Anyone at school during the 1970s? Memories?

[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?

The BBC computer or television getting wheeled in.
The student teachers printing off work sheets using the "Banda "?
The mince and potatoes for dinner. Followed by semolina.
The tuck shop. Trios and wagon wheels.
Singing "BINGO"

"Singing together" on the cassette.

The boys doing woodwork and the girls doing sewing classes.

The teacher reading one of the kids because of his sticky out ears and everyone laughing.
Making a dance routine up to Boney-M.

Getting threatened by "black Jack" the strap.

Coke machines in the corridors.

Regulation knicker inspections.

A bit later (1982) but I vividly remember Squeaker and Co with the singing together sessions.

Singing Boney M in the playground.

Elastics.

Huge long skipping ropes.

Only the favourites being chosen to help with the Headmistresses buzzer.

Lovely but possibly alcoholic infant teacher (had a hip flask) permanently eating extra strong mints.

All Things Bright and Beautiful

I started primary school in1976 and can remember doing PE in our vests and knickers, no PE kit back then!

Our head mistress was was strict and used to terrify me. She used to 'make an example of you' if you had been naughty by means of pulling your trousers/skirt down in front of whole assembly and smacking your bottom😦

I also had one teacher who used to have a mirror in the classroom and if you forgot your full stops he would get a pen and draw the full stop in between your eyes(a bit like a hindu) and you were told to stand and look at yourself in the mirror!

At lunchtime you had to eat ALL your dinner or you were sat next to the headmistress who made sure you ate every last bit! I left 3 sprouts once and was sent to her table, I was almost wretching as I tried to force them down🤢

Great times😄

Countfoscoslittlewhitemice did we go to the same school?

Oh god, I remember dinner ladies standing over me, forcing me to eat my dinner, grated carrot, hard boiled eggs and beetroot, yuk! It's left me with a lifelong anxiety about having to finish a meal and I still feel it when I go to a restaurant and consequently can never finish my food. Ever.

Yes, it was ghastly plus the ‘some mothers leave it all to us” comments. Horrible people!

Carbolic soap - great for eczema on your hands! Elastics and pogo sticks. Thick grey school knickers with elastic waist band that might snap...although looking back the rule on the solid knickers was probably down to girls spending half of playtime doing handstands or cartwheels. Staff were probably more aware of the possibility of dirty old men watching from across the field...
Music and movement - as the only girl with short hair (we're back on the narc mothers thread!) - automatically the first made to "be a boy" if the programme expected both genders.

I was at county first school from 75 (nursery class where we went 1 term of afternoons, 1 term of mornings, then 1 term all day) until 80 when I moved up to middle school.

Things I particularly remember

• Fletcher Maths books - and using Resources Mathlink Cubes (Set of 100), Multicolor these interlocking cubes to work the sums out


• Music & Movement and Time & Tune - both played over large wall speakers. Later they also included the tv series Words & Pictures shown on the big tv wheeled around on a tall trolley.


• singing songs from Tararaboomdeay song book in assembly.


• Each child being given an old tabaco tin filled with crayons at the beginning of the year and tearing the paper down just enough to use it without breaking the crayon - you weren’t allowed replacements if you broke them. Everyone hoped to get a gold or silver crayon and didn’t want white.


• PE in vest and pants and black plimsolls from Woolworths Ladybird range


• ’hungarian goulash’ for lunch which was really mince and gravy served with rings of pasta


• lessons on the school field on hot days; summer class photo in 4th year included everyone in the swimming costume, socks and shoes (as that was the year you had swimming lessons - I still can’t swim 40+ years later!)


• being taken home a couple of times by the headmistress in her MG car because mum had overslept (she was a nurse who worked nights)


• never forget being forced to drink milk (which I can’t stand to this day because of being made to as a child!)

Time and Tune - one about a newspaper "Echo Echo".... another about maybe South America? "Sunbird, tell me a story". Maybe trains ....and canals

I graduated in the USA in 1975, so was in school from 1963 (1st grade) through 1975 (12th grade - Senior). Things were so much different in school, or as a kid, back then.
You either walked to school or rode the bus, no rides from parents. Until, of course, you were old enough to drive yourself. THEN you went off campus for lunch!
No cell phones, or even personal computers (pc's) back then. If you answered the phone, you were obviously at home!!!
Busy party lines on your home phone!
Summer days spent playing baseball, whiffleball, football, etc. with all the other neighborhood kids. No one stayed in the house unless they were grounded, which is something parents actually did back then.
Drinking straight from the garden hose, After dinner, playing anywhere in the neighborhood and not being home till the house lights came on, Catching lighting bugs in a jar, Riding your bike without wearing a helmet, Not having "summer homework" to do during the summer. Summer was when, as a kid, you totally forgot about school. It all seemed so easy, and innocent, to be a kid back then.

As a kid in school back in the 70's, the biggest difference was that there were no police walking our halls for security back then. We never would have ever thought of guns in school, unless it was the country boys who were going hunting after school. City boys would never have had access to guns, let alone ever know how to use one! Never would we have thought of using guns against each other! The worst was the shout "Fight! Fight! Fight!" which meant there was a fight somewhere on the grounds.

Yay, Music & Movement,! What was that all about? Warm milk, being allowed to walk home on your own, SRA reading scheme, crematorium & graveyard next to the school with a distinctly pervy gravedigger. Classroom pet (guinea pig) who went home with different pupils each school holiday.

School purse belt for senior school which usually only had enough room for one 50p piece which is what dinner usually cost (early 80s)
In juniors, being shown whole school public information films in the hall, usually about the dangers of playing on building sites and railway lines.
Sawdust covering up where some poor kid had vomited (didn't ever mask the smell).
Playing Jacks and elastics. Best of all was marbles though and desperate to get rid of the little ones (cant remember their name) and win the emperors.
Conkers - threading a string through the hole you made in the conker and smashing your opponent's to smithereens.
Butterscotch tart - the highlight of the week. Still dream of it...
Lumpy mashed potato served up using an ice cream scoop just serve the damn ice cream.
The pigswill leftover of school dinners dumped outside the back door of the canteen.
Hopscotch in the playground.
"Kisschase"
"Bundle!!", what everyone would shout and then rush over to watch some kids (usually two boys) have a fight.

Can’t remember the name of it but it was the programme that had the kids inventing blockaboots someone tell me I’m not dreaming it 😂🤷🏻‍♂️

Fatty bacon and banana custard
Being made to jump into freezing outdoor school pool (and my mum sending me with a shower cap to swim in instead of a proper swimming hat - mortifying!)
PE in vest and pants
The school rabbit and gerbils
Running through the school showers
Hymn practice
Accidentally electrocuting the physics teacher with the van Der graff generator
Climbing "The Hump' - a huge hill on the school field, which in reality was a small pile of earth/grass
Craft afternoon on Wednesdays

There wasn't any corporal punishment at the schools I went to, and I was horrified by tales of it from friends who went to different schools.

Public service films that scared us shitless, shown on the schools on television wheeled into the classroom

Late 60s/70s: school meals were made from scratch by proper cooks. Absolutely no choice - take it or leave it. Chips a rare treat (probably once a month) with great excitement when we could smell them going into the dining hall.

Love this thread.

Born 1964, I remember

A teacher throwing the blackboard rubber at naughty kids
The TV on wheels
Pink custard
Chips at dinner were a special occasion!
The threat of the cane
Clackers, marbles , skipping in the long rope, elastics, jacks
Singing hymns in assembly
School discos and that song where everyone sat on the floor behind each other, Oops upside your head??
Warm beetroot for dinner 🤢 I could never eat it, and for years after wouldn't touch it

And learning to read with Janet and John books!

Omg blockaboots!

YES

Nerd alert:

BBC computers started in the 1980s. My school got 1 computer in 1981 and I was in the first class to take computer studies.

Listening to the radio in class with work books and just getting on with it.

No uniform until secondary.

I remember some older girls at high school having to stand on stage and read a written apology to the whole school before getting the cane, on stage.

They had written something on the seats in Woolworth's café.

At primary what you learned depended on the teacher's own interests.

At the second primary I attended the school had rapidly expanded due to new housing being built so we got teachers straight out of teacher training and mobile classrooms.

My memory is that most girls had relatively short hair compared to today. I mean page-boy type styles, maybe shortish bunches. Today they all seem to have really long hair our mothers wouldn’t have allowed.

Singing
“Never marry an old maid
I’ll tell you the reason why
Her neck’s so long and stringy, boys
You’d fear she’d never die.

Also a paean to Jessie James killing people and robbing the Glendale train.

Started school in 1970 and we'll remember many things

Savings account with TSB, think we took in 5p every Monday and it was written in our passbooks
Walking to school on your own or with friends, I don't remember my mum walking me to school EVER, not even in the infants!
Story time when the teacher would read to us while puffing away on a cigarette
Soooo much singing and singing practice
Being told how lucky our generation was because of North Sea oil......we'd all be rich and be able to retire early