occurs whenever a lesson or teaching session is interrupted before it is supposed to end.
Some of the recognisable symptoms are as follows:
- Bell Of Dismissal:
Most commonly, a bell will sound, signifying the end of the session. The lesson is always interrupted in mid-flow and never concludes properly. The bell always sounds like an old-fashioned clanging fire bell or alam bell. This is true when portraying any kind of Western teaching establishment of any teaching grade, from juniors up to university.
- The Silent Observer:
Often, a protagonist has just entered the classroom to meet with the teacher and stands quietly at the rear or the side of the room, waiting for the class to end, which it does when the Bell of Dismissal conveniently sounds a few moments after their entrance, regardless of whatever point the lesson has reached.
- Don't Forget Your Assignments:
On hearing the Bell Of Dismissal, all the students will rise, scoop up their books and papers and hurriedly leave the classroom. The teacher has only just enough time to call out to the backs of the rapidly departing students what their homework/assignments are. These usually consists of reading pages or chapters from some book. In Real Life, lessons are run to a strict timetable and a decent teacher will wrap the session and summarise it before ending it in an orderly and controlled manner. Homework is often given out before the class ends, sometimes even at the start of the lesson (I speak from experience!)
- Arrested Development:
A class will be terminated when the police enter the classroom and arrest (or otherwise apprehend) the teacher. This always involves handcuffing the teacher in front the the surprised students and marching them out through the centre isle of the class. As they leave, one of the cops will turn to the bemused students and make a off-hand remark like "Class dismissed." The police never arrive at the start or the end of a session, always in the middle. This interruption can also be applied to a student who is arrested and hauled off in the middle of the session.
- Just Enough Time for The Disruption:
An incident occurs in the classroom, such as a toe-to-toe face-off, an outrageous comment that stuns the others or a fight breaks out (or all three). The Bell of Dismissal will always sound a few moments after such an incident, usually averting any further escalation and ending the class.
Anime and Manga
Live Action TV
- It seems like poor Onsen-Mark never gets to finish his class in Urusei Yatsura. Can he really help his jerkass tendencies if his class is always targeted by aliens, mythical spirits, or martial arts challenges?
- Exploited by the protagonist Nicholas in Frindle. He often tries tricking his teachers into speaking for too long near the end of class, so that they'll forget to announce the homework for tonight and the students can dash out by the bell before the teacher remembers.
- This happens in the classroom scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, complete with the silent observer (Marcus Brody) and Professor Jones giving additional instructions to his students after the bell.
- During Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy gets cut off from his lecture when Walter Donovan tells Indy that his father had disappeared upon making a major breakthrough in his research on the Holy Grail.
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The Brody Expy takes Jones out of yet another lecture to tell him that he was being fired from his teaching position because the United States Government accused Jones of being a Soviet agent. In all of these instances, he has let several tests, quizzes, essays, midterms/finals, and homework assignments left ungraded to the point that a crowd of hundreds of his students (and one assistant) practically swarm him and demand that he give the results of months-, even years-old assignments.