If you went to school in the 70s/80s what happened that wouldn't happen now?

[TheVampiresWife]

I started primary in 1976, left secondary in 1989. Some of mine:

Corporal punishment (the most obvious one for a lot of us I think). In junior school (early 80s) we had a headmaster who would save all the week's canings for Friday afternoon assembly. The kids lined up on stage and were caned in front of the whole school. It was fucking horrific looking back - I remember a boy in my year crying and wetting himself on stage and he never lived it down, the nicknames followed him to secondary school

Girls doing needlework/cookery while boys did woodwork/metalwork

Boy in my class whose surname was Gaye. Geography teacher used to call him 'Poof' and 'Queer' which of course other kids found hilarious and joined in. He changed his surname halfway through secondary school

In my primary class an overweight girl was made to stand on a chair so the whole class could see what we would look like if we were greedy and ate too much

The headmaster who caned kids on stage also used to get girls to kiss him on the cheek and say thank you at prize givings. He also used to make comments about how we were 'developing' and once said in a conversation with my mum that I was getting 'a broad back'. The mums didn't seem to mind his comments

In primary school the children in the SEN class were described as [vile word I can't bring myself to type] by teachers and children alike quite unselfconsciously

In secondary school an English teacher had an affair with a sixth former and she became pregnant. He left but wasn't reprimanded and got a teaching job in another school the following year. The couple are still together all these years later!

It really was a different time and not necessarily for the better, either. I do have lots of happy memories of school too though!

Also in 6th Year, one of our former primary teachers died. She was a sadistic bitch who'd terrorised generations of kids. When she died the Head picked out the 6th year kids who'd been in her P7 class to go to the funeral to " represent the school". I remember the minister droning on about what a dedicated teacher she'd been etc, while I looked at her coffin thinking "I hope you burn in Hell, you bitch)."

Use of asbestos mats in chemistry lessons.

I've just thought of something else. There was a lad in my infant class whose extended family still lived in India. His grandfather was killed by a crocodile. The headline in our class newspaper was A'S GRANDAD EATEN BY CROCODILE! We all drew pictures

Not funny really, but... a little bit funny as hell

@OllyBJolly I get a sense now that it's university or you've failed.

My school was very much like this in the 80s though. Every year in September we had ‘prize giving’ where the previous summer’s leavers all had to go up on stage one by one like in a graduation ceremony, to get our hands shaken by our MP. They’d announce everyone like ‘This is [Name], she has A-levels in X, Y and Z, and she is going on to the University of Blah to read Y’. But if anyone had dared to leave school and go and get a job instead of going to uni, then the announcement would go ‘… and she is going into [pause, followed by tone of absolute withering scorn worthy of Penelope Keith] EMPLOYMENT!’

@UsedName000 Gosh yes the asbestos mats! I’d never even given that a thought until just now.

Another funny thing about registers. My mum worked as a school secretary in a primary school (not mine). She used to have to go into work on the final day of the summer holidays which I guess was kind of like an inset day for the staff to get everything set up. Her job was to crank out hundreds of letters on the Xerox machine (!) and prepare the registers. When I was about 11-13, she didn’t want to leave me home alone so they let her bring me into work with her that day. She used to give me little jobs to do, and several years running I wrote out all the registers for that school (boys first of course). Imagine any school letting a random child do that today!

Junior school 70s : massive classes, lots of projects but very little formal teaching. The most able pupils being given extra tutoring for the eleven plus. The rest of us being left to get on with art or worksheets.
Senior school ( convent): you were going to be either a nurse, teacher or secretary.

VIth Former in the 1970s and older masters telling us about flying through the flak storm over Berlin; depth charging U-boats in the North Atlantic; fighting in the steaming jungles of Burma. That will never happen again.

Threatened with the cane (but never actually used)

Knickers and vest p.e. in primary

Lack of compassion for SEN children by teachers (many, looking back were ASD).

Lazy teacher not teaching us anything and always marking our terrible work with As, but everyone failing the GCSE miserably, unsurprisingly!

Lack of acceptance of gay/camp school children by teachers and therefore the other children. Those teachers were so damaging as role-models. This damaged my friend so much that he became an addict and eventually died. I blame the terrible environment and cruel teachers for his death.

Teachers taking the piss out of ginger children In primary school, they were cruel bastards.

Girls not allowed to wear trousers

PE tiny netball mini kilt skirts, a nightmare for me as a dumpy legged teenager.

However, there was no sexism regarding cookery, sewing, cdt, electronics, girls and boys did both without any reference to gender roles.

I was jealous of a sixth form girl who was allegedly having a relationship with the sexy science teacher. I blame my rampaging hormones!

Safeguarding issues, even though believed not taken any further. So glad that safeguarding is taken seriously now (although not perfect of course).

My primary school run from 4 to 9 years. When I was 9, I was responsible for making sure everyone who should get on the bus did ( about 20 children) and the with help for one other 9 year old was responsible for their behaviour on the bus.. bus monitors were even allowed to give out lines!

I am escaping from leaving a Primary where girls are still not allowed to wear trousers!

@MyCatEatsPrawnCrackers

I am escaping from leaving a Primary where girls are still not allowed to wear trousers!

The primary and both the secondaries my children went to STILL don’t allow girls to wear trousers (until sixth form for the secondaries). In fact, several of the secondaries around here don’t allow girls to wear trousers.

Very behind the times.

So much of this is familiar. Corporal punishment was banned by my second year of juniors (the last boy to get the cane was the headmaster’s own son) but there was still low-level violence from some teachers. I remember a teacher hitting a boy quite hard over the head with a biscuit tin full of stationary; we laughed because of the clanging sound it made but it must have hurt. Another teacher shoved a boy in the back because he was walking too slowly and knocked him over. 4th year juniors (year 6) were left in charge of supervising classrooms full of younger children during wet playtimes.

In secondary school, for a statistics lesson we had find out how much our home was worth and share it with the class. WTF was the teacher thinking?

@Vulgarlady I actually consider myself fairly lucky to have gone to junior school in the 70s. Compared with the hard slog of modern primary school which my DS had to endure, my own school was much more progressive and the project based work far more interesting. We also did lots more fun stuff outside of class! We all did the 11+ and there was certainly no extra tutoring for more able children, but I did like the fact that there were worksheets at different levels so that children of different abilities could work much more at their own pace than they do now.

We had a physics teacher (male) who always used to turn up in full Lycra. On my last day of school he wrote a poem in my leavers book about the ‘wonderful shape of my ar** and am sure he must have written similar in other girls leaver books.

Also we had a French teacher (male) who frequently dropped things under the table so he could crawl under and look up girls skirts

Head of year literally just opened the drawer in his office and started throwing everything in it at my head because he didn’t agree with something I said. Quite funny to look back on but a bit scary at the time!

What I remember about leaving school was you didn’t have to have a university degree or even O Levels or CSEs to go into a lot of careers or jobs

A lot of stuff was open for you to try even if you were rubbish at anything academic.
Dh went into a career with A levels (you could enter at 16 with 4 O levels or CSE equivalent) where now you have to have a degree.

We put a heavy metal bin on top of a door so when it was opened it would fall on the teachers head. The teacher was an elderly nun. It did fall on her head, shocked her badly, cut her and drew a lot of blood. Nothing was ever done about it. She left the room in tears and presumably didn't tell anyone. I like to think the whole lot of us would be excluded these days as we certainly should have been back then. Disgusting children.

I was at primary school from about 1989 I think.

• headteacher used to pick me up and cuddle me frequently. Can't imagine this happening now but there was nothing dodgy about him. He was just a lovely lovely man.
• deputy head was another matter altogether. He used to send me out to 'find a book' every lesson, then follow me out and say/do weird things. I told my mum and she said I was being ridiculous and I should get over myself! . He was a very well regarded teacher but I can't have been the only one he was inappropriate with.
• teachers making people stand up in assembly to yell at them and tell them they will amount to nothing. My brother was one of those targeted and it was awful.
• kids were put over teachers' knees to be smacked.
• I hated PE in knickers and vest. Having to get changed in front of everyone was awful. There was a girl who was really well developed and her life was made to be hell. The teachers did nothing about it.

In senior school:

• having things thrown at us such as wooden board rubbers etc
• being dragged down the corridors by teachers
• teachers having affairs with pupils (never the young or attractive teachers, always the middle aged letchy ones).
• teachers standing in the communal showers watching everyone get washed

I remember at primary school there was a cut through accross the playground and the public would use the path and walk through during playtime. Anyone could wander in. There was a middle aged man who used to come and take pictures of the girls playing on the climbing frame (when their skirts went up). A really high climbing frame with concrete underneath. Noone batted an eyelid although we did think he was weird.
We also had a charity event with Jimmy Saville and were left watching him doing exercises at one point with no adults around.

At high school the free school meals kids had a token and a separate queue. And sometimes the teachers would announce they were getting things free.

Smoking in the staff room

Male teacher in girls changing room all the time

Teacher taking year 11’s to the pub

Mercury thermometers! Just remembered.

And those asbestos mats yup.

Wow.

Born 1972. Went to a very small rural primary, so going up to secondary in our local town was a big shock.

In 1st /2nd year (12/13 yes) there was a playground game called ‘Rape’ (I kid you not). A group of boys would pick a girl and chase her. When they caught her, they’d try to get her skirt up and knickers down… then they’d kind of lose interest and wander away. Until the next time. It’s weird but being ‘chosen’ to be chased was almost seen as a compliment - like you were pretty enough to be fancied? At the same time it was very important to not get caught or be seen to want to get caught. Pretty horrific looking back, I don’t remember there ever being an adult in the playgrounds.

And the racism, sexism, homophobia etc was off the scale - and considered completely acceptable. Pakis, wogs, poofs, slags, sluts… I don’t know if this is different now though.

@workwoes123

And the racism, sexism, homophobia etc was off the scale - and considered completely acceptable. Pakis, wogs, poofs, slags, sluts… I don’t know if this is different now though.

I think it's better now, but it's only a thin veneer of progression for many. There's still a lot of poor attitudes around.

I'd like to think most of us have grown up, adapted and become more understanding and accepting of diversity, but we're a million miles away from a world where it doesn't exist.

@VerticalHorizon I agree sadly. DD left school in 2015. When she first came out in 2012 she was bullied relentlessly. To be fair the school did intervene and her bullies were disciplined (didn't put them off for long though) - I'm not sure that would've happened in the 70s/80s. But then I'm not sure a teenager would've come out to their school friends then, either.