silent lunches were so….weird. like the entire cafeteria was expected to be quiet and it usually was a punishment for something super dumb tbh like i remember a bunch of kids popped plastic bags one day so we got silent lunch for a week and everyone was just….sitting there all quiet. it was duuuumb
the only funny part tho was sitting around ur friends and all of u trying VERY VERY HARD not to laugh when someone makes a face or something like that, or trying to sneak into the bathroom so u can talk…even then tho fuck silent lunches
ppl keep going “what the FUCK is a silent lunch why would schools have that” and im like. genuinely so forgetful abt the fact that silent lunches are one of those american public school things that literally dont make any sense
I moved around a LOT when I was a kid (mostly within New England, but all northern half of the east coast), and none of my schools had a silent lunch thing. Other dumbass “punishments” for a wide variety of bullshit-to-vaguely reasonable “infractions” (ignoring outright hateful/harmful abuses of power)…but never silent lunches. Seems more…bible-belt-ish to me?
Had to deal with that in schools in South Florida, which is about as far south of the Bible Belt as you can get in the US.