Primary School in the seventies (or sixties)

[YellowCardiganNavyJoggers]

If you were at primary school in the seventies what are things that today's children would probably be shocked at.

Here's a few of mine.

Teacher kept 'words on paper scraps' in a tobacco tin. You got called out and you had to read the words of the paper. I still remember the green flat tobacco tin.

When someone wet themselves (puddle on floor) and nobody would own up to it the teacher would take each child into the toilet and pretty much feel between their legs to see if they were wet. Can you imagine them being allowed to do that now.

Teacher was bad tempered and strict. Kids were pretty well behaved and quiet. I was quite scared of my teacher and jealous of the other Primary 1 kids who seemed to have nicer, younger teachers.

School 'jotters' - you know the books you got to write in.

Your dad covering things with old wallpaper. I can't remember what it was exactly - was it books or folders? Or was this high school and I am getting mixed up

The highlight of my day was the milk crate. Oh my god I used to get quite excited to get a whole bottle of milk (and straw) to myself. I was always hungry. Typical seventies child living in cold council house with basic and scarce diet. That bottle of milk was looked forward to each day so much. To this day I still love drinking milk and always have pints and pints of it in the fridge.

Desks with the little pull out drawer underneath. We also sometimes had drawers in a sort of unit with each persons name on a drawer.

Coat hooks outside the classroom with your name beside it and a picture on it. Do they still do this?

Play area in the corner of the room with little cooker etc. I used to love to play on it as we didn't have many toys at home.

Going up to the teachers desk to use 'the big sharpener' on the teachers desk. It was sort of attached to the desk and you stuck your pencil in and turned a handle.

If you were at primary in the seventies (or sixties) what do you remember?

Clearly food at home for me which shit or not enough as I loved school dinners!

Yes your dad showing you how to do up a tie

Those little bottles of warm milk in the summer put me off milk for years. Even now it has to be ice cold before I can drink it.

In the mid 70s my first primary school teacher tried to stop me writing with my left hand. I think my mum had to go and have a chat with the headmaster to get her to stop.

Just had a flashback to getting some program called 'Living and Growing'.
The girls had to sit on one side and the boys on the other. Lots of tittering from the boys. I think it was P6 but it might have been P7.

And the big TV on a stand on wheels that used to get wheeled in to show really boring programs. There might have been good ones but mostly I remember being bored.

That's right they wore kind of overcoats with buttons up the front although I though I remember them being white. Practical I guess. And I think they did actually make the food and peel the potatoes etc didn't they. It wasn't bought in. They actually made it on site.

All of these sound familiar to me (started school 1977, Scotland). The janitor had buckets of sawdust that came out if anybody threw up. The excitement of a dog getting into the playground. We had big sheds for sheltering in if it rained during playtime. The big TV brought in on wheels to watch The Boy From
Space.

Flashback. Think I do remember people getting taken out of the classroom to get hit. I think it was with a ruler though.

Milk being defrosted on the radiator after being delivered outside in the cold.
Going to the shop to collect the newspaper and 10 regal king size for the teacher. I you got selected for this job it was the highlight of your day

I went to a private all girls junior school mid-late 70s.

Another milk bottle hater here. Even in winter it was disgustingly warm because instead of leaving the pallets outside (it was the NE so they would have kept nice and cold!!) they brought them in. Didn't put me off milk for life but definitely off the full cream stuff.

Blocks of mashed swede cooked in vast metal trays. Crumble in the same sort of trays.

I remember the weird purple "photocopies" of things with a pungent and distinctive smell. We didn't have ties at Junior. Winter uniform was a brown zip up tunic thing worn over a muddy brown polo neck. All very artificial fibre. Any naked flame in the classroom and we'd all have gone up like roman candles.

Getting a plastic cup of 70s vending machine hot chocolate after swimming lessons. Even now, that particular taste sends me right back.

Writing with pencil in the infants then, my god, old-fashioned-even-then dip fountain pens and ink bottles in juniors! You can imagine the mess, most parents quickly invested in a cheap cartridge fountain pen; biros were banned.

I was always getting pulled up for my incredibly messy handwriting but looking back now at a few surviving examples, it wasn't perfect, I tended to head down the page at a slope, but actually very readable, small, fountain pen cursive from about 8. I was one of the worst writers, but better than most children's writing I see now.

Blotting paper was a necessary item for your school supplies.

Also yes to tobacco tins.

Lots of home-made musical instruments. The most popular was a broomstick with beer bottle lids loosely nailed on so you'd bang it on the ground for a metallic rattle and thump.

It depended on the school. My junior school had its lunches brought in from a neighbouring school as it didn't have its own kitchens. Everything was luke-warm at best.

They were still using them in 1997? Gosh. I suppose 1997 is almost 30 years ago now though.
I am in denial. The nineties don't seem that long ago to me.

Seventies child.

i remember milk and straws - yuck, I hate milk even now.

Fletcher maths - work books you worked through.

There was also a box of cards you read and then answered the comprehension questions.

I also remember one male teacher reading Charlie & the Chocolate factory to us each day before home time and doing all the voices and it was truly amazing. I was in awe of how he read so animatedly and truly believe he inspired my love of reading into adulthood.

I loved primary school.

At primary school in the 80s we all had a tobacco tin for our wax crayons. The old men in the village used to drop empties at the school office.

When I started high school, the SEN unit was called the Slow Learner Unit!! WTF.

Oh i meant the dinner hall supervisors that wore the brown overalls the dinner ladies who did cook wore white .

Aged 6 or 7 1971(?) I drew what I thought was a lovely picture of the teacher as we were given a round piece of paper and told to draw anything. I took it to show her and she screwed it up, threw it across the room and slapped my legs about 7 times telling me to sit down and draw something else. Miss Wand - you were an evil bitch and I hope you suffered in life. I told no-one about this and the class never ever mentioned it

Remember the milk, frozen in winter, some bottles had a little figure on the bottle and it was good to get this one. Making a dalek with the straw bent over!
Dusters being thrown towards bad behaviour, headmaster smoking pipe and testing times tables…the fear!
No access to water during the day, different coloured dinner tickets for those who paid or got free dinners.
Walking home unaccompanied from a very early age. One teacher no assistants, no tissues, no care.
Tracing paper toilet paper. The bucket of pink sand to absorb sick on the floor.
Filling up ink wells and being tea girl in P7, made tea for the teachers, filled large teapot, and carried it with crockery to staff room on a large tray.
There was a lot of learning but very little care.

I was at primary in the sixties and on the whole loved it. The main difference to me is school security. We now have legal guardianship of our granddaughter who is six. At my school we were let out of the classroom at 3.30 and left the school with no one checking if there was anyone there for us, all doors were open all day and anyone could walk in or out. As toilets were in the main corridors children could a!so have left the school too. Now, schools are effectively locked down and children are handed out one by one and only when the teacher sees the person coming to collect them. I prefer today's methods, was that we need it but we know are kids are safe and looked after.

My mum has tild how a farm lorry woukd sometimes stop to let the kids from her village jump in so they didnt hace to walk to the next village for school.
Along a country lane, no pavements. No parents. Older girls looked out for the little ones. All weathers... hence why the farm kr distillery would send a truck when they could.

I know how can it be 30 years ago! They had got rid of the tins when Dc2 started a few years later to plastic tubs.
I don't even know if kids get words in tins these days?

I started school in 1969. The classes were very bare and very formal, there wasn't any toys of any kind, there was no visit beforehand, your first day was the first time you saw the school or met the teacher. Our teacher was the nice one, the one in the classroom next door was the strict one, we were sent in there to be slapped if we misbehaved and we were all terrified of her. I was called in there once and I was so frightened, but she gave me a sort of stick things with cherries on it because it was my birthday! When we got older we were sent to the principal to be slapped. There was 40 in my class, though that was unusual, the rest had anout 36. We had four rows in our classroom, sorted according to ability, so there was no doubt who was smart and who was stupid. We didn't have a uniform, if we wore trousers we had to wear a dress over them. When I was a bit older, maybe 9 or 10 and the teacher was sick one day, me and my friend were given buckets of vinegar water and newspaper and put to work cleaning the windows, I suppose the other girls were given jobs too.

I remember there being a chess club at our primary school and as I really liked board games so asked to join. Apparently the chess club was for boys only and girls weren't allowed.

Loved my time at school though I fell into a time when the government was messing around with schooling so we got shunted around schools and buildings quite a lot -
Started at primary school, it then became a first school in a neighbouring building, then went back to original school to do middle school. Took the 11 plus but the system was being revised so we stayed on an extra year to take the 12 plus. That was then scrapped and the whole town went comprehensive and I ended up in a boys grammar school. Quite an interesting transition to be one of just a few girls in the school with old, mostly male teachers who had no idea how to deal with females. Anyway, I loved it.

One of my memories which may or may not be a regional thing ( West Midlands) is being turfed out of the classroom into the tiny playground on a fairly regular basis as someone had phoned to say there was a bomb in the building (church school). I can vividly remember the teachers and dinner ladies being sent in to search the building. If there had been a bomb we would have all been hurt in the blast. This would be mid 70s in the height of the IRA bombing campaign which was very close to us after the Birmingham bombings. Can anyone else remember that or was it specific to us due to location and C of E connection?

The milk was sometimes frozen in the winter and hot in the summer.

Climbing frame and swings in the playground and a climbing rope on a very tall pole, all unsupervised. I fell off the climbing frame onto my head, I was dangling by my legs over a bar head down and fell straight onto tarmac, a huge bump, my mum was not amused. The swings were lethal too children often getting hit by someone swinging. Health and safety, what's that?

The book corner where you could choose a book and hide from the teacher behind the folding book racks. The smell of the paper from the primitive copying machines.

Reading by rote from endless boring books about John and Mary and Spot the dog (other names are available). And learning times tables by heart, it was only years later I realised why the times tables were what they were, ie, just adding another one of the same number, it would have been so much easier. perhaps it was explained but I don't remember.

Sixties primary child here too!

I remember the outdoor toilets which froze solid in winter and where the roof leaked when it rained. Huge metal climbing frames in the playground with just asphalt underneath, no soft landings for us! School milk, and if you got the bottle that had a textured neck, that was the 'bubbly milk' and you were allowed to blow bubbles in it with your straw - absolutely NO bubble blowing otherwise. Teacher would slap your legs with hands or a ruler if you talked when you were supposed to be listening. Boys got 'the slipper' from the headmaster for bad behaviour. Also the IZAL toilet paper.

I loved primary school!

1970’s too. I remember all of these things, except the wee thing!!
also, one school I went to in the 2nd year of infants, they had children doing PE in vest and pants!! My previous school was shorts and tee shirt.
recorder lessons
those pull out apparatus in the school hall … can’t believe people didn’t die!
we had a big wall in the playground which was used to walk up and sit on the top - it was quite high, I’d say 5-6 feet tall at least!
playing marbles
playing horses with scarves around the ‘horse’