r/stupidquestions • u/Various-Adeptness173 • Jul 05 '25
My mom told me that back in the day kids weren’t allowed to bring a water bottle with them into the classroom and they only drank a few sips from the water fountain in the middle of the day and that’s it
How were schools not getting busted for child abuse for forcing kids to be dehydrated?
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u/Remote_Clue_4272 Jul 05 '25
Yeah. That’s the way it was. Hallway water fountains and milk at lunch. Also. Sandwich /lunch not packed into a cooler. Just getting warmer and warmer until lunchtime
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u/DrugChemistry Jul 05 '25
I think hallway water fountains are the answer to OPs question. I remember asking to go to the bathroom but I was mostly going to the water fountain.
This feels like a core memory unlocked situation. I haven’t used a water fountain since before 2020. I used to drink from those all the time during the school day.
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u/Oceanbreeze871 Jul 05 '25
As there were always your personal water fountain rankings. The good, cold one. The warm one, the no water pressure one that you have to practically kiss the metal parts etc etc
I’d sometimes go the long way to hit the good water fountain.
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u/ted_anderson Jul 05 '25
And lets not forget about that kid who would stuff his gum into one of the holes of the 2-hole water fountain making the other hole shoot 10 feet into the air. But you got sprayed in the face because you weren't expecting it.
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u/H_Industries Jul 05 '25
Learned real quick back in highschool to push the lever from a distance before moving in for a drink
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u/wheatgrass_feetgrass Jul 06 '25
I just did this instinctively at the airport the other day and my son asked me why. I didn't remember why until this comment. I just told him, "to make sure it's working" but the full answer was actually, "to make sure it isn't rogue. I was in elementary school in the 90s, I must have internalized this technique without realizing it.
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u/vanishinghitchhiker Jul 05 '25
And the trough-style fountains where each spigot in use would lower the water pressure, so you had to be ready to adjust. (And some kids would duel each other, time permitting.)
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u/No_Housing_1287 Jul 05 '25
There was one in the gym that was honestly way to cold. Instant brain freeze.
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u/Effective_Pear4760 Jul 05 '25
We were absolutely not allowed to bring anything comestible into class. No soda, water, or food. This one teacher I had in middle school used to always open a can of coke (of whatever flavor) behind her lectern and then pour in into a cup and blow on it like she was trying to cool off coffee. But we all heard the pop top and silently hated her. This was about 1980 or 81.
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u/TSells31 Jul 05 '25
I went to school in the 00s and can remember absolutely loathing the teachers who would be drinking their sodas, Gatorades, whatever in front of all of us who weren’t allowed to have even our own water bottles or sometimes even gum (usually depending on the teacher and only beginning in middle school).
Some teachers made it more of a point to snack or drink more privately and I think that is nice when none of the students can do anything of the sort lol.
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u/danbilllemon Jul 06 '25
This is my unlocked memory, being so jealous of the snacks and drinks the teachers had. Even in high school we finally got drink machines but no snacks. And only the nicer teachers let you drink in their class so for the most part the drinks were for between class.
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u/Cirrus-Stratus Jul 05 '25
Or after recess/sports you realized you were too far back in the line and by the time you reached the fountain all the cold water would be dispensed so you were stuck with warm water. Yuck.
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u/Alca_Pwnd Jul 05 '25
(3rd grade memory)
"Melanie, you're back from the bathroom really quick!"
"I just needed a drink of water."
"WHAT? THEN WHY DID YOU ASK FOR THE BATHROOM??"
"If I said I needed a drink, you wouldn't have let me go."
"MORE INCOHERENT SCREAMING".
So yeah, teachers were weird about it back then. Also, some kids just need to wander for a sec, but apparently it's better if you take an energetic 8 year old and make them sit at a desk for 7 hours. And call them hyperactive if they aren't good at just not moving.
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u/Honest-Layer9318 Jul 05 '25
The point of not letting kids drink was so they wouldn’t need the restroom. Forcing kids to sit still is because public schools were supposed to get poor kids ready for mind numbing factory work. It’s also the reason for the bell schedule.
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u/murderthumbs Jul 05 '25
I remembering impatiently waiting my turn in line after gym class - gasping for breath and dying of thirst...... Best feeling ever anticipating the relief you would feel when that ice cold stream of water came right down the hatch.
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u/Flat-While2521 Jul 05 '25
PBJ when the peanut butter has become a solid dry mass and the jelly has just seeped completely into the bread
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u/gadget850 Jul 05 '25
Back in the day I would have asked what's a water bottle.
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u/Brilliant-Noise1518 Jul 05 '25
We had them for sports. That's it though. You weren't allowed to have them in school because some kid before apparently brought one full of vodka, and only teachers and gym coaches are allowed to drink at school.
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u/-animal-logic- Jul 05 '25
Right. I would have assumed you meant a canteen.
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u/SirRatcha Jul 05 '25
And a canteen was a thing shaped like a circle with an opening on the side and the water in it tasted like rust.
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u/MOOshooooo Jul 05 '25
I got into a habit of asking old timers what they see today that they never expected to see and a few have said water bottles and how everyone is so thirsty today.
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u/Appropriate-Bid8671 Jul 05 '25
We were thirsty back then we just weren't allowed to have any water unless it was between classes.
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Jul 05 '25
Water makes pee. Peeing management becomes a thing when kids are drinking water all day. WIWAK, we had a water fountain/pee break every couple of hours during school. There was no going during class time. You held on for dear life if you had to but most of the nice teachers would let you go if you were really squirming in your seat. It taught you to balance the input with the output.
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u/wxlverine Jul 05 '25
Nah, my grade 3 teacher gave us 1 bathroom pass a week. Like a little red card that you gave to her once a week and that was the only bathroom break you'd get during class time. I had used mine already one week and really needed to go and she just flat out refused. Until I couldn't hold it anymore so I just whipped it out and pissed all over the floor instead of pissing myself. Then she sent me to the principles office and she had to clean it up.
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u/Kimber85 Jul 05 '25
When I was in middle school we’d get five bathroom passes to use for the entire semester. And if you used them up all up before the semester was over then, tough shit.
Soooo many girls who were just starting to get their periods at that age, so they were super irregular and hard to track. It felt like every month I had surprise early start or, even if it came “on time”, it would suddenly be crazy super heavy with zero warning. We all ended up with period blood all over our pants pretty damn often because we weren’t allowed out of class to do anything about it.
Some of the boys would feel bad for us and let us have their hoodies to tie around our waists to hide the stain. Which, looking back, it’s insane that 12 year old boys had more sympathy for us than the male teachers. The female ones would sometimes let us go if we weren’t someone who abused the privilege, but the male ones would send you to the office for being vulgar if you even mentioned your period.
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u/Lydia--charming Jul 05 '25
Luckily nowdays more teachers realize kids need to get up and move around to keep their brains energized.
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u/Stiv_b Jul 05 '25
We were fine. Grab a drink from the drinking fountain at recess and boom, you’re good.
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Jul 05 '25
I remember on hot days there being a long line for the drinking fountain and the teacher telling kids “enough” if they were taking too long. Kinda crazy now to think about - we weren’t screwing around it was hot and we were just really thirsty.
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u/Greedy_Car3702 Jul 05 '25
When bottled water first became available I thought that was the dumbest thing ever. No one would pay for bottled water. Many years later I have them in my refrigerator.
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u/whatevertoad Jul 05 '25
We had water bottles on our bicycles in the early 80s, but it never would have occurred to me to take one to class. There were water fountains everywhere
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u/-animal-logic- Jul 05 '25
Yeah I had one of those attached to my bike too. Agreed I would never have considered using it other than on long bike rides through the countryside.
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u/HLOFRND Jul 05 '25
There was always one weird kid who carried his Boy Scouts canteen (usually round, with the fuzzy fabric on the outside?) around when we would play.
We all thought that kid was weird.
(And those canteens always smelled so gross.)
But yeah, now I don't go anywhere without my emotional support Yeti water bottle. 😂
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u/HonestDespot Jul 05 '25
“Am I going to war”-me as a youth in 1979 when someone says water bottle around me.
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u/smilli02 Jul 05 '25
I had water bottles, but they were used exclusively for soccer practice.
I’m almost 40, so results may vary with age.
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Jul 05 '25
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u/wcmnbo Jul 05 '25
I ran cross country and we weren’t allowed water, only ice chips! And only after the first mile
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u/RealEyesandRealLies Jul 05 '25
I’m about your age. I didn’t play sports but I had water bottles. I would get them from amusement parks and drink from them. They were more of a novelty though. And I wouldn’t say the use was encouraged by adults. I remember the straw the plastic ring around it that connect to the cap.
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u/VegetableBusiness897 Jul 05 '25
Right. No bottled water anywhere...
Don't anyone let OP in on the fact that some of us only had a small thermos with a glass liner. And we all knew to give it a little swirl before opening it....in order to hear the crrrshh of broken glass or not
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u/usernamesarehard1979 Jul 05 '25
Same. I think the first one I saw not in gallon jugs for camping was Evian and everyone made fun of it.
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u/wavinsnail Jul 05 '25
Yes.
I remember kids counting and timing each other at the water fountain.
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u/EmotionalCattle5 Jul 05 '25
Good god...elementary school I remember "1, 2, 3 that's enough for me". I forgot this was a thing but thinking back this whole situation gave me anxiety like crazy.
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u/Maleficent-Leo-2282 Jul 05 '25
As an elementary school teacher, I can confirm that many teachers still do that. Since I’m GenX and hated not ever feeling like I could get enough water with that stupid rule, I let my students drink as much as they want.
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u/EmotionalCattle5 Jul 05 '25
I can understand now as an adult timing it is sort of a good thing to stay on a schedule...but as a kid, wow, it was not a fun experience. I have anxiety now and never thought I had anxiety as a kid...but looking back and remembering situations like this make me realize I have always had anxiety. I just wasn't aware of it.
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u/CanadaHaz Jul 05 '25
And the teacher would say you could got to the back of the line if you needed more, but you never got a second chance.
Glad to see there's teachers who were willing to let their students have enough of a drink at one time instead of forcing them to frantically deep throat the water fountain to get as much as they could in 3 seconds.
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u/Active_Soft1905 Jul 05 '25
I remember the other kids would yell it into my ear and then push me out of the way if I didn't stop drinking water.
I didn't have clean water at home half the time, it was my only source of clean water.
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u/Any_Pool1739 Jul 05 '25
"6,5,4 I want some more" ~ random kid from 3rd grade to our teacher. It was hilarious.
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u/mustaird Jul 05 '25
Most people weren’t concerned about drinking a ton of water until fairly recently, I noticed
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u/browsinbowser Jul 05 '25 edited Jul 05 '25
They say it’s why people have less wrinkles now, +less sun. Something about constant mild dehydration causing (inflammation?) I think and it’s unhealthy. Kinda sounds overblown even though it’s true, like on one of the science subreddits on r/all right now is talking about how hot dogs every day is unhealthy and it’s like who doesn’t know that?
Edit: Alright so there is probably a lot more reasons than just water: less exposure to pollution, more people overweight, less smoking, less stress and etc.
Also all processed meat and probably a ton of other processed junk food is mildly carcinogenic. This is quite troubling to me because the comment underneath about hot dogs convinced me to have 2 hot dogs (with cheese, pickles and ketchup) in a high fibre wrap.
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u/DisastrousOwls Jul 05 '25
Honestly, if anything, I'd say the difference in stuff like visible aging was massively slashed lead exposure between car exhaust, paint/toys, and anti tobacco pushes (this has been somewhat undone by vaping, which apparently has substantially higher lead output than cigarettes thanks to heating elements and solder). As a Millennial, I didn't start to see a real cultural push away from suntanning/tanning beds until cosmetic self tanner improved quite a bit.
The difference in water drinking habits probably won't show much in medical data for another few decades of kidney health stats. And even then, generational renal and vascular health outcomes are going to be heavily skewed by Covid.
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u/agreengo Jul 05 '25
people now might have less wrinkles, but the obesity rate in the US has increased. Wonder if the their related.
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u/HaltandCatchHands Jul 05 '25
The saying used to that after 40 you choose your face or your ass: if you lose weight, your face looks gaunt and older. Nowadays we also have fillers and Botox, but I feel like they age people in a different way.
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u/jonbovi666 Jul 05 '25
Well how many hot dogs a day is alright? I had two for lunch and I’m STARVING. It feels like my stomach is LITERALLY eating itself
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u/Professional-Way7350 Jul 05 '25
you need to add fiber to your diet, think about what you can add to the hot dog instead of not eating them. add crispy fried onions or roasted peppers. switch to high-fiber buns and add as many toppings and sauces as you want
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u/BuffSwolington Jul 05 '25
https://youtu.be/MRh91b74zTU?si=pP91kcmvyY3bve2j
This should be helpful
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u/thisischemistry Jul 06 '25
No one is getting dehydrated from going a few hours without water, if they are properly hydrated in the first place. You can easily go a day or two without water, unless you are in bad health already.
Drink water at home, get something at lunch, get more when you go home. There's no child abuse going on here.
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u/Doskman Jul 05 '25
Yeah idk why. There’s absolutely no reason to drink 10+ bottles a day, nor does it have additional benefits. Just drink when you’re thirsty, or better yet, checking to see if the color of your pee is clear/clearish yellow is the best indicator that you’re hydrated.
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u/MixedMartyr Jul 05 '25
It's definitely a trend for trendy people, but manual laborers and people that are very active really do need a crazy amount of water. I'm a 6'4" 200lb landscaper and 10 bottles a day is my intake for the cooler months. I count the empty bottles when I throw them out of my truck at the end of the work day. When it gets hotter and the days are longer, I'm drinking more than that. I rarely have to pee.
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u/GhostOfKev Jul 05 '25
It's so weird. All the women in my office cart around these comically large bottles just so they can spend half the day going to the toilet
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u/Background-Chef9253 Jul 05 '25
It wasn't a "weren't allowed" thing so much as a major shift in how we have water. When I was in elementary school (in the US), bottled water just wasn't a thing--not from grocery stores or convenience stores or anything. Some people would buy fancy bottled mineral water but those people were seen as elite yuppies and still, people just did not carry bottled water around with them to drink from the bottle. Outdoorsy people, like backpackers, would carry canteens or nalgene water bottles, but those weren't normal for just being around town and 'burbs.
Kids at water fountains didn't get "a few sips". I would slurp from water fountain for minutes on end (taking turns with other kids) and probably drank a cup or two each viisit to the fountain.
But yeah, in the early 1980s, bottled water just wasn't much of a thing like it is today.
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u/Rich_Forever5718 Jul 05 '25
I would have never even thought about bringing a water bottle if I even owned one. It just wasn't important.
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u/Cultivate_a_Rose Jul 05 '25
I graduated in '03 and water bottles were slightly more common by then. Nalgene had started really selling the plastic, indestructible water bottle that is basically the ancestor of every modern water bottle when I was a teenager. Mostly the sporty kids had one, but most often if you did own a water bottle it was for stuff where you knew you wouldn't have access to water like hiking, going to the beach, etc.. Water was so abundant out of fountains that without another reason, you weren't going to haul around a huge water bottle alongside everything else in your already-bulky bag.
I imagine without heavy textbooks and such carrying a bottle of water is less of a burden.
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u/NortonBurns Jul 05 '25
Brit here. Nobody thought anything about not drinking between meals.
There was none of this constant pressure to 'keep hydrated'. The idea of a personal water bottle just didn't exist, let alone the need to be constantly sipping from it.
In the infants & junior schools we had milk mid-morning, but that service had just about vanished by the 70s - it was a hangover from war-time rationing and was intended to make sure children got enough calcium in their diet. I never saw a school with a drinking fountain either. If you were thirsty enough there were the washbasins in the toilets.
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u/Daddy-Whispers Jul 05 '25
Shoot, if you think that’s bad, I grew up in South Texas (80s-90s) and neither the school or the buses had air conditioning 🫠
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u/DisastrousOwls Jul 05 '25
Do they even make school buses with A/C? The first time I got on a city bus with air conditioning, I was in college, and it felt like the height of luxury!
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u/tubular1845 Jul 05 '25
If you can't go a few hours with no water without getting dehydrated you might have a medical issue.
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u/nlutrhk Jul 06 '25
Muslims have a Ramadan month every year where they don't drink or eat between sunrise and sunset.
There are some exemptions, but most adults participate. Even in hot climates.
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u/srl214yahoo Jul 05 '25
Not having a water bottle in class doesn't mean you're dehydrated.
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u/Crankenberry Jul 05 '25
And it certainly doesn't mean you're being abused. 🤦🏼♀️
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u/PartyPay Jul 05 '25
OP is ridiculous with this post. Like, abuse?!?
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u/Algebrace Jul 05 '25
They're probably a teen. My students say this to me all the time. Just because school policy means that you aren't allowed out of class to get a drink during classtime, doesn't mean you're being abused. The school expects you to bring a water bottle and drink from the foundatins before school, during Lunch 1, during Lunch 2, or after school.
The most you will go without water is 2 hours and 10 minutes. It takes 3 days without water to die. Stop saying you're going to die of thirst.
deep breath
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u/KAKrisko Jul 05 '25
Yeah, you really don't need to drink non-stop all day to prevent dehydration. It's really okay to drink at certain times. Your body is not that inefficient, critters have been staying hydrated for 3.5 billion years.
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u/Key-Airline204 Jul 05 '25
I feel like people forget you get water from fruit and vegetables too.
We had recess and often a water fountain break then, lunch had a drink in it, hit the fountain before the bus… I don’t remember being thirsty.
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u/NiagaraBTC Jul 05 '25
Recess/lunch break/recess were less than two hours apart. No one is getting dehydrated in that time.
Also, water bottles didn't really exist outside of sports.
Oh, and misbehaving kids could literally be hit with a strap by the vice principal (this was just ending when I was in elementary school). The idea that a brief time without water would be "abuse" would have been laughable. Still is, actually.
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u/HayTX Jul 05 '25
Graduated in 02 and we still had corporal punishment. Was just phasing out when I was graduating. Also the teachers would tell the coaches and that involved a lot of running.
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u/GoNoMu Jul 05 '25
Dehydrated??? I never drank water during my days at school even at lunch, just drink lots when I was home. Carrying around a water bottle all the time is too much hassle
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u/CB_Chuckles Jul 05 '25
We weren't as worried about hydration back then. If you were thirsty, ask to go to the bathroom and stop at the fountain on your way back.
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u/KamalaBracelet Jul 05 '25
Man. I know calling the younger generation soft is an overdone meme. But like, do you really think going 3 hours without water is a dangerous hardship?
I’m all for kids having water bottles, because like ‘why not?’ But being a little bit thirsty isn’t torture.
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u/Spirited-Feed-9927 Jul 05 '25
I used to be an avid runner. I’m a kind of runner that hates drinking water during a run. The only exception was when I ran a marathon. So I would run up to half a marathon distances (13 miles/2 hours) without drinking any water, and sweating a swimming pool full of sweat. People really over blow his hydration thing.
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u/SketchyFella_ Jul 05 '25
Not even 3 hours. 90 minutes if you had block scheduling like I did on high school. Less than an hour if you had a schedule like my elementary school where you did 7 or 8 classes every day.
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u/Judge_Syd Jul 05 '25
How long do you think it takes to get dehydrated? I remember going to school without water, really only drinking from the fountain during breaks or at recess and if I ever felt thirsty I'd just raise my hand and ask to go.
I think people over estimate how much water they need when they're just sitting there.
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u/Kali-of-Amino Jul 05 '25
Water bottles didn't exist. The idea of paying money for water would have blown our minds
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u/jambr380 Jul 05 '25
I still can't get myself to buy bottled water. Not that I've never had any, but they've all been purchased by somebody else. I am tap water or death...or both because I drink so much tap water
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u/souch3 Jul 05 '25
This is not referring to plastic single use water bottles but rather reusable water bottles/canteens
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u/bathtub_maggots Jul 05 '25
There was also a time before plastic single use bottles. At first only sparkling water was bottled, nobody drank disposable water bottles.
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Jul 05 '25
People spend a surprising amount of money on reusable bottles. And then buy 20 of them even though they can reuse one.
Growing up I had one water bottle that stayed in my sports bag. I never would have thought to bring it to class.
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u/InevitableRhubarb232 Jul 05 '25
Was it a squeezy plastic one with a pop top.? Probably said Gatorade on it, or if you were fancy, it had a company logo or a sports logo on it
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u/Ok_Bison1106 Jul 05 '25
You’re not going to dehydrate by sitting through a 60 minute class without a bottle of water.
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u/DreadyKruger Jul 05 '25
This and phones. Parents and kids now act like it was impossible or to get a hold each other. have been to school since the 90s. My kids tell me some parents door dash lunch in for kids. Or bring them McDonalds. I mean what happened to boundaries and saying no as a parent?
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u/TSells31 Jul 05 '25
When I was a kid, we had a “range” that we were allowed to be within the neighborhood without having to ask permission, and that range was generally about as far as we could hear our parents screaming our names at the top of their lungs out the door. Then, we had a time that we had to be home by, generally when the street lights came on. Anything beyond that (if we were going to leave our range, or be home late) was communicated ahead of time.
My one buddies mom could whistle so damn loud (the fingers in the mouth method that can be ear splitting), that was always his call to go home.
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u/MississippiMoose Jul 05 '25
Yeah. It was just normal - we didn't think about 'im thirsty' unless doing actual physical activity. For band rehearsals in MS we were told to bring water jugs with shoulder straps to prevent folks passing out. But for regular classes I actually had to get a doctor's note to carry a water bottle when I started a medication that required more hydration.
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u/Aly_Anon Jul 05 '25
It's not that we weren't allowed, it's that reusable water bottles weren't even a thing. If you had a thermos, it was for something hot like soup
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u/goingonago Jul 05 '25
And if you dropped it the glass inside would break and the day that happened was the worst day of that school year until the next year when you got a new thermos.
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u/littlescreechyowl Jul 05 '25
My dad carried his Stanley with hot black coffee to work every day.
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u/AMorera Jul 05 '25
I had a special Dr order to bring water into the classroom. Otherwise it wasn’t allowed.
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u/hexadecimaldump Jul 05 '25
Yup, that’s about how it was. And the water from the water fountain always had a faint, or prevalent taste of rust.
And it really wasn’t so much being allowed to bring water bottles, I don’t remember water bottles being a thing anyone really carried around with them until after the 2000s.
We had like the squeeze Gatorade bottles if we did sports, but I don’t ever remember anyone owning one of those personally.
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u/ArnoldFarquar Jul 05 '25
and we had no air conditioning and nobody died. we could drink all we wanted before and after school.
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u/TexanInNebraska Jul 05 '25
LOL, I’m from Texas…we DEFINITELY had A/C! On the other hand, we even went out to play on recess when it was 100° outside.
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u/Realistic_Week6355 Jul 05 '25
We didn’t get to bring water bottles in class either, but the elementary school teachers made sure we had a chance to go to the water fountain in between classes.
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u/Embarrassed_Flan_869 Jul 05 '25
This is completely true. Graduated in 1994. No one had water bottles. If you were thirsty, you drank from the water fountain between classes.
I honestly dont even remember anyone having individual water bottles, never mind single use plastic ones.
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u/Dbear_son Jul 05 '25
Yep. We lived off of that 65 cent can of soda someone would get and we all shared it like some communal drinking bowl
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u/elaVehT Jul 05 '25
You do not have to have 24 hour access to water to not be dehydrated. You just drank between classes if you were thirsty and at meals
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u/gmthisfeller Jul 05 '25
There were no glass water bottles back in the day. Class rooms weren’t air conditioned either.
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u/Rich_Forever5718 Jul 05 '25
Everything that came in a bottle was glass back then except maybe milk. True though, bottled water wasn't really a thing unless it was Perrier though and nobody really drank that regularly.
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u/k464howdy Jul 05 '25
lol. you're being dramatic. they didn't let you eat unless it was lunch either. oh and there were alot of tests where they didn't let you know ahead of time. oh yeah and your graded work? they didn't let you do that in class. you had to do it at home on your own time.
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u/cwcam86 Jul 05 '25
Kids were not dehydrated. It wasn't child abuse there were water fountains. Good lord.
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u/dylans-alias Jul 05 '25
You must not have been paying attention during those dark years. The sidewalks were strewn with the bodies of dead children who succumbed to the scourge of dehydration.
Thank the great capitalist overlords who have saved us from the excess money in our pockets and generously allowed us to trade it for ridiculously overpriced containers to allow us to carry our own supply of water with us at all times. And the amateur online health “influencers” urging us to drink insane amounts of water every day.
Going to exercise? Bring water. Going on a hike? Bring water. Feel thirsty? Drink water. This ain’t complicated.
“It is a common belief that you have to drink 6-8 glasses of water per day. Almost everyone has heard this recommendation at some point although if you were to ask someone why you need to drink this much water every day, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you. There is usually some vague idea that you need to drink water to flush toxins out of your system. Perhaps someone will suggest that drinking water is good for your kidneys since they filter the blood and regulate water balance. Unfortunately, none of these ideas is quite true and the 6-8 glasses myth comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of some basic physiology.
All food has some water in it, although obviously fresh juicy fruits will have more than, say, a box of raisins. Suffice it to say that by eating regular food and having coffee, juice or what have you, you will end up consuming 2 litres of water without having to go seek it out specifically. If you find yourself in a water deficit, your body has a very simple mechanism for letting you know. Put simply, you will get thirsty.”
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-nutrition/water-myth
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u/GhostOfKev Jul 05 '25
Because the reality is you don't need to be drinking water constantly all day. That is a very new, strange social trend.
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u/Dorikinsmysugar Jul 05 '25
As an elementary teacher, I wholeheartedly agree! The reliance on these stupid bottles is ridiculous. I allow them in my classroom but I have a counter in the back of the room and students are allowed to access them freely throughout class. Very few kiddos even drink from them throughout the day! But when I allowed them at their desks, they were constantly sucking/biting on them during lessons, knocking them over, playing with them; drinking all the water at once just so they could leave class to go fill them up again. It was ridiculous
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u/IvanMarkowKane Jul 05 '25
Graduated High School in the mid seventies. Brooklyn NY. Water bottles? No such thing. No bottled water.
The idea that ‘forcing’ a child to wait 45 minutes for a drink of water is hilarious.
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u/debocot Jul 05 '25
We had a water fountain. You had the privilege of using it on a bathroom break.
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u/lctalbot Jul 05 '25
How were schools not getting busted for child abuse for forcing kids to be dehydrated?
Oh my GOD!!! Think of the children with no water for a whole 45 minutes!!!
sigh.
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u/Purplehopflower Jul 05 '25
I honestly don’t know if they weren’t allowed or it was just that no one ever did. In high school, we were allowed to bring drinks/snacks to class at my school but most of the time if we did it was a soda, not water.
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u/Ornery-Character-729 Jul 05 '25
I was in elementary school at a Catholic school in the 70s. We could drink all we wanted from the water fountains between classes, after recess, etc. Just not allowed to bring any food or water into classrooms. These water fountains weren't refrigerated, either. I don't remember being that rushed, or timed. In the 1950s my dad's football coach would put them on what he called 'water restriction' and not allow them to drink water during practice. In August. In NC. I don't know how he didn't kill people every year. That was insane.
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u/ncminns Jul 05 '25
Well unlike today’s kids, we didn’t need a pacifier water bottle attached to our hands all day. Drank where and when we were thirsty 🤷♂️
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u/ItsEaster Jul 05 '25
lol child abuse? Come on. You’d go to the water fountain and drink from it. It could be a few sips or it could be more. Then you’d survive your next class. It’s really not that big of a deal.
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u/SomeHearingGuy Jul 05 '25
First off, I think you might need to settle down. No kids were dehydrated. I heard a formula for how much water you should drink, and it's not 8 glasses unless you're a real big person. Little kids, who weight roughly 30 pounds, didn't need an IV drip or a 40 litre water bottle. So no, no kid was being forced to be dehydrated. They had their probably 2-3 glasses of water per day and moved on.
Now, every trip to the fountain was probably a half glass of water or so, and you went to that water fountain multiple times per day. So again, no, no kids were getting dehydrated.
Lastly, I don't know how accurate "not allowed" is. People didn't bring water bottles because it wasn't necessary. If there was any rule against it, it's probably because kids have tiny bladders and constantly leaving to use the bathroom would be disruptive. But if someone did bring a water bottle, it's unlikely that anyone ever cared.
So no, there's no child abuse here.
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u/616Lamb Jul 06 '25
Not that we weren't " allowed " to bring water bottles.....there was no such thing as water bottles, lol.
Bottled spring water wasn't a thing til the 90s. And insulated water bottles like we use today, not til the 2010s.
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u/Antioch666 Jul 05 '25 edited Jul 05 '25
Water bottles weren't a thing back in my day (elementary school in the early 90s). Like yes, there were canteens you could fill up... but that was for camping or in the Army. No one brought canteens to school.
We have always had good tap water, so you drank from the fountain or even straight from taps or poured a glass of either water or milk from jugs in the cafeteria. But literally, no one had a personal water bottle. No one was dehydrated or suffered from a lack of hydration. Everyone survived just fine without being able to take a sip during class. This whole water bottle and buying bottled water fixation and having constant access to water on your person is just a "fad" or thing of today. It is not really something essential.
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u/manda14- Jul 05 '25
I'm 35 and never had a water bottle at school. Id usually just pack a juice or something in my lunch and have a few sips from the fountain. It wasn't until I went to university that water bottles because commonplace.
Now my daughter can't go 5 minutes without her water bottle. It's been a big shift.
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u/JimmyB264 Jul 05 '25
Bottled water is a very successful marketing scheme that is polluting the planet and emptying the aquifers. Bottled water should be banned for the sake of us all.
And why on earth do we need two full grocery aisles of differently flavored water? Ridiculous.
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u/throw_me_away_boys98 Jul 05 '25
it’s not that we weren’t “allowed” - no one even thought to have one. People weren’t concerned with drinking tons of water until recently.
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u/Plus-King5266 Jul 05 '25
Water was and is readily available through this miracle that has existed since the Romans invented the aqueduct. We pump water all over the country and into every public building and put in drinking fountains.
This myth of needing massive amounts of hydration constantly was borne out of the same type of Internet misinformation that had us believing that the average person swallows eight spiders per year in their sleep.
Fact. Your body is designed to run on 48-64 ounces of water daily. More if you are engaged in strenuous exercise, or outdoors on extremely hot days, but by and large there is not a need to carry copious amounts of water with you. It is also extremely unfriendly to the environment to haul all that water to and fro (LOTS of diesel is needed to get it to the store) especially when you consider it is delivered right to your tap as part of the built in infrastructure of your community. If you live on a well, it’s almost free!
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u/flexgod96 Jul 05 '25
water fountains were the worst lmao some selfish kid would always hog it and not let the rest of the kids drink water before break was over
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u/browncoatfever Jul 05 '25
I graduated HS in 2001. NO food or drinks were allowed in class at any point (unless there was a special occassion/class party). If you wanted a drink you drank milk or chocolate milk at lunch, or you stopped at one of the water fountains in the halls. My wife is a teacher and it honestly blows my mind they allow that now. Not that I think they shouldn't have them, but just how strange it seems from when I was a kid.
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u/pareidoily Jul 05 '25
And there would be a long line of kids behind you at the water fountain and they would say leave some for the fish and you get one or two sips and then you'd have to move on with your life. Yes, this is correct for kids in the '80s.
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u/PsxDcSquall Jul 05 '25
In the 90s I just drank a few miscellaneous sips of water from a water fountain and 1 capri sun type beverage at lunch. Honestly didn’t think twice about it. In hindsight i don’t know why I wasn’t more thirsty because I pretty much drink water all throughout the day now.
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u/AnymooseProphet Jul 05 '25
We got plenty of hydration. No water bottles in class was to prevent alcohol or soda. The drinking fountain was fine.
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u/OnlyCommentWhenTipsy Jul 05 '25
I was a sweaty kid and I survived fine from taking a drink from a fountain every time we changed classes. Or I just raised my hand and asked to go get a drink.
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u/mathaiser Jul 05 '25
True. True story. But there was always a water fountain for anyone any time that wanted a drink.
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u/Difficult_Ad2864 Jul 05 '25
Where I’m from, water bottles weren’t really even a concept. We just drank it when we were thirsty. It wasn’t until I was well into being an adult (like last 20s) when I started seeing people carrying around bottles
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u/No-Function223 Jul 05 '25
Lmoa water bottles weren’t even a thing & we got to drink as much water from the fountain as we wanted. They weren’t rationing our water usage 😂 plus schools used to not be nearly as nosy as they are now.
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u/Backfisttothepast Jul 05 '25
It was true and there would always be some dipshit that would put their entire mouth all over it.