What would school children of today be stunned to learn about your school?

[zippy2]

Girls had to wear dresses.

 

[justafigment27]

We didn’t carry around water bottles … if you got thirsty, it was drinking fountain water.

 

[amcnj]

In elementary school we went home for lunch.

As others have said, my high school also had a smoking room for students.

 

[barkley]

when i student taught in the early 80's at a public elementary school built MANY decades prior, despite multiple renovations over time it still had a punishment 'hot box' built into/on the property. it had been landscaped a bit around it but was still recognizable for what it had been

 

[martikus]

Our school had one TV. It was an exciting day when it was rolled into your classroom.

No internet - none.

Allowed to go home for lunch in elementary.

Once a month you could pay to stay for lunch and get a hot dog and chips - always looked forward to that.

 

[barb969]

In 3rd grade I was on triple session. That’s 3 hours a day.
Our tech was film projectors and record players. No tv’s.
Milk was 2 cents a day at school.

 

[ronandannette]

Grades 1 - 9, about sixty students altogether, three grades per room. Three teachers, the principal and the secretary/librarian were the entire staff. Everybody rode the bus and packed their lunch, no computers or AV technology except a TV on wheels (with rabbit ears) and a rickety film projector that had to be taken to the gym and projected against the wall. Good times!!

 

[cedricandsophie]

1. There was exactly one piece of technology in the whole school, which was the Radio. It was huge, had to be wheeled around on a trolley, and took about five minutes to warm up when turned on.
2. The nuns wore full habits and carried bamboo canes with which they would hit the students for breaking any rules. And irony of ironies, they called themselves the "Sisters of Mercy".
3. We had to wear shorts/skirts all year round. No long trousers.
4. Anytime you needed to go to the staff lounge for something, the smell of cigarette smoke upon the door being opened was absolutely overwhelming.
5. The headmistress (a nun) went to the church on Sunday to keep track of who went to Mass. Anyone who was absent was summoned up to the stage during the next weekly assembly, and if they did not have a good excuse for their nonattendance were caned on the spot in front of everyone.

In grade school we had to go up to mass a couple times a week. If you didn’t kneel when required ie sat back on your seat, the nuns would hit you across the back of the legs with a ruler to get you to kneel.

 

[Magical2017]

Submitting poor quality work earned the score it deserved. There was no "automatic 50/100." Fifty is the new zero for our middle and high schools. I have very mixed feelings about this policy. I read the pros and cons and feel there are some good arguments for both sides.

 

[CdnCarrie]

Some of these are kind of barbaric.

 

[Genie+]

Trappers Keepers. Kids today would have no clue.

Our middle school bought maybe like 6 Apple computers around 1982 and the whole school of almost 400 students got to try them. It was very sparse, iirc a 30 minute class every other week.

This image looks accurate


By the end of a couple years we learned how to do this:
You had to number each line 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. I remember something about string and using a dollar symbol $. It was interesting and boring at the same time. Like wow this could do something great, but we were just saying ‘hello world’ lol And making Christmas trees out of asterisks.

Now? I could never have imagined what happened over 40 years. Like I can see that my husband just went in the restroom at Home Depot on the Find My app (I’m not weird, just making and timing dinner). Edit a movie on my phone. Have access to almost any bit of info anytime and everybody forgot how to spell because spellcheck. Endless list here really When you think about.

 

[Genie+]

Oh yeah. We also spent years learning a secret code that kids today cannot understand.

cursive

 

[Jimmy Mouse]

Just as others mentioned,
Teachers smoked outside classroom or in lounge.
Students could get a smoking permit.
We got paddled when we did wrong.

Things at my school, middle and high school,
We stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.
Every time the President was on TV we would watch it.
All students had to shower after P.E.
In 6th grade we brought our rifle to school (no ammo) on gun safety day for lessons.
In high school it was common to see a gun rack in the back window of pickup trucks with a shotgun or 30.6, 30/30 etc on the rack.
All the guys carried a Buck knife on our belts.
Most importantly, there were no school shootings back then.

 

[DaisyDuck001]

As far as I know, everyone I knew in school identified as the same gender as they were biologically born.

 

[Chili327]

Smoking section.

 

[mylilnikita]

The only drill we had to know were tornado and fire drill. Lock downs were non existent. Kids knew how to use fists and not bring guns

Paddle aka the convincer:i never got paddled because I was more afraid of my dad off I got paddled.


High school had an unofficial smoking lounge.Then there was different kind of smoking lounge past the track lol
My Drivers Ed teacher was a sauce monster who drank from a coffee cup that was never hot with steam and he smelled like Jack Daniels.

You may get an eraser upside your head by a teacher for acting up lol

Girls couldn’t wear as short of gym shorts as the guys,we don’t want to tempt the boys lol

 

[KayMichigan]

The only computer we had was in the math classroom, and all it could do was draw graphs.

 

[indimom]

If we were good, we got to help the teacher by making copies and cleaning the erasers. lol
And we really did consider it a reward.

 

[CdnCarrie]

As far as I know, everyone I knew in school identified as the same gender as they were biologically born.

Or they pretended to as they had no choice.

 

[mjkacmom]

View attachment 742579View attachment 742580
If we were good, we got to help the teacher by making copies and cleaning the erasers. lol
And we really did consider it a reward.

Wow, an eraser machine! We took them outside and pounded them on the brick walls.

At our elementary schools, kids can still go home for lunch, and the HS has always had open lunch. All students in all of the schools still stand for the pledge of allegiance, that’s how all meetings, such as the BOE, are started.