Japan school restrictions on hydration, cooling items affect 1 in 4 young students: survey – The Mainichi

I was talking to a coworker who said in elementary school during PE they couldn’t drink water. Just hearing all of this is infuriating. Keeping hydrated and cool should be the number one goal in this swamp.

Why the fuck are these things rules?! I would just tell my kid to fucking ignore the teacher and if they give them shit I’ll tell them to kick rocks.

I think that we’ve been pretty lucky so far. The yochiens and now elementary school that our boys go to have all been quite sane and sensible. Not noticeable lunacy so far.

Year round, all of the children are expected to come with a flask with tea, water, whatever, in it.

And on those days where we’ve been able to observe our sprogs, they all take a drink break in PE class, and can do so in classroom lessons.

Asking my son now, he reckons that the aircon’s usually on. Although I can’t say for sure about that.

I think that what the main problem at some of these schools with nutty rules is, is that the staff running them might be powermad.

Of course, this may also be due in part to historical incidents, where an incident happened, causing a rule to be made, but the rule persists long since everyone who originally knew what it was for has long since died, and those who remain are incapable of exercising the initiative to change the rule because too many people would need to be consulted and reach a consensus.

My school’s gym won’t turn on their AC until July 1st. We had to wait until May 1st for AC in the classrooms, when it was already hitting 29C inside the classrooms in late April.

Why? Because the calendar says it isn’t “summer” yet.

I was an assistant English teacher back in the day. My first week of classes was hot as hell. No A/C in our run down little rural school. I had class on the first floor and was dripping sweat. Between classes, I got a drink from the water fountain and grabbed a waterbottle from the vending machine. The next class was up three flights of stairs. I was a little faint by the time I got to the top of the stairs. I started teaching the class and was feeling increasingly faint, so I paused to take a drink of water. My students all giggled and murmured and the Japanese teacher leading the class with me shook her head and said, “It is rude to drink in class!”

I remember wanting to say, “Is it rude to faint in class?” but I didn’t. I soldiered on until my hearing got muffled and I started seeing black around the edges of my vision. I excused myself and went into the hall and sat on the floor with my head back and drained the rest of my waterbottle. No one checked on me. Thankfully I didn’t faint, but that always stuck with me. From then on, I would drink as much water as I could stomach in between classes and took breaks between flights of stairs when it was that hot. 

Then winter came and I would be so cold I had to wear my coat and gloves in class until the propane heaters got hot enough, but that’s another story.