[lispsil]

I witnessed this in highschool. The first school I went to was extremely authoritarian and was grade 8-12. Fights and bullies a common occurrence. I didn't have a problem dealing with them but other kids had a brutal time, pushed down the stairs breaking their jaws, fights everyday, kids waiting around the field after dark to catch you crossing it by yourself for a brutal beating, one kid had his hair lit on fire in chem 11 class, police would shake the students down for drugs and weapons almost every week.

I got kicked out for redboxing the school payphone and for reciting the lyrics to Nazi school and saluting my detention room minders, which is some old 80s song on the KBD comps http://youtu.be/QJ5kuA_66u8

I was sent by my country's ministry of education to a school of 'criminal youth' with 1200 students and no rules that was 10-12 grade. Not one fight. Many of the kids were serious gangsters involved in operating drug lines or fresh out of juvie hall. With no rules to rebel against everybody hung out including geeky neckbeards with Christian Audiger wearing Gs. They told us it was up to us to pass or fail, they weren't responsible and we could do anything we wanted including not showing up. Meanwhile my friends would lament of the stifling rules and regulations back in my old school that saw endemic violence and brutality. The more you try to control people the worse they become it seems.

My first week at the new school I acted like I was still in an institution by booting my books down the halls, and generally being a complete goof. Nobody paid attention to me and my antics didn't move me up the social ladder. There's no reason to rebel against a place without any rules that tells you your own actions will decide if you sink or swim. No nannies phoning home to your parents saying you didn't show up, no detention, no late slips, no punishment for disrupting a class either. We would talk to each other in the middle of a lecture and the teacher didn't go on a massive power trip trying to punish and humiliate us in front of all the other students. We were just told that if we didn't listen or respect the teachers we'd fail in life, so we listened.

Compare that to my last school when in grade 8 I was dragged into a Socials 12 class because the instructor thought I made a racist comment in the hallways when it was some other older kids who did while passing by. He basically encouraged the other Grade 12 students to 'teach me a lesson' through violence and would harass me on a regular basis because of this. I reacted like any other kid, become a total nightmare student and get kicked out.

[goggles99]

This is the strangest sounding story that I have ever heard. It is either fake, or there were other factors going on such the juveniles with true behavioral problems just never bothered showing up to school because they weren't required to.

A school with absolutely no rules? So you could cheat on tests openly? you could walk through the campus naked? you could sell or do drugs in class? You could vandalize the campus? Threaten to kill the teacher? You could break into the school's office or computer system and change your grades? Bribe the graders? ETC?

A bunch of 16-18 year old kids with no such requirement following all the rules once they aren't enforced? Nice story.

I call BS. Source: Documented history of innate human nature and the 100% failures of all utopian ideas like the one you fabricated...

I would downvote you if I could. Your 6 day old account probably will be abandoned in a week anyway.

[nitrogen]

Such a warm welcome. If you're so convinced the parent comment was a fabrication for attention and approval, why not just say so without the derisive tone and personal attack?

Edit: though it may have been an accidental misclick, I would appreciate an explanation from the user who downvoted my comment if it was not an accident. I consider googles99's comment to be unnecessarily harsh to a new HN user, and want to know why discouraging such incivility is worthy of a downvote, if indeed it was not accidental.

[goggles99]

Grow a pair, it's the internet (not much of the fake PC here [which is really just honesty suppression] that you see in society today). I don't like people trying to plant false ideologies in sheeple's brains based on fiction. It actually works (just look at America over the last 20 years). So I deal with it rather harshly when I see it.

[nitrogen]

It's not the Internet, it's Hacker News, which has rules and guidelines to promote civility and maximize signal to noise. So what false ideology is being planted, and to what end?

[boomlinde]

tl; dr: "Grow a pair [...] honesty suppression [...] sheeple"

[lispsil]

Yep. There was a punching 'wall' I never used full of holes to let out frustration. The school itself had no rules except for the laws of Canada obviously so threats and bribing are illegal anywhere but I never saw anything like that, in my old school I saw threats against teachers. Selling drugs, again illegal in Canada so no however there were kids openly smoking weed in the field and nobody did anything about it. There were no tests to cheat on. Their motto was 'we never give up you' and it wasn't utopian at all, you had to work to graduate which was a gov test taken elsewhere where cheating was monitored. The motivation to graduate for some was to end parole restrictions about going out at night, others the motivation was to not become a failure

[goggles99]

You went to school for two years there to prepare for 1 govt provided test? It must have been rough to remember the history or social science questions of material you have studied two years prior huh?

No rules but the laws of Canada? Well that is very close to the same thing as most schools then right? The only difference was a few rules such as you could be late to class or truant and you could leave campus whenever you wanted to. Funny that one of the laws of Canada prohibits redboxing - one of the very same "rules" that you were kicked out of school to begin with...

So you are telling me that 3 rule changes, only having one test in all of school, people telling everyone that they should study or they will fail at life (something I probably have heard from every teacher I have ever had) and a motto of "we will never give up on you" changed things that much?

What was the name of this miraculous institution???

One could change just one rule in any school in the world and it would make the kind of improvement that you describe. Optional attendance. Of course 1/3 of the school won't show up, but that is the "bad kids" anyway.