed belly) shirts - which was something our principal really did not like. But they could have just banned those explicitly if they wanted, without requiring the uniforms. I did not notice other changes of the type

At my school girls can't wear short skirts or yoga pants, but they do anyway and nobody does anything about it. You can't also wear shirts that expose the spaghetti string tank tops some girls wear. You can't wear jeans with massive holes or the teachers will duct tape the holes over. Our school doesn't have a problem with clothing related bullying either, it's mostly just over stupid stuff.

With mine it's stuff like shirts that advertise beer brands, etc. that aren't allowed.

Our school doesn't care about that, someone once came inwith a Harley davidson shirt that had some sort of beer (I don't remember what brand) and no one batted an eye.

Interesting how different school have various dressing policies in thE USA. In the UK with uniform, you wear a polo shirt with grey trousers or a shirt in primary and infant schools. When you go  secondary you have to wear a shirt and blazer.

Funny how there's little bullying that's related to poor fashion taste/quality

And yes some school rules I find are a bit pointless in some ways

I had a Heineken branded hat with which i went to some school trips, no problem with that ever