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I Remember When

Started by ulthar, December 19, 2007, 10:24:04 PM

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ulthar

The knife at school thread led me to wax nostalgic about my high school days - boy, how things have changed.  Some of these were mentioned over in that thread, but I was wondering what's changed from when you were in school.

I was in high school 1979-1983 in the mountains of a southern state.  Here are some of the things I recall about school that would NEVER be countenanced today (zero tolerance, political correctness, etc):


  • knives at school were the norm
  • guns at school, in vehicles, were common
  • going deer hunting (in season) was a legitimate absence from school
  • staying home to work on something at the house was likewise a legitimate absence
  • For that matter, any absence was 'excused' with a parent's note - if your parents knew you missed school, and condoned it, it was none of the school's business besides that; you could fail a grade, however, if you missed too many days in a school year no matter what your grades were.
  • it was okay to smoke at school, just not INSIDE the buildings
  • chewing tobacco had a similar rule, but it was easy for us to chew or dip in class
  • we called many of our teachers by their first names; many of our teachers taught our parents or at least KNEW them outside of school
  • leaving school for ANY reason during the day (unless you worked in the afternoons, then you could leave school at lunch time to go to work) was forbidden, but there was no fence, no cameras, etc.  You COULD do it if you thought you would not get caught.
  • I cut history class one time because my girl friend and I were having problems and I wanted to talk to her; later, my history teacher caught me, and I happened to know she was going through a divorce at the time.  We took a walk and had a long talk about life and stuff - a teacher and a student could interact outside the classroom without a bizillion alarm bells going off.
  • soft drinks were not allowed at lunch
  • we prayed at ALL sporting events and most assemblies
  • no one stopped us if we wanted to pray in class
  • freshman hazing sometimes involved bloodshed, though it was not always the freshman who bled
  • we only had about dozen or so black students at school, but our school was not 'racist' (that was just the make-up our our community); there was, however, a school that our black football players did NOT travel to to play, as they would not have come home

I'm sure there's more, but that's what I got at the moment.

I'm not so sure that what we have now can really be called "progress."
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Professor Hathaway:  I noticed you stopped stuttering.
Bodie:      I've been giving myself shock treatments.
Professor Hathaway: Up the voltage.

--Real Genius

LilCerberus

Remember when sex was safe, and motorcycles were dangerous?
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

CheezeFlixz

I'm from the Class of '81 and I remember those things, I also recall.


  • If you got in a fight at school you didn't get counseling or detention, the gym or football coach got the gloves out and let you settle it.
  • Teachers taught and did not spout political opinions.
  • They did NOT hand out condoms.
  • You actually had to make the grade to pass, or else you failed.
  • Getting licks (whoopen) was common place.
  • You could wear t-shirts with not so great messages on them and the worse thing was you'd have to turn it inside out.
  • If you got caught doing something stupid, they didn't call the cops, they called your parents which was often worse.
  • Gas was 70 cents a gallon and my car got 8MPG ... but it'd go 140MPH

Ah high school, the best years of your life and it's all wasted on youth.

RCMerchant

School has changed  little here...except...
.the work is MUCH harder...or else I'm much stupider!
.I carried a pocket knife always.
The shop teacher would through blocks of wood at you if you weren't paying attention.
.A very large paddle with holes drilled in it was used on those who deserved it...(which included me on occasion. ( I didn't deserve it,of course- :lookingup:).
.Fights were common on school grounds...and  weapons never came into play. If you kicked or bit,you were a 'sissy',-that was an unspoken rule.
.You didn't 'rat'.
.Smoking was strickly OUT. Yet you could chew tobacco outside during gym and recess...no one seemed to care.
.Pot was sold EVERYWHERE....and it was real cheap-people would stumble into class reeking of weed-these people were called 'heads'.
.Most of the farm boys had 12 gauge shot guns under the seat of their trucks during hunting season.
.You could not wear shorts or hats in class.
.You had to take a shower after gym...even if you didn't like to because you were embaressed about your little weiner.(Again...not me- :lookingup:)
.Soda pop and candy was not allowed in school. Except at Valintine Day parties. You could get your knuckles or head rapped if the teacher felt like it...as long as they used rulers or yard sticks.

Oh yeah...I went to high school between 1975 and 1979...was supposed to graduate in 1980-but I ran away from home and hitchhiked to New York. I was 16.)
Supernatural?...perhaps. Baloney?...Perhaps not!" Bela Lugosi-the BLACK CAT (1934)
Interviewer-"Does Dracula ever end for you?
Lugosi-"No. Dracula-never ends."
Slobber, Drool, Drip!
https://www.tumblr.com/ronmerchant

odinn7

#4




I also lived through the days where you could have knives in school.

Hunting is still an excuse to miss school for a day around here and in fact, they recently changed the school days to have the school closed on the first day of deer season...lol

I recall being in high school and there was an actual smoking area outside. You had to be in 11th or 12th grade to use it but there it was...and it was a nice set up too.

No security...fights were handled by kids and if they got out of hand, a teacher would step in...

I could go on...it just seems like so much has changed these days and I really can't say that any of it has gotten better. My 7 year old daughter is in 2nd grade and I really wonder what it's going to be like as she gets older...*sigh*


*edited* I went crazy with that quote button I think!
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You're not the Devil...You're practice.

Jack

I graduated in '82.  A few things:


  • Nothing political was ever taught in class.  That would have never even occurred to anyone
  • You could smoke if you went to the designated smoking area, and if you had a note from your parents.
  • Those shorts that the Hooters girls wear were extremely popular - every girl in the whole school wore those to PE class.  Ah...the memories.
  • We had some cop from New York give a speech to all the students one time, and he was extremely adamant that anyone who smoked pot would wind up dead or on skid row.  The next day, the principal got on the intercom and apologized to all the students.
  • Did I mention the thing about the Hooters girl shorts?  Oh yeah.  Well, it's worth repeating.
  • There were about two or three people who were in charge of making sure no one left the campus during the day.  In other words, you could leave anytime you felt like it.  I drove past my high school a few years ago and there's a huge fence around the whole thing.  It looks like the exercise yard at a prison.
  • Teachers could pretty much do anything they wanted to students, so long as there were no broken bones or permanent scarring involved.
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.

- Paulo Coelho

Derf

Senior of '82 here.

I don't remember smoking being allowed (I didn't, anyway). Chewing tobacco was no problem as long as you didn't spit it at anyone.

No shorts on our campus, but we could leave to go home for lunch.

Sodas? Anytime we could get to a machine and didn't make a mess with them.

Most teachers wouldn't allow gum, but that was up to the individual instructor.

Rifles or shotguns in the cars were no problem; I'm not sure about handguns.

There were only a handful of weed heads on our campus, and even fewer that were on anything harder.

There were a few visits from the drug dogs (like, one or two through my time in high school). If anything was found, everyone knew it almost immediately; it was big news. Now, it would only be big news if nothing was found.

I'm sure there was plenty of underage drinking and such, but I was unpopular (and my father was a deputy), so I never heard about it.

Even the smallest teacher could break up a fight because we would actually stop when someone in authority caught us. We would never have dreamed of hitting a teacher/administrator (okay, maybe we'd dream it, but we wouldn't do it).

We always prayed at sporting events. In fact, they still did up until very recently.

We got a computer (one mainframe terminal hooked up via phone modem to a nearby junior college) my junior year, and computer programming (BASIC) was an after-school class. I took it. Side story: Our computer teacher (the mother of a friend) and the school counselor were feuding, but both liked me well enough, so I would go down and get "sensitive" info from the counselor and give it to the computer teacher--I was a double agent, but not a double-naught spy.

I worked on the school newspaper one year, and since I was too lazy to go out and do any reporting, I'd do the entertainment stuff. We would regularly include "poems" like "I had a little duckie,/ It was really sweet./ I used it as a hockey puck/ And now it has no feet." We were never "counseled" and everyone knew it was a joke. Some people groaned, some laughed, some were a bit grossed out. But no one accused us of animal cruelty.
"They tap dance not, neither do they fart." --Greensleeves, on the Fig Men of the Imagination, in "Twice Upon a Time."

AndyC

#7
Some of the experiences I can relate to. Hunting wasn't as common where I grew up, but I now live in a place where business, construction, government, etc. seem to grind to a halt every deer and moose season, so I understand.

One thing I remember well was the lack of security cameras. You could goof around, stack each others lockers to fall out when the door is opened, write smart-assed comments on posted notices. Not that I did any of those things, of course. The problem now is that they're stepping on not just the big problems but also the youthful pranks.

I can also remember when school assemblies weren't compulsory, but if you didn't want to attend, you had to get out of the school. No roaming the deserted halls. So, we'd just head downtown, have lunch, play a few video games.

About halfway through high school, the assembly policy changed (if there ever was one), and we had to attend. But, if we got to an exit before the teacher got there to watch it, we were out. Or we snuck out through the wood shop. Or we hid in the washroom for a few minutes, until the coast was clear.

Each day started with the national anthem (O Canada) and the Lord's Prayer. There might even have been a scripture reading. I graduated in '89, and they might already have started the "moment of silence" BS by my last year. I'm a little fuzzy on that. And when the anthem and prayer were broadcast over the PA system, you stopped what you were doing, and stood there. Didn't matter if you were running in the door five minutes late, as I often was.

Which reminds me of a nice loophole in the attendance system. The teacher of a particular class would mark you absent at the beginning of the class. If you were late, you got a late slip and signed a book. The record of your tardiness cancelled your absence. But there really didn't seem to be any measure in place to determine whether the slip actually got delivered to the teacher. At least, they didn't seem to worry too much about it. I was not one of those guys who habitually bagged class, but it came in handy a couple of times. Being someone who was habitually late actually made it easier, however.
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"Join me in the abyss of savings."

LilCerberus

Born in 70, I'm just old enough to remember when selling & delivering newspapers, and landscaping median strips were the sorts of jobs twelve year old kids did, & I just got in on the tail end of on the job training.
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

asimpson2006

A lot of things changed when was there and bunch of stuff changed AFTER I graduated.

Here is what changed (I graduated in 04)

Random drug tests for all students.  There were different disicpline actions for each offense.  I think the first one was that you were banned from school sponsered events (Sports games, dances,etc) for 30 days.  2nd offense was I think half a year a year ban from school sponsered events, I think the third offense was a ban from all school sponsered events the rest of your time at the school.

The school also tried to broden their area of control outside of school property.  This one really flipped my s**t.  If you a staff member, or teacher sees you doing something illegal off campus, you can get suspended from school sponsered events.  That really made me mad, since they were trying to go outside of their jurisdiction and trying to get any one and everyone in trouble for something.

I don't know if that's done anymore or not.

trekgeezer

I grew up in a very different time and I understand why schools have some of the rules they have now.  The real problem is the total lack of common sense applied to the enforcement of those rules.



And you thought Trek isn't cool.

BeyondTheGrave

I went to a catholic all boy school here in NYC graduadated 03.

-You could smoke(Cigs) outside with no hassle

- Anytime their was drugs weapons etc.. was found their was no cops involed it was either suspension or expulsion and of course parents called.

-I could be absent as much as I wanted (Which I was:wink:) as long as I had a parent note.

- Some of my teachers were politcal and wore on their sleeves but taught the lesson and left that out.

-No security. teachers would handle it.

-Thier was on candy machine down by the gym but I don't know if anyone ever used it.
Most of all I hate dancing then work,exercise,people,stupidpeople


Mr. DS

Few things...

If you weren't there for the bus, it wouldn't wait for you.  Rather, you were sh!t out of luck trying to find a way to school. 

People actually had to walk, regardless of a lack of sidewalks, over a quarter mile to catch the bus or to get to school.

As a kid, you could kiss/harrass a girl in elementary school and not have charges slammed against you.

There was little choice on the cafeteria menu.  What they served is what you got unless you brown bagged your lunch.
DarkSider's Realm
http://darksidersrealm.blogspot.com/

"You think the honey badger cares?  It doesn't give a sh*t."  Randall

AndyC

Ah, walking to school. I remember from kindergarten right through to high school, I walked ten to fifteen minutes four times a day, because I also went home for lunch. Rides to school were for thunderstorms and snowstorms that weren't quite bad enough to close the school. Kids took shortcuts through the wooded park, past an open drainage ditch, across a street full of 70s land yachts. I knew a guy in senior public school (I guess it would be middle school south of the border) who came halfway across town (a couple of miles) and when the weather was good enough to bike, he went home for lunch.

Today, the only kids who seem to walk to school are the ones living within a block or two. The street is clogged with cars twice a day, as they drop off or pick up. Kids where I grew up don't have the option of going home for lunch anymore, regardless of where they live or what their parents do. That's thanks to the "balanced school day" that actually unbalances the day into three pieces not resembling anything practiced in the world outside school. Instead of the nice 70 or 80 minutes I got for lunch, during which I could take a healthy walk home for hot, nutritious food and come back with time to play outside, these kids get a couple of short breaks, with one designated a nutrition break (but it's called something more jargony). Many kids never had the option of going home, but that doesn't mean brown bagging should be considered the ideal. If they can go home, let them.

When I was in elementary school, my dad was a detective working shifts. When he worked the late shift, we still sat down as a family at noon and shared a meal. Can't do that today.

And from the balanced day, it's probably an easy step to the balanced year, with summer break chopped up and redistributed, and kids sitting in classrooms on the nicest days of the year. It's sick and it's something a lot of the parents were strongly opposed to, but that board always had a keen interest in social engineering, at least since the late 80s. Funding cuts in the 90s forced them back to basics, but money started flowing again and some old, familiar names were voted back onto the board, and they're back at it. Glad I moved away from there before I had to put any kids in those schools. Not that the schools where I live now aren't messed up in their own way, but at least they're concerned primarily with teaching the kids.
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"Join me in the abyss of savings."

LilCerberus

I remember when a nickel over & above the minimum wage was actually worth it, & $4.00 an hour was pretty darned good.

I remember when you could buy a modest, but decent house for $30k.
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.