Things you remember being shocked or surprised to learn at school

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Some basic facts you learn at school can be really shocking when you first hear them, and this was long before the Horrible Histories books. Some of the OMG moments I remember were:

Punishments in Victorian schools, such as being hauled up to the ceiling.

The Incan punishment of holding a child over a fire of chilli peppers, so they would inhale the smoke.

Swarms of locusts destroying all greenery in minutes.

The story of Abraham nearly sacrificing his son Isaac. (Yes I know, it’s a Bible story which probably didn’t happen, but in my primary school days, it was almost presented as fact, before teachers had to say “some people believe”).

Of course, a teacher would normally explain these without any emotion at all, and somehow this made them all the more astounding, that they didn’t seem bothered at all.

That rape in marriage was legal in the uk until 1991 (A Level Sociology).

I also remember being bitterly disappointed finding out how small the UK was when the teacher showed us on a map in year 2, I can remember that feeling to this day 🤣

I actually think this one would shock a lot of people.
We always see Western society as so progressive and yet still in our parents lifetime woman couldn’t have bank accounts, they could be raped by their husband.

I did a sociology module as part of my degree and it was a real eye opener how far we have come as a society over the past century.

Even things like Send with the Warlock report - that was only the 80’s.

I wish sociology was taught like RE in school and was compulsory. A combined RE, sociology and philosophy curriculum where 1 term each school year is dedicated to each module.

When the contraceptive pill was first introduced in the UK in 1961, general practitioners and NHS clinics typically required a woman to be married and to have her husband's explicit permission or signature to receive a prescription.

Serving in tennis and how to hit the ball, forehand and backhand. My dad had only taught me hitting the ball like tossing a pancake in a frying pan 😅

That most kids live with their parents.

That being fed is normal.

That being abused is not (friend told me this, not a teacher).

Oh yes this reminds me as well when I found out that women needed their father or husband to counter sign a credit card until relatively recently (definitely 70s, not sure if it was 80s too…?)

I am old enough to remember the change in law, it wasn't popular with a lot of MPs.

Newspapers ran cartoons of women turning up at the police araton en mass on a Monday morning.

Oh and in PSHE when we were told to look around our class as 1 in 10 children experienced domestic abuse at home. That was a dark lesson!

God that’s crazy. I always assumed it was something that had been overlooked as opposed to something openly and actively supported.

It’s hard to imagine now! Until the mid-1970s in the UK, women often needed a man to sign, guarantee, or consent to a mortgage. Lenders routinely required a husband's permission, a male guarantor, or discounted a woman's individual earning power.

It’s no wonder how deep routed misogyny is when things like that were still happening to/around people very much still alive today!

I had to get Dad's signature to open my first bank account in 1973

I know!

My DS is 22 and he’s horrified when I talk about changes that occurred just before I was born or in my lifetime. I’m reassured he’s horrified!

Daughters were just an extension of their fathers. They went from paternal authority directly to marital authority under the doctrine of coverture.

I was seriously taken aback during my first French class to discover that they had entirely different words for things, as up until then I thought they used the same words we did, except spelled and pronounced differently.😂

This always makes me so angry. Right let's shun and shame unmarried women for getting pregnant but at the same time let's not allow them something that would stop that happening.

We had to petition the school to let us wear trousers in winter instead of skirts and this was 1995!

Same! The government and medical establishment feared it would encourage promiscuity and undermine traditional family morals. Contraception was viewed strictly as a tool for family spacing within marriage, not for premarital sex.

@DreamingOfGeneHunt What was your school’s reason for not letting girls wear trousers?

Girls wear skirts, trousers are for the boys. Pretty much exactly that sentence from the headmaster when my friend first asked.

That not everyone had a loving family - it was a horrible shock when I got to secondary school from our lovely village primary school where everyone knew one another to find kids with no nuclear family, abusive/absent non - interested parents. Not sure much has changed in the last 30yrs either…

I remember learning that China had a one child only policy and that if the first baby was a girl then some families would put them in a bin or get rid of the baby somehow. I was definitely no older than 8 when the teacher told us this and I can remember another classmates Mum asking me in the newsagents after school if it was true that we were told this so I assumed he must have told his Mum and she was angry/upset/annoyed that our teacher was telling us stuff like that.

What was your school’s reason for not letting girls wear trousers?

The Queen and senior royal women wore dresses or skirts. If it was right for them we would do well to follow.🤔

At my secondary school, girls played netball and hockey and boys played football and rugby. Girls had cooking and sewing classes and boys had woodwork and metalwork classes. Girls had to wear skirts too!

The Queen used to wear trousers too but rarely in public!!

I vividly remember the lesson when I was about 10 years old.

I sat there, as the grandaughter of coal miner, while the teacher explained fossil fuels.

She went on to tell us that there was only enough fossil fuel left for 50 years and it was our job, as the future generations, to come up with the solution.

I think that's when the anxiety started.