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?

being told that we were too thick to laern numbers so we would learn about shapes instead and wether they would float or sink, because thats a really usefull thing to know in a special maths class in primary school.

lovely caretaker who used to take children into storecupboard to give them sweeties, he was actually just a geniunely nice man who liked giving the kids sweets
also in primary school

in seconadry a history teacher who would tell us read chapter whatever and make notes ill be back soon. she would come back five minutes before the bell rang! same teacher had a breakdown in my sisters class, dont think she was cut out to be a teacher.

french teacher throwing balckboard rubbers and rulers at students.

being allowed to watch psycho in media at age 14/15 without parents consent and being told by the same teacher while on a residential "there is srtictly no smoking in grounds, but there is an area just over the bridge in the woods that you cant see from the building and no teachers ever go there!"

Put over the teachers knee and smacked in front of whole class for getting zero in spelling test age 7.

Boys ears being twisted as they tried to translate French. Every wrong word the ear was twisted more.

Teacher standing behind boys with mop handle ready to hit them if answer was wrong.

Having PE lessons dressed in gym knickers with aertex shirt tucked in until the age of 13.

Not allowed to go to toilet except in break times.

Numerous pieces of chalk and board rubbers thrown.

I also remember a close friend having to sit in front of a plate of maccaroni cheese which she detested until she ate it and then proceeded to throw up.

Loads of men I know remember PE teachers 'helping' them over gym equipment with their hand up their shorts. This behaviour seemed to be the norm and was laughed at.

oh and our snacks at the canteen on break time was a choice of sausage roll, pizza dripping in grease, cartons of milk or bottles of pop, crisps, choccy but not an apple in sight!

was pretty much the same at lunch time too but you could have chips and gravy with your sausage rolls.

My sister went to a convent school in the 1970's when she was about 9. The nun who taught her class once tipped her desk over (my sister's desk) and kicked the contents all over the floor because she hadn't done her homework. My sister then had to get on her hands and knees to pick it all up.

I remember having chalk bounced off my head, and teachers throwing board rubbers across the room.

And at the boarding school I went to in Surrey we used to laugh about the school doctor - "Fingers O'Flynn", who used to ask you to take your knickers off if you came in complaining about a cold.

The 40 year old bachelor head of the junior boys house used to make the boys walk naked from the dormitories into the bathroom, and then supervise them (ie stare at them) while they were washing. When he broke his arm he had a group of 8 year olds in to help him wash himself....

Our housemaster was found with pictures a year 9 girl in his house - she was semi clothed. Apparently he'd confiscated it after finding it in the dormitory, but had stuck it in a drawer at home and not said anything to her parents.

At another boarding school we were only allowed to bath three times a week and wash our hair once a week. We were told not to have baths while we had our periods in case we caught a cold.

It was just after the revolution in Iran in the 1970's and we had several Iranian girls at the school whose families were supporters of the Shah . One of these girls was very butch. She later went on to have a sex change, but while she was at the school she had affairs with several other girls - including my sister, who she beat up horribly. Staff at the school found out but it was all hushed up - as were the shoplifting sprees this girl used to indulge in every weekend down at the local village.

Sigh - those were the days....

If anyone remembers the hard white mats that you were sposed to put the bunsen burners on to protect the tables-they were actually made of asbestos any are probably banned now.

My sister having a fall in the playground and her infant teacher, who was abit "alternative", dangling a crystal over it. Her conclusion was that my sister was fine and was making a silly fuss that her shoulder hurt.

Poor kid had to sit there all afternoon with a badly fractured collar bone

Heat proof mats are no longer made of asbestos and loads of the things that we did and saw in science lessons are now banned for H and S/ financial reasons.

No more potassium dichromate 'volcanos', no more pigs heart and cows eye dissections, no more whole rat dissections

Oh god, I'd forgotten about rats intestines and dissecting chicks - I remember a couple of girls fainting.

And why did we always have those lessons just before lunch?

My husband, who's not yet 40, remembers his primary school teacher sitting with a fag smouldering in the ashtray on his desk at the front of the classroom.....

Being sent to the shops to buy wine and cigs for my mum, i was only 7yrs old!
Walking to and from school through fields and a wood and the school being next to a high security prison where some of the primary school girls would "tease" the prisoners by showing their knickers...shudder at the thought now.
Being scared of dogs as we lived in an area with rabbies (Switzerland).
Having teachers who picked on me because i was British and not Swiss, they are still the most racist nation on earth to this day!
Back in the UK, having a Welsh language teacher who loved to twist boys ears, English teacher who would throw blackboard rubbers at you (the heavy wodden kind), also would throw whole desks.
He was finally sacked when he held a poor lad out of the 2nd floor window by his ankles!
A fellow A-level student who drank heavily and had the DT at 17yrs old, she would also swallow little live fish just to impress people.
Would actually buy them and bring them to school!
What times!

Maths teacher in first year of secondary (late 80s) making misbehaving pupils stand on their chair and shouting at them for several minutes. He did it to me for daydreaming. He also gave us spelling and word definition tests.

Board rubbers and chalk thrown at pupils here too.

At primary school I recall public humiliations in assembly for misbehaviour. There was often talk of 'the cane' and 'the slipper' but I think (hope ) it might have been just talk.

I remember dissecting bulls eyes in biology. One of the girl's in my class, her dad was the local butcher, so she managed to get the 30 bulls eyes going cheap or something and brought them into school on the bus in a couple of Tescos bags. Some poor girl got splatter with one chucked around the bus

Where do I start....? This was a very highly-regarded day and boarding prep school in Derbyshire in the 80's.

• Headmistress Headmaster's wife who thought up a brand new rule every morning
• Hairwash only once a week. Hair drying with a fan heater (hairdryers were verboten)
• Minimal washing of shirts, even in the summer
• Pervy PE teacher (though nothing so shocking as offering to help with your tampon )
• Hockey and netball in the freezing cold (think Derbyshire winters in the hills) even if it was hailing / snowing / blowing a gale
• Rounders in the hot summers wearing the same heavy changed-once-a-month rugby shirt type tops we also wore in the winter for games
• Not being allowed to wear any footwear whatsoever on the way from the changing rooms to the pool: 100m over the gravelly drive OUCH.
• (Anyone recognise the school yet? )
• English teacher who was very good BUT threw a massive fit if anyone dared to question apartheid
• Mad Science teacher who hiked 10 miles to work every day and used to write comments like ATBQ in your exercise book and promote vegetarianism (very way out at the time)
• No TV, radio (corrupting influences of the real world?)
• Sweet rations of 2p a day (what would that get you now?) to be eaten while reading for half an hour after lunch
• No pocket money either. "Shopping" was something you did by getting the caretaker to write "one heart-shaped Strawberry Shortcake rubber" in his little notebook which he would then take into town and try and find for you. Quite sweet really.
• No phone conversations with home. Only exception was eg if you'd passed your exams. And then you could hear the click of the headmaster's wife lifting up the phone to listen in. And don't forget the bill for "20p" at the end of term.
• I could go on... and on... and on...

Anyone recognise it?!

I remember being served spam fritters for lunch.

oh yes the food... spam fritters for BREAKFAST I seem to remember.....

We used to do rat disection in A-level biology and we were given a yellow shrink wrapped specimen each.
Thought it was a special breed but the yellow was from the preservative and even now i feel sick at the smell of it...yakkk!
We had a "roll" of scalpels and tweezers and we had to take them home at the end of the week to wash them.
Can you imagine that these days, letting kids walk around with that kind of "gear"?
We got good value out of our rats, used them over 6 weeks or more and it was DIGUSTING!!!

My grandmother's next-door neighbour, who we viewed as a sweet old codger, used to give us a sixpence each when we went to stay - as long as we felt in his trouser pocket to find it.
Oh, and no seatbelts/carseats on journeys. Once we were out of a carrycot, we took our chances on the backseat. If my dad stopped in a hurry, we all tipped onto the floor, picked ourselves up and climbed back on! If he took a corner too fast, we all slid along the seat to squash whoever was that side.
My friend and I (aged 9-ish?) went out for a day-long bike ride to a village about 4 miles away, going along the main roads. Took a picnic. Wandered back home when we'd had enough - don't recall having had a watch....

Jingleyjen, no not Whitby, though ours sound rather familiar.

"Being scared of dogs as we lived in an area with rabbies (Switzerland)"

I lived in Delhi as a child. My sister's friend was bitten by a dog and died of rabies......

Other memories....

Living in a little Sussex village when I was 10. I was friends with the local farmer's daughter who had a pony. We would pack a picnic and go out for the day, taking it in turns to ride the pony. We'd go cross country and be gone all day.........

At 17 I lived in Nairobi in Kenya. I used to slip out of school with my two friends (another expat Brit and a Kenyan politician's son). We'd smoke bhang in a big field behind the school and then come out onto the main road where we'd hitch lifts into the city. Then we'd go to a Chinese restaurant and get stiffed on beer.

I hitchhiked on my own once. In Nairobi. Wearing a mini-skirt.

The school had a resident basset hound called Winston, who had a huge penis. He used to lurk around outside the classrooms, sliding down a grassy bank on his willy over and over again. Sometimes he'd raid the girls' bogs and tip the sanitary bin over. Then he'd sit chewing used sanitary towels in the playground.

at this thread.

In infant school, the head would be left alone with the whole shool while the rest of the staff "tidied up". She couldn't really cope, and would haul little boys to the front, pull down their trousers and smack their lags.

In infant school we had a nutter of a teacher who would throw books at us, and make children stand up and slap their own faces if they were naughty talked. I remember one boy, who was sitting next to me hitting his own face repeatedly, really hard.

In high school, there was one teacher (he was actually one of the nicest) who would ask who had talked/run down the corridoor. If no one owned up he would order the boys to take off glassses if wearing them, then give them all a quick hit around the head.

9 of us in a car.

Giving a baby a teaspoon of brandy to help with teething.

Being shut in a dark cupboard at school for talking (aged 5)

Our teacher bought us a large container of scrumpy to share at our party on the last night of school journey. It was my last year at Primary School!!

This is definitely one for 'mumsnet classics'!

We also had a teacher who was a great shot with the wooden board rubber (perhaps that was a basic skill taught at teacher's training? )

I can remember stomping round the school playground at primary in a big group of girls singing "send the boys to Vietnam" {shock} I'm sure we weren't aware what it actually was (early 70s)

First year at grammar school and a girl in our class got copper sulphate crystals in her eye at science club.

My friend's elder brother and his friends used to fill the gas taps in the science labs with maggots, which shot across the room when the tap was turned on.

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