After School Detention

When I was in 8th grade I had a lot of fun with this:

http://www.deafthreat.bravepages.com/SchoolStoppers.html

It's dated, but a lot of the pranks still work. As for just passing the time, I used to get In School Suspension all the time and found that being stoned helped a lot. Or if you really don't care, you can just not go and they'll probably end up suspending you, which is much nicer...worked for me anyway, but might put you at risk of expulsion, if you care...

Careful, don't give the teacher an excuse to give you more shit by antagonising them.

You could start a calm and polite discussion with the teacher who is detaining you about what they'd rather be doing if they weren't stuck there. (I'd be surprised if they actually enjoy being in detention with you!) I've done this before and they let me out early so they could go and walk their dog (whose welfare I showed a keen, if largely fake, interest in).

If they won't talk to you then I guess there isn't much you can do to pass the time, but they will probably make you suffer more than them if you piss them off. I know you want to fight back, and that's good, but the fact is it's probably not going to make your life any better if you do. Unless you do it in a very smart and undetectable way by cynically out-witting them by pretending to be nice to them, who knows, maybe they'll surprise you and treat you like a fellow human being!

But yeah, detaining someone against their will for petty reasons really does suck, in school or in prison.

Just to add: I'm not saying you should always conform to what teachers tell you to do, just pick your battles wisely, innit.

Soz for the patronising tone- and hope detention passed quickly and you found a way of salvaging something from what is usually an exceedingly dull experience...

Wise words stateless_crow wise words.

Word.

I used to get detention all the time. I got past it by really losing myself in the tasks they set me. They'd give me old English exam questions and I'd have to write an essay for an hour but I really enjoyed doing that so it wasn't much of a punishment.

Well every maths class for the first year just always seemed to end in whole-class detention, so I just considered it par for the course (many other classes too, basically just consider your leaving time to be 16:30 instead of 15:30). I think everyone found their way of dealing with it, usually by just having fun by being really obnoxious and making it drag on until she couldn't be bothered and let everyone go (her weakness: smoking), it actually turned out to be quite fun in the end.

That schoolstoppers stuff looked interesting but it seemed like one of those lists written by someone who'd never done any of the things. And some of them were really anti-social, such as putting ground glass on posters or pouring ball bearings on the floor.
Like stateless said, getting into a fight you can't win isn't a good idea. If you find something to do that is quiet and doesn't involve moving around most teachers will leave you in peace in detention, perfect chance to do some reading. I first read solzhenitsyn because I stole it out of a cabinet in detention.
Most teachers can be reasoned with, if you stay calm, polite and talk to them in advance. Also, if they can't be reasoned with then it will really annoy them if you remain calm and polite so they have no reason to up the punishment.
The other silver bullet is to get your parents to write a letter saying you can't do afterschool detention because you need to pick up a sibling or there's only one bus. They will check into that usually though.