Weirdest Schoolday Memories?

Never could understand geometry, kept asking why! teacher refused to explain anything so never did learn the subject! never needed it, survived without it.

Grandmabatty, I too won a chocolate essay, it was a big thing at the time!

jocork

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!

We had to wear 2 pairs of knickers (regulation blue ones over our usual white ones) at my all girls grammar school in 1963-8 which was ludicrous.
Also we had to have a leather ‘Penny purse’ across our chests for a hanky.... it wasn’t big enough for a sanitary towel though...
so there was much embassment every month.
I hated my secondary school and it’s archaic rules not designed for girls but implemented by old lady teachers. Grrrrr.

Yes we had to dissect a frog and a bull's eye in biology. We then had to device a maze for a rat - I won a book on flower arranging for that one! I also did the Cadbury's essay competition in junior school and won some chocolate although I'm not sure now how much arrived home

We did the usual apron and cap for our first cookery class and an embroidered nightdress case in needlework - I found it recently when packing up to move house and couldn't bring myself to throw it out . I was quite good at sewing and found it pretty frustrating that I had to wait till the next week to get on with something so often took it home and had it finished by the next lesson!

Probably the most memorable day was when the rebel in the English class was sent out of class by the irascible teacher and ended up having a row with him outside the door then a physical fight - 3 years later I was married to him (the rebel - not the teacher !!

Not being allowed to wear patent shoes 1s they might reflect your underwear!!!

The dining room at school had rows of long tables where 8 pupils sat on either side with a teacher at one end and one of the senior pupils at the other. The meals were very good apart from what was known as Jam Slab. Not many people liked it but we were not allowed to leave anything, so when a groan went round the room you knew what was coming.It was a big round of thin pastry covered in jam but it was always so hard we found it difficult to get into it with a spoon, so we used lots of custard to try to soften it. One day the girl next to me got frustrated, lifted her spoon high in the air and whacked it down on the slab. Straight through the Slab,custard, jam and dish. There was a sudden silence in the room. All the people near the girl, including me, and the teacher were covered in all the mess. Then everyone in the hall started clapping, even the teachers. It was hilarious. Needless to say poor Dorothy never lived it down.

We had someone visit who gave a talk on Australia with slides. The teacher poked me at the end for questions as I was always putting my hand up. I had drifted off and said something stupid about sheep. I sometimes wonder if it was to put the seed of Australia in our minds, being inner city and part of the baby boomers.
I was given the part of the narrator in the nativity play at primary school (looking like an old soul) My mother was mortified when I told her I had replied to the question did my mother have a skirt I could use, that no, she didn’t.
At secondary school, the music mistress looked like a film star, ample bust and she wore her v neck cardigan the wrong way round. When we walked in a crocodile behind her, workmen all whistled like mad.
Heaven knows why I had to design and make a RUG just before I left school. I walked out with that unfinished rug over my shoulder.

Sex education- we went from spyrogyra (?) procreating, to a good old Irish nun concluding ‘... so if you sit on a boy’s lap , put a book down first’ ( thus avoiding pregnancy!) Not much info of what happened in between!

I was made to stand on a chair on a table through the whole of break time while the rest of the school jeered at me through the window. This was top year primary (Year 6).
Why? Because I didn't know how to solve mathematical word problems.
Luckily, it didn't do my mental health too much harm - I became a teacher!!!
Glad I didn't fall too...

I remember being made to dissect a pregnant rat as I was a vegan and in the 70’s that was very unusual. The teacher singled me out to do it and the whole class even the teacher were laughing at me as I was crying uncontrollably. I cannot imagine anything so cruel happening these days.

Back in 1983, aged 15, sitting in a Sex Ed class.

The teacher was talking about homosexuality (all 1980s stereotypes in play) and said that the way to tell if a man was gay was to look at the colour of his shirt, if it was pink it was a sure sign.

Two minutes later my maths teacher, a burly, straight, married man walked into the classroom to give me a message. Yes, you guessed it... he was wearing a pastel pink shirt and the whole class was falling about laughing hysterically and he had absolutely no clue why.

MaggsMcG

I used to move about the classroom talking to people pretending to need a pencil sharpener. One teacher told me to "get in my desk" so I opened the lid and say in the desk. She didn't appreciate me taking her literally and sent me to the head masters office. When I told him what I had done I could see him trying not to laugh.

On my sister's first teaching practice she told her pupils to 'get in their desks' and one of the children was a bit large and got stuck and they had to get the caretaker to come and take the desk apart! My sister did still go on to teach but she never forgot that lesson.

My first day at school sitting on a small chair at a small table playing with Sticklebricks!

Sul2 I am just the same. Just chickened out of 2nd AZ vaccination because SO anxious about the blood clot thing. As for school, I remember the days when teachers would wheel a telly from room to room so we could watch the schools programmes. One programme showed a picture of black tar in a smoker's lungs. It made such an impression on me that I was never ever tempted to even try smoking and could never understand anyone who did.

tictacnana

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! ?

That's actually rather shocking! ?

Scentia that must have been so horrible for you.

@Dragonfly46 Malt? For some unknown reason, I just cannot picture malt, so I'm having the greatest trouble trying to work out why you'd have it on a spoon?

I went to boarding school. I had chosen some material with my mum to make a night dress. I absolutely loved the soft brushed cotton material. It was light pink with, I think, some pretty little flowers on it.
I followed everything my teacher said and did, and somehow managed to make a nighty that would have fitted myself, my best friend and my teacher all at once!!!
To this day, I still do not know how it came out so huge. Yet i still wore it on occasion! ??

@Shropshirelass
Sticklebricks, oh the fun I had with those!
Yet, nowadays, I do not see the fascination ??

@starlily106
I'm almost peeing myself with laughter!!

Su12
That was rather random. But I feel your pain!
Do try not to worry as much.
Try to see the funny side to life instead of the worrying.
And we all get thru, one way or another, so just smile and have a lovely day!
Hugs to you.

Ali08 Hello, just in case Dragonfly doesn't see your query about malt. I think she is referring to Cod liver oil and malt. In the 1940's and '50's, in my experience, this was given to children to build them up. Cod liver oil and malt was a soft, caramel consistency. It came in a blackish brown, wide neck jar. My twin brothers and I used to line up every morning for mummy to give us each a spoonful. It tasted reasonably ok.

You can still get it, and also malt on its own which is yummy.

Our Science Teacher was very pleased that a kind local farmer had donated a dead piglet for dissection purposes. She proceeded to pin its little trotters to a wooden board, it was belly up, and then sliced it open with a scalpel. Unfortunately said piglet must have been dead for quite some time, copious amounts of foul smelling yellow liquid flooded from its body, over the table and onto the floor. The smell which filled the room was truly dreadful, children started screaming and some fainted, and the poor teacher had to quickly evacuate the class. I can still remember the shock on her face. We were 11.