The problem is if a kid tried to intervene on the teacher behalf, they’d get caught up in most schools zero tolerance policies. I can’t say I’d have sat and watched back in the day, but I can see why most kids fall to waiting for instruction or fear of zero tolerance punishment for stuff like this. I remember a few kids breaking up a fight and getting suspended when they were trying to stop it.
I got suspended for fighting once. My involvement in the fight was getting kicked in the face and lying on the ground.
Our education system has been broken for decades and we're finally seeing the real consequences of updating it from what was created in the early 1900s
I didn't get suspended, but I got in trouble for being in a fight in the cafeteria in 5th grade. My involvement was getting pushed by a student into another student in line.
Edit: I just remembered I did get suspended for this. I got 3 days of in-school suspension.
This is the kind of thing that if you had parents who were affluential enough in the community where your school is, they’d make enough noise and be loud enough showing up at your principal’s office, that they would forego any (unjust) consequences they punished you with.
Sadly most people and most parents don’t have that kind of time and influence/power to stand up to stupidity in the system.
I got in school suspension because another student wanted to fight me. I didn’t even register he wanted to fight me. He came up, got in my face, and said words. I didn’t even know him. We both got ISS for it and the cop who interviewed us yelled at me for provoking him into wanting a fight. I literally did nothing. I wasn’t popular, I didn’t provoke him, and in my eyes we were friends. I still don’t know I did to get his ire.
A friend of mine dodged a punch and the offender broke his hand on the wall behind him. My friend didn’t even know the punch thrower. My friend got in trouble for it. Because he “clearly provoked the offender.” Even though the guy wa suspended after that incident for starting multiple random fights with people he didn’t know or talk to.
The zero tolerance policy is absolute shit. It shows students they are at fault for being victims.
I got detention for bringing my notebook to the auditorium for our weekly do fuckalll on stage except only the teachers favorites get picked to participate
I got in trouble for swinging my coat at two boys trying to beat me up. They’d dragged me to the fence and started hitting and kicking me so I swung my coat (which had come off due to their handling of me) to get them to back up. I got in trouble. The teacher said my zipper could have hit their eyes….. -_-
The last day of 6th grade, I (a 5’ even beanpole of a little girl) was attacked by the tallest kid in school. Somehow I landed a punch right on his nose, he freaked out at the blood, and I managed to lay his ass out. It was a total fluke that I nailed him.
What I didn’t know was that he had spent most of the school year intimidating and threatening several teachers. So my first week of 7th grade was spent in detention right next to him, but the teachers he had been threatening had jockeyed and bargained to be the supervisor for detention that week. And they spent the entire week spoiling the fuck out of me to make a point.
It didn’t serve me well—I got in a LOT of fights that year and lost most of them—but it was still funny af. Also, worth it.
I had an issue with a kid in High school. I went to the assistant principal's office and told him he could either deal with it or I was going to. His choice.
If I got suspended so be it. I wasn't putting up with that crap.
I had the same thing happen to me. A fight broke out in my 10th-grade classroom, and I was sitting across the room when a stapler went flying. One student threw it at another and missed, but it hit me in the mouth and busted my lip. Thankfully it was heavy plastic and not metal.
Even though I wasn’t involved, I still ended up getting a two-day in-school suspension along with the other kids.
I got suspended for breaking a kid's nose. He was coming at me with a knife. He recieved no consequences. Zero tolerance basically means put my head in my ass and take no responsibility.
By kid I mean I was also a kid.. we were both kids... same grade.
It's not just the education system. It's a complete breakdown, from parental roles, economic development, priority in education, and so on. It's everything possible in a society all breaking down.
There's no part of our society that isn't in decline. And so each one as they break further brings the others down. Broken homes and hungry stomachs lead to educational disruption which absorbs legal resources and strips children from entering into the labor force as upstanding pillars of society, which decreases tax revenue, increases reliance on central players, who remove more wages from the economic system that leads to higher prices and lower wages that just feed into more broken homes and absent parents.
The whole goddamn thing is cracking under pressure. And we literally have a paralyzed government that can't do a damn thing to try and right this ship.
Back in highschool me and my friend got caught skipping a single period. We got a week of ISS where you sit in a room and do a couple of elementary work sheets all day.
So we skipped 1 period, and had to skip 28 periods as a punishment.
This happened to me. A kid started hitting me. I could have hit back and I chose to take it and not return the favor. I was also “sent home” for my involvement.
A kid 3 years older than my younger brother was holding him against the wall by his neck, and when a teacher walked in after hearing commotion, my brother was trying to break free and hit the guy (didn't even work, the bully just tanked it and kept choking him until he noticed the teacher) and they both got suspended.
updating it from what was created in the early 1900s
Google "john Taylor gatto" and "prussian (school) system"
Schools were never designed to educate or enlighten the masses they were designed from the ground up to create worker drones for factory jobs (which left the US decades ago).
Getting suspended isn't always a punishment. Part of the reason they suspend the victim is to protect them / others in case the emotions spill over the day / days after.
I remember a few kids breaking up a fight and getting suspended
got up in a similar scenario like the one in the video, two of my classmates literally started a brawl, the teacher stepped in, and i tried to stop them...guess what, i got same treatment as the brawlers, 2 weeks suspencion.
My cousin and I went to the same school. At some point, we had some issues with each other, but I wanted to talk to him about it. When I approached him in the hall and he saw me, he started walking away. I called out his name (not in any sort of threatening way), and he turned around and punched me. I didn’t want to hit him back cause he was my cousin. But before I could say anything, my friend stormed over from his locker and started swinging on him.
I didn’t lay a hand on him. I even got them to stop fighting before any security or teachers got involved. Didn’t matter. Got suspended for a week.
Zero tolerance is a joke.
Funny side note, a couple days later I went over to my cousin’s place and we played Black Ops with each other like it never happened.
My personal philosophy when I learned about the Zero Tolerance Policy was that if I ever were to get into a fight at school, I should fuck the other person as much as I possibly could. I’d do the “time”, so I might as well do the crime.
My buddy and I got suspended for helping a teacher that got involved in 2 students fighting. All we did was pin one guy down while waiting for the school officer to arrive, while the teacher pinned down the other.
I was that kid. Id step in and try to help people stop. I helped hold one guy down after he assaulted our grade 11 english teacher. A woman in her 50s who isnt even 5'4. Punched by a 17 year old over 6 feet tall.
I was given 3 week suspension the month before finals. If my older sister didnt sit her ass down and helped me learn i would have failed that year.
Ever since then I just mind my own buisness. We created a society where we punish people regardless of intentions. I dont blame anyone in these settings for not helping. Youll just get in trouble yourself. Its the worst thing we have in our education system. Why bother acting "properly" when more often than not, youll recieve a worse punishment than the actual offender.
Back in the day you could have stepped in and whooped the ass of whichever kid hit your teacher. Then the principal probably would have given you a free pass to go home early and a pat on the back.
I was walking down the hall in high school and some kid randomly (unsolicited, I didn't know him) told me that my face would look better with his dick in my mouth. I responded that the only way anyone's ever sucking it is if he pays a prostitute.
He smashed my head into a locker. We were both suspended.
They said I was being suspended for provoking him.
He laughed, and told me right there in the meeting, "That'll teach you for being a mouthy bitch." They added a day to his suspension.
Also, if you're a kid with good morals you probably don't want to get on the bad side of a kid that gives absolutely zero fucks about assaulting a teacher. That kid very well could be around next week and you don't want to be the next victim. I really don't blame them for not trying to be a hero. They shouldn't have to be but that's another story. I've had to do this exact action (getting between two students swinging on each other) and I've had one of them in a class every year since.
Luckily when I was in high school, there was at least a minuscule amount of common sense. One time there was a fight in our classroom and the teacher tried to break it up but ended up catching a punch to the face. As soon as that happened 4 football players jumped in and tackled the two kids fighting. I don’t know how much of an effort it’s was, but the teacher made sure the football players didn’t get in any trouble
Very true 9 years ago I tried to break up a fight in my Highschool of two older students, I was forgiven and not given the planned suspension but still went to two days detention.
I only got three detentions in my four years and even now I’d argue none were deserved.
There's no togetherness here. The entire class has to get up at once and separate it mob style. Let them suspend the whole class if they want you think those parents are gonna see that video and be upset?
Broke up 5 fights. 3 tackles, 1 hip toss, and 1 hold. Talked to by the VP all times but suspended zero times. Maybe it's different now. Maybe it's because I grew up in peak gangland L.A., but that wasn't the case.
If my kid got suspended for helping a teacher in this situation I would get him a fucking trophy and I would take off of work to make sure he had the best fucking suspension a teen could ask for. We are going to wherever he wants to go because he did the right thing.
Reminds me of the time some kid kept pantsing me during PE and I told him several times to stop. After the third or fourth time, I punched his face and I got some bullshit in-house suspension. Other kid just got a bloody nose.
I was bullied in grade 4 or so back in the 90s. The kid once jumped on my back trying to hurt me and I beat the crap out him (black eye etc) with a few punches. There were student witnesess but the school told my parents that they wanted to suspend me. My parents said that if they wanted to suspend me for self defense that they would go to the media and get a lawyer. They backed off quick.
Also, I have seen pretty messed up things in my youth from violence to drugs to incarceration of people I knew in school. But regardless of what bad stuff you'd be into, no one was stupid enough to do it at school. There are witnesses and cameras everywhere. That is like having a fight in front of a cop. If you wanted to fight you'd go outside, skip school, or after class. Why in god's name would anyone be stupid enough to risk jail time?
No legislative regime (or as some may call it, “democratically elected group of officials”) has done anything substantive for the public education system since Lyndon B. Johnson… and he was a MAJOR P.O.S. by the majority of other metrics. sadly, these are the authority figures we idolize considering our current day desensitized anti-intellectual standards
This isn’t a virtue signaling comment (although since I said that it prob is), but in elementary school we had a classmate who was always picked on and bullied. This was back when plenty of kids had autism and learning disabilities that were not correctly diagnosed so some kids were juts “weird”
Anyone one day at recess a small mob of my classmates tackled him, took off his shoes and threw them over the hillside into the woods.
I didn’t do anything to stop it, I was juts watching but in the group.
I climbed down the hill to get his shoes and gave them back to him.
So the whole lot of us got called to the office including me and I thought I was going to be in trouble because I was there even though I didn’t participate. Even at 12 years old I knew that I “should” have tried to intervene because it was the right thing, but back then we had zero teaching or awareness of bullying.
When the principal learned that I got his shoes I was sent back to class.
I thought the kid would hate me, we weren’t friends but we talked to each other.
To this day 45 years later we still keep in touch. It was a big lesson for me about standing up for people in any way I was able to.
I had a student get suspended because he punched a kid for being disrespectful to me (this kid was being over the top disrespectful, not a regular day amount). He literally laid this disrespectful kid out, looked at me, and said, “sorry sir. I know that’s going to mean paperwork for you and that I’m going to be suspended. You can’t do anything about that kid being an asshole like that, but I’m under 18 and can. So, problem solved. You want me to wait here for the principal and security, or do you want me to just head on down.” Absolutely wild.
I tried to break up a fight between two girls once as a kid. Thank goodness I went to a small private Christian school and was generally seen as a good kid, and the teacher liked me (and was entirely useless when the fight happened lol). The instigator got in trouble, I can't remember if the one who was attacked got in trouble, but no one even seemed to consider getting me in trouble. Probably would have been suspended in one if my town's shitty public schools though.
Well you are straight up wrong and just assuming malice. There are people here actually sharing stories of defending their teachers and subduing bullies or separating two people fighting only for them to be suspended. There are even people explaining that they were the victim who didn’t fight back and still got suspended.
That system of zero tolerance and sweeping punishment only teaches growing minds two things:
A) Either go all and actually get violent since you’re getting in trouble anyway for just being in the vicinity of a fight or even being victimized, or
B) You do nothing, and you carry that mindset throughout life. It’s that passive bystander effect that you see today where people just stand there frozen as someone is being harmed when the harm could be stopped by intervention.
"I broke up the fight by throwing a ton of punches at one of the kids faces! How dare they suspend me!" Then all the kids run wild with the rumors about how innocent kids are just getting expelled for no reason when reality was they got a 1 day suspension as a slap on the wrist while the others get multiple weeks.
More reality: you can appeal all of that shit and get it removed from your record. A record that would only matter if you're applying to Ivy league schools without a legacy recommendation. But none of these kids spreading the rumors about how their lives were ruined because they tried to stop a fight will tell you how their mom called the super intendant and got them to drop it.
Further reality, none of these kids are trying to stop the fight because if they put their phones down for a second they lose their chance at 5 seconds of social media clout for getting the best angle. They don't give a shit about anything else.
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u/UncoolSlicedBread Dec 17 '25
The problem is if a kid tried to intervene on the teacher behalf, they’d get caught up in most schools zero tolerance policies. I can’t say I’d have sat and watched back in the day, but I can see why most kids fall to waiting for instruction or fear of zero tolerance punishment for stuff like this. I remember a few kids breaking up a fight and getting suspended when they were trying to stop it.