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

Oh yes the accepted violence ! Waiting outside the headmaster’s office to be hit by him/her across the palms for something (70s comprhensive). Taking part in organised fights just outside school gates in full view of teachers who did nothing. Getting notes saying ‘x will fight you this afternoon’ spending all day knowing this and gathering support. Always look back on this without any particular horror/scars but good god what a nightmare. I was a year ahead so smaller than many other girls but I was also a very good fighter (by the end anyway). Casual classism, regionalism, racism. Remember classmates being publicly humiliated if they were wearing dirty/damaged clothes when we all knew their home life was chaotic and it was great they were even there at school. Teachers making fun of any child with a different accent. All white school though so didn’t see bame kids being treated like this but expect it would have been similar if not worse. Amongst this I did have some great teachers at that school, had a lot of fun and did pretty well. !!

In Primary - oh no you forgot your PE kit???..then that will be vest and pants!!

School days 76 to 88.
Infants walking to and from school alone
Playing underneath the terapin buildings.
Cookery lessons in infants. There was an oven in the corner of the year 1classroom.
Being shaken by my reception teacher with both hands on my shoulders.
Being referred to as silly or stupid.
Standing in the corner with back to the room for being "naughty".
Girls with brown hair being virgin Mary and all blonde girl angels in the annual nativity.
Assembly every morning with hymns such as Morning has broken, All things bright and beautiful and Kum by yah my Lord.
Vest and pants PE with BBC Musical Movement.
Playing marbles on drain covers.
Dinner ladies making you eat every last morsel on your plate.
Climbing ropes to the top in PE
Cane and board rubber

Naked showers in high school. Teacher used to make all girls line up naked hand towels to her. She would then peg them at the other end of the "tunnel of showers" and stand and watch ro make sure you walked all the way theough and showered properly. Sometimes making you so it again because otherwise you would smell!!
Having to say "excused showers" in PE registration if on period. Teacher would comment " wow your period has lasted 3 weeks" or " see me after class" if you were lucky!
Bunny San pro machines. Not sure how they worked but pretty much the whole school knew you used it cos it was so loud and shook the building.
Teachers being absent and no cover teacher ever showing up. Cue chaos.

TCP and plasters that needed soaking in the bath to get off after falling off metal playground climbing frames onto concrete or tripping in whole school games of Bull Dog!

Carbolic soap in the toilets smelled awful 😂

When I trained to teach in 1997, just after break on a Friday, a student would come round all the classrooms and take the teachers’ sandwich orders which would then be rung through to the local pub. We then went and had a full hour’s lunch at the local. It was heaven.

We also had a smoking staff room.

And kids who were naughty at lunchtime had to stand and face the wall of the canteen. There were normally about 8 or so Year 8-10 boys facing the wall at any time.

‘British bull dog’ we called it !

We were allowed out at lunchtime in the 1960s at junior school to go to the seeet shop at the end of tje road with our threepenny bits.
My dad taught in the 1950s and was in charge of the "remedial" boys who seemed to do a lot of basket weaving.

Music teacher keeping booze in his office and offering it to visiting 6th formers at lunchtime. Same teacher had an affair with one of the sixth formers and carried on teaching. Another teacher used to regularly swear at pupils.
If anyone talked lining up outside for PE you spent the rest of the lesson standing in line in silence in the cold without coats with the PE teachers chatting and having cups of tea.

In the minibus on a geography field trip: a teacher driving round in circles at top speed doing handbrake turns on a cliff top to make us scream with excitement.

On a Duke of Edinburgh practice expedition, me the only girl in a group of boys. The two male teachers in charge deciding that it was better to take me with them when they went to the pub, leaving the group unsupervised. And buying me a couple of halves of lager. (I was about 14 or 15).

Chanting times tables every morning before assembly. We had to have our hands flat on the desk and if we moved them the teacher hit them with her ruler (first year Juniors).
Boys playground and girls playground. The boys' playground was the size of the girls' and Infants' put together. The boys used to make massive ice slides in the winter.
Outside toilets across the playground which froze in winter and you would often find someone else's frozen poo. The washbasins were in school, up two flights of stairs, so I doubt if many people bothered washing their hands afterwards.

My high school in 1983/4 had an outdoor pool. We used to have swimming lessons early and late on in the year. Stroud by the side of the unheated ancient pool in swimming costumes for 15 minutes whilst being given instruction before getting in the Icey water. It was only my first year this happened it remained empty for year 80 the filled in and a garden planted over it thank God!

When i was at high school from 1985 -1990. We used to leave achool at lunch time and have a wander around the local town centee my oldest has just started high school and they cant leave the building at lunch , lunch is only half an hour for them

If you were naughty in primary school you would stand in the corner with your hands in your head.
I remember one boy always used to lose his pencil and the teacher getting so cross she drilled a hole in the end of a pencil and threaded it with string and made him wear it around his neck. Humiliating.
I remember class pets, tracing paper loo roll, glass milk bottles and being the milk monitor.

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Whoops, just trying something out, apologies

Same as a few others have said here. Outside toilets in primary school. That combined with the slippy bog roll made going to the toilet very unpleasant. No wonder kids piddled their pants. And teachers would punish children who wet themselves - as if any child would actively choose to sit there in soaking wet clothes.

I remember we were all slapped for talking in bed while on a school trip. The teacher went around asking 'Were you talking?' and smacked everybody whether they said yes or no. I remember being overcome with homesickness at that point.

Being smacked with a ruler for the most minor offences.

We learned to write with fountain pens and there were open bottles of ink everywhere, getting knocked over and spilled left, right and centre.

I took my 10 year old to get his school supplies at the end of summer and he asked for a compass. I remember thinking there was no way they would allow compasses in primary school any more. Then I saw it with the tiny little point on the end. Ours were full-on spikes and they were frequently used as weapons.

Standing up when a teacher walked in the room, and not sitting down until you were given permission.

DD does that at school now letshope.

I seem to remember a craze for spraying Impulse over a lighter to try and make some kind of flame thrower effect

Then accidentally catching the window frame and having to colour all the scorch marks in with tippex

Taking caps into class and jabbing them with a compass to make them go bang.

Melting the ends of crayons in a teaspoon over a candle, then pouring the hot wax onto a piece of card to make a picture.

Walking home from school alone, aged 5.

In senior school we used to have cold communal showers after PE. The PE teachers used to stand at the the entrance and the exit to the showers and watch us to make sure we were actually showering .

I remember that film about kids playing on the train tracks that they showed in school too, it gave me nighmares me for years. I remember some of my friends crying as they were scared and wanted to leave the room but we were all made to sit and watch it.

Dinner ladies at primary used to put the fear of god in me, they would go ballistic if you didn't eat your sandwiches first or finish everything on your plate

I also recall a lot more man-handling, pulling kids about by the scruffs of their collars or hiking up our arms if we were misbehaving, no one ever thought anything of it at the time, wouldn't even bother telling parents.

@PillowOfSociety your post made me laugh out loud

The copy of Forever by Judy Blume being permanently on loan from the school library and furtively passed around, with the well thumbed pages guaranteed to fall open at the dirty bits. Cannot hear the name Ralph without thinking of that book

See also furtively passing around a copy of More magazine to gawp at Position of the Fortnight, which felt like the height of filth at the age of 12

Tweens are probably watching hard-core pornography on their smartphones now, so can't imagine Forever or More would have elicited the same sense of illicit mischief

I remember someone posting on a similar thread that if a child standing in the corner looked round the teacher would say "Face the corner, i don't want to see your ugly face!" I remember that too in Infant school.