Weirdest Schoolday Memories?

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, Grandmabatty, that's a fantastic prize for a student.

We went on a geography field trip for GCE work. The English teacher came along to help the geography teacher. The former was a strong character, who soon took over map reading and we got totally lost. It took a while to find out way back to the coach.

So much for risk assessments.

When I was 7/8 for a Summer show 12 of us had to learn to dance a Minuet. It was hysterical the very reluctant boys having to bow and twirl with arms raised and girls twirling under their arms. It was very funny but no one from my family saw it very upsetting.

My memory is of being asked to collect a ‘log table’ for a girl taking A level maths. I found a table and between us we carried the table over to where we were asked to. Teacher out that she would take ‘it’ upstairs to the student.....seemed a bit odd to me so we started up the stairs..(to be helpful) Teacher appeared from around the corner to see what was happening. Of course I was 100% wrong....just needed a booklet. I realise no young GN reader will have a clue what a log table was!

I remember log tables and slide rules (think I still have one).

Having to sit through a public information film on the dangers of playing on bomb sites and handling unexploded ammunition when I was in the juniors at my local primary school.
This was in the 1950s in inner city Birmingham. Our local neighbourhood was dotted with unfenced bomb sites which we children loved to investigate.
It was the same film shown just before the summer holidays, usually by a stern policeman.

Our first week at primary school.
Denise D creating a little 'puddle' and announcing to Miss that the radiator was leaking.

We were all impressed!

I was 6 or 7 and in a new school. The class were learning how to tell the time. I was asked to go and look at the clock in the hall.
Half and hour later I was still gazing at the clock when another teacher passed and asked me why I was standing there. "I'm looking at the clock". "Well there it is" came her reply.
I must have been rescued eventually.

I went to a convent school, Notre Dame. It was unfortunate (and teenage girls are so cruel), that the caretaker (Mr Peacock) was hunch-backed and we nicknamed him Igor/Quasimodo. He was also stone deaf.
In readiness for speech day, the whole school was rehearsing the national anthem in the school hall. The head teacher, Sister Veronica, watching us from the stage, had already lost patience because some girls were giggling and issued a stern warning to the next girl who laughed.

As we began the anthem again, the stage trapdoor opened behind the headteacher and up came Mr Peacock, his back turned to us and completely oblivious of our presence. We tried very, very hard not to laugh but it was truly impossible.

Logarithms! Aargh!!!

Never ever understood them, I seem to have muddled through life without them.

I remember Log tables midgey. I began to smile straight away, I guessed what was coming.
In our first science lesson, aged 11 the science master made alcohol from potato. The alcohol was passed round for us all to taste. I can't imagine a class of eleven year olds being offered alcohol in a science lesson these days.

I was taught by nuns we had maths with the head mistress I liked her although she could be strict
One day she was reaching up to write on the board when her knickers fell down She handled it wonderfully, stepped out of the knicks picked them up and said ‘they don’t make elastic like they used to ‘ and floated out the classroom amid hidden giggles, behind hands and a huge release of laughter after the door shut

Grammaretto, I too was sent to look at the clock, a big one on a landing. This was because I couldn’t tell the time at an age when virtually everyone else could. I waited until someone came past, and asked them what time it said, using the excuse that I didn’t understand the Roman numerals. Actually, I couldn’t tell the time at all. They always told me, and I went back with right time, but I suspect the teacher knew of my little trick.

A mad headmistress who made us stand with our back to a full-length mirror and bend over. If we could see our knockers (sorry - knickers!) in the mirror we were sent to lengthen our skirt.

First year secondary school we had a horrible maths teacher. He would write out a problem on the blackboard, tell us to stand on our chairs. We could sit down when we had the answer. I used to wail until about half the class had sat down before I did. He then asked random pupils the answer. I sat in fear and trembling in case he asked me. I almost always didn't have it.
I hated maths ever since.

These are making me smile, hope you're all enjoying the thread

I married for the second time in 2015 to someone I knew slightly at school. My best friend's brother was his best friend. He found me through Friends Reunited and he occasionally posts on Gransnet from his home in France using the moniker of olddudders.

We didn’t date at school and had no idea back in the Sixties how significant we would become to each other several decades later!

In junior school our teacher promoted a class competition, I do not recall much about the actual competition but I do remember coming third. My prize? A box of fireworks! I was eight years old!

I was at boarding school in Schleswig Holstein during the Cuban missile crisis. We were only about 30km from the border with East Germany. Everyone in BAOR at the time was on the alert in case the political situation escalated. We had to practise getting up in the middle of the night, grabbing a blanket each and being ready to be ferried to the nearest RAF airbase to be flown out...

It was a bit hair raising.

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

I think that’s why I gave up biology!

One sex education lesson at an all girls school. We were told to make sure that our petticoats didn’t show below our skirts as it would drive the boys mad!
I’m pretty sure lots of girls let their slips slip after that!

In primary 4, I came 3rd in the end of term tests.
I duly turned up at the prize-giving in my best dress, as was usual for winners. I sat there and got nothing because 3rd prize was awarded, in her absence, to a girl who had been away from school for most of the year, with serious illness.