To ask , what were your pet peeves about school as a school child?

[SteveAs]

Inspired by the teachers thread

Mine was , we only could have chips on a Monday
And that RE lessons in Year 10 dragged on , they were 1 hour lessons which felt at least 10 hours

showers after pe while the teachers stared

That their solution to my finding the work easy was to put me up a year... so I had nothing in common with my peers and thus few friends. (A year is a long time when you are a child, and I was a summer baby so one of the young ones anyway.)

Thank goodness schools don't accelerate as much as they used to.

Having to shower in cubicles with no Curtains

The uniform. It wasn't the great leveller, we could all tell who the well off kids were; they had the cotton blazer, not the cheap synthetic one. And they got a new one every year, not one to last hem through school. It swamped you for the first 2 years, fitted you in the third year, and gradually rose up your arms for the next 2 years.

Girls not being allowed trousers

Girls having to play certain sports (not the fun ones)

Communal showers

Boys who messed around in lessons and nothing done about it

Kids who disrupted lessons when the teachers were actually nice

Supply/new teachers getting arsey when I corrected them about how to pronounce my name there's such an easy nn they could get from it but no, they just continued to butcher the long version

Being picked on to answer questions. If I want to answer you I'll raise my hand otherwise back the fuck off. Randomly asking me when I don't want to answer isn't confidence building it is awful.

All the pe teachers. I'm a teacher of many years myself now and I still find it hard not to judge my pe teaching colleagues .

Another one saying showers after PE.

Nowadays I have no qualms about stripping off in an open-plan womens changing room, but as a self-conscious teenager with a newly developing body it was mortifying to have to strip completely naked and be seen to "wash properly" by the PE teacher standing at the edge of the showers, watching.

Not being praised and rewarded for achievement while poorly behaved students and underachievers received accolades just for turning up

Games teachers. Because they existed. And were arseholes.

PE teacher staring in showers and standing by them to make sure every girl stripped.

Why Jane Deakin (not real name) was allowed to use turquoise ink and the rezt of us were chewed off for it.

Being picked on by my physics teacher who hated me!!

Having to be weighed in front of the whole class of girls every term

Having to go at all - I hated the fact I HAD to go to school very single day - bussed in, dropped off and bussed home again - like being bussed off to prison!!

.... but there were good times! Some great teachers, lots of laughs!

Just the general existence of school was a constant bugbear to me during my formative years.

Only being taught needlework and cookery when I wanted to learn woodwork and tech drawing.

Not being allowed to play rugby.

House meetings - tedious and pointless.

The milk. Mrs Thatcher didn't snatch it quickly enough.

I wasn't allowed to read ahead. I had been reading since I was 2 or so (my parents were both avid readers), but I had to keep pace with the children that were still learning to read.

Other than that I rather enjoyed school.

Toad Hospital, prison, school, which is the odd one out?

Prison. You get time off for good behaviour.

Having to spend break and lunch outside no matter how bloody cold it was while the teachers where nice and cosy in the warm.

Raindrop - this very afternoon I was reminiscing on my younger self pretentiously using turquoise ink for I while, imagining all the teachers like but she's very quiet so we won't say anything. What I couldn't remember was where on earth I got it.

The amount of books, folders, kit etc. that we were expected to carry each day and the school only had enough lockers for about 20% of pupils. They weighed a tonne and often didn't all fit in a large backpack!

Swallowing something vile and repulsive through a pipette in a science lesson in Y7 and then being shouted at. Apparently we were not meant to swallow it.

Having to wear a skirt in PE when the boys and teachers could wear tracksuit bottoms.

Boy/girl seating plans in lessons

Mol

You reminded me

PE knickers. No one liked girls doing sports did they...

I agree with MintCassis - we had no lockers and had to lug all our books, game kit, packed lunch about with us, and anything we'd had to cook in Home Economics. To make things worse, the school was split site at some distance, so if you were unlucky in timetabling, you lost your entire break trekking from one site to the other.