Health teacher bans students from saying "bless you" after a sneeze
By Jeff MillsSeptember 30th, 2011, 4:45 pmComments (30)
Onion story? Nope. Health teacher Steve Cuckovich of William C. Wood High School in Vacaville, California actually put the kibosh on students offering up a "bless you" in response to a sneeze. Cuckovich thought that kids were being wiseacres and sneezing overdramatically with the intention of disrupting class, with the "bless yous" being part of the mischievous plot. (Or maybe they just had pepper steak for lunch?)
Cuckovich believes that all that polite well-wishing is disrespectful. He actually went so far as docking twenty-five points from one student's grade for having the gall to utter the phrase. He claims that his policy has nothing to do with religion, but rather thinks that the phrase is obsolete and anachronistic. Cuckovich said:
"When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body. So they were saying, 'God bless you' for getting rid of the evil spirits. But today, I said really what you're doing doesn't make any sense anymore."
There seems to be confusion about the origin of "God bless you" or just "Bless you" in response to a sneeze. I know I've been told that the heart supposedly stops when you sneeze, and the little benison is encouragement for pulmonary continuity. But there are other theories as well.
After some parents complained that Cuckovich's (you notice I've been resisting using the word "cuckoo" here) rule was anti-religious, he had to bend and discontinue his point-deduction penalties. But he says he'll find another way to discipline students for their troublemaking "bless yous." Just you try him.
The district weighed in on the issue Thursday, in the person of Superintendent John Niederkorn. According to Niederkorn:
"The teacher believed that students were dramatically sneezing and responding in repetitive fashion "Bless You." Of question is whether a series of these repeated remarks by several students constitutes freedom of speech or a classroom disruption and merits student discipline. We are reviewing the impact of this disruption and the student grading policy. Certainly a blessing by one individual to another after a sneeze is a welcomed acknowledgement of a social norm. Hopefully it is not abused as a disruption of classroom instructional activities."
Commentarium (30 Comments)
this guy's nuts, but to be fair, a class of kids would totally do something like this just to screw with the guy. We did it when I was in school, things like playing "The Sniff Game" or having a few of us work together to position dirty pictures aournd the classroom... the more it drives the teacher crazy, the funnier it is to the kids, and this dude's clearly gone off the deep end.
Absolutely. Kids are obnoxious, and I can absolutely imagine one of my old high school classes doing something like this to annoy teachers. People may think he's going overboard, but if they are mock-sneezing I can imagine how disruptive it would be to the teacher and other students. They should just give him some time off, seems like he needs it.
I don't think the teacher's nuts, just frustrated at being so expertly played by some of his students. What he needs is a sit-down with the principal and a school counselor to find a way to get the upper hand again. If the kids are doing this to one teacher, they're likely doing it to others.
I'd say he's crazy, but for the "University of Maryland Sneeze" email forward that's been circulating amongst the nation's conservative-religious aunts and uncles. Yes, they're just messing with him, but it's also a part of something more pernicious. If this wasn't instigated by some "USA is a Christian Nation" bullshit, it's by now been absorbed into some "Keep God in Schools" agenda. To the insecure, fear-driven, lower-middle class, white Christian masses, these kids will be heroes speaking up for their faith. I guess I can't blame the guy for feeling embattled.
If this teacher can't control his classroom without banning speech, then he shouldn't be a teacher. Ban his dumbass. The students should say, "salud" instead.
Now that's a bit silly.
This teacher is a compete out-of-control wingnut, you can't dock grades for this. However, I stopped saying "bless you" a while ago as I think it's idiotic: the other person is the one making noise and spewing germs around the room, and I'm the one who's supposed to say something?
How would you handle a situation where one student sneezes, 32 say "bless you" and the one who sneezed thanks each one individually by name?
I'm not a teacher so I shouldn't be expected to know how to solve this problem, but for starters, I'd tell the kids, "It is really nice that you want to show courtesy to your classmates. However, we still have x-amount of material to cover so if we spend 5 minutes on 'bless you' and 'thank you' courtesies, we will stay after class 5 minutes so as to make up the time necessary to cover the material." The kids are being kids, trying to manipulate the teacher, and the teacher has no control other than to ban speech. He should be smarter than they are. The teacher is a dumbass.
The fact is, this teacher lost these kids long before this point. It's a stupid mantle to take up in a classroom, but someone with better classroom management skills from day 1 could have pulled it off (or at least made students think about what they're saying).
He could, for a brief period, try and teach the kids a lesson by fighting fire with fire. Someone sneezes? Then as the teacher let off the blast of an air horn. Sure, the kids will play with deliberately engendering THAT response for awhile, but hearing 1 of those things in a resonably confined a space on a regular basis would very quickly wear on anyone's ears.
Hey, I have a serious allergic condition that makes me sick pretty much 3/4 of the year (or when anything in a nine-mile radius is alive and spewing pollen everywhere). Sneezing is very much an uncontrollable thing; punishing the sneeze, rather than the constant blessing, is redundant.
However, if everyone were to bless me every time I sneezed, we would never have time for anything else.
This is what can happen when teachers have limited disciplinary measures to call upon. The kids are taking a test, with a "no talking" rule; can you imagine the kind of smart-assed crap 30-40 teenagers can get up to under those circumstances? As if that weren't enough, you can't blow time during a testing period to have "talks" with the students about their behavior.
Sure, not every classroom is that bad. But as a teacher, I can tell you: "woooh-boy..."
The kids probably starting doing once they saw it was getting on his Hooksexups.
It is a disruption at this point, they need to be disciplined, but the teacher is going WAY overboard- he's letting a bunch of teenagers get a rise out of him.
Is it really that overboard? Really?
All they have to do is... not say it. There are worse things a teacher could do. And I love all of these responses from those of you who clearly have no clue what it is like to teach a classroom of adolescents. Yes, blow an airhorn in their faces. That is so much more professional and less insane.
But at the same time, does it really detract from class time that much if someone, being courteous and not pointedly being annoying, says "bless you" to a sneeze?
I'm with julian on this. If the kids are using it to tweak the teacher, that's something to deal with. If the kids are being courteous, that should be encouraged, not penalized.
Okay, that teacher OBVIOUSLY has classroom managment problems if he can't control students from doing fake sneezes and disrupting class, and the students obviously know it gets on his Hooksexups and (light blub!) that is why the students are doing it. If he was a SMART teacher he would just ignore it instead of banning "bless you" which could/can come back to bite him in the ass the students would stop the fake sneezing. But if the students are actually sneezing then they should be encouraged to have manners and say "bless you", "God bless you", etc..
That teacher is a dumb fuck. he obviously has NO manners. It is because of people like him that people are losing respect for themselves and each other. I would rather have students showing their manners and saying "bless you" after someone sneezes or coughs, then just sitting there because the sneeze itself will disrupt the classroom teaching anyway. That teacher seriously needs to get the shit slapped out of him...
Wait, you're calling for manners by name-calling and advocating physical violence?
I read somewhere that the origin of saying "bless you" dates to the days of the Black Death, when it was erroneously believed that a sneeze could be the first symptom of the dread disease.
If the kids want to piss him off they just have to use "gesundheit" instead.
"... the heart supposedly stops when you sneeze, and the little benison is encouragement for pulmonary continuity."
Pulmonary refers to the lungs. Perhaps 'cardiac continuity' was what the author was looking for?
I originally wrote "cardiac continuity." It was changed.
The kids are now all saying "Geshundheit!" and clicking their heels together.
I think the appropriate term to use after someone sneezes should now be, "our teacher is a d-bag."
Stlealr work there everyone. I'll keep on reading.
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Now you say something