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

bananafish I was an adult when position of the fortnight was introduced into More magazine. Lots of adults including myself were outraged at the time.

The magazine status was based on how old the target reader was

So you started with Shout and Fast Forward
Then Smash Hits
Bliss and Mizz
Just 17
19
More

And probably others I've forgotten

No 17 yo would have been seen dead reading J17 - that was for 13/14 yo

Age 4 at primary school in late 50's I was tied to the chair all afternoon with a skipping rope for fidgeting!!...my mum had made me a wool skirt and it itched my legs like mad...it was torture trying to keep still!!

Primary school was very old building and the toilet block was outside flipping freezing in winter!!

Primary school teachers were really scary and very handy with a ruler or slapping you on the back of the legs if you could not read your book!!.

They also had a paddle for hitting you on the bum...it had a picture of someone being hit on the bum on it!!!

All girls Convent Grammar school mid 60's.... summer panama hats or boaters with dresses and blazers. Winter Mortar boards with tassels and thick army style coats.

Pupils got in serious trouble if there was any trouble out side of school.
Very rare for any bad behaviour in our school. Bullying was not acceptable and people got caned for it!

Walking down the corridor in silence after morning assembly in long lines either side of prefects who stood in the middle.

Number of pupils in school 400!!

Primary school : getting the slipper or copying lines from the bible as punishment, being hit with a ruler, being forced to drink tepid milk, being put in the corner, being forced to write with your right hand even though you may have been left handed and most probably had dyspraxia, playing on metal climbing frames with only bare earth or possibly hard standing underneath, keeping bantams, rabbits, canaries, mice and gerbils (Although I guess some schools may still have pets or a hamster) being made to stay in all lunchtime crying into your congealed lumpy stew because you couldn't eat it...
The head mistress saying your mother wasn't fit and proper as she was a working mum (despite being one herself) This was the 70s!

Middle school: your French teacher calling you his girlfriend every time you went to class, your English teacher hitting you around the head with your exercise book whenever he felt like it. Early 80s!

That type of thing I suspect would not be tolerated these days!

Salad with peanuts in

Mint custard 🤮

Country dancing where the boys chose a girl to be their partner

Sports day being a whole six hour day - at secondary you might not even participate but would spend the whole day 'spectating' ( strutting round the stands comparing trainers)
School always being closed for strikes, elections (80s)
Spelling letters and words in a tobacco tin !! Even smelt of tobacco

I remember loads of these. I work in a secondary school now (non-teaching) and while a lot of this is a complete and shocking absence of safeguarding and supervision, I hope it makes some people realise how bloody hard it is to work in schools these days. There are measures in place to prevent most of this outdated (and sometimes criminal) crap.

It is right that most of this stuff can’t go on nowadays, of course it is. But the following up of the neglected and SEN pupils, the prep required for school trips, the rules against anyone leaving the premises at lunchtime (so impacting on teachers who are then forced to forgo their break to do lunch duties), etc etc, ie the general CARE for all pupils’ pastoral needs compared with the old days when you were left to it, it’s pretty full on and exhausting for all school staff.

And on top of that the teachers have to teach. Woe betide them if they decide to veer off the curriculum to get the kids interested in science and risk scorching the walls in the process. Added in to this you have a lack of respect for any authority because the kids have never known the cane/ruler/sin bin, schools need to keep them there because they need the funding they bring (and kids know this) and there are no sanctions that they REALLY care about avoiding and you can understand why no-one wants to become a teacher these days. A lot of TAs have gone meaning that SEN kids are left to struggle in mainstream.

Yes there was a lot of shit happening in the old days but somehow most came out with a respect for education and some qualifications.

I sometimes think the education system is no less shit than in the old days. It’s just shit in a different way!

Country dancing where the boys chose a girl to be their partner

OMG yes, I'd forgotten about that, it was awful...standing waiting just praying you'd be picked by someone, anyone. It was dreadful.

Do they still do pupil team leaders picking their teams in PE? I was always picked last as was crap at most team games. HAted that and wondered why the PE teacher didn’t just pick the teams randomly. I think they liked watching the humiliation and seeing who was popular.

1960 Every classmate with hand outstretched to receive a sharp smack with a ruler across the palm.Ouch.

When I was in Year 6, in 1978, our teacher would do a times table test on a Friday. We'd sit with our hands out and he would walk round with a ruler. If we got the answer wrong, or didn't answer fast enough, we'd get whacked across the hand.

I also remember seeing the same teacher explaining fractions to a boy who was standing at his desk. Every time the boy said "I don't understand" the teacher would bang the boy's head on his desk.

In Y6, I went on a residential to London and we stayed in a youth hostel. One morning, the boys were talking about the teacher's 'hairy cock' which they'd seen in the communal showers.

I often tell tales of my school days to my own Y4 class, and they absolutely lap it up!

Primary school had a small, unheated outdoor pool at one end of the playground. We had to get changed in the classroom, then walk all the way across the playground in our cozzies and towels. The rule was that after freezing in the pool, we had to undress at the benches next to it and walk back to the classroom with our towels round us.

The staff room had a very distinctive smell of fags and stale coffee.

The "naughty wall", where you had to stand at break with your nose touching the painted brick. No leaning allowed. If you moved, the headmaster made you stand on tiptoes and do it.

Writing poetry about the most random of subjects, like clearing out the class stationery cupboard or eating your lunch.

Primary (90s) -
Vegetarian kids being made to eat fish at school dinners.

Kids in reception being asked to run errands for the teacher (e.g. fetching worksheets that had been left on the photocopier).

Being made to stand in the corner if you were naughty.

Hot drinks machine that years 3-6 were allowed to use.

A supply teacher who used to swear at pupils.

Writing lines.

Secondary (00s) -

At least one teacher who hit pupils and got away with it.

Our year 7 form being had a right go at by the head shortly after we started for not standing up when he entered the room, when he knew full well we were all new and hadn't been told the rules.

Teachers using force to correct uniforms.

3 hour long detentions.

The cookery teacher made a rather loud, rude comment about the way I smelt to the rest of the girls in the group.

Pupils who said they wanted to be hairdressers being told off for it and told 'that isn't a proper job'.

Being allowed to go home for lunch.

Being allowed to leave at sixteen.

No mobile phones meaning exactly that - you had to leave it at home altogether if you had one.

Amazing how many PE teachers were sadists and or perverts.

Do kids still have communal water fountains or have they been removed for health and safety?

Yes they are still in schools holypoo. They are apparently making a resurgence in general life in an attempt to reduce plastic waste.

Curly haired assassin at our local secondary it is the TAs who do lunchtime supervision - half an hour to eat your sandwiches, half an hour in the quad supervising pupils, for no extra pay. Not a popular part of the job.

I was away sick when the class were 'taught' fractions. The teacher said he hadn't got time to teach me so he appointed another girl to teach me. She spent all of five minutes showing me. Thinking back I don't think she understood it either. I missed out any 11+ question which had a hint of a fraction in it. When I got to Grammar school and was taught properly I realised it was actually quite easy.

I didn't have my kit and literally had to do it in my bra and knickers. That wouldn't happen these days
It didn't happen in the past either

has reminded me of open air pools (freeeeeezing) does anyone remember having to walk through the orange disinfectant solution?

I also remember us being allowed to liberally douse younger children's scraped knees with dettol or tcp. Slightly sadistic!

Not having PE kit - at primary school we were made to tuck our dresses in our knickers or wear our vest and knickers if we didn't have our kit. Not when we were old enough to wear a bra though.

I also remember a humiliating ' 'medical' check where an alleged doctor looked down the front of my knickers (teacher in the room but still?!?! Wtf was that all about?) we all had it - I wasn't singled out, but at the time, even though I was only 5 or 6, I remember feeling very unsettled and shocked about it.

Ooh I remember the doctor looking down my knickers. I think we were older. I assumed they were looking for signs of puberty. Not pleasant though.

Our a-level physics teacher shot an actual air rifle inside the physics lab (into a blob of blutac attached to a toy car to demonstrate the conservation of liniar momentum)... He was fab, but as if you'd get away with that today!

Also I'm now wondering where on earth my parents got a tobacco tin from to put my dinner money in at primary school.... Everybody had one but I don't know of anyone whose parents actually smoked.

Outside toilets with a pen at the end where the school goat lived. Then having to come indoors to wash your hands.
The boys doing gardening whilst us girls did domestic science, the boys would sometimes come to the window and try to beg for food.
The maths teacher used to smoke a pipe during lessons.
The classrooms had large boilers, either coal or oil fired depending on which building they were in!
School assembly every morning, can still remember all the hymns now.