Teachers call it “the most brain dead meme” but six-seven slang has invaded classrooms across the UK, with students even painting the numbers on their faces and leaving staff perplexed.
A survey of 10,000 teachers found that four out of five working in secondary schools had heard the viral phrase called out last week, with the percentage soaring to 90% among younger teachers.
Primary school teachers were not far behind – half of those teaching the youngest children and infants said they had heard it being used.
Maths teachers are the worst affected – unsurprisingly given the frequency the numbers six and seven appear. But teachers from other subjects say that any mentions of page 67, the year 1967 or any other phrases involving sixes or sevens, will set off a disruptive chorus. Even PE teachers can’t escape it.
Those surveyed by the Teacher Tapp polling app also reported students wanting six-seven painted on their faces for half-term school discos.
“Six-seven is everywhere but especially in the maths classrooms, and classroom teachers are getting it the most,” a spokesperson for Teacher Tapp said. “But what does it mean? No one knows. Not even the young teachers.”
A maths teacher at one London school who has issued detentions for its repeated use in class, said: “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.”
If anything, things seem to be worse in the US, where the Wall Street Journal reports that teachers will avoid breaking kids into groups of six or seven. One teacher in Texas said: “If you’re like: ‘Hey, you need to do questions six, seven,’ they just immediately start yelling: ‘Six-seven!’ It’s like throwing catnip at cats.”
Some British headteachers are more relaxed. “As with every craze, we just tend to ride the wave until it dies down. In my opinion, it will be over soon and we move on to the next thing,” Caroline Lowing told the Daily Echo in Hampshire.
The phrase – pronounced “six sevvv-an” and accompanied by up-and-down weighing hand motion – exploded in popularity after a content creator’s video at a US basketball game earlier this year. Although the precise meaning is obscure and malleable, ranging from “meh” to recognition of a number, there’s no denying its popularity.
But most of the teachers polled said they couldn’t explain what it meant. Among the youngest teachers, aged in their 20s, barely half were confident they knew.
The Teacher Tapp survey found that six-seven had displaced last year’s gen Alpha meme champion: skibidi – short for skibidi toilet, referring to an animated series involving toilets with human heads – although it lacks the lottery factor of six, seven or 67 appearing during a lesson.
After six-seven, what’s next? According to the survey, cooked or cook – slang for continue or finish – is rising up the slang ranks, so that nearly half of all secondary teachers said they had also heard it used last week.
