Weird things your teachers did, which they would be fired for today.....

[muriel76]

Bit of a random question, but I was chatting with an old school friend the other day and we were remembering our teacher at primary school having a new bathroom fitted and she wanted to check how the workmen were doing.

The whole class was told to 'line up at the door' and off we marched down the road to her house, with teacher leading the way (small town BTW she lived near the school!) but no other adults in sight.

We then all sat in her back garden while she chatted to the plumber!

Ok this was back in the 80s but it made me think - you would never get away with this today.

Anyone else got a similar story from before the days of the national curriculum and parental consent forms etc?!

Apologies for the entire bolded paragraph.

chocolateyclur, that just reminded me of the twunt of a teacher Mr Hill who had slippers in graduating sizes hung in his cupboard for the purpose of thrashing small bottoms depending on the severity of your misdemeanour - he had a very short temper and was usually bright red in the face with rage for no good reason - bastard!

No surprise to hear a few years after leaving primary that he had died of a heart attack during a road rage incident

Some of these are quite sad and scary; but some just O.M.G. !

We had a history/geography teacher who more than once opened a (3rd floor) window, put one leg outside and sitting on the windowsill would threaten suicide as we were too stupid to bear.
He also lived on fags and cognac, was about 5ft nothing, weighed 6st dripping wet and looked like a jaundiced prune even then (80s). Unsurprisingly, he is a bachelor, his sister cooks for him and he loves to chat about existentialism in the local pub. My brother lives near him and sees him every now and then if he doesn't manage to hide first .

We had a physics/maths teacher who was ex-army and every problem/calculation had a military setting: "If your tank weighs 1800kg and is stuck on a slope of 20 degrees, how strong does your winch need to be to pull it up?" or some such lark.
He also took us on a residential schooltrip and used to make misbehaving students do forced marches through the snow - until some of us vomited with exhaustion . We loved the man and would have done anything for his approval...

All the usual chalk/wet sponge/book throwing - seems quite commonplace, sadly.

The 2 aforementioned teachers were best friends btw, really strange pair, tiny prune and 6ft 4 He-Man .

• Blackboard duster thrown at Bad Boys in back row - regularly
• smacking hands with ruler
• knicker inspection once.....

Our Religious Education teacher (!) crept up behind a not-paying-attention student and SLAMMED him over the head with the large hardback RE textbook. The book went completely U-shaped.

Same guy cleared us all out of the room so he could confront another student he hated, and threw steel chairs across the room at the student while we all looked in through the glass windows.

The head of PE went into the boys shower with a camcorder to film for a promotional video .

Another used to hurl board wipers as chatting students..

I went to school when we still got "the ruler" if we were naughty. Teachers DSs went to the school and I remember one time when her youngest was naughty, she took him to the back of the classroom, pulled down his trousers and pants and whacked him on the bare bum with a ruler..

Germany, late-90s: we got chalk and/or erasers thrown at us.

England, 2000: Art teacher used to chuck tables and chairs in a rage, but in mellower times she would sit on said desks and tell us all about her horrendous periods. .
Same school, one english teacher used to hide alcohol in his desk and seemed to have regular breakdowns where he would be absent from school in the run up to exams. At the time we thought it was just annoying, but I just feel sorry for him now.

Hitting.

Having an egg timer which was turned over with the words 'if Annette hasn't stopped crying when the sand has run through, I shall give her something to cry for!'

Hitting again

Smoking in the classroom while we were in assembly

Bawling in the corridor 'I DON'T LIKE YOU, I NEVER HAVE AND I NEVER WILL, RIGHT? RIGHT! GREAT!'

General mocking and deriding of clever children, giving them offensive nicknames and encouraging other children to join in.

Not really teaching us anything.

Boys and girls used to have separate PE lessons. The PE teacher used to make us girls hang upside down on the rings to make our t-shirts fall down so he could see our boobs.

The music teacher used to stand up leaning his front against his desk, pushing up onto tiptoes and down again, thus rubbing his erection against the edge of the desk.

I was just talking to FIL about this today. He went to a Catholic school, he's naturally left handed but was forced to write, eat etc with his right hand.

All mine are from primary school. A teacher tie a girl to her chair with sellotape, another time she made a girl get changed in the boys changing rooms after PE as she was being silly.
The blackboard throwing teacher retired the year before I started.
Anyone caught spitting was made to spend breaks spitting into a large bucket "until it was full" this punishment was never needed beyond the first year of primary. Also if you were caught kicking you had your shoes taken off you. Very sensible IMO, but wouldn't be allowed now. I loved that teacher she was fantastic.

The fun things that wouldn't be allowed now.
If it was a nice day the teacher and 1 other adult (either a parent helper or whoever was around) would take the whole class of 30 for walks in the countryside for the afternoon, no permission slips needed, we'd just go.
The school field had a great big banking, then it flattened out. When it snowed, so long as you brought a change of clothes you'd be given a polybag (big plastic feed bag donated by local farmers) and you could spend lunch time, and often the afternoon polybagging down the field.

We had some odd school trips too... the weirdest was to a sewerage works. As a result I will never ever flush a goldfish down the toilet. :(

My primary teacher used to let me out of school early to pick up her son from nursery school about a mile away. I was about ten at the time.

A very dim, art teacher who when I was in second year (year 8) believed me when I said that every week I had to miss art and go and visit a sick Aunty in hospital. Art was the last double lesson of the day and I just skived off. It was only weeks and weeks later I got caught because the art teacher happened to ask my Dad, the deputy head how his sick sister was!!!!! Dad was more cross with the gullible teacher than me!

English teacher who ate sweets and peanunts in front of the whole class (without offering them round), taught us nothing and threw a sickie on parents evening.

Junior shcool teacher who would pull me (and others) out by our fringes/noses/ears for talking in class and rap on teh knuckles anyone who did not know all their times tables. She also kept a record of who had given what to the charities we collected for (good Catholic school) and gave out a prize to the highest donor whilse shaming others.

Oh and of course the inevitable male PE teacher who would sit at the back of the gym and look up all our little PE skirts rather than teach us anything. Naturally he had an affair every other year with a sixth former.

Senior school teachers by comparison were remarkably normal... although we were all made to watch "Threads" in Humanities when we were 13.... it's filmed in the city we lived in so the teacher could tell us whether we'd be dead, or how serious our burns were, depending on where we lived. We all had nightmares for weeks, people were going out and throwing up... and they did this year in, year out.

First year of secondary, every monday morning was double science, where the teachers for both classes in my year would give us a video and put it on in the tech room and tell us to shut the fuck up while they dealt with their hangovers with lots of coffee and fags next door.
The video collection included Blue Lagoon and 9 1/2 Weeks...

Then there were the trips in the school minibus, with a dozen of us on the floor and clinging on for dear life when the doors flew open going round roundabouts - and the chem teacher smashing up most of a petrol station when he stopped to refuel.

And the computer studies trips which consisted of going to Pizza Express, being given glasses for both red and white wine and not allowed to leave while one had wine left, getting regaled by stories of the teacher's three-year-old, then going on rides on the pier followed by watching a movie with Julia Roberts in. Ironically the stories of handling stubborn toddlers have been some of the most useful stuff I ever learnt at school!

Then there was the RE teacher who covered contraception for a whole year, complete with graphic details of her own sex life, in particular the effects ofher husband's vasectomy on his penis, which recovered full function after a month but now bends slightly to the left...

Plus of course board rubbers and model molecules being thrown at you for not paying attention. And the bonkers priest who came one day who asked if we believed in God (ripple of indifference), pulled out a gun and shot down the aisle making a bullet hole in some hymnbooks, and then said Now do you believe in God? Though to be fair he wasn't invited back!

This was all an expensive boarding school in the 80s/90s!

LimburgseVlaai had one of those at college except he used to just plonk "himself" on the corner of the desks and just sort of stay there ... balancing on his bollocks. Mind you we all did well on his segment of the exams, probably due to the fact we took copious notes - better that, than to actually look at him hanging off the corner of your desk

One teacher tied a 5 or 6 year old boy to his chair because he was naughty and put sellotape on his mouth. Just imagine, she would be in prison for doing that today!!

My middle school (late 70s - early 80s) was pretty much fully staffed by the most foul, abusive and shite teachers I ever experienced. My primary teachers were all normal and mostly inspirational so it was a bit of a shock. And then after leaving that school all my high school teachers were lovely and normal again. It was like some sort of evil educational twilight zone.

I think most of them would have been fired. There was the stuffing paper in someone's mouth incident, the making a boy do PE in a leotard incident, the freaky, pervy teacher who only allowed boys to join his special 'science' club every year and just the general air of fear of getting a board rubber lobbed at your head.

It was only some years later when me and some former schoolmates were talking that the penny dropped. The school opened a year before we started and we can only assume that all the shit teachers from other schools had been 'encouraged' to apply to the new school as a means of getting rid. Thirty years later there are still some who I would love to bump into so I could tell them what revolting shits they were who made a bright kid who wanted to learn shrivel inside after being made fun of. Being made fun of by the teacher FFS! For being overweight, for not having a car, for living in a detached bungalow - wtf?, for having a SAHM (I know - different these days!) and for going on holiday to Filey - paid for by my GPs cos we were skint.

Yes Mr Oldroyd. You is at the top of my list! You Purdy haired, man-bag carrying arse! I know not nor care where you are but I am so glad that the school went long ago! I give it no credit for my success in life.

When I was 5 in 1987 one boy already dressed just in his pants and vest for PE having forgotten his kit accidentally farted. The teacher spanked him.

When I was 7 another teacher dragged the class naughty boy across the class room by his ear and spanked him repeatedly while we all sat in stunned silence. The same teacher also made us all weigh ourselves and record it in a chart. One poor girl who weighed almost as much as the teacher was mortified.

13 years old went on school trip to Hungary by coach. This coach load of girls spent much of the trip wearing only underwear and getting hammered every night. We were utterly unsupervised. Mainly because two of the teachers were busy carrying on an affair and another was very elderly. I had the most wonderful time and I learnt so much. At least two of those teachers are dead now and it was only 16 years ago

My wood work teacher used to swing a bit of wood around, if you were standing to close you would get hit (which i did).

We also had a teacher who would slam a piece of wood down on the table infront of you to get your attention but it was so loud it would leave your ears ringing for the rest of the day .

Nothing compared to others though .

When I was 16 (and a lightweight thankfully) my geography teacher -6'2"- picked up my chair with me on it and put it on my desk. Then laughed evily and went back to his chair, leaving me to climb off.

All for the cardinal sin of swinging on my chair!