Steve Cuckovich, a health teacher in Vacaville, California, has earned his 15 minutes of fame by unapologetically docking students points on their grades if they say a version of ‘bless you’ after someone sneezes.

First reported by Fresno’s ABC30, Cuckovich says that it has nothing to do with God or his beliefs, but that the response of ‘bless you’ is a disruption to the learning process. That, and it just doesn’t make sense, says Cuckovich:

“It’s not… got anything to do with religion, it’s got to do with an interruption of class time. The blessing doesn’t really make any sense any more. In the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body, so they were saying “God bless you” for getting rid of the evil spirits. But today I say really what you’re doing doesn’t make any sense anymore.”

Cuckovich is a teacher at Will C. Wood High School, a public 9-12 school with about 1,850 students, and says that he’ll find another way to discipline students for saying ‘bless you.’

Links to reports of Will C. Wood’s performance on the district’s website were not functioning, with an error message of “Oops!”, at the time of publication.