How naughty were you at school?

Domestic Science! My bestie friend in class (and still is 60 years on) threw a wet dishcloth at me as we were wiping down the white wooden table. I threw it back at her, just as Miss Pascoe turned round to see,so I was the one who got the detention!

LOL bet you could recite them all.

My best friend and I at my convent school were given a punishment (I can’t remember what for.) We were told to report to the scullery the next lunchtime to do the washing up. We thought this would be great fun: it was winter, and huddling in the playground didn’t appeal. I brought my tiny transistor radio in and we thought we would have fun chatting and listening to radio 1. However, the sister who usually did all the washing up and drying too didn’t leave us alone. She greeted us very kindly, then sat on a stool and opened her breviary, and spent the whole period in silent reading. We felt so guilty we worked in silence too.

I was generally quite well behaved, but twice I ended up getting the slipper( actually an old white plimsoll with a hard sole) for messing about at my first secondary school. First time was having a tug of war with a school tie that broke( two whacks that hurt), then annoying the deputy headmistress by saying her piano playing was like Les Dawson( four really hard stingy whacks and my name in the punishment book).
Otherwise nothing really rebellious as I changed school in the third form and corporal punishment was hardly ever used. Instead it was detentions if you broke the rules: I got one for not doing homework and the other for firing an ink pellet at a blackboard. I can remember we got some punishment essay about behaving in class that we handed to the teacher at the end and he threw in the bin as we walked out.

I wasn’t particularly bad but the teacher took a dim view of my art work.
Remember when the class photo was put up? I put beards and moustaches on some of the girls.
I just loved having a laugh. I could always get a giggle ( and more) from the girl sitting next to me. I wore those awful nhs glasses ( with a strong prescription. My party piece was to pull my bottom eyelid down under the bottom rim of the glasses, tap the girl next to me who would naturally look at me. She would squeal and then get the giggles.
When we were walking up the stairs we thought it was a good laugh to pull the petticoat down of the girl on the stair above us.

By the time I reached secondary school I was quite spirited.

It was so-educational and the first year girls were bullied by a group of older boys. They would trap us in a corner and punch us. My father taught me how to box when I whinged about it, telling me I had to learn to stand up for myself. Next time a boy hit me I punched him in the nose and broke it. That got me quite a reputation as someone who took no prisoners. I was never bullied again.

My mother had a part time job so I was a "latchkey" kid and had to come straight home from school to let my small sister in. Consequently I never stayed for detention. One day our form teacher noticed and asked me why. I told her that if I did not get in on time I would get a whalloping from my father, adding "Your not allowed to hit me miss so Im more scared of him than I am of you".

I hated sport and always went off sick on sports day. When the sports teacher remarked on this I reminded her I was top of the class in 5 academic subjects and that these were the ones I would be putting down when I applied for jobs. I added that I was not looking for a job as a sports teacher!

From the age of about 13 my friend and I used to "bunk off" for the occasional afternoon and go into Liverpool to look at the shops or visit the cinema. We waited until after the register was taken and then sneaked out. Once the register had been taken classes split up and went to our respective rooms as by that age we had begun to specialise in certain subjects. So the corridors were full of noisy kids for ten minutes or so - easy cover to slip out. The class teachers where we were supposed to be going knew the register had already been taken so an occasional absence was not questioned. They assumed our form teacher would deal with it. We were never found out.

After we did our GCEs I hardly went into school at all. There seemed no point. My mother went off to work not knowing that I returned to the house after her back was turned. It was the end of term so no one was bothered and there were no lessons. They did not have fines or nosy attendance officers back in those days.

I got off with a lot because I was a swot and came top of the class in all those subjects I mentioned. So I was popular with most of the teachers (except the sports mistress). When I left with 5 "O" levels I went into the civic service as a clerical officer. However didnt like it. Then I got a job as a library assistant and eventually took the professional exams.

I was never deliberately naughty at school, nor generally, but I expected the adults around me to behave in a rational and reasonable way, and if they didn't I would try and discuss it with them.

As a result I was always in trouble for insolence and 'dumb insolence' (when I said nothing, but looked mutinous).

I was expelled from two boarding schools.

I needed reminding to pay attention, sit, concentrate. I've ADD, but the sweet nuns won tiny battles over concentration. I'm last of many sisters. I'm extraordinarily patient, adept at waiting - logical necessities in my life.

Another very old thread revived. Who trawls for these?

I was a goody two shoes.
Hence I became teachers pet sometimes. Not that I wanted be. I didnt. I found it a bit embarassing.

I went to the kind of small Scottish private girls' schools that only admitted or kept well-behaved girls, and as they employed teachers who loved teaching and understood children, school was FUN from the first day until the last one.

So there was no incentive to be naughty.

The worst thing we ever did, as a class, was to hang out of the windows overlooking the street calling to the boys from a boys' school going past. Our new headmistress, whom none of us liked, was NOT AMUSED, but did not know the class well enough to know, that the girl who piped up with, "Please, Miss, I was only giving my brother a message from Mother" was telling the exact truth, but that none of the rest of us had brothers amongst those boys, or indeed on my and many others' parts brothers at all!

Wot me.......norty.............nah........it wernt me miss.......I aint dun owt!

I wouldn't have dared to misbehave at my first school, which was 4-14 when I first went there in 1954, or at the Ladies College I attended as a fee payer in 1961.

I was never in trouble. I did get asked not to put political badges on my school scarf when I was in the 6th form. I also took one afternoon a week off school in U6th to see my boyfriend but no one noticed, especially not my parents.

MiniMoon , I remember those dreadful stick pens with the scratchy nibs, we had porcelain ink wells in our desks. It was almost impossible not to have ink blots all over the exercise book. How on earth were children supposed to write with those !? I was reasonably well behaved in school ,often the ink monitor!!!

Auntieflo

Another very old thread revived. Who trawls for these?

You don’t have to look far 😄 It’s on this page.
I sometimes wonder, do people actually go looking for threads 🤷‍♀️

petra

Auntieflo

Another very old thread revived. Who trawls for these?

You don’t have to look far 😄 It’s on this page.
I sometimes wonder, do people actually go looking for threads 🤷‍♀️

Maybe someone wanted to talk about the subject now, had they started a new one there would have been comments about there already being one.

Or somepeople fancy a chat but cannot think of a subject so resurrect an old one.

Either way, what does it matter?

Auntieflo

Another very old thread revived. Who trawls for these?

5year old thread😄
Still, I’ll join in and say I was saintlike as a child tho I do remember running through a few corn fields.🤪

Well behaved at primary school then went to mixed grammar school. Around the third year a lesbian PE Teacher took a shine to me as I was very sporty and tried to get me in her personal shower. I didn’t know how to handle that or whether to tell anyone so I started playing up, being late for lessons, not doing homework etc and under performing in sports, swimming etc so she wouldn’t single me out again.

Aside from that my friend and I hated needlework and our teacher was very nervy. She used to keep all the scissors in big metal biscuit tins. We used to pretend to give them out and waited till we got close to her and drop the tin and contents which made a splendid crash and she nearly fell off her chair.

Re the reviving of old threads.

Either way, what does it matter?

Not much, I dare say, Theexwife. But it can be a bit disconcerting suddenly to come across comments from long-dead members, and sometimes even a bit upsetting if they were ones you counted as GN friends.

MissAdventure, that's me exactly! I wasn't really naughty either, I was a very quiet and timid child and terrified of being shouted at and embarrassed by anyone but I hated the ''authority'' and also the sexism! ''You should read Learn to Sew With Mother books for girls and ''Learn Model Aircraft Making'' for boys type of rubbish. I detested them!

HOWEVER! As most of my teachers and other students hated me because ... just because ... I wasn't the academic type or the being a subservient little housewife type and I didn't like them either ... I was a very lonesome girl ... one naughty thing I LOVED to do and it always got me shouted at by teachers and classmates but in this case I didn't care was when we came back from the school holidays or some other break and I was picked to shift our lidded desks around in the classroom after teachers had used it for something else, I knew where each pupil sat but I totally rearranged them so they all had to scramble around trying to find theirs while I left mine at the back where I belonged!

That gave me SO MUCH glory and happiness and I'd sit there smugly as they swore and hissed at me and teacher threw a tantrum at me!

It was beautiful!

Managed to avoid games and PE for 7 years!

petra

Auntieflo

Another very old thread revived. Who trawls for these?

You don’t have to look far 😄 It’s on this page.
I sometimes wonder, do people actually go looking for threads 🤷‍♀️

It weren't me who dunnit if id ave nown it wor an old thred i wunt of ritten owt

In Junior School one of the teachers told us to bend our books instead of open our books, I thought I'd be a smart ass and bent my book promptly getting the cane... But i only did what she said..... hmmmm