Do most people have generally bad school memories?

[GRex]

Inspired by a range of commentary from colleagues and peers, it strikes me that a number seem to comment about bad experiences in primary, secondary, or both. Thankfully nothing major, but bad memories nonetheless.

There are not going to be absolutes here, or nobody could be positive, but thinking about school memories on the whole. I remember a mixed bag, but broadly positive especially in secondary school, wondered if that is unusual.

YABU - generally speaking, school was awful for me
YANBU - school was OK, mostly happy memories

Primary was a lot worse than secondary, which is ironic because mentally, I was in such a bad place at secondary age and it only got worse.

Haven't kept in touch with anyone I went to school with. I enjoyed the final year. Previous years I was bullied badly.

I remember mostly enjoying school. Some teachers and classmates I didn't like but on the whole it wasn't awful. I didn't want to leave because I liked the routine of going.
But......
Looking back from an adult perspective I think my secondary school was pretty crap.
It was massive which made it incredibly easy to be invisible - but actually that's not a good thing.
No one cared much if you didn't do homework.
No one cared if you skived off.
We weren't taught how to revise for exams - just left to our own devices.
There was no careers advice or even advice about which subjects to choose.
Experience wise it was fine.
Actually setting me up for life.....it was crap.

Mostly good memories for me.

I think it often depends on your personality and attitude towards life, how you view the past.

Well , being sexually assaulted by your classmates can only be viewed one way .

Primary school was mostly ok.

Senior school was largely shit. The quality of teaching was terrible, lazy and uninspiring. The extra curricula was non existent and there were lots of friendship problems to navigate.

This was supposedly the best state school in the area too.

I was pretty ok with school, I was quite good in most subjects except for maths, terrible at that. I had quite a lot of friends and what I look back on and really appreciate these days is that our teachers were mainly quite strict in how we behaved in class so we really did get to learn about the subjects. You didn't mess about and disrupt any of the lessons, you just got your head down and worked.

We also had games twice a week which is why I think the number of overweight kids was about a handful in the whole of the year I was in. We had quite a big choice of netball, hockey, rounders, cross country, gym, in the summer we had athletics, volleyball, tennis, badminton and swimming. I wasn't particularly good at games but I didn't hate doing any of it, it was just part of the school week.

I look back quite fondly on my schooldays even though it was so long ago.

Primary was fine.
Secondary was hell.
Some eenage girls can be horrible to other teenage girls.

Primary - mostly happy days. No uniform, nice teachers, lots of music, art, sport, sewing, playing, dancing, school plays and festivals as well as a bit of maths and English (8Os pre National Curriculum)

Secondary - some fun times with friends but hated school itself. Awful stiff strict uniform, cold disgusting bathrooms, nasty teachers, religious shit forced upon us, humiliating PE classes and showers afterwards with sadistic teachers, bullies, pervy male teachers, disgusting food, horrid school bus, I could go on.

Secondary school was like Hunger Games- just surviving and avoiding bullies by keeping a low profile. It was hard being “swot” and top setter. Back in the 80s there was less or no support from school or parents to address these issues - certainly no pastoral care.

I did A levels at college and had a blast though . Couldn’t leave Secondary fast enough and didn’t attend speech day to be awarded my certificates.

As far back as I can remember school was just about counting the days til I could leave. I spent most of my childhood waiting to become an adult so I could start to actually live, really. Hated life at home; school was probably better than that in terms of doing well and getting validation from teachers through that. I was neither badly bullied nor especially popular; I didn't really like the majority of my classmates and just always had a sense that adult life would be a lot better and I'd fit in a lot more. Which turned out to be correct.

I need a button in-between the two options. Plenty of bad, but good times too.
Edited to add that primary was the worst for me. No where to hide when the cool girls took against you or the teacher decided to make an example of you. I hated primary school. Secondary was easier. I could fly under the radar more and a bigger range of teachers meant that overall it was a far better experience.

Primary school - got made fun of because my mother was HT of a special needs school so got called all the awful names used for those children in the 70s.

High school - got bullied because I wore glasses and was clever. One lad in particular was absolutely vile to me - now a convicted paedophile.

Which is why I used the word 'often' and not always 🙄

I have mixed memories of primary school, but I enjoyed the topic based learning, and overall it’s mostly positive with the exception of year 6 (disastrous change of school).
Secondary school traumatised me and I still live daily with the effects. I was bright and well behaved, but a target for the bullies being neither pretty nor popular nor sporty. Despite being predicted A’s and A*’s in my GCSES, I ended up dropping out at 15 with nothing.
I finally went to uni at 40 and so far I’m loving it!

Enjoyed it. Did what on was asked to do. Opened up a new world of opportunity for me.

I enjoyed school. Wasn't uber popular but generally well liked and had a close knit group of friends some of whom i am still best friends with. No bullying. Have found however that some people are surprisingly negative about schooldays. When I mentioned enjoying school my bf of 47 years said she didn't think i enjoyed school that much! Some other friends who were clever but just normal, average teenagers otherwise seemed quite happy and okay at school - turns out that at 50 they tell me that they weren't or hated schooldays.

I went to school in the 80's and loved school. I had happy memories and am still friends with with a group of them now.

My best friend I met at secondary school and we are very close.

Mostly OK, though there was some miserable bullying for a couple of early teen years. Fine once we were in the 6th form.

School was really ok for me. I didn't love it but nothing bad happened.

I had a facial difference ( rectified in my teenage years) so was relentlessly physically and verbally bullied in primary. By secondary I’d lost confidence. I didn’t want people to notice my facial difference especially the bigger kids so I found places to hide. Seemed to be easier to disappear at secondary. Still a few bullies would seek you out because they wanted to. I did make some friends in year 11 when people seemed to get more mature and I stayed on until sixth form and enjoyed that period.
I think whoever it was that said people who get bullied at school will be the ones posting about cliques at the school gates is harsh. Of course some people will always have social issues. It depends on how much trauma you’ve endured and what resources you’ve got available to you to heal that trauma ( a loving extended family for example). Some people can walk away from bullying at school and put it behind them, some really struggle.
Bullying at school can be more than a bit of a name calling. Schools are downright dangerous places for some kids.

I was one of those people who loved studying. I just loved it and even today was thinking how much I'd love to do another degree but don't think I can afford it.

So I have good memories from that point of view but for some reason I really didn't want to keep in touch with most of my classmates.

It was ok. Mediocre teaching for the most part and I would have enjoyed a more academic school.

A small amount of bullying and nastiness at around ages 10-12. It was a very small school (same pupils mostly went on from Junior to Senior school) and there was one queen bee type who led the bullying. At the end of First Form she was moved up into the older class. It was a win win. They were much tougher characters in the older class and she was very bright, so could both handle the work and became a much nicer person.

The rest of the students were fine, I never quite had any best friends, but was always included. I am still in touch with them all to this day.

I remember comp secondary being intensely boring. And bunking off double science to sit and 'twos' fags in the park. The teacher could see us clearly out the science lab window and would shout at us to come back in while we just laughed.
I remember having pretty much no friends, except a couple of misfits. One girl was a kleptomaniac and stole my grandmother's jewellery. Nobody wanted to sit next to me in class.
So yeah, school memories are not great.
Except one funny one where the history teacher accidentally exposed his bollocks while wearing shorts on a class trip to the park?!

I absolutely loved school.

I was very academic and also very sporty, so a lot of my needs were met.

Plus it was a few hours escape from my abusive mother every day in term time. School was my safe space.