How different was school when you went?

[Red State Rebel]

Born 1957, went to public school in a semi rural area. It was an all white area, which I regret. I never had the opportunity to talk to or interact with a black person until I was out of High School.

Lunch was .25 (my mom made lunches for us) milk was .02 and on Friday you had the option of getting chocolate.

When it was your classes time to go to lunch you lined up and quietly walked to the cafeteria, went through the line and went to the table and sat in the same order. There was quiet chatting, but you weren't allowed to get up or be loud and crazy. When you were done, you got up and in the same order filed past the trash can to throw your trash away and take your tray, if you had one, to a window by the kitchen. Quietly walked back to class and that was it.

Girls HAD to wear dresses back then. That didn't change until I got to High School.

[connecticut yankee]

1. When I went to school

back in the fifties, we would get detention for: talking in class, passing notes, cutting classes.

What a difference fifty years makes!

:evilgrin:

[Left Is Write]

2. I was born in 1966.

I went to school in the same school district in a Minneapolis suburb from kindergarten through graduation. The district had about seven elementary schools, two junior high schools, and one high school.

Hot lunches were 25 or 50 cents when I started school; I can't remember which. They went up to 75 cents, and then were $1 by the time I graduated.

My mother made our lunches when we were in elementary school, but we could take hot lunch sometimes for fun. Milk was 5 cents in elementary school. We could have either regular or chocolate any day.

We had to go to the cafeteria as a class, but we could sit with kids in other classes if we wanted to. Teachers left for the faculty cafeteria, and we were looked after by the "lunch ladies." At recess, we were watched by the "playground ladies."

Also in elementary school, we could not wear shorts to school except during Track & Field days in the spring, and on the last day of school for the class picnics.

When I was in high school, we had a "smoking lounge" outdoors, behind the school. You were supposed to be 18 to smoke there, but no one ever checked I.D.s. The ladies who watched over the lounge were a couple of parents, and as long as you were only smoking tobacco, they didn't seem to care.

We had an open campus at lunch time, so I often went out to lunch with friends.

[terrya]

3. With me, school was walking 10 miles, barefoot, in the snow.

:-)

[KitchenWitch]

4. uphill both ways?

[terrya]

5. Of course.

Sheesh...it wasn't any picnic going to that one room schoolhouse. :-(

[KitchenWitch]

7. did you still use inkwells?

[terrya]

8. Yep. And pigtails were dipped in them.

I did my share of dipping. For which I'm now suitably ashamed. :-(

[CO Liberal]

6. When I Started Kindergarten at Public School in 1958....

...all the girls had to wear dresses. And we said the Lord's Prayer every morning until I was in the Fourth Grade.

[mcscajun]

9. Parochial School in the late 50's and early 60's

Lunch was by floor; file out by twos down the stairs to the basement lunchroom. Get a tray and take whatever was handed out to you as lunch for the day. Sometimes soup, sometimes a sandwich; a piece of fruit, stewed plums or fruit salad, a cookie or cardboard-wrapped ice-cream slice for dessert. Milk, always milk.

One nun at the entrance door and one at the exit.

Quiet conversation, finish your meal. Walk up to the trash can under the watchful eye of the nun at the door, who would send you back to your table if you hadn't finished everything; it was a sin to waste food. Right after lunch you'd hit the concrete paved playground to run around or at least get the fresh air until the nun rang the bell for return to classes.

High School beginning in 1965 was better: a cafeteria with a choice of a hot lunch of the day for .35, or you could buy milk for .04, an ice cream sandwich for .10 and bring your own sandwich or salad. One or two faculty monitors but seating wherever your group of friends had established their beachhead and loud, boisterous conversation until your 20-minute lunch period was over. Nobody checking what you ate or didn't eat.

Uniforms always. Brown oxfords with navy socks, dark blue navy wool jumper with white cotton blouse in grammar school. Long sleeved shirt and white gloves for special assemblies and high masses. Attendance at mass was obligatory with your class every Sunday; your parents attended their own masses in the main church while student masses took place in the basement chapel.

High school uniforms were still wool; skirts and blazers and white cotton blouses. Crisp pastel shirtwaist dresses for Spring.

No minorities in my grammar school; the school was pretty much solidly Irish Catholic with some Italian students. High School was more Italian-American with quite a lot of Irish, a smattering of Hispanic and what unfortunately were still called 'token' Black students. When lunch time came, the minority students would hang together, even though they might have friends in their homerooms and in afterschool activities.

[LiberalEsto]

10. Born in 1952

Went to public school in suburban NJ, 20 miles west of NYC. To my regret, I didn't meet or interact with black or Hispanic people until college because they didn't live in our town. We purposely chose a multi-ethnic, multi-racial school system for our kids in Maryland.

Lunches were 25 cents in elementary school and milk was 2 cents, but some of us who lived close to school walked home for lunch.
We had the same strict cafeteria rules and overall school behavior rules.

Kids did not get away with disrupting classes or talking back to teachers. They were sent straight to the principal, and the parents were called in. Corporal punishment has been illegal in NJ since 1876, but suspensions and detentions were used to enforce rules when needed.

We actually learned in school, but we also had fun. In elementary school there was an upright piano in every classroom, and every teacher had to know how to play. We sang a lot, patriotic songs and holiday songs and fun songs and songs that were once part of America's cultural heritage.

We had recess every day, even with a foot of snow on the ground. We frequently went outside again in the afternoon for games, nature walks, story-time.

Girls had to wear dresses. The only exception in elementary school was on extremely cold days when girls could wear pants under their skirts going to and from school. These had to be taken off as soon as you got in the classroom. In high school, skirt hems had to reach our knees, or we were sent home. Dress codes were eliminated in 1970, the year after I graduated.

Boys could not wear jeans or any pants that had outside seams, even to dances, unless the dance was specifically a "hobo hop." You also had to wear socks with sandals, or else. The year before I graduated, about 300 boys protested and disobeyed that rule on the last day of school. The vice principals rounded up every guy with sockless feet, herded them to the cafeteria and gave them detention. They had to write essays on why they should wear socks with their sandals. (yes, this was a public school!)

We also had dances almost every weekend in high school. Every club sponsored at least one dance as a fundraiser. When my kids were in high school, they had two dances a year, Homecoming and Prom.

My kids graduated in 2001 and 2004. They have often said they wished they could have grown up in the 1960s. They said their schools were full of disruptive kids who made learning impossible, and there was very little discipline in some classrooms.

[Red State Rebel]

11. Amazing isn't it???

The reaction of your kids points out something I've always believed. Kids really DO want discipline and boundaries. They feel safest when they know someone is going to stop them from doing something stupid.

It's a shame they have lost that in today's schools.

I love the socks and sandals story!!! ahahha

[ScreamingMeemie]

12. I still live pretty close to my high school, and it's amazing how it has

changed. When I attended, everything North of the school was farmland and we had "hayseeds" (farmkids) in our classes. Now it's all suburban sprawl, and each kid looks exactly like the next kid. Kind of sad.