Things your teachers did that they'd never get away with now..

This maybe applies more to those of us who have left school a few years ago (I left in 2009!)

Inspired by a DM article in which a parent's up in arms about the fact that his kid's scholl refused them lunch - rung a few bells with me.

When I was in primary school, I attended a rural school which was built on two sites. Site 1, in the village centre, had no kitchen. It had a small dining hall but no kitchen facilities. It was an Edwardian school. Site 2 (for pupils aged 8 - 12) had a kitchen. Lunch was carried from the second school to site 1, in fancy containers so it wouldn't get cold. Because of that lunch was ordered in exact amounts and done by a menu system (school needed to know what you wanted before lunch), e.g. say 30 children from site 1 wanted a burger they would take 30 rolls down. By 2000 Site 2 burnt to the ground, site 1 got meals from a school 10 miles away, site 2 were shifted to an empty school thirteen miles away and got meals from a school near to there. (Still following?!)

For whatever reason there were inevitably food shortages. There was never enough for everyone. As such, the meals were done by rota. So on Monday, P4 would be fed first, followed by P7, P6 then P5. If you had lost your meal ticket, hadn't paid, or had badly behaved, you were put to the far back of the queue. By the end of the queue, there'd be nothing for the final few pupils. Depending on the situation, this could mean there'd be nothing for those who had behaved, paid etc.

So the final few had to get something, but obviously the school had no stores of decent food. So "meals" consisted of a mix of - rice and grated cheese, digestive biscuits, oatcakes, a single potato/scoop of mash or baked beans, also a small glass of water. What you got depended entirely on what was for dinner that day.

Because of the shortages though they would make sure every last drop was eaten. I still remember the dinner lady standing at the bucket, checking your plate. If you had left anything more than crumbs/sauce remnants you were sent back to eat it all, or occasionally told to eat it there and then while she watched.

We were also walked up to the local castle, perched on a cliff edge with unfenced 80 ft drops (more than several people/animals have died up there). The whole school, all 90 of us, 5 teachers, went up there, clipboards and pencils in hand, to draw the castle. We also went and counted traffic on the main road with one teacher to fifteen of us... Went to a teacher's house to examine her pond for frogs.. They also walked us to the harbour to spot porpoises (a harbour with twenty foot drops that were unfenced), walked all the way to a church two miles out of the village (involved walking on a main road). Also had regular times when we were totally unsupervised, not even in the school building, because of staff shortages..

We also had lessons from an untrained man who taught us about ghosts. He made us tell him about the ghosts we had seen, and he made us do telepathy experiments. I kid you not. Some of his stories were terrifying for eight year olds and I remember having nightmares.

It's seriously never occured to me that this was at all odd - but I can see if it happened now, it would be stopped pretty quickly!!

Anyone else have anything weird happen to them at school?!

I remember once in drama lesson we were having in Year 8, we were learning about the Holocaust and one of the exercises we had to do was pretend to make up Nazi propaganda by insulting Jews. There was no acting or things like that involved. We just sat in groups of about 4 or so and we were told to make up insults about Jews to replicate what probably would have been seen on posters stuck around Nazi Germany 'warning' people about Jews. A friend I had came out with, "Jewish Arse of David". He was praised by the teacher because she thought it was clever word-play. Mind you that hasn't made me hate Jews.

Strange that.

I remember once in drama lesson we were having in Year 8, we were learning about the Holocaust and one of the exercises we had to do was pretend to make up Nazi propaganda by insulting Jews. There was no acting or things like that involved. We just sat in groups of about 4 or so and we were told to make up insults about Jews to replicate what probably would have been seen on posters stuck around Nazi Germany 'warning' people about Jews. A friend I had came out with, "Jewish Arse of David". He was praised by the teacher because she thought it was clever word-play. Mind you that hasn't made me hate Jews.

Strange that.

What the hell? There is no educational benefit in that at all. Apart from promoting racial hatred. Literally shocked by that.


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I still haven't left school but in year 2 we had a teacher who used to walk around the classroom with a cane and if you weren't working she whacked your desk with it. She also used to make you stand on a chair at the front and recite dates of battles and stuff and every time you got one wrong you would miss 5 minutes of your lunch. She also used to scratch the blackboard with her nails if we weren't paying attention. Also in my primary school any latecomers had were marched around the quad 10 times while everybody else watched from their classrooms and if you didn't sing the school song or hymns loud enough you were stood at the front of assembly and made to sing the school song by yourself, anybody who still didn't sing loud enough were only allowed bread and butter for lunch! I can't believe that that used to seem normal!

Exactly. To be honest, I didn't really think anything of it at the time. It was just an exercise the teacher told us to do and I complied. I wasn't really one those intelligent, Lisa Simpson-type people that would've said, "Hang on, this is wrong, you're being anti-Semitic!" In reality, I only looked back on this moment when I was in college and thought, "Wait a minute..." So yeah, it took me a few years to realise what just happened.

Its not like i'm old or anything but when i was in primary my teachers would always hug & comfort a crying child, i don't think they would do that in present day primary school

that doesn't even sound normal for 10 years ago, sounds more like the victorian times

Well it's a bit grim for pupils who won't get an evening meal because of neglectful parents but surely most kids could have taken sandwiches?

Unless it's a school for the suicidal, pupils are going to know not to jump off cliffs, under the wheels of juggernauts etc. Unless there's a particular hazard like a narrow, crumbling cliffedge path where the leading pupils are going to be getting jostled along by those behind I think y'all needed to man up a bit.

This didn't happen to me but I'll add it anyway. I think this was a screenshot of someone's Facebook status which was then posted on Memebase. The status message said that on days he had PE I think it was, before they would go outside, the PE teacher would take the boys or both boys and girls one by one into a room and inspect their genitalia before letting them go out to commence their PE. The guy who posted it I think referred to it as 'penis inspection day' or something like that. He seemed genuinely serious that it happened to everyone and he thought it was normal.

Poor guy