School in the 1970s

[Malie]

Was chatting to a friend who also went to school in the 1970s. We agree they were quite different to now. Anyone else go to school then?

Very little corporal punishment at any of the schools I attended. We would occasionally hear that a child had been sent to the head for the slipper - but it certainly didn't happen as a rule in the classroom .

I had the same French book @MulberryMoon

Started school 1969 and finished 1980 ish so full on 1970’s education.

Infant School - I remember Dick and Dora. But I could read before I started school. Learning decimalisation , playing plasticine, rods, straws, bringing threepenny bit bit for a wagon wheel at snack time. Separate boys and girls playground. Tucking skirts into knickers so boys couldn’t see knickers when you did cartwheels.

Primary School - Times tables, separate boys and girls entrances/playground. Girls did knitting/sewing and boys did football. Loved maths. Worked out height of trees in school field by Pythagoras. Long multiplication. Learnt names of all different trees by collecting leaves. Egg and spoon champion - it was the only race I could win (by secretly holding into the egg). Picking up litter in playground. Elastics and clackers at playtime. Top of the class. 10/10 every week on spelling test. No homework. Loved every minute. Passing 11 plus.

Grammar School - Girls only. Knowing no one. Everyone Posh. Too hard. I wasn’t the clever one any more. Homework. PE in navy knickers and embroidered initials on blue lurex top. Green science lab gown - also with embroidered initials. Brown briefcase. Teachers in black gowns. Being told I shouldn’t be there because I didn’t know what binary was. Crying into my school book when the maths teacher laughed at me. Crying more when my mum said it was because I wasn’t listening properly. Feeling like an imposter. Horrible. 1980. Left at 15. God I tried.

I remember being slapped with a metre stick in front of the classroom as a 10 yr old. Village life meant that I could never out perform the local shopkeepers child and that was a strange thing for a child to understand. The same child was asked to assist the visiting school doctor and I still remember her staring at my budding nipples.
Educationally the school was very sound but I remember the strong sense of class very clearly.

Buying a school badge for 15p to sew onto our blazers
backing books with wallpaper
learning a dance routine to Hey Big Spender in the playground
good times

Tv being wheeled out on a very tall stand to watch ‘How We Used to Live’ at Primary school, used to love that programme.

at one point my dm could not afford my dinner so i took sandwiches, and had to sit on a table on my own due to it

Does anyone else remember a game where you had a tennis ball in a sock and you stood, back to a wall, saying a rhyme whilst whacking the tennis ball either side of you ? Whenever you said "sir" in the rhyme you had to lift one leg up to the side and hit the tennis ball in the gap.

Yes!

Googled and found the rhyme on another forum... I think the one we used was slightly different but definitely involved tea.

"Want a cup of tea 'Sir', No 'Sir', why 'Sir', Cos I Gotta cold 'Sir', Where you get the cold from, from the north pole 'Sir', what you doing there 'Sir', Catching polar bears 'Sir', how many did you catch 'Sir', one 'Sir', two 'Sir', three 'Sir', the rest caught me 'Sir', threw me in the sea 'Sir', now that's the end of me 'Sir'. Everytime the words 'Sir' was said they bounced it between the legs. AAAhhhhh life seems so simple and worry free back then :-)

I'm half way through Apaches, its brutal!

This sounds like primary school in Germany!

Going into assembly with a record of either classical or a modern classic song playing in the background and that you sat and listened to whilst everyone arrived.

One teacher bashing out the hymns or the other songs on the knackered old piano. We loved singing.

MulberryMoon Yes that's them. I don't remember the text book but we may have had that too. The images are very familiar, just as I remember them, up on the screen as we listened to a recording of the narrative. I eventually left school with a grade U French O level so it didn't do me much good. Thanks for that.

I remember it. I’m not sure if it was a Scottish thing.

For us the teacher would draw a circle on the blackboard and you had to put your nose inside the circle. The board could be rolled up or down depending on how mischievous he felt that day. It was always turned into a class comedy show.

Definitely not just Scottish as I grew up in London.

I remember the Naughty Boy being sent to stand in corner of the classroom in
with his back to us. He stood there doing that thing where you wrap your arms around yourself so it looks like you're being hugged by someone and pretended to kiss the imaginary person. This would have been Y5.

I remember if someone standing in the corner looked round the teacher would say "Turn around, I don't want to look at your ugly face" Charming

I started school in 1970, it was very different to now. It was in Ireland so no school dinners, though the poor kids (I was one) went to a lunch room for milk and sandwiches, currant buns on a Wednesday. The school was run by a nun and she was very strict, you were slapped on the hands and legs for misbehaving, no caning though. There was 41 in my class, all girls, but it was the biggest in the school, they averaged just under 40 I think. There was four rows in the class, and we were streamed by test results, top row down. I was in the top row except for Irish, hopeless at that and i enjoyed school, it was strict but not cruel in any way. We had a huge school yard where we mostly played skipping or chasing. Secondary school was a new mixed comprehensive, so a whole new world for me. We had male teachers but there was never any scandal with pupils, at least not that I heard about. I read now about boys in school objectifying and even sexually assaulting girls, there was no way any of that happened at my school it would have been shut down immediately. I loved secondary school but there was a lot of messing going on amongst the boys and it did distract me from learning, I didn't do very well academically, I remember my school days very fondly though.

I longed to take a packed lunch but my mum wouldn't let me, because chool dinners were horrendous and you had to eat everything. Except - Fridays were fish and chips and Arctic Roll for pudding - heaven!

Quite a few pupils used to go home for lunch, assume that doesn't happen so much nowadays

I think I knew every bit of the wall of one classroom corner I stood in it so often. Just hoped the teacher wouldn’t say ‘See me after the lesson’ as that would be painful!

Does anyone remember the children's encyclopaedia with multiple volumes and a variety of pastel colourways? Also remember a reference book of weird natural history essays that told semi-narrative stories for exotic species.

We had sets of Children's Britannica and Encyclopaedia Britannica at home. The Internet of the time 😂