<p>CGM, you have to realize HGFM is a tad bit naive about some things and doesn’t know any better. No offense HGFM, I don’t mean to do name calling, but that’s just been my observation over the past few days.</p>
<p>I think it’s common sense to walk on the right side, and kids should be taught that. Just like its common sense to walk on the right at the mall, drive on the right side of the road (in America), etc. Walking on the right side of the hall isn’t supposed to be like prison. It’s just common sense. Kids need to start to have common sense somewhere. I could ask my 8 year old cousin how you walk down the hall and she would say on the right hand side. I used to find it so annoying in high school when someone was walking on the wrong side of the hallway - and they all did it on purpose. It was like they were plowing right through, knocking people over and things out of their hands. It’s just flat out rude. It may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but teaching kids to be not rude is a great idea. Kids, regardless of age, need to have manners.</p>
<p>Children are allowed to be treated like children, however how many of them actually want to be? Every middle school kid that I know wants to be treated like the big adult almost high schooler instead of the child who was just in elementary school. They want to go to the movies with friends alone, they want to hang out at the mall without parents, etc. If they want to be like that, then they need to act mature enough to be like that.</p>
<p>I was taught to walk on the right from elementary school. It has nothing to do with making the place a prison, it is about respecting everyone’s right to get to where they are trying to go, not just the ones who are the biggest or the fastest or who can push the hardest.</p>
<p>I do find the idea of a turning zone absurd though.</p>
<p>Yes, I must be naive because you’re older than me, so you obviously know more than me.</p>
<p>Let me just say that I do walk on the right side of the hallway. I just think that ticketing people for walking on the wrong side of the hallway is ridiculous and won’t achieve anything except a more oppressive environment.</p>
<p>Like I said, if a high school with 4,500 students can keep order in the halls without it, why can’t a middle school?</p>
<p>No, you’re naive because you think your way and thought of how everything should be is the correct way as evidenced in a few other threads around here.</p>
<p>I think the ticketing idea is way over the top, but obviously the school had some sort of problem which led to them doing it. All schools are different. Some have problems with pushing in halls, others have problems with people bringing guns to school, others have problems with people smoking in the bathrooms, etc. Just because your school had no problems with order in the hallways doesn’t mean other schools don’t. What works in one school may fail horribly at another school. At my cousins high school they could only use clear colored backpacks as a result of all of the bomb threats and such around the country. To me, that was a bit over the top, but obviously something led them to doing it that way.</p>
<p>you’ve deduced this from my stance on one issue. That is not the way I think, and I do not appreciate you labeling me that way because again, I do not think that.</p>
<p>If it works for them, hey, that’s great. I just think it’s ridiculously over the top and there are better ways to handle it.</p>
<p>I guess we were smarter back when I was young. Our schools were jam packed because we were the height of the baby boom, yet we all learned how to walk through crowded hallways and get to our lockers without color-coded lines on the floor, monitors giving us tickets, turn around zones. </p>
<p>Some rules are for safety. At the next school my daughter attended, the 8-9 junior high, the stairs were up-only and down-only. This was inconvenient at times, but it was better than kids getting pushed over the side accidentally. That is different than being ordered to walk at a certain pace, leave a given distance between you and the person in front of you, walk in a straight line.</p>
<p>Drill sergeants have their place. I just don’t think that place is middle school.</p>
<p>We don’t even have that at any of our schools (our Elementary and Middle Schools don’t have any 2-story buildings, to my knowledge), but we all do just fine.</p>
<p>Like I said, I’d rather know how to move through a crowd (which I’ve gotten really good at) than just having to walk in a straight line all the time.</p>
<p>We had “up stairs” and “down stairs” in part of my high school. Sure it seemed like a pain at times, but I know one particular stairway if people tried going up it there wouldn’t be any kind of movement. That stairway was already packed nearly every class period. There were for staircases in that part of the building. A set of “up stairs” and a set of “down stairs” were pretty close to each other.</p>