School legends Lesson 24 of the myths course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Oscar swears a kid at his cousin's school skipped a whole year and nobody noticed. 1 Every school has legends like this: the haunted toilets, the secret tunnel, the head who sleeps in the office. 2 A school legend is usually told about "a kid at my cousin's school", never about someone you can actually ask; that friend-of-a-friend detail is the first clue it may be made up. 3 Real school life runs on rules and records: the register is taken every day, absences are followed up, and big decisions, like closing for snow, are made by the head, not by a magic law. 4 Some legends hold a grain of truth: schools do keep records, and chewing gum may wake you up a little for a short time; but the scary or magic part is almost always added. 5 To check one, ask a teacher, the school office or the person it happened to, and enjoy the spooky ones as stories, without teasing the younger kids who believe them. 6 Schools take a register every day, and an absence is usually followed up quickly by phone calls, letters or visits, so a pupil missing a whole year would be noticed. 7 Schools do keep records about pupils, but there is no single "permanent record" that every future employer (a boss who gives you a job) reads, and small mistakes are not carried for life. 8 There is no rule that a class can leave if the teacher is 15 minutes late; you should stay and send someone to tell the office. 9 There is no law that closes schools after a certain amount of snow; the head teacher decides, based on safety. 10 There is no evidence that ghosts exist; haunted-toilet stories are told at schools in many countries, such as Japan's "Hanako-san". 11 Pencil "lead" is graphite (a soft, grey, shiny form of carbon) mixed with clay and contains no lead, so it cannot give you lead poisoning; a pencil stab should still be washed and checked because it could get infected. 12 Teachers are pleased by a score of 100%; a perfect mark is not a sign of cheating. 13 There is no evidence that Friday the 13th brings bad luck, though worrying about it could distract you. 14 Head teachers go home at night like other people; they do not live in their offices. 15 Some small studies found chewing gum can make you feel a little more alert (awake and paying attention) for a short time, but the results are mixed, and gum gives no magic marks; many schools do not allow it. 16 Secret tunnels between old buildings are a very common legend, and they almost never turn out to be real; old maps and local history groups can help you check. 17 A story about "a friend of a friend" that nobody can check is called an urban legend. ← previous Petrol stations, pools and things that go bangnext → Viral facts and chain messages↑ back to Myths This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/24-school-legends/