When I was at school, we were…

[Cogsworth3rd]

My parents talked about school practices such as getting the slipper and caning, about shutting misbehaved kids in a cupboard (classrooms often had a large walk in cupboard to put supplies, my primary school also had them). My “I can’t believe they used to do that” moments are supervising showers after PE to make sure you were fully naked, board rubbers thrown at children and facing the wall all lesson if you misbehaved. Some other aspects were more relaxed though, so if
you needed the toilet during a lesson you could go, the teacher could talk about a topic in more depth if the children were engaged in it, we could play in the snow at break.

What will be the “I can’t believe they used to do that” or “I can’t believe they wouldn’t let us do that” that our children will tell their children?

I’m so sorry you lost your mum so young.

Oh no it’s fine, it just shows how teachers literally shape young people. Sadly when my ds1 was 11 his dad also died suddenly and the school couldn’t have been more supportive and this continued throughout secondary school so things have improved!

Some things haven’t improved like schools telling girls not to show their ankles when wearing trousers 🤦🏽‍♀️ I have read other posters say the same on here and it has been shouted down but my dd was told (and so was I) that she wasn’t allowed to show her ankles at school despite having a condition that meant normal school socks and sport socks did not fit her. Whereas when I was at school we wore those rolled down ruffled look socks - does anyone remember them?!

I was smacked by the teacher at school in the last year of first school, so age 7 and 1983. I was a good kid, she told the class to be quiet, someone else said something, and she walloped me. I still remember the injustice!
The headmaster in middle school had a cane in his office, but no one got caned while I was there.

Guess what, the prison population was back then than it is today.

I meant to say half what it is now

That’s disgusting! Luckily the only priests at our private convent school were old and we never had dances. The Catholic boys school nearby did have dances though and you’d get randy boys snogging and groping you, hoping for sex. One boy brought me to a deserted teacher’s office for sex but I refused to do it and we dry humped.

One thing that appals the Gdcs when I tell them, is that there was NO CHOICE! of school dinners, which were largely stew and stodge, as we used to call the puddings. And you were expected to eat what you were given, whether you liked it or not.

A choice of school dinners would have been amazing - or even a choice not to have that disgusting custard on everything.

I wonder if isolation rooms (mine aren’t in secondary yet, so don’t know that much about them in practice, but it seems some schools use them willy nilly or for a minor uniform infraction - probably like some schools used caning with regularity in previous years).

@leavesinthebreezeI’m sorry about your DS’s dad and glad that he’s getting good support at school.

We actually has a teaching assistant who used to force us to eat meat in the infants school with phrases like "An animal has died for you to have that, eat it".b This was the 60s. She was quite mad. She would also witter on about when she met Queen Mary, who, I believe, was Queen Elizabeth's gran. Surprise, I ended up a vegetarian.

Aw at junior school we had the best school cook! She made delicious lunches and puddings and compared to what I read about other people’s experiences we were incredibly lucky.

We were the same - just red knickers instead! Had to walk the entire school dressed like that as the gym and the girls changing rooms were nowhere near each other

My primary and junior school in the 1960's had corporal punishment, usually a ruler over the knuckles, although the headmaster had a huge cane in his office and I knew a few boys that received that. If you repeatedly talked or dicked around in class you'd end up facing the wall with a "dunces" hat on. That was a pointed hat made of cardboard with dunce written on the front. This was far more humiliating than the ruler or cane. But to be fair these punishments were very rarely meted out. My secondary school in the late 60's/early 70's was an independent and actually quite forward thinking. We didn't have corporal punishment or detentions and teachers didn't throw the rubber at anyone. We didn't have to shower after PE either but we did have to wear navy knickers. In the summer we were allowed to wear our own summer clothes so of course we all wore mini skirts.

In answer to your question, I wonder if the current ‘inclusion’ strategy will be what our children tell their children about.

I am fully behind inclusion when it’s funded properly, but putting children with massively high needs in a mainstream class of 30 with one teacher and systematically breaking them, is not it.

The teacher being pulled in every direction supporting toilet training, children with ADHD who can’t cope with the curricular demands, those with ASD who are totally overwhelmed by the noise, those needing (different types of) sensory breaks, monitor blood sugar levels of diabetics, hoisting those with physical differences to the toilet etc etc

When the teacher is having to do al this alone (whilst actually trying to focus on teaching and learning, plus jumping through SLT and Ofsted’s latest hoops), everyone suffers.

Convent school girl from the late 60’s here. We were told that it was immoral to wear shiny patent shoes. The reason for this was that the reflection of your underwear might be seen on the shoes. The example given was that if we were standing on a busy bus or train a man could be sitting close by and see the knicker reflection and result in him having improper thoughts 🤢

There was no mention of the man being in the wrong. It was entirely the fault of the immoral girl with the shiny shoes!

I'm sure there's been research about women being utterly put off from doing sports or exercising due to the absolutely crazy shit we had to put up with in PE lessons. We also had 'check you were naked in showers'. It's not like an 11 year old is getting sweaty in a t-shirt and shorts standing around 'fielding' for rounders for half an hour. I don't think I ever really broke a sweat in PE!

Where did it come from that teenage girls were checked to be naked in the shower by teachers? I would love a teacher from the 90s to come on here and explain who told them they had to do that.

I doubt anyone told them - I'm sure my secondary school PE teachers were just naturally callous.

I wasn't Catholic, but chose the Catholic school over the non-Catholic one because I knew it had individual shower cubicles. But the teacher nevertheless popped her head round the curtain.

We also had weekly swimming at another local school's pool and had to strip naked in communal showers there.

I used to take the morning off if I was on my period, because the pe teachers wouldn't excuse me from swimming without a note. The first time my mum wrote a note it said I was "unwell" - my mum believed this to be well known code for being on your period - but the teacher read it out in front of the class and said "Does unwell mean that you're on your period? That shouldn't stop you doing swimming!" It was a humiliating start to year 7, and I hated PE for ever more.

I went to a comprehensive school in the mid 70s that was very strict.
After the Easter holidays, even if it was snowing, you had to be in your green checked horrible nylon summer dress. You couldn't buy this particular type of material anywhere else except a local market, and it was the material, not a made-up dress. My mum had to pay her cousin to make me up a couple of dresses each year, because she couldn't sew.
Any girl who didn't turn up in her dress on the first day of the summer term had to buy a second hand one from the PTA shop. If you tried to have the dress too short, as was the fashion, you were put in detention in the sewing room to stitch a frill extension onto it.
I still hate green checked dresses.
I used to wish I was a boy at times.
Their uniform was far more sensible.

I think I got off lightly, especially regarding the showers during PE, good lord

Lots of teachers sleeping with students though

I do remember the last year of junior school in particular, because the teacher used to read us Roald Dhal all the time, and talk about fossils. He also had a big jar of boiled sweets.

I can't really remember doing anything else during his class, there was one computer which we occasionally got to bash on the keyboard

In my junior school, if you forgot to bring something in like a book, pencil etc you would have to write out lines.
I must remember, not to forget to remember, to remember to bring in my pencil.
100 times for the first offence then it went up by 100 for each further offence.
They also used “the strap” a thick leather strap with a forked end. You had to hold your hand out. If you pulled your hand away before it hit you they would add on one more hit for each time you pulled away.

There did seem to be a disproportionate number of warped PE teachers.

In our 6th form common room smoking as allowed! 1980’s comp

That sounds horrific @mindutopia

Looking back, I think my school was pretty lenient. Yes, we had the communal showers but we weren’t supervised using them.

School uniform was just a navy skirt and cardigan/jumper and a light blue shirt. There was a tie but you could wear it with top buttons undone and a polo shirt in summer was fine. No rules about skirt length and you could wear trousers in winter. I’m aware of many schools now where the children have to keep blazers on even when it’s hot, but it was nothing like that for us.

We had a school trip to Blackpool each summer (age 13-15), the teachers would head to the pub and we were left to roam around.

In my primary school we only had a few set lessons a week, we were then supposed to get on with working through our maths book or doing the reading and writing tasks set out for the week, but nobody monitored if we did them all at the beginning of the week and spent the rest of the time helping ourselves to the craft cupboard. Uniform wasn’t compulsory at primary. Then again, this was the 1970s, and the HT wore long skirts and had bare feet!