School days, the good, the bad and the ugly.

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

Some people love school others hate it. Experiences varied wildly depending on lots of things like the type of school, the era and the feelings of the individual towards it.
Did you enjoy it? Was the steak and kidney pudding the thing that made it worthwhile? Did you have a crush on Mr Smith? Did they thrash you if you set a foot wrong or was it progressive?
Got a kooky or cute school pic or you at your goofiest? Put it here

 

[medtran49]

You obviously have had very different experiences than Americans have generally.

 

[Windigo]

You obviously have had very different experiences than Americans have generally.

Also different from the Dutch.

For example in Dutch school there are no hot meals, most do not even have a service counter at the lunch hall. My school was already 'luxurious' because we could buy soda and candy bars. Dutch mothers send kids to school with a packed lunch, only universities offer full meals for their students.
Everyone else, also elementary school children get a packed lunch. The only exception would be school Christmas & Easter celebrations, but that would be a potluck situation where the parents would each bring a food item for the children to eat and share.
I was always jealous of children who did get a hot meal at school in other countries, I loathed packed sandwiches as a kid.

A typical school lunch for Dutch kids would be four slices of wholemeal bread, one sandwich with cheese and one with something else. Accompanied by a piece of fruit, a milk or a fruit juice, and if they were lucky a protein bar or something. That's it.

 

[Fooodie]

I loved my school years. I also enjoy looking at my photos and reminiscing about that time with a smile.

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

You obviously have had very different experiences than Americans have generally.

So you all love school?

 

[Windigo]

So you all love school?

No, not at all. I was bullied my entire school period, on every school I attended. I loved learning but I have very few good memories and don't want to ramble about the bad ones

 

[JAS_OH1]

No, not at all. I was bullied my entire school period, on every school I attended. I loved learning but I have very few good memories and don't want to ramble about the bad ones

Me too. I'll ramble a bit though.

To begin with, we moved a lot so I had to change schools frequently. I went to 3 different 2nd grade classes when I was 7-8. It's hard to make friends moving around so much. My dad retired from the military when I was 10, so after that I stayed in one place for the most part, but I was always the shortest one in my class and a late bloomer, so I got picked on and bullied up until I was 15. I grew up over the summer that year and then all of the boys who had been mean to me wanted to date me. No thanks.

 

[medtran49]

So you all love school?

No, but no steak and kidney pudding, though the way they made greens could make me gag just walking into the cafeteria.

There was only 1 male teacher that was remotely crushable when I was in school, and he was old enough that all the girls agreed he wasn't bad looking, but ewww due to his age. There was 1 sixth grade, 12-13 year olds, female teacher that the boys crushed on, but she was on her third or fourth marriage in her early 30s.

You had to do something really bad to get paddled at all by the principal, your equivalent of headmaster, and then it was 3 at most and you had to be really bad and a repeat offender for more than 1. I never had the pleasure.

I did get spanked by hand once by my teacher, but it was for something I said to a girl whose family was atheist. We lived in the Bible Belt of the US. My teacher happened to go to the church my family did. If my mother had chosen to make an issue of it, that teacher would have been in big trouble. Instead, I got another spanking. All I said was "at least my family goes to church" in response to an insult. I still think I got a raw deal. Granted, not nice, but 2 spankings!

 

[TastyReuben]

Did you enjoy it?

Some days yes, some days no.

Academically, I was fine. I was always second-to-the-top of my class, because I figured out pretty quickly that top-of-the-class warranted too much attention, from teachers and classmates.

The worst part of school for me was physical education, because I’m not competitive at all, don’t like sports, don’t like doing physical things, don’t like being outside, and don’t like teamwork.

Was the steak and kidney pudding the thing that made it worthwhile?

There were horrible school lunch items (creamed chicken) and ones you’d stab your best friend in the eye for (school pizza).

The hardest part, year-to-year, was knowing what was “cool” that year, bringing your lunch from home, or buying a school lunch. It changed every so often.

If that year was a “bring your own” year, then you had to know if brown bags were cool, or if it was still ok to bring a lunch box, and if a lunch box were deemed appropriate, you then had to know if novelty ones were the in item, or plain ones, or cute plaid ones.

Did you have a crush on Mr Smith?

No, but I did on Miss Trayer…and Mrs. Vanderbilt…and Mrs. Westheimer…and Mrs. Hill…and Ms. Hedger (you never forget your first Ms.) and Mrs. Jesperson (who used to be a student just a few years before!)…and Ms. Kramer (OMG, she was like one of Wonder Woman’s co-Amazons… )…and Ms. Swelk (who was a teacher’s assistant, so maybe 21yo, said the f-word under breath, and told the class her three favorite things were fast cars, fast food, and fast boys)…and Mrs…

Did they thrash you if you set a foot wrong or was it progressive?

Yes, ‘70’s ultra-conservative SW Ohio was big on school beatings, but administered usually by the principal or their assistant, though a teacher was certainly allowed to.

I got a paddling just the once, unjustly, because my only guilt was sitting between two other kids who started fighting, and we all got hauled in and smacked.

Teachers were not above dishing out a little bodily encouragement, though. We had one shop teacher who would ask questions while marching up and down the rows, and if you answered incorrectly, he’d elbow or smack the back of your head rather hard and bellow, “Wrong!” or “Incorrect!”

If a kid acted up, then was kind of open season. We’d have smart-aleck kids dragged out in headlocks, and Mr. Klay (the man who swatted me) flat out cold-cocked a 13yo classmate who was fighting. I guess he won the fight!

Got a kooky or cute school pic or you at your goofiest?

I posted a few in the Way We Were topic, but my all-time favorite school pic is lost to the ages - I was in 2nd grade (6-7yo), and I was dressed exactly like a porch-rocking old man: yellow and brown plaid shirt, light olive green cardigan, and the look on my face was of complete and total disinterest, thousand-yard dead-eye stare. I love that pic.

 

[TastyReuben]

I still think I got a raw deal.

I got suspended off the bus twice, and one was definitely wrong, and the other could have gone either way.

The first one, I was in 5th grade (10yo) and I was playfully teasing a girl I liked (don’t worry, she was giving as good as she got), and at one point, just as the bus went quiet, I said rather loudly, “You’re so ugly, you should be in a horror movie!”

The bus driver misheard that as “whore movie,” and that was that. Off the bus for three days.

Seriously, who’s ever said “whore movie” ever? C’mon, Mr. Darke!

The second time was the following year, my last year riding the grade-school bus, and there was a smart-alecky first grader who was picking on a wispy little classmate every day, and I’d finally had enough, so I threw a pencil at him and it stuck in his neck a little.

The kid happened to be Black, and we had virtually none of that at that time where I grew up, and his parents lodged a racism complaint, and I had to apologize to the kid and his parents, and say out loud that the pencil-throwing was racially motivated (which it wasn’t, he was just aggravating me for constantly making the other kid cry), and there was no acknowledgment that he was bullying the other kid at all, so off the bus again for three days.

 

[TastyReuben]

Oh, and bus drivers were also empowered to smack the out of you, if necessary!

 

[JAS_OH1]

Oh, and bus drivers were also empowered to smack the out of you, if necessary!

I remember my first and only bus driver when I was in the 9th grade (I had to walk to the elementary school and middle schools because I lived just under 2 miles away from them---quite a feat carrying a book bag and my trumpet in middle school 1 and 3/4 miles to and from school each day). Anyway, the bus driver was the coolest ever. He had long hair and smoked cigarettes, and he had a radio he would play with the local rock station on...and I remember hearing "Hotel California" and a lot of other great songs on my way to and from school.

From the 10th grade on I got rides with friends who had their driver's licenses and didn't have to ride the bus anymore, and of course when I turned 16 I started driving myself (that's the year that my dad's real estate business really started taking off and he bought me a pickup truck).

No, but no steak and kidney pudding, though the way they made greens could make me gag just walking into the cafeteria. There was only 1 male teacher that was remotely crushable when I was in school, and he was old enough that all the girls agreed he wasn't bad looking, but ewww due to his age. There was 1 sixth grade, 12-13 year olds, female teacher that the boys crushed on, but she was on her third or fourth marriage in her early 30s. You had to do something really bad to get paddled at all by the principal, your equivalent of headmaster, and then it was 3 at most and you had to be really bad and a repeat offender for more than 1. I never had the pleasure.

No steak and kidney pudding at our school and the lunches were terrible.

No crushable teachers at all. I remember about a year after my mom and dad got divorced I thought that my science teacher would make a good date for my mom, so I asked him if he was married, and found out then that he had quite the ego, as he said, "Oh sweetheart, I am far too old for you." I must have had the most horrendous look of disgust on my face as I said, "Oh yes you sure are, I was asking for my mom!"

I got spanked for being late to my English class 3 times when I was in the 7th grade. Remember my saying how short I was? Well they gave me a top locker, and I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach the combination lock and I couldn't see it very well so had trouble on a regular basis getting it open, and the taller kids in the hallways would often block me when I was trying to get to and from my locker, which was on the other side of the school from my English class. That b!t$$ of an English teacher I had that year had a rule that if you were not in your seat by the time the bell rang, you were late, so she sent me to the office and one of the coaches paddled me with a ping pong paddle, then my mom grounded me for a week (not like that really mattered because I never went anywhere anyway).

 

[TastyReuben]

Anyway, the bus driver was the coolest ever.

All our bus drivers were farmers or farmers wives, who drove school buses for extra money, since they were already up at 4AM anyway. They didn’t take crap from any kids, that’s for sure.

The circuitous route my bus took meant that it was right at an hour each way on the bus.

 

[JAS_OH1]

All our bus drivers were farmers or farmers wives, who drove school buses for extra money, since they were already up at 4AM anyway. They didn’t take crap from any kids, that’s for sure.

The circuitous route my bus took meant that it was right at an hour each way on the bus.

That would have been okay with me, I would have gotten to hear an hour's worth of great music each way! But sadly, my bus ride was only about 25 minutes.

 

[karadekoolaid]

The worst part of school for me was physical education, because I’m not competitive at all, don’t like sports, don’t like doing physical things, don’t like being outside, and don’t like teamwork.

That's probably why I enjoyed school. I was good at most sports and made a reasonable effort at those I was bad at.
I was usually in the middle/bottom range as far as marks went, but I take comfort from the comment our Headmaster made when we arrived at school:
"As Grammar school students, you are automatically in the top 5% of all students in the country"
Sorry boss - I took a wrong turn somewhere
In my 4th year (of 7) we got a new headmaster. He was undoubtedly the most unpleasant, disagreeable, unsympathetic, invidious, execrable human being I can ever recall. He'd stand up there at Assembly first thing in the morning and imperiously survey the snivelling masses below.
"YOU, BOY! IN THE 4TH ROW! Go and get a haircut, right now, and don't return until you have!"
I got my own back on him, mind you. I decided to retake my final exams because I wasn't happy with the results, so I enrolled for an 8th year and applied to university all the same. On Xmas eve, in the first term, I received a letter saying I'd been accepted at university. I went to the old git's house on the 26th to show him the letter, with a huge smirk on my face.