What used to be common in schools that would never happen today?

[abacucat]

There are lots of things that were common when I was at school, that would cause outrage if they happened today. For a start -

• Teachers giving kids the belt from 5 years old
• Dinner ladies in primary making you eat everything on your plate
• Teachers in -primary making you drink your bottle of milk
• Teachers in secondary throwing blackboard rubbers at kids heads

The TV on a trolley and the TV room.

Also remember the smoking staff room that a pp posted about

Art teacher smoking joints in his cupboard

Big blue PE knickers and tiny little skirts. Forced public showering after PE. Red laces from the tuck shop. Standing up when the teacher walks in. Climbing ropes. School song. Dissecting small creatures In biology. In junior school the ruler and evil dinner ladies.

Teachers at Secondary going to the pub at lunch time.

Teachers at secondary wearing academic gowns all the time. When I tell my own pupils this they area awestruck:
Did you go to Hogwart's, Miss?"

At the same school, the dining hall was run by 6th form prefects, who would call out the tables to get the food - very civilised now I think of it, tureens of food are given to the dinner-getter and we dished it up ourselves.

Also, prefects could give lines and detentions.

Oh, and they covered lessons when a teacher was away.

All this was in the 60s.

The school dentist with those pink disclosing tablets we had to chew to see who had cleaned their teeth properly

Being allowed chocolate and sweets, bring empty drink cans to be recycled some company paid the school for them). History teacher taking our small history teacher on fieldtrips without telling parents. Older children cleaning up cuts on smaller kids who fell playground. Kids doing all the wash up in the canteen .

In the days before 1471 and caller display, we used to look up teachers’ telephone numbers in the phone book, and ring the numbers (only let it ring 3 times so as not to cost money).

Being allowed to leave the school from primary six onwards so she 10, at lunchtime and walk to the local.chippy and sweet shop. Burger van and sweetie van in the playground at secondary, a roll on square sausage washed down by coke every day, or alternatively into the dinner hall for chips and cheese. Leaving school at secondary lunchtime too and playing in the lifts of the local.high flats, then popping into kwik save for biscuits. Some kids who were 16 before June just dropped out and didn't do exams, this was in 1997!

In my infant school if it was your birthday we used to go to the heads office and she would give you a little bag of sweets.

@Helpimfalling I know. It was awful. PE teacher shouting, 'Unless you've got three boobs, get your towel off and get in there!'

@Dljlr "I remember being made to kneel in the school hall to check if my skirt touched the floor, along with 120 other girls in year 7. Can't imagine that happening now. " ...I think went to the same school!

@bobow no one believes me when I say we did PE in our vest and pants!

My primary school lunches had three colours of custard: yellow, pink or brown. I can't eat custard to this day.

Someone in my class was suspected of breaking his arm and two sensible girls were selected to walk him to the hospital! This was in the equivalent of year 6.

Primary: for pe we got changed in the classroom, boys and girls together.
We could go home at lunch and we could walk.
I used to get the job of washing the mugs in the staff room.
One naughty boy spent almost the entire p4 year sitting behind the blackboard with his desk.

Secondary: there was always a stray dog that could be encouraged into the building where we would then run in the corridors screaming.
I remember a girl doing pe in her knickers.
Our male pe teacher used to yell 'decent ladies? ' at the precise moment he threw open the changing room door... we'd all stand there with towels clutched to us. He would then look in the showers....
Sexual predator for a science teacher. He'd been moved from another school... and eventually he was moved again. Years later the girls involved room it to court and he was found guilty. The school knew...but in those days they were just moved on.

Oh this brings back memories. First aid consisting of:

Grazed knee? Wet paper towel.
Banged your head? Wet paper towel.
Severed artery? Wet paper towel...

They were magic!

Bullying was never dealt with. It was 'character building' and 'only a bit of teasing' apparently

Never allowed out of school grounds during the day.

Strict social hierarchy was carried on in school. You always knew where you were in the pecking order depending on how much money your family had, what they did for a living and how 'useful' your family was to giving others a leg up.

One older girl was married very quickly as she was pregnant. At the time it was seen as a huge shame on the family if a girl was an unmarried mother.

Listening to a very dreary wireless programme called 'How things began' and being told to take notes (top juniors). Nowadays it would be on the interactive whiteboard with a video.
DH was a day boy at a boarding school and at weekends the perfects were in charge of the boarders, with an occasional staff member popping in if they were lucky.
He also remembers master's who were very skilled at chalk throwing and could hit a boy on the ear with chalk thrown across the classroom.

No apostrophe in masters. Why does autocorrect do that?

Roling mercury around in science class

In our infants school playground in the early 60s was a climbing frame. I can remember some children hanging upside down from it, I think it was just on the concrete, definitely not H&S

Little porcelain ink pots in the desk to dip your regulation school pen in.
If you were lucky you bought your own bottle of nice blue ink and a fountain pen to school.
Everyone in the school standing still with bowed head for 2 minutes silence on Remembrance Day.
Caramel tart for school dinner - it's legendary down the generations where I come from - nectar of the gods, nothing else to touch it.

Going home for lunch with my friends and always being late but never getting in trouble because I said I was “scared to leave my house”. Whilst all my mates got detentions.
No one dared to question me because I had moved to a very posh school in the West Country from a grotty violent area in London, and had seen muggings, murders, drug raids etc. It was so far out of their frame of reference that people didn’t have anything to say, I regularly missed the entirety of my after lunch classes and could get out of anything 😂😂

The belt
Teachers smoking in the playground
Throwing blackboard erasers
Teachers hitting kids

Aged 15, I went on a school trip where the teachers allowed us to smoke and drink alcohol. I think the reasoning behind this was that we would do it anyway... I'm still amazed this actually happened.

In my second year of junior school (so year 4 now) a bunch of girls would decide that they didn’t want to do the lessons that afternoon and would rather put on a play instead. The teacher would let them and then get everyone to watch. This happened quite a few times - I’d be really annoyed if this happened at my children’s school.

At the school my Mum taught at, the headmistress would bring in her dog and the girls would take turns to walk it (they would be taken out of lessons to do so).

Standing when teachers came into the room, and the embarrassment in the first year - were we meant to stand for the caretaker?
The Head wearing a gown in assembly, and singing real hymns from a hymn book.