Weirdest Schoolday Memories?

Oh, lots of lovely memories. We had a trainee maths teacher who we all swooned over in the 5th and lower 6th. He ran a music club in the club period which I think was the first period after lunch on a Friday. He fancied himself as a budding John Peel and would play records by the Incredible String Band and the like.

We all hated our DS teacher. In forms 1 and 2 we did sewing with her and in 2 and 3 we had cooking. We were making meringues and one girl couldn't get her eggwhites to whisk up. The dish went right round the room and everyone tried to whisk them to no avail. It was only when the dish came back round to her that she realised that she had been trying to whisk up the juice from the tin of pineapple and the egg whites were still sitting on the counter!

At lunch, four of us always sat at the same table together. Once the salt had clogged up in the salt cellar and one of us banged it on the table to try and loosen it. The room went completely silent, as this was what the teachers would do if they had an announcement to make. (Teachers sat at a separate table on a raised platform at the side of the room). So embarrassing!

Grandmabatty

We watched a film about chocolate production and then had to write an essay about it. I won and duly received 30 big bars of Cadbury chocolate. I was very popular until it was eaten! I can't imagine such a prize these days.

Wow, we did that very same thing which must have been an inter school thing. I remember the girl, who was my best friend, that won got a flat tin with all the chocolate in. Every other pupil got a bar of chocolate for entering. The funny thing is her parents had been full on and written her essay for her, lol. Needless to say she had to take the whole tin home untouched by sticky fingers, lol.

There are loads of things that were done at school that they wouldn't get away with now.

Kate1949

Did anyone else have to dissect frogs in their science lessons? ?

I never disected a frog, despite studying Applid Biology for my degree, but my DM did during higher school certificate in Biology. Apparently they used ether to kill the frogs but didn't use enough so had only knocked them out. They pinned them to boards and cut them open then went for a break and returned to find the frogs trying to escape from the boards!

In secondary school we had a very nice and a bit Bohemian English teacher and one day we went into the class and she had an open suitcase with about five piglets in it!!….?????

jocork

Kate1949

Did anyone else have to dissect frogs in their science lessons? ?

I never disected a frog, despite studying Applid Biology for my degree, but my DM did during higher school certificate in Biology. Apparently they used ether to kill the frogs but didn't use enough so had only knocked them out. They pinned them to boards and cut them open then went for a break and returned to find the frogs trying to escape from the boards!

Oh my God that is totally disgusting ????

Oh, yes, the sex education! More or less non existent at my girls’ grammar.
Though there was one session where our biology teacher, probably in her 50s then, said we could write down questions anonymously, and she’d answer them in class.

Except that when it came to a question about birth control, the very stern answer was, ‘This is something no nice girl needs to know about until she’s married!’
??
This would have been pre O level, so perhaps 1965.

Blinko

Oh yes, needlework. Did anyone else take seven years to complete the school apron, I wonder? Just me then...

My DM told of a teacher called Phyllis Irene Greenwood who had a leather briefcase with her initials on! No prizes for guessing her nickname!

I started at the convent when I was 6. I was shown into the classroom on my first day during a lesson on tens and units which I had never seen before.
At break time I joined the wrong line to file back into class as I didn't know which was mine. I got the ruler on my hand for that mistake.
During that first day the nun who taught us picked on a lovely, lively little boy and hit him with a ruler on his legs mercilessly.
That was 1952. I hated school.

Foxglove77

In the first year of our comp school we had to embroider our initials onto our PE jumpsuit. I felt sorry for Bridget Oliver

Oops clicked on wrong quote!

The outside chemical loos at my village primary school in the 50s, and the ghastly headmistress and very strict uniform rules at my all-girls secondary school (e.g. no boots to be worn unless there were x inches of snow - boots outside that is, we could only ever wear regulation sandals indoors).

I thought everyone wore a pair of white cotton underpants under the regulation ones.

We all did at the two schools, both all girls, that I went to.

The regulation ones were horribly scratchy - you simply could not have worn them next to the skin.

As thirteen year olds we did gym outside during the summer term wearing only airtex shirts and our regulation school pants, ankle socks and gym shoes.

Anyone passing in the street could see us, and a lot of lads and men did stop to look.

Our mothers complained and shorts were finally added to our gym uniform.

In the last year of primary school, we had to make an apron for the cookery classes we would have to suffer the following year. Fabric was scarce in those post-war years, so our 'cookery' apron had a little triangular bib, offering little coverage and more like a French Maid's pinny than a cook's. Fortunately, I was able to 'inherit' a proper apron from my older cousin who had just left school. No idea what happened to my little pinny!

In my sons school one of the teachers was quite short but exceedingly well endowed in the chest area. One day she wrote something on the blackboard with chalk but when she turned round she inadvertently it off with her chest.

I don't think anyone at my secondary school wore white pants under the regulation navy ones.
We had the choice of wearing navy shorts or the pants for gym, as long as they had a strip of wide red ribbon sewn down each side.
I had shorts but many didn't.

It was quite usual to have a class interrupted by a message from a gym teacher, which was brought by 2 girls (always the same ones) from the year above me.
They were in their navy pants, and stood at the front of the class while the teacher read the message.

My dd1 had to make the exact same cookery apron I’d made nearly 30 years previously. She loathed sewing, so I ended up doing most of it.

I was reasonably accomplished at sewing so was equally miffed/amused to end up with a C+ - ‘Neatness and accuracy are 2 skills which you must practice (sic).’

I was at junior school and it was Easter we was putting on a religious play about the temptations of christ and I was playing the devil I wore red tights and a red polo neck jumper secured under neath with a safety pin! Unfortunately half way through the play the pin did in fact ping ? but the show had to go on you never saw anyone leave a stage more quickly than me!!

Yes Kate1949, although I couldn't bring myself to do it. Once the teacher dissected a rabbit in front of the class!

Yes kate1949 we did a lot of dissection at school including a rat but it was the bull’s eye that really got to me. I passed out in class and have had a real thing about eyes ever since!

I was reasonably accomplished at sewing so was equally miffed/amused to end up with a C+ - ‘Neatness and accuracy are 2 skills which you must practice (sic).’

Our first project was a cotton waistslip. My seams were never straight enough so there was much unpicking. We were made to pin exactly along the seam line, then tack along the seamline (trying to avoid stabbing ourselves ) and then we machined on top of the tacking so unpicking meant having to go back to the begining every time. I was told I would have to re-do mine at home. Well Mum did them for me. Next class...I had to unpick them again. All these years later I have no idea whether they were still bad or ifthey were in fact fine but the teacher knew that I hadn't done them myself.

Final year at junior school we went on a school journey for 2 weeks to staying in Cliftonville in Kent. Educational trips included a visit to the last colliery in Kent where we went underground and a chicken processing plant where we saw chickens stunned, electrocuted and then decapitated. Can u imagine this happening today?? We had to keep a journal with essays and pictures and i won a prize awarded by the School Journey Association. I really enjoyed that experience. The visit we made to Richborough Castle started my lifelong love of archaeology and Roman history.

At junior school in the '50s, someone decided that the school trip would be to walk up Skiddaw near Keswick. Of we went on coaches with pack lunches inappropriate foot wear and clothing. We were dived among the teachers and used at least three different routes, not all the easy paths.
All sorts of mishaps happened along the way to the top. We then walked down.
We all made our way to the coaches and returned to West Cumbria. As we got off the coaches one woman started screaming where was her son. Teachers had to go all the way back and luckily he was wandering down one of the wide paths he had found.
When I taught myself I was so conscious of all the preliminary work and form filling of risk assessment that any trip entailed. Did it not exist in the 50s and what were our parents thinking to let us do it? It wasn't even mentioned in the local newspapers.

Gwyneth

Yes kate1949 we did a lot of dissection at school including a rat but it was the bull’s eye that really got to me. I passed out in class and have had a real thing about eyes ever since!

All the dissection that was done was revolting and why necessary???
Firstly, many children would be repulsed by having to dissect things, secondly what is wrong with detailed pictures or slides on a screen? Or even a movie?
I can't see why actual animals and eyeballs had to be cut up, I really can't.

Hard to say what was the weirdest. In my first year at secondary I was ‘employed’ by a team of psychologists to go round to every class with them to help with the tests they were doing. This involved setting up equipment and showing them round . I was out of class for a week and they treated me like one of the team even though I was only 12. I only thought it was weird years after because I was so young . Another weird one was when I was in the 6th form and there was a bomb scare. All the children were evacuated except the prefects who were told to search the building for stragglers whilst the staff looked after the children. I pointed out they WE WERE CHILDREN which was regarded with a disgusted sniff and the threat of confiscation of a prefect badge. Weird ? Well I thought so.

Kate1949

Did anyone else have to dissect frogs in their science lessons? ?

Not a frog, but we did have to dissect cows eyes and other 'bits' from farm animals. One of the boys in my class was a son of the local butcher so these were always readily available.

Actually( and I’m not sure if this is weird or more probably something else) our form master made us line up and pull our skirts up to prove that we were wearing stockings and not tights , which were not allowed as they were seen as unhealthy. Hmmm! ?