[pewpew_]

> meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of time.

In grade school, every time someone asks permission to use the bathroom they stop the flow of the lesson and valuable time is lost. In college the idea is that most of the students are responsible enough to handle the bathroom and food.

[ineedasername]

That's not a strong argument for strict bathroom rules. That's an argument for guidelines that don't require explicit permission: let kids go any time they want, and they silently signal it by holding up 2 fingers as they get up & go.

And how much valuable time is lost here, weighed against the extreme distraction a student has if they can't go? Besides, once the student has raised their hand and been called on, the flow is already disrupted. Answering "yes" or "no" is irrelevant at that point.

Do you have a proposal that both meets biological needs and doesn't run the minor risk of disruption? Disruptions occur constantly anyway every time a student asks a questions when they don't understand, even when most others do.

I simply fail to see how "stop the flow of the lesson" is either very relevant to unpreventable biological needs, or an unsolvable problem in its own right.

[fuzxi]

I'm not sure if you're agreeing that students shouldn't have to ask permission. It does interrupt the lesson, after all, and does very little besides reinforcing in children an obedience to authority, even above their own basic biological needs.

[throwaway201103]

When I was in elementary school, we were told to try to use the bathroom after lunch, or during recess. This was teaching how to plan for what you needed to do and use the opportunities you had to get it done. You had four or five times a day when you could go to the bathroom without needing to be excused from class.

It was actually harder in high school because other than lunch, you had minimal passing time between classes (just a few minutes) so if you stopped to go to the bathroom there was a good chance you'd be late to your next class. And of course no recess. Lunch and P.E. were the two chances you had per day to use the bathroom without having to ask.

[ineedasername]

I'm all for teaching personal responsibility & planning at a very young age, but I draw the line at expecting control over autonomic functions.

It's fine to ask kids to go when there's specific opportunities, but that doesn't justify restrictive policies during other times: Tiny bladders of small children don't work that way. Especially in grade school, it doesn't need to take more than 15-20 minutes to go from "I'm fine" to "I a really need to go". Especially when bathroom privileges are rationed out & tightly controlled and you become hyper aware of your bladder state. I have my two young kids "do a try" in the bathroom before we leave the house for any car ride. That doesn't stop the occasional "I have to go!" 20 minutes into the trip. And sure enough, at the rest stop it's like my kid turned from a 6 year old into an elephant from the amount that comes out of their body.

When & how quickly you develop the need to urinate depends on a lot of factors: Your specific metabolism, recent activity, what you drank and ate, body position, and probably more. And at some point mentally, you simply pass a threshold where one minute you feel no need to go to the bathroom, and the next minute you do. If that "next minute" occurs 10 minutes after lunch break, so what? What is gained by denying that need?