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Teachers Are Kicking Kids Out Of Their Class For Chanting ‘6-7’ – Here’s What It Means
Teachers are kicking kids out of their classes for chanting ‘6-7,’ so here’s what it means.
If you work in a school and you’ve recently been greeted by an inexplicable chorus of children gleefully shouting numbers at you, you are not alone.
A viral slang phenomenon has swept through classrooms across the United States and United Kingdom, leaving teachers simultaneously baffled, frustrated, and — in some cases — genuinely impressed by the sheer staying power of what is, on the surface, absolutely nothing at all.
The phrase taking over schools
The phenomenon is called ‘6-7’ — pronounced with the ‘seven’ stretched out into something closer to ‘six seveeeeen.’
Students say it when a teacher accidentally mentions the numbers six and seven in sequence. They say it when a page number, a time, a score, or a year contains both digits.
It comes with an accompanying hand gesture — a slow, weighing motion, as though the speaker is juggling two invisible objects — and it tends to produce instant, uncontrollable hilarity in anyone under the age of approximately sixteen.
It has reached the point where teachers in the US are reportedly avoiding breaking students into groups of six or seven.
In the UK, a survey of 10,000 teachers by polling app Teacher Tapp found that four out of five secondary school teachers had heard it in the previous week alone — with the figure rising to 90 percent among teachers in their twenties, per the Guardian.
Even primary school teachers aren’t immune, with half of those teaching younger children reporting they had already encountered it.
Maths teachers have it worst, for obvious reasons. “If you’re like: ‘Hey, you need to do questions six, seven,’ they just immediately start yelling: ‘6-7!'” one teacher in Texas told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s like throwing catnip at cats.”
A maths teacher in London who has been issuing detentions for repeated use in class delivered perhaps the most quotidian verdict on the whole phenomenon: “It’s the most brain-dead meme in the history of brain-dead memes, it’s meaningless, and it is just an excuse for some children to make noise.”
Why can’t teachers stop it?
This is the question educators find most maddening — and the answer, according to experts in linguistics, communication, and digital culture, is essentially that any attempt to ban it makes it significantly more powerful.
Karen North, a professor of digital social media and psychology at USC, has been direct on the subject to the LA Times.
“Because there’s nothing that middle schoolers or elementary schoolers like more than to have teachers get upset and try to take action against something, especially if the something is impossible to ban,” she said.
A student can reasonably argue they haven’t broken any rule if they simply react when the number 67 appears organically in a lesson — which, in a maths class, is going to happen constantly.
Taylor Jones, a linguist and social scientist, has described the phrase as a kind of ‘shibboleth’ — a coded signal of belonging, per CNN. Those who use it are in the group. Those who don’t get it are outside it.
For a generation of young people who have grown up navigating intensely complex social landscapes, having a simple, deniable, endlessly flexible in-joke is enormously appealing.
The phenomenon is also partly explained by what Jones calls ‘semantic bleaching’ — the process by which a phrase is stripped of its original meaning through repetitive use until it carries no fixed significance at all, becoming purely about the social act of saying it.
How teachers are pushing back
Faced with what several describe as an essentially unwinnable battle, educators have responded with varying degrees of creativity.
In Michigan, sixth-grade language arts teacher Adria Laplander announced on TikTok that any student caught saying ’67’ would have to write a 67-word essay about what the phrase means, the Independent reports.
A second offense: another essay. By the fifth offense, the essay grows to 670 words. “If you do it again, another 67-word essay,” she said in the video. Some students, she noted, have taken to shouting it outside her door to provoke a reaction while technically staying within the rules.
In New Jersey, fourth-grade teacher Monica Choflet has gone old-school: first offense, write “I will not say ‘6-7’ in class” six times. Second offense, seven times. Third offense, 67 times. “They thought I was kidding but once I made them write it for homework, they said, ‘Whoa, you were serious!'”
Seventh-grade science teacher Gabe Dannenbring in South Dakota has broken the record 75 times in a single day for hearing the phrase and has concluded that the most effective approach is to simply use it incorrectly himself.
“That’s so 6-7 of you,” he will say, producing groans of protest from students who feel the phrase is being misappropriated by an adult who does not belong to them.
“If you don’t play into it, it’s super disruptive,” he said. “If you acknowledge it, then it gets over with in about 15 seconds.”
In Michigan, a middle school choir teacher successfully defused the phrase by incorporating it into a warmup song alongside other pieces of Gen Alpha vocabulary including ‘slay,’ ‘Ohio,’ and ‘rizz’ — effectively assimilating it into the fabric of the lesson rather than fighting it.
The consensus among experts seems to be that this last approach — co-option rather than combat — is the most effective. “The easiest way to kill it is for teachers to say that it’s cool,” Jones said flatly.
Should anyone actually be worried?
The short answer is no. Experts are consistent on this point: ‘6-7’ is not evidence of declining literacy, eroding critical thinking, or any of the other civilisational catastrophes some parents are prone to projecting onto the behaviour of young people.
“We’re rewriting our own history,” Jones said. “This is not anywhere near being a new phenomenon.” Every generation invents its own coded language — what was once ‘the bee’s knees’ became ‘groovy,’ which became ‘fire,’ and so on indefinitely.
The difference now is simply the speed at which social media can amplify a phrase and, subsequently, how quickly adult attention can hasten its decline.
Giano Intermediate School principal Carlos Ochoa, in his thirteenth year in the role, put it in perhaps the most useful perspective.
“I think the culture of our school is we roll with the punches because you can’t fight this,” he said. “I have seen a lot of fads and at this point, I’m just getting ready for the next one.”
Jennifer Trujillo, the middle school music teacher who first heard her students say ‘6-7’ and sought clarification from her teenage daughter, offered a thought that might serve as the most sensible note on which to close.
“When you think about all of the things that our kids go through in this age, with all the bullying and political stuff that’s going on in the world, we could be worried about so many other pressing things. But for us to be worried about two little numbers, maybe it’s this generation telling us to lighten up a little.”
So, where does it actually come from?
The origin of ‘6-7’ is simultaneously straightforward and anticlimactic. It comes from a song called Doot Doot (6 7) by Philadelphia rapper Skrilla, whose real name is Jemille Edwards.
The song was never intended for wide release — Skrilla has said it ‘wasn’t supposed to leave the recording studio’ but that he decided to leak it toward the end of 2024. The phrase ‘six-seven’ is repeated in the chorus.
Skrilla himself has said he ‘never put an actual meaning on it,’ which is perhaps the most important detail in understanding how this particular phrase achieved the cultural reach that it has, per the LA Times.
A phrase without a fixed meaning is a phrase that can mean anything — or everything — depending on context, and that flexibility is exactly what has made it so irresistible.
There are various theories about what it might loosely refer to. Some suggest it is a nod to the 10-67 police code, which is used to report a death. Some say it’s slang for something being ‘mid’ — average, neither good nor bad.
Some point to NBA player LaMelo Ball, who stands at six feet seven inches and began using the song in his TikTok videos, giving it a high-profile face in the sports world and accelerating its spread.
In early 2025, a video from a high school basketball game went viral — a young, wildly enthusiastic spectator shouted ‘6-7!’ with the accompanying hand gesture at the camera. The internet promptly decided his name was Mason. Mason 67 has since become its own parallel piece of internet mythology.
The honest answer, embraced even by most of the children using the phrase, is that nobody really knows what it means, and that is entirely the point. Dictionary.com named it word of the year.
It has been referenced in Abbott Elementary and was the entire plot of South Park’s first episode of Season 28. When In-N-Out’s order number 67 was called at one US location, a group of teens reportedly lost their minds.
@g_unit24 How many times I heard 6 7 today as a teacher #teacherlife #sixseven #teachersoftiktok #teacher ♬ original sound – Gabe Dannenbring
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