Latest Student Torture: The No Pissing Contest

By Linda Dobson

Hey, kid, rethink that drink!

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a Coney Island 5th grade teacher has had her fill of nature calling. With the principal’s blessing, Ms. Warner instituted a “No Pissing Contest” among the children placed in her care by their parents. In exchange for possible bladder infections and constipation, the 5th graders can win…are you ready…stickers and pencils!

The rules are cut and dry (quite possibly drier than the kids). Each student receives three bathroom passes per week. The passes may be cashed in on the following schedule:

8:00 – 8:15 am

10:20 – 10:30 am

1:40 – 1:50 pm

Of course, the children are encouraged to use the facilities during their lunch break.

No Pissing Contest Rules

But wait – there are more rules!

“Only one person at a time, they must have the pass, they have three minutes, they must sign in and out properly, and they must ask me,” Warner wrote in an email to the principal. “If the procedures are not followed properly, they will receive a note home. I can’t think of anything else that would solve this problem. I am exasperated with the constant bathroom needs.”

Any child who has all three passes left at the end of the week gets a prize! (I guess Ms. Warner hasn’t read Alfie Kohn’s Punished By Rewards.)

See also “12 Health Benefits of Homeschooling“

A television report on the no pissing contest sheds some light on responses from the community.

A student explains, “Lots of kids are holding because they want to get a prize.”

A parent explains, “It’s not fair to the children. Mine has a bladder problem so three times a week is not cutting it.”

A teacher at the school explains, “They want to discourage the children from missing instruction for whatever reason, but if you have to go, you have to go. I have to go to the bathroom,” said Vicky Giasemis, who is also a union representative. (Giasemis also teaches fifth grade at P.S. 90. She said last year she had three students urinate on themselves.)

The Department of Education explains, “Individual teachers in classrooms decide who goes to the bathroom and when.”

Have Standardized Tests Inspired the No Pissing Contest?

5th grade has historically been an important “high stakes test” year in New York. Might this be one of the long list of “possible side effects” of the standardized test craze, you know, like the drug side effects that are so numerous and sometimes so much worse than the problem for which the drug is prescribed in the first place that the announcer has to rattle them off so quickly you miss most of them?

What do you think of this new way to further complicate school attendance for children and train them to seek (junk) rewards?

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