I still have some of the items that I made at secondary school, a wooden pencil box from woodwork classes, a spirit level from fitting & turning & two biscuit shape cutters from sheet metal work along with a hammered copper fruit bowl.
In metal work classes all we made all year was various types of ashtrays. The teacher would lean over the desk & comment on our work, ash dropping from this chain smoking.
Amazing I didn't take up smoking, but he was a decent teacher & never looked like hitting any student for anything.
Craig1 said
04:44 PM Nov 29, 2022
We had a very odd teacher in 3rd year High School. Prone to throwing the blackboard cleaner a fair bit. One day someone was acting the goat, so in frustration he yells out " you in the green shirt- stand up ". So the whole 35 of us did exactly that, as it was part of our uniform to wear a green shirt.
Quietend him down for a week I recall.
Whenarewethere said
05:48 PM Nov 29, 2022
Reminds my of our French teacher (I have forgotten French), the class regularly had to put our hands on our heads for X amount of time.
One time we prearranged for the next lesson... Class, hands on your heads for 10 minutes. We all did, not where she expected, & she stormed out of the classroom.
I think the headmaster was wise enough to ignore this situation & let it die a natural death, so to speak!
It actually pretty much stopped hands on your heads!
86GTS said
06:08 PM Nov 29, 2022
At our school we wore blazers & were supposed to wear matching caps but hardly anyone wore them despite the school going to great lengths to enforce the wearing of them. One Friday at assembly it was announced that caps were no longer part of the official school uniform & must not be worn. On the following Monday morning almost everyone turned up wearing a cap.
rgren2 said
06:16 PM Nov 29, 2022
86GTS wrote:
At our school we wore blazers & were supposed to wear matching caps but hardly anyone wore them despite the school going to great lengths to enforce the wearing of them. One Friday at assembly it was announced that caps were no longer part of the official school uniform & must not be worn. On the following Monday morning almost everyone turned up wearing a cap.
Outsmarted.
Whenarewethere said
08:56 PM Nov 29, 2022
Two of our classrooms were tired demountable (probably called something different in those days), joined together. You only had to sneeze & the building would move sideways an inch.
We organised at the end of the lesson for the two classes, when we put our chairs on the tables that the legs just stayed on the edge.
We all tippy-toed out to the assembly in front, about a minute later as usual the teacher came out slamming the door behind. Every chair fell off the desks, it seemed like the building were collapsing.
Derek Barnes said
12:40 PM Dec 3, 2022
Some of my memories of primary school include playing lunch time tennis ball cricket, making clover chains, being a master at playing jacks (knucklebones) (I never lost!), making moss gardens, getting straight Fs until I repeated 3rd grade when I started getting As, getting straight As in 6th grade, having a horror teacher at the start of 6th grade who kept a dozen canes in the front cupboard and would thrash anyone who made a noise in class including girls!, chain smoked constantly and grumbled to himself about how everyone was useless, everyone was terrified of him and he was chucked out of the school when parents complained. I also remember buying lollies at the local shops after school including yummy musk cigarettes in an opening packet, and creamy soft streets blue ribbon hearts.
Whenarewethere said
02:51 PM Dec 3, 2022
Mike Harding wrote:
I am truely appalled that many of you seem to see the beating of children as something with an aspect of levity to it.
I see it purely as an act of bullying and brutality.
I'm pretty sure the dismembering of school children on Sydney Northern Beaches came to a halt because the government protocol of torturing childing to within an inch of their life was going to cost more the the entire education budget.
The last case that I can remember was a parent who was a lawyer in a top legal firm. It was not cost effective to continue to disembowel school children any more.
Whenarewethere said
02:55 PM Dec 3, 2022
In other words the private lawyers would earn more than Mr Crown!
Cuppa said
06:23 PM Dec 4, 2022
Mine was an English all boys grammar school founded in 1520. Not religious, just a centuries old culture of "I had it done to me in the early years, now I'm in the upper years I can do it to others". The culture was bully or be bullied.
It provided me with the most miserable years of my life. Think Tom Brown's Schooldays.
The bullying was rife & encouraged by the teaching staff of whom many were sadistic &/or willing to turn a blind eye.
'Wilfred' the size 10 plimsoll was the French masters weapon of choice when not throwing chalk or chalk dusters at students. Wilfred was for anyone achieving less than 50% in a french test.
The history teacher who would belt kids across the head with the thick, heavy cardboard tubes used for rolling maps on.
The Geography teacher who would sn igger when throwing my exercise books at me with 'fail' marks, knowing full well that his favourite students had thrown my books in a puddle or torn out my work.
The PE teacher who would watch us showering & who would slipper us if we refused to shower
The teaching staff as a group who turned a blind eye to a student having been 'crucified' with his arms tied behind his back by prefects, & hung on the coat hook rails in in a cloakroom & left. Found unconscious. Nothing was said. No-one held accountable. Same when one of the small number of boarders - a 12 year old, was dragged from his bed in the night & taken outside naked & had his head squeezed between railings & left. He lost toes to frostbite.
Even the better teachers had their moments. I was in first year, a 'sprog'. We were being taught how to write a letter by the English teacher. Homework was to write a letter. All the kids were giggling & joking about writing a 'love letter'. Yours truly was the only one stupid enough to actually do it. After the homework had been marked the teacher called everyone up to his desk one by one to get their work back. He left me until last. When my turn came, he made me get down on my knees & did all he could to make me look foolish in front of the class. He then made me crawl on hands & knees the whole length of the school, stopping at every single class room along the way to interrupt the classes, to 'introduce' me & my crime to the entire school class by class, until I reached the headmaster's office, whereupon, still on my hands & knees, had to knock on the door & when answered had to say "Please sir I have come to be caned", & got caned across my knuckles.
I lived several miles from the school & had to use the school bus to get to school & back each day. That day was the beginning of me regularly hitch hiking because the school bus became the most unsafe place to be. The scars from the darts thrown to embed themselves in my legs and arms healed, but the scars from the steel capped boots are still on my shins today.
The need to constantly look over my shoulder to try to avoid the next blow saw me fail all of my exams at school, & I left before my 16th birthday. I was never safe.
I wouldn't wish that schooling experience upon anyone, but I also know others who were there at the same time who share some memories but still claim it did them no harm & set them up for life. Mostly they were the ones who excelled academically or in Sport.
Me, I made my life in spite of the experience, my strength came from surviving on my own terms. There were others who didn't.
-- Edited by Cuppa on Sunday 4th of December 2022 07:27:47 PM
About 1967, I was in 3rd year, My music teacher broke a violin over my head, the class was mucking up, not my fault! I left school after that and got a job as a driveway assistant in a garage,..then a motor mechanic. for another 50 years or more.
smwhiskey said
07:35 PM Dec 4, 2022
Secondary School was 5 years of living hell at a prestigious private school where the reputation of the school was far more important than the students themselves. Generally felt like I was a loner who had few friends, was considered a waste of space by most of the teachers, was written off by the school careers adviser, was completely disliked by the headmaster who threatened to expel me in grade 10 for not doing my best (but by then I didn't care) and could guarantee at least one afternoon a week in the detention room writing lines. Even the school bully wasn't interested in me. Scraped through on sheer ability and nothing else. My very hasty departure from the student car park on the last day of school was something I've never regretted.
Craig1 said
08:10 AM Dec 5, 2022
Good to see long haired louts from Liverpool
Tony Bev said
06:50 PM Dec 5, 2022
I must have led a sheltered life
Or perhaps because I was born in 1947, there were just too many of us in the same classroom, for the teachers to start chastising
86GTS said
05:02 AM Dec 6, 2022
A few more pranks that we used to get up to were shoving ice-cream sticks down the drinking fountain holes & breaking them off flush. Turn the water on & they squirted 20ft in the air or better still in someones face.
Removing the ink tube from a BIC biro & shooting rice through the tube. They made a good blow gun & were really accurate.
Whenarewethere said
07:57 AM Dec 6, 2022
Someone I used to work with went to a catholic school, primary grades. He never wanted to go into specifics, but he did say that the nuns were the cruelest people ever known to mankind.
dorian said
08:12 AM Dec 6, 2022
Whenarewethere wrote:
Someone I used to work with went to a catholic school, primary grades. He never wanted to go into specifics, but he did say that the nuns were the cruelest people ever known to mankind.
Sister Mary Stigmata (The Penguin)
peter67 said
10:22 AM Dec 6, 2022
Whenarewethere wrote:
Someone I used to work with went to a catholic school, primary grades. He never wanted to go into specifics, but he did say that the nuns were the cruelest people ever known to mankind.
Your friend was damned right.
86GTS said
11:14 AM Dec 6, 2022
Last month I read Billy Connolly's autobiography.
Half the book is about the cruelty that he endured at a Catholic school.
AndyCap100 said
07:05 AM Dec 8, 2022
memories of a pleasant if not particularly usefull time back in the UK. Secondary school, not primary .We also had a teacher, chalky edwards if memory serves ,was also bloody fond of hurling the blackboard rubber around .Funny thing is Mike Harding ,it did teach you discipline and respect .i expect a phycologist will have some sort of reasoning for this ,but there you go .
Respect for the teachers ,your parents ,the police,people in general of all nationalities etc etc .NOT LIKE THE LITTLE ****S WE ALL HAVE TO PUT UP WITH TODAY .Have you read about the ramraids ,people being stabbed and beaten up over here in NZ at the moment ,mostly done by 8-15 yr olds!
I rest my case .
Rock on people .
Dougwe said
07:13 AM Dec 8, 2022
Not just "Little ****s" Andy, a couple of big ones too.
Six students have been expelled from Waverley College in Sydney's eastern suburbs following incidents the school says involved "assault and humiliation-type behaviours".
landy said
09:43 PM Dec 8, 2022
86GTS wrote:
A few more pranks that we used to get up to were shoving ice-cream sticks down the drinking fountain holes & breaking them off flush. Turn the water on & they squirted 20ft in the air or better still in someones face.
Removing the ink tube from a BIC biro & shooting rice through the tube. They made a good blow gun & were really accurate.
A bicycle tyer pump connector made a great rice shooter, As you could keep facing the front of the class while firing it back over your shoulder. If you thought you were being punished unfairly at school you could always go home and tell your father why you had been whacked with the slipper or got the cane .
dogbox said
12:14 PM Dec 10, 2022
Dougwe wrote:
Not just "Little ****s" Andy, a couple of big ones too.
those big S***s use to be little S****s not all that long ago, and there seem to be more of them these days or maybe my perspective is changing
it would seem some of us could expect worse on the home front if the news of our punishment if the news made it back there, whereas now the parents are more than likely front up to the school demanding to know, why their little darling is being harassed/victimized ect by the teacher
86GTS said
02:25 PM Dec 10, 2022
One parent teacher night my Mum & Dad met with a female trainee teacher that was teaching me. She greeted them saying, " you're his Mother & you must be his Father". My Dad quickly replied "I bloody well hope so".
Her cheeks turned fire engine red with embarrassment.
-- Edited by 86GTS on Saturday 10th of December 2022 04:07:06 PM
Someone I knew who was a teacher in a girls school. Sometimes girls would sit in a position to create a distraction with their very short summer school uniforms with no underwear.
Not to be seen looking at the temptation you would have to teach the class from the back of the room.
You couldn't even send them to be caned as then you would have by default admitted to looking. Some of the more difficult teaching which were pointed out by him.
In metal work classes all we made all year was various types of ashtrays. The teacher would lean over the desk & comment on our work, ash dropping from this chain smoking.
Amazing I didn't take up smoking, but he was a decent teacher & never looked like hitting any student for anything.
Quietend him down for a week I recall.
Reminds my of our French teacher (I have forgotten French), the class regularly had to put our hands on our heads for X amount of time.
One time we prearranged for the next lesson... Class, hands on your heads for 10 minutes. We all did, not where she expected, & she stormed out of the classroom.
I think the headmaster was wise enough to ignore this situation & let it die a natural death, so to speak!
It actually pretty much stopped hands on your heads!
At our school we wore blazers & were supposed to wear matching caps but hardly anyone wore them despite the school going to great lengths to enforce the wearing of them.
One Friday at assembly it was announced that caps were no longer part of the official school uniform & must not be worn.
On the following Monday morning almost everyone turned up wearing a cap.
Outsmarted.
Two of our classrooms were tired demountable (probably called something different in those days), joined together. You only had to sneeze & the building would move sideways an inch.
We organised at the end of the lesson for the two classes, when we put our chairs on the tables that the legs just stayed on the edge.
We all tippy-toed out to the assembly in front, about a minute later as usual the teacher came out slamming the door behind. Every chair fell off the desks, it seemed like the building were collapsing.
Some of my memories of primary school include playing lunch time tennis ball cricket, making clover chains, being a master at playing jacks (knucklebones) (I never lost!), making moss gardens, getting straight Fs until I repeated 3rd grade when I started getting As, getting straight As in 6th grade, having a horror teacher at the start of 6th grade who kept a dozen canes in the front cupboard and would thrash anyone who made a noise in class including girls!, chain smoked constantly and grumbled to himself about how everyone was useless, everyone was terrified of him and he was chucked out of the school when parents complained. I also remember buying lollies at the local shops after school including yummy musk cigarettes in an opening packet, and creamy soft streets blue ribbon hearts.
I'm pretty sure the dismembering of school children on Sydney Northern Beaches came to a halt because the government protocol of torturing childing to within an inch of their life was going to cost more the the entire education budget.
The last case that I can remember was a parent who was a lawyer in a top legal firm. It was not cost effective to continue to disembowel school children any more.
In other words the private lawyers would earn more than Mr Crown!
Mine was an English all boys grammar school founded in 1520. Not religious, just a centuries old culture of "I had it done to me in the early years, now I'm in the upper years I can do it to others". The culture was bully or be bullied.
It provided me with the most miserable years of my life. Think Tom Brown's Schooldays.
The bullying was rife & encouraged by the teaching staff of whom many were sadistic &/or willing to turn a blind eye.
'Wilfred' the size 10 plimsoll was the French masters weapon of choice when not throwing chalk or chalk dusters at students. Wilfred was for anyone achieving less than 50% in a french test.
The history teacher who would belt kids across the head with the thick, heavy cardboard tubes used for rolling maps on.
The Geography teacher who would sn igger when throwing my exercise books at me with 'fail' marks, knowing full well that his favourite students had thrown my books in a puddle or torn out my work.
The PE teacher who would watch us showering & who would slipper us if we refused to shower
The teaching staff as a group who turned a blind eye to a student having been 'crucified' with his arms tied behind his back by prefects, & hung on the coat hook rails in in a cloakroom & left. Found unconscious. Nothing was said. No-one held accountable. Same when one of the small number of boarders - a 12 year old, was dragged from his bed in the night & taken outside naked & had his head squeezed between railings & left. He lost toes to frostbite.
Even the better teachers had their moments. I was in first year, a 'sprog'. We were being taught how to write a letter by the English teacher. Homework was to write a letter. All the kids were giggling & joking about writing a 'love letter'. Yours truly was the only one stupid enough to actually do it. After the homework had been marked the teacher called everyone up to his desk one by one to get their work back. He left me until last. When my turn came, he made me get down on my knees & did all he could to make me look foolish in front of the class. He then made me crawl on hands & knees the whole length of the school, stopping at every single class room along the way to interrupt the classes, to 'introduce' me & my crime to the entire school class by class, until I reached the headmaster's office, whereupon, still on my hands & knees, had to knock on the door & when answered had to say "Please sir I have come to be caned", & got caned across my knuckles.
I lived several miles from the school & had to use the school bus to get to school & back each day. That day was the beginning of me regularly hitch hiking because the school bus became the most unsafe place to be. The scars from the darts thrown to embed themselves in my legs and arms healed, but the scars from the steel capped boots are still on my shins today.
The need to constantly look over my shoulder to try to avoid the next blow saw me fail all of my exams at school, & I left before my 16th birthday. I was never safe.
I wouldn't wish that schooling experience upon anyone, but I also know others who were there at the same time who share some memories but still claim it did them no harm & set them up for life. Mostly they were the ones who excelled academically or in Sport.
Me, I made my life in spite of the experience, my strength came from surviving on my own terms. There were others who didn't.
-- Edited by Cuppa on Sunday 4th of December 2022 07:27:47 PM
Front row ( left )
Not surprised that schools get burnt down.
Almost. Front row, second from left.
Secondary School was 5 years of living hell at a prestigious private school where the reputation of the school was far more important than the students themselves. Generally felt like I was a loner who had few friends, was considered a waste of space by most of the teachers, was written off by the school careers adviser, was completely disliked by the headmaster who threatened to expel me in grade 10 for not doing my best (but by then I didn't care) and could guarantee at least one afternoon a week in the detention room writing lines. Even the school bully wasn't interested in me. Scraped through on sheer ability and nothing else. My very hasty departure from the student car park on the last day of school was something I've never regretted.
Or perhaps because I was born in 1947, there were just too many of us in the same classroom, for the teachers to start chastising
Removing the ink tube from a BIC biro & shooting rice through the tube. They made a good blow gun & were really accurate.
Someone I used to work with went to a catholic school, primary grades. He never wanted to go into specifics, but he did say that the nuns were the cruelest people ever known to mankind.
Sister Mary Stigmata (The Penguin)
Your friend was damned right.
Half the book is about the cruelty that he endured at a Catholic school.
Respect for the teachers ,your parents ,the police,people in general of all nationalities etc etc .NOT LIKE THE LITTLE ****S WE ALL HAVE TO PUT UP WITH TODAY .Have you read about the ramraids ,people being stabbed and beaten up over here in NZ at the moment ,mostly done by 8-15 yr olds!
I rest my case .
Rock on people .
Here's a turn-up:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-08/waverley-college-students-expelled-for-bullying/101747276
Six students have been expelled from Waverley College in Sydney's eastern suburbs following incidents the school says involved "assault and humiliation-type behaviours".
A bicycle tyer pump connector made a great rice shooter, As you could keep facing the front of the class while firing it back over your shoulder.
If you thought you were being punished unfairly at school you could always go home and tell your father why you had been whacked with the slipper or got the cane .
those big S***s use to be little S****s not all that long ago, and there seem to be more of them these days or maybe my perspective is changing
it would seem some of us could expect worse on the home front if the news of our punishment if the news made it back there, whereas now the parents are more than likely front up to the school demanding to know, why their little darling is being harassed/victimized ect by the teacher
One parent teacher night my Mum & Dad met with a female trainee teacher that was teaching me.
She greeted them saying, " you're his Mother & you must be his Father".
My Dad quickly replied "I bloody well hope so".
Her cheeks turned fire engine red with embarrassment.
-- Edited by 86GTS on Saturday 10th of December 2022 04:07:06 PM
Someone I knew who was a teacher in a girls school. Sometimes girls would sit in a position to create a distraction with their very short summer school uniforms with no underwear.
Not to be seen looking at the temptation you would have to teach the class from the back of the room.
You couldn't even send them to be caned as then you would have by default admitted to looking. Some of the more difficult teaching which were pointed out by him.