What things do you remember from your schooldays that would have the MN police screeching for Ofsted/Social Services/the Police?

[frogs]

Prompted by a discussion with a group of old schoolmates which confirmed a memory so bizarre that I always thought I must have hallucinated it. But no, it turns out that in the early 80s, in a bog-standard Catholic comprehensive in provincial England we did in fact spend our history lessons learning to sing overtly pro-IRA rebel songs, such as The men behind the wire and Tiocfaidh ár lá. Bearing in mind that this was during the hunger strikes in the early Thatcher years, when Sinn Fein was considered so dangerous that Gerry Adams' voice was dubbed on the news (remember that?) it's only just dawned on me how seditious the whole thing was. Unbe-bloody-lievable. Can you imagine the hoo-hah if that happened today?

And on a very different note, another friend confirmed that when we went to boarding school aged 15, we were allowed one clean shirt per week which was worn from Monday to Saturday inclusive (we had a different one for Sundays). In a school full of teenage girls. And hair washing was by rota only, limited to once a week. Rank.

So what badness, madness or just plain weirdness did you take in your stride at school which would be unthinkable today?

My parents sending me to the shop to buy their cigarettes.
I was only 7!!

Ah, Mehgalegs, but was he as scary as my Geography teacher? The rumour persists to this day that he tried to strangle a pupil with a blind cord.

But....but....Dead Priest!!!!!

I can imagine how i'd feel if DS1 came home and told me that!!!

we used to smoke weed on the field at dinner

and i was one of the good ones

Dead priest is pretty outrageous, PBS.

We used to have an Undead Priest at my primary school. He was about 120 and I remember him telling us all to get our parents to vote Conservative during one school assembly (in 1979, I'm guessing).

wg - could be him. His face would go purple his veins would stand out. I was a goody two shoes but in my first week at secondary my friend and I got lost so we were a few minutes late. We knocked, apologised and he kind of slithered across the classroom like a dementor right up to my face saying"You were LOST!!rant, rant, scream " Jesus, right in the face of an 11 year old girl.. I didn't cry, just stood there and took it. I hated and dreaded those lessons forever. We had a sadistic french teacher the lesson before and she used to keep us after the bell. I used to be in a state of anxiety every wednesday morning in case she made us late for Mr Robison. What a bunch of saditic freaks they were!

[This has made me really angry - haven't thought about it for years]

Also time we were walking up snowden in the thick fog and only one teacher for about 12 of us, so he decided to to enlist help of lone man also walking up mountain to 'bring up the rear' so to speak and he seduced the last girl in the line later that night in the youth hostel. Left it too long on top of mountain so we did most of the descent in the dark. We were 14. One pre camp lesson involved the teacher sabotaging lots of those pressurised pump up parrafin stoves and then getting us to try and light them as demonstration of 'what could go wrong'. Also being taught how to cook on said stoves inside 2 man tent with door zipped shut to keep out wind. Some of did begin to suspect camps were some sort of cover for getting rid of tricky kids..! Course at the time I loved it.

At junior school the Headmistress told us why black people were black, because the cleansing pool (to wash away sin) that God gave man had run dry and only had enough for hands and feet??? This was in the eighties.

We had an old female games teacher who used to stand at the side of the pool and if any of the girls swimming costumes had got caught up as they climbed out - she would pull them out of their bum for them (This was in secondary school)

Also remember some of the classrooms had platforms for the teacher's desk and we would move the chair so it was on the edge and then fall about laughing when the (oldish) teacher fell off.

One primary teacher had a jar with used bits of chewing gum in it.
When someone was caught chewing gum they had to take a used piece out and chew it and put theirs in the jar or put it on their nose
She was one of the more normal teachers as well.

Kids getting the cane/belt was normal,mostly the same ones all the time.

Posieparker, that is pretty outrageous.

PortandBlacks -- at the risk of sounding as if I'm competing for the Most Gothic Childhood award, one of the nuns died when I was still in infants, and we had to file past and kiss her forehead. She was stone cold, I still remember the feeling.

Can you imagine the newspaper headlines half these things would make today? Never mind the white heat of MN outrage?

At primary I remember the whole school being taken outside to witness a partial eclipse
no eye protection at all.
Hard blackboard rubbers being thrown at children regularly.
Being forced to drink school milk in the summer after it had been standing unrefrigerated for hours and had formed skin.
At secondary I remember one particular teacher having some sort of breakdown and physically assaulting a classmate.
We also had a Physics teacher who ignored girls completely - he made us sit at the back and only really taught the boys because he said girls were a waste of time - they only left school and had babies!!!

We were latch key kids at primary school age.

Used to cross a busy road to buy chips for lunch EVERY day during summer hols.

Played out until dark every night.

One of the monitors jobs at Junior school was to nip out to the shops and pick up a packet of cigarettes for the teachers.

Head of year at my middle school would send pupils wearing prohibited clothing (per school uniform rules) to his classroom at breaktime where they would have to remove them in front of him.

In highschool girls weren't allowed to do the triple jump because it would damage your ovaries.

Girls had to do Home Economics (cooking and sewing) and boys had to do Shop(woodwork).

Boys weren't allowed to do typing.

frogs, I know I still think that I must be making it up!! She definately said it and I can't remember whether other teacher's were at assembly or not, she was very old and retired whilst I was still at the school. I think, living in a town of 16000 with about 0.1% non whites I was not even shocked about the story and had never heard of racism.

Another one who used to be sent to the shops to buy cigarettes for my mother.

Had a seriously dodgy primary school headmaster (CofE school) who liked little girls to sit on his knee. Boys used to be caned if they were naughty.

Outside lavs at infant school with that slippy loo paper that just spreads stuff around.

Dirty old men in raincoats hanging round our hockey pitch while we played in those teeny tiny gym skirts and PE knickers. Gym mistress used to yell 'Ignore them, gels, and PLAY UP'. She was nice and warm in her tracksuit and NOT the object of the DOMs' interest.

Brilliant chemistry teacher who demonstrated why you shouldn't blow on a Bunsen burner by, um, blowing on a Bunsen burner. I've never seen people jump off a row of stools so fast!

Horrible history teacher who spent the whole lesson ranting about why apartheid was A Good Thing and telling us Desmond Tutu had a bone through his nose (a la Victorian images of savages). We were supposed to be doing Stuart history so it had NO relevance at all!

Oh and the schoolband got pissed one year and went skinny dipping in the school pool after hours accompanied by the caretaker....

Oh - just remembered the compulsory school medicals - no parents present - just being called out of class and sent to strip off in the nurses room. God I hope this dosent still happen anywhere. My dds have never had to go through this.

I talked in a music class in nursery school and was put in the corner. I started to cry - teacher got very annoyed - I got very upset and vomited on the floor. Headteacher told me to get a brush (shovel?) and put the vomit onto newspaper and take it home to my mother! Fortunately, a nicer teacher ran down the road to our house, got my mother and she then had a few words with the head teacher. Oh, such nostalgia for the good old days!

@ Frogs.

Competitive primary school corpse stories.

The pe teacher having a 'period register'. Everyone having a period had to make themselves known to be excused from going in the horrible dirty communal shower. The showers were horrible but you could only get out of it one week in four - she knew all of our cycles!

Oh yeah, my PE teacher marked our periods on the register with a red pen and the letter P so everyone could see!