"Bless you." "That will cost you 25 points" "Oops"

A Northern California teacher is at the center of controversy after imposing penalties on his students for saying “bless you” in response to sneezing in his classroom.

Teacher Steve Cuckovich at Will C. Wood high school in Vacaville said the common courtesy is disrespectful and disruptive to classroom activity — but insists the ban has nothing to do with religion.


“When you sneeze, 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,” said Cuckovich. “But today, I said, ‘Really what you’re doing doesn’t make any sense anymore’.”
Cuckovich started off the new school year by docking a student 25 points for saying the phrase in response to a sneeze.

I should say that I had a teacher in High School who was like this. I never thought of it as being ant religion, she was just very strict and didn't like anyone speaking in class. She wasn't a fan of expression. Mind you, she was a language arts teacher. And yes, I drove her up a wall. But she didn't deduct points. Just yell at you.

Beyond that, I think this is silly.

ETA: Forgot the link. I blame my sister in law.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011...enforces-bless-you-ban-for-classroom-sneezes/

It could be the students, but like I said, my teacher from HS did it on day one. It was a pet peeve of hers. This was way before I annoyed the crap out of her. I didn't get to that for at least 10 or fifteen minutes. The no "Bless You" thing was one of the 1st things out of her mouth.

I buy that it's not about religion. But it still seems extreme to me. Saying Bless you is a cultural norm. If you train a group of students to fear saying it, then won't people look at them funny when they don't say it elsewhere?

My teacher used to say, "They sneeze, you say 'bless you,' then they say 'thank you' then you say 'you're welcome.' That's a whole conversation that didn't need to take place."

So if someone should trip and fall, can we ask "Are you ok?"

Just sounds like a power trip to me.

Teinz said:

"A parent saw the deduction and made a phone call..."

This is where things went spiralling out of control.

Parents rely on teachers not only to educate their kids, but also to provide them with the necessary upbringing which parents themselves are increasingly incapable of giving.

Yet, when something goes wrong, and their kids are punished, they are quick to choose the wrong side and support their kids instead of the person they rely on for a decent upbringing.

Me and my colleagues experience this every now and then. Usually it is the parents that lack most parenting skills, that are the worst complainers.

Sad thing is; everyone loses. Teachers lose standing amongst their students. Parents lose whatever authority they had left over their children. And the children lose, because they fail to learn one of life's important lessons.

Click to expand...

As a rule, I couldn't agree with you more. My wife's a teacher and she's had to deal with this too. One kid did a report where they copied nearly everything in the report from their sources, word for word. There was no question, but the parent didn't want to accept that it was wrong. My wife gave the student a chance to redo the report. The mother said, "But what's wrong with the original report? All the information is in there."

As parents ourselves, we back the teacher if one of our girls gets a bad grade, something that doesn't happen often.

However, we will go speak to a teacher if they aren't being fair. It's has happened. Like once, there was a thing where kids got to be picked for certain jobs. My daughter wasn't allowed to try and get a class job because of a homework assignment the teacher said she didn't hand in. Only she had handed it in. When my daughter told us, (We had checked it the night before so we knew it had been done) my wife spoke to the teacher who went through her folder and found she(the teacher) had put it in the wrong place. However, the jobs had all been filled and she didn't feel that she should have to do anything. I forget, but there was a real reason for her wanting to have one of these jobs.

This was in 2nd or 3rd grade. We had other issues with that same teacher, all along the same thing. We had never had an issue with our daughter before, or since. We feel it was the teacher, who because we made a fuss, decided not to like our daughter.

Another example was how the class was divided into different groups for reading and math. Although they didn't say it, one was for the students better in those subjects, the other in the one where they needed more help. There was a different teacher who was in charge of the kids who needed more help. My daughter, for the first time ever, was placed there. We didn't say anything at first, as the teacher in charge of the second group had told all parents that if they got stronger, she would send them to the other class. By the end of the 1st week, my daughter was sent to the other class in both. Then sent back down again. That happened for several weeks, until we got involved. My kids were both reading books all the time. They are both in advanced classes for math and reading and science. Not only did no other teacher ever think they had an issue, but we received tons of positive feedback that they were always ahead. But this one teacher for one of my girls always thought they needed to be with the "other" teacher.

It was so clear, it was crazy.

So if I heard that my kid had 25 points taken from them for saying God Bless You, yeah, I'd be making a phone call.