Should teachers have the right to deny a student's need to use the bathroom?

Yes

1 of 2

by Christina Bernice

Write now Print Invite a writer™ Add to Favorites RSS Feed Contact this writer

To my knowledge and in my personal experience, teachers reserve the right for whatever happens in the classroom, including allowing students to use bathrooms. Graduating from New York City public schools, I know how difficult this situation is and the school system I've come out of has opened my eyes and heart to this situation rather than closing and hardening my heart. It is not without a heart that I say teachers can and should decide whether a student is allowed to go to a bathroom or not; rather, it is from the fact that public schools are set up the way they have been and it is not feasible for a teacher, who also wears the hat of care provider to students, to let a child go to a bathroom whenever they decide they need to.

The first reason a teacher actually must do this is because parents feel comfortable leaving their children in their care. However, anything can happen traveling in between the classroom and the bathroom. Lower grades usually have teacher's aides and paraprofessionals whose presence surely assists with the bathroom trips. Teachers, usually, cannot accompany each and every student to the bathroom when they need to go. In younger grades, it is often a class trip, where the class goes as a group to the bathrooms and a few go in at a time while everybody else waits outside. This allows a teacher to keep watch of the entire class during the whole bathroom break. The teacher can monitor who is in at what time and how often everybody has a chance to go. This benefits the children's safety as well as it monitors abnormal behavior. Abnormal behavior includes children who use the bathroom as an excuse to play in the hallway, miss part of a test or just because they are fearful of their personal bladder control. All of these need be put in perspective early on, so a teacher keeping a child from bathroom, when they have a record that the student went twice in the half hour already, is a wise teacher not a cruel teacher. She is being caregiver.

Social responsibility, etiquette, work ethic and time-management come into play in higher grades. Teachers have the responsibility of creating and maintaining a positive, productive learning environment. As children get older and the fear of bladder control is out the window, it is much more common for teachers to deny bathroom breaks; they assume the child doesn't need to go and just wants to get out of class. This assumption is where it becomes cruel and abusive. A teacher should not try to control, let's say a ten-year-old student, in their request to go to the bathroom. A teacher's demanding job and out-of-hand class may make him/her want to control it but children are still children and not the teacher's children but the teacher's students. In order to prevent bathroom breaks from interrupting his/her teaching, a teacher may designate a signal (such as sticking up your thumb, as my fourth grade teacher did) so that a student may use it to show the teacher they need to use the bathroom. This signal, when observed, allows the teacher to grant permission without having to hear constantly through the day, May I use the bathroom? This fosters an education-oriented class and instills social responsibility and etiquette. This helps when pre-teenage and adolescent girls reach a certain point in their puberty stage and need to know they'll be able to use the bathroom whenever necessary at certain times each month. Many higher grades usually have bathroom passes in a designated spot that students can take one without interrupting the class. This usually allows just one person or one person per gender to be out at once with passes.

What about when you're rejected?

For a student who needed to go to the bathroom and wasn't trouble-making to be denied the right to go to the bathroom, it will literally feel abusive. Why would a teacher tell you no? Have you done something to upset them? Do they not like you? When you know you've done nothing wrong, you feel wronged. You wonder who gave her/him the right. Who are they to say I cannot use a bathroom? It's a human right. Why don't the teachers ever use the bathroom? It's like they don't ever have to go. Even if they can hold it, I shouldn't have to. The parents should follow-up in these instances because these teachers cannot handle their classroom properly.

However, in the situations when the teacher is using wise discretion and perception, it is an invaluable tool and instrument in the classroom. All the student is left to do is their work, which is what was expected of them originally.

Older teens, naturally, don't feel as much of a need to use school bathrooms for the few hours they are there. Their bladders are about adult size and, like their teachers, they have the 'special power' of being able to never have to go. When in high school, the school (not the teachers) may try to use this to their benefit and regulate bathroom usage. I have experienced bathrooms being closed the first few and last few minutes of every class. This can mean that a student would have to wait fifteen minutes to a half hour to go.

Usually at the high school age, if somebody doesn't want to be in school, they won't come. Still, many students come to school with no intention of doing any work whatsoever. Bathrooms tend to be rowdy in such cases with crowding, fights, drug usage and sexual activities. To prevent such undesirable occurrences, schools often try to have bathrooms locked at certain times, or even all of the time. I've even experienced schools setting certain periods, such as third through seventh, where you could go only in that set time. The bathrooms are open for the greater portion of the day. In these situations when it is not, teachers may still allow a student to go. The student goes to the office, requests the bathroom pass that has the key attached and goes. The teachers become the middlemen, the advocates. We should protect that.

Learn more about this author, Christina Bernice.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.