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?

@IdaGlossop "In my final year of infants, I was in one of a pair of classrooms in a terrapin hut"

Same here. They were new that year and we were the first pupils in them. I heard the word "terrapin" being talked about by the teachers and told my parents excitedly that we'd be sharing the our new classrooms with terrapins. Needless to say I was rather disappointed.

@ginasevern ours were new too. They had a distinctive small, and grey lino that felt bouncy when you walked on it.

Same again. I suppose it was a batch specially made for schools - unless we went to the same primary!

Getting hit by teacher with a ruler for talking
38+ in an infant class

I was at primary school in the 1960s. We moved house when I was 5 onto a new estate so I went to 3 schools in 2 years. Nobody appeared to think this was anything to be concerned about and I don't remember any school visits or any special arrangements being made for me.
I hated milk and refused to drink it.In reception,after being kept in at playtime a few times, which had no effect ,the teacher gave up so I never had any again.
I remember being at the teacher's desk and reading the reading book straight off. She was very surprised. We were a family that read a lot. I would ask my mum to write sentences on the back of old greeting cards and I had pretty much taught myself to read by the time I went to school.
In reception I fell on the tarmac playground and cut my head. It must have been quite bad because the lady in the office took me home,with me giving her directions. We didn't have a phone at home. I was taken to A&E and had a stitch in it.
I was about 6 when I started to walk to and from school by myself. There were a few roads to cross but they were quieter then. One afternoon playtime I decided it was home time and walked home. My mum was mildly surprised to see me but carried on with the ironing. When I went to school the following day nothing was said to me. I don't think school contacted my parents. The other children missed me but I'm not sure the teacher had!
Fascinating thread @YellowCardiganNavyJoggers Thank you .

The milk, god it was so gross. Why was it always put next to the radiator?

The belt. I never got it and it was abolished when I was in about primary 3 but I remember me and my friend in p2 so 6/7 were hit/kicked etc repeatedly by a boy in our class and he got the belt. I remember the teacher yelling at him that he was a savage! I mean ffs yes he was nasty to us but he was 6/7 years old!

Typical seventies child living in cold council house with basic and scarce diet

Grew up in a council house in 60s/70s and there was nowt wrong with my family's diet or my friends.

Maybe we did. Mine was split-site: infants in a 1950s building, juniors five minutes down the hill in a Victorian building with a late 1960s addition.

I was at primary school in the 60s.
There were 50 children in my class. Our teacher was a Jamaican who I remember bringing a sugar cane into class. He was a brilliant teacher if somewhat eccentric.
We were streets ahead in maths when we got to secondary school.

I loved the milk! And would always volunteer for the spare one left at room temperature all day. It wasn’t in bottles though - it was in triangular tetropak type packs.

We had ‘music and movement’ in our pants and vests and black pumps. They would play the ‘music’ through giant wooden speakers.

I was always starving as a 70s kid. Other kids had crisps and wagon wheels but I was given an apple for break time.

Teachers had no set curriculum looking back. They would teach us whatever crap they thought was helpful. And we lived in fear of being ‘told off’. We all came out literate and numerate though!

60s/early 70s state primary. Head ruled with an iron rod (well a cane). Teachers were strict. If you wanted to go to the toilet mid lesson the answer was always no. Puddles were treated matter of factly though, not as described in op thankfully. Standard of education was very high. No one was unruly in class.

The milk was gross! In Winter, the silver tops perched on top of the frozen columns of cream, which at least was amusing.

1960's primary school for me. I loved the milk, we had white paper straws, but on your birthday you got to choose a plastic coloured straw. I also loved the school dinners, especially the pink custard. Loved it when the dinner ladies called out " anyone for seconds".
I remember being taught how to tell the time, and we were told to button our cardigans from the bottom so that all the buttons lined up.
In winter, we had our mittens on string/ wool threaded through the arms of our coats to stop them getting lost.
I loved it, it was strict but I enjoyed it.

Still used in universities.

I remember that so well. I had very curly tangly hair and it was agony. But when. I had girls of my own I longed for their to be a nit lady at school so I didn't have to keep retreating my own daughters and their very long hair and my own

Ah, no is wasn't then. Ours was all Victorian except for the new terrapins.

So many memories from my 70s primary. Everyone was able to read and write to some level when we started, and the behaviour was good - this was a bog standard primary in a rural village. I remember us all walking to school together, no parents with us, and all having fluorescent sashes to wear in the darker weather. Clothes pegs with our names on for outdoor shoes which were left in the cloakroom after we changed into plimsolls. Reading, writing and maths every day - and marked every day with corrections highlighted so we knew when we'd got something wrong. Close links to the village school, with harvest festival a big event. Our (terrifying) headmistress having been a teacher there since WW2 when she watched the Battle of Britain overhead. Growing our own flowers and being very aware of the natural world around us, thanks to that headmistress. Learning copperplate using pen and ink on Victorian desks with ink wells and tops that lifted up before our new school extension was built - and an ancient pear tree that had to be cut down to accommodate this 😥. A (black!) man coming from Mauritius to tell us about this tropical island - why I'm not sure, but it was amazing hearing his stories. So many memories really - all good.

The one that really makes me laugh is a pudding of warm milky coffee and doughnuts - a firm favourite with us all. Can you imagine that now?!

London primary school in the 1970s. No uniform. Two playgrounds: one for the girls and little boys and one for the older boys. There was a small grassy area that each class took turns using during playtime. It was an exciting day when it was your turn to play on the grass.

Daily assembly which was called Hall. I grew up in a non-religious family and I was fascinated by the prayers and hymns. I remember singing Morning has Broken, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands, All Things Bright and Beautiful. If you sang with particular enthusiasm, the teachers would invite you to come to the front of the room. That was considered quite an honour.

I remember the bottles of milk and also learning the phrase “Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher.” 😀 We ate lunch in a separate building. The dinner ladies terrified me though I always brought my lunch so they paid no attention to me at all. Children who had school dinners were kept inside until they’d eaten everything.

My teachers were kind and I don’t remember corporal punishment. In reception (which was called Class 8) we had individual slates to draw on and practice sums. In year 1 (Class 7) the teacher would call two children at a time to read aloud to her. They would stand on either side of her and read at the same time, though they would be reading different stories. I remember thinking it was odd, though I suppose she found it efficient and could tune in and out to each child.

I could go on and on. I have mostly good memories of primary school. It was an ordinary state school but looking back I can see that the teachers used a lot of innovative methods, many based on the Montessori philosophy.

Shame! I like a coincidence.

I returned to my home city after many years in London. I was in a public place doing some work for a client when a woman who I knew a little through work told me we had been at infants' school together. I didn't recognise her. She asked me if I remembered the school hymn (it was a church school). I said I didn't but she sang the first line and then I did remember. We sang all three verses together, much to the embarrassment of my DD, who was with me at the time.

I started primary school in 1971.

In P7 some of us (always the girls🙄) took it in turns to take steaming hot coffee in a jug to each teacher at break time. Up and down stairs with boiling hot black coffee or slightly less boiling hot milky coffee with a horrible skin on it. We poured it into the teachers’ cups for them. I quite liked getting out of the classroom to be fair.

I remember learning to do cursive writing with an ink pen and blotting paper. Our desks still had ink wells, although we all used either cartridge pens or refillable pens and Quink ink. There were a LOT of ink related accidents🤣

Desks with squeaky integrated seats that kind of flung themselves up when you stood up. There was a certain smell of them that made me feel a bit queasy.

The caretaker used to throw sand over vomit left by some poor sick child, then deal with it later. Sometimes there were several mounds of sand in the corridor.

We had outdoor toilets until I was in P5 when the new indoor blocks were built.

We got rapped over the hand with a ruler if we misbehaved.

Girls did knitting and sewing and boys did woodwork and crafts and made exciting stuff like papier mâché lamp shades. I loved knitting and sewing, but I wanted to try everything.

Meant to say, I HATED the milk. It was warm, either because of summer or because of the warmth of the radiators. I knew the bottles were recycled and spent way too much time pondering over whether the bottle I used on any given day had been previously used by one of the snotty nosed boys in my class🤣🤣

Thank-you for reminding me about papier maché. We made heads with it, coveringvan inflated balloon with torn up newspaper and flour and water glue. When the papier machine was dry, we popped the balloon with a pin and added a final layer of white paper shich we then decorated.

Like you, I wanted to do boys' stuff too, once we got to secondary school ‐ woodwork, metal work and technical drawing.

Yes it is a shame, I love a coincidence too. You're doing alright if someone recognised you from infants!

60s child who went to school in Australia.
Sitting on the mats in the afternoon being read to. Books on rotation-Blinky Bill, the Magic Pudding and Snuggle pot and cuddle pie. Sitting behind your best mate and drawing on their back with your finger. Asmr before it had a name.
The nature table. Anything interesting you found went in a jar or a box and brought in for everyone to look at. You can imagine that was interesting.
School magazines, school radio. Every primary school child got a magazine for their year every month. Lots of stories, articles and competitions. You had a special folder for them. Must have been a massive undertaking.
Music lessons on the radio. Cross curricula so we made percussion instruments, learned about countries, bit of English.
Cusenaire rods for learning maths.
Skipping and elastics.
Less pleasant- at infants we had an older style building with a covered verandah. A girl who probably was severely autistic, sat out on the verandah all day, just rocking. She never spoke and was treated very unkind by other kids.
Similarly, in primary there was the remedial class, anyone with any disability, learning or physical or even just not able to keep up was in there. You didnt come out. Shockingly, thats where all the First Nation kids ended up.

Teachers were largely spinsters who didn't even seem to like children.

750 kids in the school - we went out to play with no adults supervising - the janitor wandered about from time to time.

Class of 42 - no differentiated work. The less academic kids just struggled away.

Parents would never have dreamed of complaining to the school about anything.

We had to sit in the dining hall until we'd eaten every scrap of food. I can remember boking on stone cold semolina and getting no play time as I was still there when afternoon school started.