what still gives you nightmares from school?

[BrickPoet]

bullying

Bullying. I had counselling later in life and my therapist said it was very telling that I didn’t even shed a tear when talking about being raped and sexually abused at 19, but I cried my eyes out when telling her about being bullied at secondary school.

I literally used to have dreams where I was back at school but at the last moment realised I had already done it. No idea what that was about.

I went through lots of stages

Being sexually assaulted on school premises by another pupil - I just froze

Seeing a cockroach type thing crawl in another pupils hair

Disclosing my childhood rape/incest to a friend who then told others - I had to quickly deny it

When I took an overdose, was off school - rumour mill stated I had an abortion

Hated PE, preferred to study

Feeling like a loner - just wanting to study, would often study alone in library.

Missing a lot of school. Feeling very alone. Knowing life at home was not normal. Feeling very different because of this.

Knowing my life as a child/teen was not like my friends - feeling embarrassed, ashamed

Seeing and feeling how quickly most teachers just ignored me, wanted to achieve, but wasn't the typical golden child with the nice family/parents

Feeling different - dead mum always made me feel different. Always felt I was looking in on everyone else

I know I was also horrible to other students - I regret this

God so much....

I liked school and have fond memories. I even liked PE.

It was the fighting that I hated at secondary school. I was never involved directly but the atmosphere always felt unstable, like something could kick off at any moment. I developed a lot of nervous habits in year 7, like compulsively pulling out my hair and pinching the skin on the back of my hands.

It was not having any friends for me. I've got tons now and I feel really lucky, but I really can't bear to think about losing them. I feel a cold sense of dread at the very idea of being friendless.

Sports day. Sports in general. The nastiness, the contempt and the bullying of the PE teacher.

I left school at 18, binned my trainers on the way home and didn't buy another pair until I was 48. Haven't been in a gym or in a sports team since. The very thought still makes me feel panicky.

What a good job they did !! 🙄

having to stand outside on the playground in the freezing cold during break/lunch times. I had a bad reputation for punctuality in the winter but that was to just land myself a lunch time detention.

Generally treated as cattle than a human being.

Games teachers
Bullies
Being the poor kid with NHS glasses
Games teachers
The horrible corrugated corridor between the two school sites with spit hanging from the beams
Games teachers
Strange how many of the pupil bullies were the sporty type...
I always vowed I'd home school if ever I had kids and send them to more pleasant places than school for socializing

The bullying I suffered, I was hit, kicked, pushed downstairs, spat on, had my stuff stolen, I didn't fit in. I only found the reason I didn't fit in when I was diagnosed with Autism 5 years ago. One girl when I was at primary school told me that our teacher, who was her aunt, had told her mum that I was going to be taken away from my family & put in care. I spent 3 years being terrified every time someone knocked on the door, I was too scared to tell my parents as I thought they would make me go if it happened as they were very law abiding. I still have panic attacks about it now.

The mental maths sats test.

Things I hear that are going on now to be honest. Some of the stories from the local schools are a million times worse than the low level stuff that went on when I was a kid. The media want to blame TikTok but I think the current toxic school environments are the cause of the mental health crisis. My kid has improved no end since starting online schooling

So much questionable behaviour from pe teachers regarding showers.

Maths exams, as it was my weak subject. I still dream about answering endless questions that start to morph into completely cryptic symbols and codes. (No actual maths symbols.) Everyone else seems to understand them and is scribbling furiously, but my paper keeps expanding with no end in sight. The teacher says “pens down!” and collects the booklets. She’s kind and says she’ll collect mine last. But more and more questions keep appearing. Finally she says she can’t wait anymore and leaves the room. I’m in a complete panic at this point, and run after her, still trying to write. I even follow her onto her bus, writing and yelling “but I’ve nearly finished!” And then wake up with a jolt. It’s quite surreal, and I’m starting to recognise within the dream that it’s a dream.

Izal toilet paper.
Bullying.
Uniform - skirts only even i snow and you had to wear full uniform travelling to and from school.
PE.
Needlework.
Domestic Science - I have never starched anything in my life since then. Who does?

Then being forced to attend VI form at my brother's school. I still have dreams about it. It made me ill to the point of hospitalisation, but still not allowed to leave.

I've said this before on here - those awful info videos from the 70s/80s of children getting electrocuted/run over/drowned etc and being forced to watch what to me, seemed a pretty graphic account of children dying from these accidents.

I remember once realising we were about to watch another one of these videos and remember asking to leave and the headmaster told me I was "being a very silly little girl"

Genuinely found them terrifying and couldn't opt in or out of watching them!

Bullying and PE, particularly the flipping ‘Pier Relay’ - unique to one school so everyone else breathe a sigh of relief - and cross country on the Long Sands in shorts in the middle of winter!

Sadly I agree with the previous poster. I am concerned about schools today.
Tiktok or similar seems to have warped the minds of most their peers.
The children spend most of the day repeating sexualized content from tiktok.
Between that and the SATs my child stopped going to school.
I am disgusted that any parents allow their child to consume online content like this.
It makes for a lonely world.

This maybe a unpopular opinion..the internet has done more harm to society than good.

Communal showers. I went to an all girls school and we had a PE teacher who would stare at us in the shower, it was disturbing. However in my third year they installed individual shower cubicles where you could undress. Even so, she would always be in the locker room, watching us. Makes me shiver to think of it.

Similar,male pe teacher would stare at us and any attempt to cover genitals was actively discouraged.. being teen boys most of us were very self conscious.

The yearly 'no uniform day'. I had a lovely childhood but my dad was a minister and they didn't have spare money for branded clothes and labels...so I'd agonise over what to wear so I'd 'fit in'. Most of the time, the anticipation was worse than the day itself but it still makes my blood run cold thinking about it.

PE. I hated team sports and was usually the last to be picked. The girl who was usually captain of one of the teams was playing at national level by the age of 16 and went on to compete in the Olympic games, and couldn't understand my reluctance.

Singing/Music Lessons/Hymn practice. I hated singing out loud (would mime in morning assembly) but the music teacher would ask us to sing solo in lessons. I also couldn't read music. I dropped music as soon as I could.

The boredom of sitting through endless dull lessons and the guilt I felt about doing virtually no work.

PE was particularly awful, I used to hide in the bushes during cross-country runs and rejoin the group for the final lap. Luckily our PE teacher didn't care, they must have been aware of around a third of us disappearing for most of the run. I was completely hopeless at all sports (except one which I was extremely good at as our lovely granny played it with us every day in the summer and it never appeared on the curriculum 😫). I was also terribly overweight due to comfort eating because of an abusive home life, I found having to lumber around in a short games skirt completely hideous and still can't understand why joggers couldn't be an option. We'd play in our games knickers if we didn't have our skirts (and gymnastics was in games knickers by default). Put me off group exercise for life!

During one particularly memorable incident, it was decided by the rest of my team that I would go in goal for hockey. I was quite happy with this arrangement as the chances of me scoring anything were zero and the padding offered a certain level of safety. Except for some reason I can't quite remember, I fell over while wearing the padding and couldn't get up, flailing like a beetle on its back. It's now a funny memory but at the time-mortifying!