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?

we might have bumped into each other, at least!

Headmistress dug her nails into my head because I was wearing a ring in her maths class.....
..... hair washing on a rota (also boarding school), once a week, but we were only upto age 12, so it did not really get very dirty anyway....
..skateboarding down the driveway at breakneck speed, teachers wandering around quite unperturbed. no protective padding
....biology got cross and threw the bloody oozing heart he was dissecting at the front row, splattering them all in blood-- tee hee.... poor sods sitting there.
Makes me smile anyway
.....liberal access to bunsen burners and various acids, generally, to fiddle with, melt biros with, burn squiggly patterns into the wooden work surface with....

(by the way, this was all in the mid to late 90's, so not that long ago!)

boilogy teacher.... in meant!

Teacher who picked up the boys by the ears when they misbehaved. Headmaster pulling boy down the corridor while caning him with the other - that was for 8-12 year olds

School trip to Bulgaria where one boy had to be put on a drip because he had drunk too much 100% proof vodka.

Getting stoned in Florence but then we were nearly adults (17)

When my brothers were in the top year of Juniors (1960 & 1962)they had to break the ice in the outside toilets on cold mornings.

And they were given a coal hammer to break up the big lumps of coal before they made & lit the fires in the classrooms - then they would go across the road to the headmaster's house & do his fires too.

By the time I was at school, they'd had a rebuilding programme & had central heating & inside toilets.

Oh and we backed on to a field full of cows, and watching them give birth was fairly common.

My form tutor at Secondary school (Scottish, Male, avec moustache) used to make the 'pretty' girls (ie Big busted) kiss his cheek before they were allowed out of the classroom.

How I yearned to be one of those girls.

We had to do swimming lessons in the unheated outdoor pool regardless of the weather if it was 'summer' term. I can remember breaking the ice off the top of the pool before being made to get in...and that was in the mid-1980s...!

we weren't allowed to talk after lights out, if we did we had to run round the lawn in our nighties until we were tired.

That sounds like fun jingley!

Some of these stories are shocking.

The worst things I remember are

primary school - several older boys getting the cane, one teacher who threw blackboard rubbers and pulled ears, and having to sing at a few funerals

secondary school (girls) - one PE teacher who made us do slightly dubious stretching exercises and another teacher who told us about her experiences with a ouija board which frightened some of the girls (I was fascinated but thought she was making it up)

still have a scar on my chin for running away across a polished floor to get away from the teacher who wanted to give me a christmas kiss...(unsuprisingly some years later disocvered he ended up in prison)

Our female PE teacher used to offer to help us insert our tampons.

Crossing Finchley Road (big road in N London) on my own, aged 6, then getting 2 buses, on my own, and walking the last mile (on my own, 'natch), home from school every day.

I also had evil PE teachers who marked down periods and didn't believe they might come more frequently than every 4 weeks...was this part of compulsory training for PE teachers in those days?

And I had a Sunday school teacher who used to throw the board rubber, hard, at anyone who she got annoyed with. And excercise books. And chalk. And anything else that came to hand...

Mum use to leave us on our own for a several hours with our housekeeper who was clueless wrt looking after children (and my mum was uncontactable) .. at home with a swimming pool with no safety net, gate ..

Oh we were free range from the age of 5, outside of school
we just wandered here and there in the suburb we lived in. There was little traffic though and we were always with other kids but still, totally unsupervised really. My mother worked so we'd tip up for food.

At school, if we hadn't done our history homework, the teacher would pick up our heavy books and whack us over the head with them..

My brother was caned for being the last pupil to make it in line after changing for PE - the fact that the school knew he was slightly SN didn't prevent the canings...

maidamess !!!

Actually we had a PE teacher who had a very 'close' relationship with one of the girls in my 6th form, she and her husband all but adopted her. She spent all her school holidays and most weekends there.
I found out later she was sleeping with the husband. I suspect she was sleeping with our teacher too but I don't know it for sure.

I win the prize for the maddest secondary school.

I've posted this before, but I will briefly re-cap

A girl in my year caught playing the school harp with her bare breasts

A boy was stoned and jumped offte top of the science block, totalled the chemitry teachers car and walked away unaffected apart from a few bruises

In the first year an older kids used to sit behind the school and take pot shots at us using an air rifle

The chemistry teacher (not the one who had his car totalled) was caught shagging one of the lab techs in the plant breeding room by the head of chemistry.

One of the physics teacher run a kid down on school property, jumped outof the car and shouted at the kid!

History teacher threw a desk down a flight of stairs at a kid

Heamaster had a nervous breakdown on the stage during assembly and was asking us if we had seem Kojac the night before on TV.

Someone crapped in the geog teachers cupboard.

I could go on......Do I win???

4 or 5 kids to a double seat on the school bus

never seemed strange at the time

Oh martianbishop, that is fabulous, that sounds like a film.... can you hint at what school it was? It must have been a private one? Is it famous?

Martianbishop......I think you probably sooooo win....

state comp.

One of the art teachers was more than averagely barking mad and in his free lessons would craw between the floor of his art room and the room below and hiss horrible comments to the head of art who was teachin in the room!

Sniffy, no I laugh thinking about it now, although at the time we all just sat in a stunned silence until 1 boy was brave enough to go through the 'bloody' door and find a teacher in the next classroom. It was called CDT when I started school but think the changed it to Product Design and Technology later.

Gryffin, our school bus was like that to, apparently children are only half the size of adults so it was ok to cram twice as many kids into it.

I also remember a biology teacher that, brought a complete cows heart and lungs with the windpipe stil atached then asked for volunteers to blow down it and inflate the lungs.

As part of home economics we had to learn to use swing machines and had to make pairs of dungarees for Romanian orphans out of old curtains. I stil wonder now about a little Romanian child walking around in brown/orange flower print dungarees- falling apart at the seems with one leg shorter than the other.

I have been told, on many different occasions that I should write a book about my school days. they were quite something!

Afrikaans teacher (school in South Africa) and maths teacher having an affair. would sit snogging in the back of class and obviously thought that because we were blind we wouldn't know. they would send those who had some sight out to do some chore or other and would stop when they got back. .

Hostel mother of the boys' hostel allowed me in to visit my bf who was ill. Upstairs, in his bedroom, alone. Given how conservative the school was she must have trusted me a lot.

We had a tuck shop which sold crisps, chocolate, coke... you name it on demand...

Science teacher conducting various experiments with alcohol and various other toxic substances such as murcury.

Same science teacher also ran the mountain climbing club. And one day we went to a place where there was a pool at the bottom of a 20 foot drop. He helped us all to get down there by throwing us over the edge to ensure no-one hit the rocks below. All with our consent of course - he was fab. Very very strict but very fair and everyone loved him - would have trusted him with my life. Died three years ago of a stroke .