What were you like at school........?

Mishap, why is being short and fat a problem?

Showers! You were privileged, we were left to fester...

Memory of the misery of having to have showers after sport ...

Hated every minute, enjoyed art hated everthing else... did decided to stop on(against teachers wishes)! I wanted to stay with my friends lol.. but got fed up and decided to stay off for 3 weeks..(that wa after creeping into school in the morning whilst otehrs were in assembley. the registers were left int he outside office...so we (yes me and my friend) usd to nip in sighn our names in reg then..sod off for the day.. eventualy we were summoned in tot he headmaster room and politely asked to leave "FOR GOOD" LOL lol lol......... my parents werent too pleased ..my friend and I ended up working at the local Crisp Factory (loved every minute of it)

Mixed really. I hated PE teachers, but my history teacher was excellent, I corresponded with her until she died last year at the age of 89. Our geography and RE teacher, Mother Frances was wonderful, really caring and determined to push us working class girls as hard as she could to achieve well.

Grammar school -mixed where I was very bright but also very rebellious. Working class girl in alien environment, apart from the actual learning. I spent so much of my energy avoiding games and PE, pleading that I was working in the library. (With DH to be!) The Senior Mistress, who had no idea of my academic prowess, saw me walking home with DH to be, and holding hands, and told me I was a slut and would never get anywhere; I spent much of my life proving her wrong! OK, we did get pregnant after celebrating my "A" Levels but I went back to university and eventually ended up with a Masters and half a PhD. AND we're still married! Sucks to you, Miss Jones.

I hated school, full stop!

This whole thread simply reinforces my gut instinct that school is a bizarre institution - why do we do it? Throw children together in an alien setting and expect them to be happy and thrive - nothing that anyone has said has given the impression that it was a good way to spend one's childhood - such precious years!
There must be a better way to get an education!

I HATED school - I was boringly brainy and was pushed on a year and did all Os and As a year early and went to uni too young really. So - for me it was not about struggling academically - I was just so bored, so frustrated with the discipline, so tired of being force-fed facts and not being listened to, bored with the treadmill, tired of the quashing of imagination, intimidated by the hierarchies both among peers and that dictated from above, and so sickened by all the pettiness and tin-pot gods of teachers who just loved the wielding of indiscriminate power (especially PE teachers).....

You will have gathered that it was not great.

My OH was talking about his school this a.m. and said that his head teacher was short, fat, narrowly religious and sadistic and should never have been allowed near children.

The only saving grace for me was the music - I grabbed every opportunity to sing and sing and this has been the central theme of my life.

You can spell 'academically'!
I now realise that my naughty episodes were mere peccadilloes by contrast with some of yours. I'm so ashamed.

Did anyone see the BBC4 2 part series about grammar schools? I missed the first one, but saw the second the other night and was in floods of tears. Several of the people in it talked most movingly about how proud their parents were of them, coming from a poor home but getting into the best grammar schools. The one that made me cry the most was a guy who said that he didn't do much with his education when he left school, and by the time he had got his act together his mum was dead, and never got to see what he had achieved. One man's mum pawned her wedding ring to buy him his uniform [the first new clothes he ever had]. I then understood how my mum felt when my best friend dropped out of school before taking O Levels, and she was terrified that I would follow her. I was in a group of 4 friends; we were the poor ones. I was bullied by some of the 'richer' ones and it made me determined to do better than them academically [sp], which I did [even though I still can't spell academically ]. I would imagine that I was very shy and tended to want to fade into the background as much as possible. I'm so grateful that I went to an incredibly good primary school which enabled me to pass the 11 plus, and had a mother who gave me the love of books that i still have today. I wish she was here so I could thank her.

I didn't like school one bit! I was very shy, very tall (for my age) and very thin - which led to a good bit of bullying. Once I'd left primary school, where I was more or less top of the class, things started to go downhill a bit. I did have friends, but not very close ones. In that case, it was a wonder that I didn't just knuckle under and work hard, but no....I rebelled quite a good bit. Wouldn't wear the correct uniform, received the belt on numerous occasions, and was to be seen lurking outside the head's office very regularly, awaiting more disapproval. I was also the class clown, and I know I was very likely considered to be a right pain in the backside. I ended up with a small handful of O levels and pregnant at 16. However.....46 years later, I have brought up a fine family, and had a good career, where I gained appropriate qualifications.

Oh Carol that sounds so familiar. I once was persuaded to lead a deputation to complain about something to the head. By the time she opened her office door I was standing there on my own! Unfairness and injustice still have me hopping up and down and shouting.

I think we have a few things in common as well Granny23. I was never disrespectful, but always challenged unfairness and did not see what allowed a teacher to try to assault me when they insisted I should have the slipper for forgetting my gym kit or not doing homework - I never did get hit because I always stopped them by moving. My big mouth got me into trouble because if there was a collective complaint and a group of pupils agreed we should tell the teachers what our problem was, I always seemed to be the one who was speaking, while the others took a step back. There was so much unfairness that I voted with my feet and kept truanting, plus I was bored with doing the same thing over and over again.

Respect granny23, I had much the same attitude but my lacked your ability

I was the opposite of Carol, following 1 year behind my model pupil, top of the class, sister throughout school. I started school able to read fluently and count and after 3 months in Primary one was sent up into primary two. The Primary two teacher did not appreciate my efforts to show her (and the other pupils) easier ways to do the sums we were set, any more than Primary one teacher had done and we had a big stand off when I pointed out to her that it did not matter whether the counters on the number board were red side or blue side up when we were doing addition. The turning some blue was only useful when subtracting.

In Primary 4 I was sent to the Headmaster and put into another class again - my crime? - calmly telling the teacher that there was no point in belting the class dunce for not having learnt his spelling, when it was obvious that he just was not bright enough to cope with such hard words. This kind of incident occurred regularly throughout my schooling and although I remained always and easily top of the class, I got on well with all the other pupils, was never bullied and usually appointed class spokesperson in any dispute - unlike my sister who was deemed 'a swot' and 'stuck up'.

The Rector, at High School, called me into his office specifically to tell me that I was NOT going to be appointed as a Prefect because of my rebellious attitude, which, he implied, would blight the rest of my life. I told him that I would have refused the Prefects badge anyway as I had no wish to boss about my fellow pupils (or waste break times herding first years into 'lines' of boys and girls, or supervise detention - imposed when the school bus rendered a whole village late, someone forgot their gym kit etc.) I suppose it must have been difficult for the teachers but I have no regrets. If they would insist on setting up such silly, petty, useless and convoluted rules, they should have expected that someone would challenge them.

- so much for my education, jeni!

butternut no Miranda as in shakespeare, the tempest.

Butternut, no. It was primary school so she was a general purpose teacher.

jeni - 'Miranda' as in the recently successful comic??
Think she's brilliant.

jingle In primary school, teacher would leave the class unattented and slip out to buy cigs. Before leaving, he gave strict "No talking" instructions. Nevertheless we all gassed umpteen to the nine in his absence. When he returned he would suck his teeth and ask..."Who broke the rule?" How come I was the only one to own up? The punishment was the cane across the outstretched hand [which to his annoyance I could barely keep still long enough for the THWACK as the cane whizzed through the air at supersonic speed.]

Just beeping miserable!

jessM hey who said I wasn't interested? It just wasn't allowed Strictly forbidden, verboten! Got the picture. Besides it's difficult to be interested in men when you never meet them. In fact I felt a bit like Miranda when I went to tech:- oh brave new world that has such creatures in it!

jingl - it wasn't a science teacher by any chance, was it? . Mine was good at that!

Carol - You clearly did extremely well. (smile)

I was also very scruffy, probably smelly and wore NHS pink wire rims!! Not a pretty picture. - and yep, I finally got an education (in determination and bloody-mindedness) despite school, and contrary to expectations, became very successful in my field. My husband's nickname for me is 'little soldier'.

I can remember getting the ruler for talking! It was a really awful woman teacher, and she used to bend your fingers back while she did it, which hurt more than the ruler.