to think parents have no idea what goes on in schools

[dogsnotsprogs]

I am nearing my end of sixth form (A Levels) and I was just thinking that parents might not understand the pressures school gives children/young people as well as what goes on, on a daily basis.

I am just going to give a few examples of what has happened in my years at a state comprehensive school.

1. A boy (think this was year 10/11 so 15/16 years old) came into the classroom at lunch with a vibrator/dildo and was waving it about before he ran up to this boy (same age) and rammed the vibrator near his asshole through his school trousers. The second boy told his mum and then the first boy nearly got arrested for sexual assault. Nobody cared about the second boy and people started to dislike him, as the first boy was suspended for a week.

2. I know a lot of parents worry about porn / the Internet. I was aware of porn and sex for pleasure rather than to pro-create, at about 11? Boys had it on their phones and were sending it to each other.

3. I don't know if you've seen the videos on Facebook but there are some gore/shock sites that contain images of weird fetishes, gay porn, infected vaginas and Mexican men getting beheaded with a chainsaw. We (us being my year group) saw these pictures and gross videos so much throughout year 10-12 and still today. We have become desensitised to violence, sexual violence and gore.

4. I watched my first horror film (rated 15) at 6 years old, as did most of the people at school.

5. Swearing is frequent. Now I'm in sixth form it's also used more commonly by teachers who we call by their first names.

6. Seatbelting and peanutting someone? Does this still happen?? Seatbelting someone is where you pull as hard as you can on their backpack and hopefully usually they will fall to the ground. I saw someone have their bag completely ripped from the handles earlier today. Peanutting someone is (if they wear a tie for uniform) pulling/tugging in their tie so the knot gets super tight and is often impossible to get off.

7. Teachers have thrown stuff (chairs etc) at students.

8. A girl in my GCSE English class got drunk in the double lesson after drinking vodka in full view of the teacher.

9. The majority of people in my year lost their virginities at around ages 13/14 and some have up to 12 partners at the age of 18.

Was it like this in your day? AIBU to think you are unaware of this sort of thing occurring in your child's school?

BTW - My school is shit, I know that.

There's loads more but I can't think!

Apart from the easy access to graphic porn, sounds quite tame compared to my nice private schools in the 80s. And back then it was deemed OK for teenagers to be made to do PE in just pants if they got PE kit, with blokes lined up looking over the fence.

Throwing board rubbers and other wooden items was the accepted way for teachers to get your attention. If you got hit, your fault for not paying attention. And we watched 18-rated horror movies age 12, given to us by the teachers, and 18-rated soft porn, when the teachers' hangovers were too bad. Debagging (going up behind someone and pulling track suit bottoms and possibly pants down) was common.

My mum (graduated 1958 in USA, so same year as characters in Grease) was shocked by modern access to porn, but then conceded that back then with no TV and little else to do, that the boys would just grab a girl and figure it out for themselves. 2/3 of the girls in her year were mothers by 16, but they were made to get married, so that was OK.

I was a top student but still went to some A-level classes completely pissed - one was after a biology trip to a cider factory and the deputy head bought us lots of cider to take home, forgetting the rest of my group were good Muslims who didn't drink. Two liters of cider did improve Schiller...

Personally I think there are a lot of parents who are a little naive about what happens at secondary school....however a lot of this is not 'new'. I'm 33 and at secondary school:

• Got drunk several times by sneaking hard spirits from my parents cabinet and drank them at lunchtime

• Took poppers at the back of class once

• Had two or three fights with another girl

• Knew about sex from 8-9 years old, watched porn from 15 (someone stole their DF porn stash)

• Swore frequently

• Had a teacher who hit a child across the face and another who would snap girls bra straps when walking around the classroom.

This is just a few things and I would point out that I went to an 'outstanding' secondary school in a semi-rural area and I got almost straight A's so was far from the worst behaved.

I suppose my own experience shows that teenagers will be teenagers. Yes, it can be a little shocking but I lived through it...went to a good Uni and now work in the City in a responsible role and am generally a sensible creature so I will try not to worry too much when my own DC go to school.

the next generation are rarely the trailblazing anarchists they think themselves at the time

^^
This

I've found myself feeling a bit sorry for kids these days as it was ridiculously easy in the 90's to fake ID and get into pubs/bars/clubs and buy alcohol and it seems to be much more difficult these days.

Nice to know I don't have to pity you too much

When I was at a state comprehensive school in the 90s...

1. No vibrators, but there were often bullies that would kick the crap out people, throw chairs, etc. One was a right psycho, the lads were scared of him (he never bothered the girls), as well as smacking people around he'd rip up their work and eat their pencils. Turned out his dad had died when he was young, and his mom was dying of cancer, and nobody knew. He was angry at the world. Pleased to report he actually grew up into a pretty nice bloke!

2&3) Oh god, the fabled hedge porn! Plus I remember my male friends sheer horror and fascination in describing some of the videos that went round, one was 'Animal Farm' (bestiality) and the others involved midgets and grandmas... admittedly, I don't think access was even remotely as easy as it is now.

4. I saw my first 18 rated film when I was 8, and regularly watched stuff like Predator, Aliens, etc as a kid - didn't do me any harm at all (although I won't be allowing my child to do the same!). Again, slightly different today - what would have been 18 rated now gets a 15, 15s get a 12a, and what's an 18 now wouldn't have been released back in the 80s/early 90s.

5. Can't imagine teachers swearing, but the kids? Potty mouthed little gobshites, even back in t'day!

6. Peanutting and seat belting were both common in my day, although they didn't have names as I recall.

7. We once had a music teacher that was suspended for a few years as he'd walloped a student. He came back, and all was fine until a couple of lads in my class decided to smoke a couple of cigarettes during the class. He was covering for our usual teacher, so demanded, "What's your name, boy?" after they refused to put them out or leave the room, and the one replied, "Cinde-fucking-rella". The teacher punched the filing cabinet so hard it was dented, and none of the drawers would open. The one lad ended up being moved to a unit for disturbed youngsters 80 miles away (allegedly for trying to perform a sex act on his hamster for a £10 bet), the other ended up in jail for attempted murder and arson (he was a massive racist and set fire to a corner shop with the family inside - we had a lot of lads that would Tipp-Ex Combat 18/88/Swastikas onto their school stuff).

8. We had people drinking at lunchtimes and returning to class a bit drink, plus open dealing of weed during science lessons.

9. Most girls lost their virginity before 16, I was roundly mocked for not doing so (I was positively a crone when I had my first boyfriend at 19!). We had 9 underage pregnancies over three years. Most of the sexually active underage girls were 'dating' men that were 25-35. One was a bit upset because her 'boyfriend' wanted her to invite a friend to have a threesome with him, that he'd film.

We also had the obligatory perv teacher that the girls knew not to be left alone with, a newly qualified teacher who left the profession after less than a year of teaching at our school due to the physical and psychological abuse from the students, one teacher who was an evangelist religious nut who told us that the apocalypse would come in four years and all non-Christians would be stuck in eternal damnation (students used to troll him by drawing inverted pentagram and the like) and a pair of teachers who were caught canoodling in one of the offices!

Your parents let you watch horror films at age 6?
What has that got to do with school

this thread shows (in case anyone ever doubted it) that if you cage up a load of teenagers- posh/not posh/boys/girls/black/white etc etc- in a school environment- big/small/private/state/grammar/single sex/Bog Standard Comp:

they will get up to Norty Stuff

I reckon we should put teens to work- say, at 13- then resume their formal education at 18 when they start to give a shit again

The mobile tech isnt even that new. We had WAP

The main difference between now and 20 years ago (when I did my GCSE's) is the Internet- porn in those days was magazines and videos. Everything else sounds terribly familiar (I went to a decent, large comprehensive school in north London). Every generation thinks they are the first to experience stuff 😄

None of this stuff happened at my school and I'm genuinely shocked that it's normal. I would have hated being in a school where these things happened.
My teenaged children told me about their school life and it made me look into Home Ed. I regret sending them to secondary school, they both hated it and are much happier out of it.

I went it a girls private school in the 80s and none of this happened. None of it. Obviously it wasn't perfect but none of this stuff that most people say 'yeah that was normal' ever happened. And then MNers wonder (and bitch about) why parents want to go private?

Yes because today's parents never went to school... OP you're so rad..

Actually my dd who is 8 has never watched anything scarier than Harry Potter but yes some children are exposed to inappropriate material like some of her friends have been playing COD for some time now. Nothing new there as when I was a kid, there were some who watched things like Chucky or Nightmare on Elm Street on sleepovers.

As for the sex, drinking, drugs, not much has changed since I was in a 90s council estate comp. Coming of age must inevitably involve exposure to one or all three of these things, it's up to the parents to educate and limit the damage. It was only children who had parents who couldn't give a shit or too liberal that really went off the rails.

How do you know what school was/is like for anyone else? you read the "What was the worst thing that happened at your school?" thread. It would be a real eye opener for you as you seem to be under the impression that your hardcore life is as hard as it gets.

Private schools are not all more innocent! It definitely depends on the school.

I went to both state and private, and there was definitely more sex and alcohol at the private school. But much less bullying. And unhappy pupils were swiftly removed by their parents, unlike at the state school where you just had to suffer for years as changing schools didn't seem to be a thing back then.

All schools are different. At the private school I was at I heard horrendous stories from other pupils about previous private schools they'd been at.

I'm 28 and no, it wasn't like this mainly because our phones could text someone only and hitting the "WAP" button (ask your parents) meant frantically hammering the cancel button for fear of being charged a fortune per second. A couple of boys had pornographic images on their phones or glamour models and some shock stuff too but not the mass stuff that's available readily on Facebook! The rest was just general pranking like the peanuting and seatbelting you mentioned. I feel for teenagers these days. They're not the unfashionable nerds they once were, they're miniature socialite "wannabes" with their expensive clothes and makeup following the crazy trends of the Kardashian twats thinking that's what adults do. I pray for my little girl and the world she'll grow up in.

I went to a very ordinary comprehensive in a very ordinary town in the 1980s and I never saw anything like this, ever.

Maybe I'm just pathologically unobservant.

the next generation are rarely the trailblazing anarchists they think themselves at the time

Speak for yourself

They're not the unfashionable nerds they once were, they're miniature socialite "wannabes" with their expensive clothes and makeup following the crazy trends of the Kardashian twats thinking that's what adults do.

In my day it was DMs and miniskirts and drinking as much as the boys to show you were as hard as them, but with a skirt.

Most of my friends teenagers seem to be asking for expensive make-up for birthdays and Christmas. In the 80's expensive make-up was only for your mum or granny and came in the form of YSL lipstick. Teenagers were happy with Boots 17 I still am

We got up to all sorts out of school (in the 80s) - but I'm glad to say school at least felt pretty safe. The only bullying really going on was a bit of name calling. Granted we used to find somewhere to smoke at lunchtimes but that was about it! And I'm glad to say that my pretty grown up kids had pretty decent (different) schools where students and teachers treated eachother with respect in the main (they have been pretty honest about things that happened now they're out the other side). I just wanted to reassure parents of younger children that it doesn't have to be how some people make it sound. But perhaps we were lucky

I'm only 26 to be fair, but a lot of this happened when I was in secondary/college.

I am pretty damn sure my parents didn't know, unless I specifically told them something.

I'm guessing it was equally as bad when they were at school, just very different types of things.

Happily I went to a rather nice private and so do DC.

Even so, teenagers are teenagers and a lot of your OP I'm either not too worried about generally (swearing) or confident it doesn't happen in my dcs school (chair throwing)

Number 3 worries me though. We didn't even have internet when I went to school....

We did sniff glue at school....

I'm 43 and it wasn't normal at my school either - unless I just had no fucking idea. I still have friends from school and thirty years on have never had a convo that covered fellow pupils on the game, pissed/poppers in class, teachers throwing stuff. Friends from university have never mentioned things like this either.

Am a bit sad it's so normal and so widespread. DD1 isn't far off secondary school and it sounds like it's going to be a pretty unpleasant and possibility frightening few years..

I'm 43 and also thankfully don't remember any of that going on....

Smoking behind the boiler rooms

The odd fight

Odd bits and bobs

Nothing on a scale with the Op

eddie

I dont think its widespread and normal

But i do know that large chunks of the Op happened at our school, not everyday and i didnt see some of it, but there was violence, some teachers threw stuff, one teacher spent every lesson with her head on her arms crying, one girl was pregnant at an early age, another was having sex at 12...

My children havent seen much of this stuff, but obviously swearing js rife, drugs have been sold at school, girls taking topless pictures of themselves. I would be stupid to think that no one has shown them disturbing videos. Internet was crap in year 6...10 year old son saw a naked man with a "very big penis' that he "seemed to like a lot"