School Memories

[Sidi Fidi Gold]

I haven't seen a thread about school, so I thought I'd start one. Its for any school memories, either good, bad or indifferent. Please feel free to post.

Anyway, I'll start.

Somebodies just shown me a photo on Facebook, its from 1978, its a photo of my year at school, I would have been 9 years old at the time, the photo was taken in July, just before the August holidays and before we moved up to middle school, it brought back so many memories.

I started at that school in 1974 aged 5, the plan was to stay there until 7 then move to middle school, however, that changed, after a year there, the Government changed it so we had to stay there until 9 years old, the only problem was there wasn't enough classrooms. The Council ended up bringing in 2 mobile classrooms and putting them on a grass banking overlooking the school, that's were we ended up for 2 years, it was a great view and I really enjoyed it, the only problem were the toilets, they brought some portable toilets in and rumour soon got round that they were haunted, it was fine using them at break time when there were other kids in but if you had to go during lessons, when it was quiet and there was nobody else about, it was scary, especially for somebody like m, who'd been traumatised by phantoms.

When we moved into the mobile classrooms, we got a new teacher, new to the school, she used to smoke in class, she used a cigarette holder, she wore these long gloves that almost came to her elbows, she wore a leather skirt and boots that came to her knees, I used to think she looked like a film star.

She used to send kids to the shop at dinner time to buy a packet of cigs for her, she could be very harsh and critical if your work wasn't up to scratch, she made me teary eyed once or twice but equally, she was quick to lavish the praise if you did well.

For P.E we had a small hall where they could put climbing apparatus up, outside there was a small grassy area and the playground was used for Cricket and Rounders. Our new teacher arranged for the boys to go to Purston Park for football, I hated football, she used to referee and she used to let you know if you weren't trying. I used to try and get involved early on to look as though I was trying, I would try and make a tackle or just kick the ball. After the 4th week of playing football, we started the match and I was looking for an early touch of the ball to avoid the wrath of the teacher, the ball came to me so I kicked it as hard as I could, I wasn't really bothered were it went, what I didn't realise was that I was in the opposition penalty area and the ball hit the inside of the post and went into the goal, all my team mates  jumped on me, it gave me such a buzz, I can still hear the sound the ball made when it hit the post, from that moment I was hooked, I started watching match of the day, the big match, I subscribed to Shoot magazine, within a month, I learned about all the teams and all the players, I was playing football with my mates as much as possible, I played up front and could put the ball in the back of the net.

At School all the teachers were female, then in our final year a Canadian male arrived, he used to take us for rugby, he only new the rules for union but after about 6 weeks we'd learnt him the rules for league.

Anyway, that's some of my memories from school, please feel free to post.

[graveyard johnny]

warm milk - teachers who were bullies - pupils who were bullies - the home time bell couldn't come quick enough

[The Phantom Horseman]

Sidi Fidi Gold - with apologies to other readers for making this too personal about the location - but which school are you referring to? I'm probably 4 or 5 years older than you, I went to Regent Street and then St Thomas's Junior School which at the time was across the road from Jubilee Steps, neither of them exist any more but like you we were sometimes taken to Purston Park for "games" which ended up with the (female) teacher taking the 16 or so girls to one side of the park to play rounders, and tossing a football to the boys and telling us to go to the other side of the park to sort out a game (jumpers for goalposts and all), you can imagine how that worked out.

[Sidi Fidi Gold]

14 minutes ago, graveyard johnny said:

warm milk - teachers who were bullies - pupils who were bullies - the home time bell couldn't come quick enough

Did you go to the same school as Billy Casper ?

In fact, are you Billy Casper ?

[CanaBull]

Apart from a few genuinely good moments, that I could probably count on one hand, school from 3-16 years old was pretty crappy really.  Things seemed to improve when I hit my apprenticeship, college and uni, but I’m sure plenty of beer was a complete coincidence  

[Sidi Fidi Gold]

1 minute ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

Sidi Fidi Gold - with apologies to other readers for making this too personal about the location - but which school are you referring to? I'm probably 4 or 5 years older than you, I went to Regent Street and then St Thomas's Junior School which at the time was across the road from Jubilee Steps, neither of them exist any more but like you we were sometimes taken to Purston Park for "games" which ended up with the (female) teacher taking the 16 or so girls to one side of the park to play rounders, and tossing a football to the boys and telling us to go to the other side of the park to sort out a game (jumpers for goalposts and all), you can imagine how that worked out.

Girnhill Lane, I then moved up to George Street(now St Thomas'), we played on the full size pitch at the Park, the girls stopped behind and played rounders in the school play ground.

[Futtocks]

Memories from a variety of nursery, primary, public and state secondary schools.

Going to James Terry's (of the chocolate-making family) birthday when I was really young. Of course we all ate too much chocolate!

Learning morse code for "SOS" and thinking I'd probably need it before the month was out.

Being alerted to look out for Colorado Beetle (rural school).

Gigantic majestic elm trees in the playing fields that suddenly vanished.

Bars on the windows and horsehair mattresses.

A swimming pool that would take several days for the antique heating system to bring up to a temperature that could best be described as absolutely bloody freezing.

Briefly being taught Rugby League by a temporary PE teacher who looked exactly like the little psycho sergeant guy from "All Quiet on the Preston Front".

The first photograph I took, of Queen Elizabeth II, when she opened Robinson College, Cambridge.

Big Dave Preston knuckle-punching your initials into the dining hall plasterwork if you paid him 50p. And also him being banned from taking penalties in Football after he dislocated two of the goalie's fingers with his first attempt.

The absolute worst, creepiest, greasiest, least-competent teacher being the only one from my time who was still there when my niece went to the same secondary school. An establishment that had otherwise turned itself around and actually become really good over the intervening years.

Getting the slipper (trainer, actually) a few times from Mr Peacock, who at that time held the record for the hardest serve in Real Tennis.

Losing my rag and chucking chairs at our new, sadistic deputy headmaster. I was expecting punishment afterwards, but when he called me to his office afterwards he seemed genuinely shocked. He later became oneof the school's favourite teachers, so I may have achieved something there.

The inspirationally creative and hippyish art teacher Miss Smith, who got married and became Mrs Crisp. We adored her enough not to make the obvious snack-food joke.

Edited September 6 by Futtocks

[The Hallucinating Goose]

School, my slow progression to nerdhood! 

In Primary School I was one of the popular kids, the cool gang, one of the lads. 1st team goalkeeper and legend!

As soon as I went to Secondary School, no one I went to Primary School with seemed to want to know me and for the first couple of years I ended up hanging out with a group of emos, goths and general weirdos. Those guys were fun though and we did have a laugh. I have heard far too much Screamo music in my life though!

When I was a teenager I was convinced that I was gonna be a writer in the future and actually wrote a couple of novels in school. They were rubbish and no one wanted to publish them but it is something I think I want to revisit at some point. I was a bit of a pretentious w️ in my teen years and did have a bit of a superiority complex but I was also very immature and naive looking back. I was just about the only kid that wore a shirt, tie and blazer as uniform (the school accepted a simple school branded polo) and wore a duffel coat over that. 

After those first couple of years I found my major friend group which was the tv and gaming nerds. Every lunch time for years, we all sat at the same table in the library, a table that everyone basically knew was ours and left alone for us! 

As an immature little ##### that thought too much of himself, some of my worst memories are writing soppy love letters to girls and thinking my skills as the greatest writer in the world would win them over; in fact it just made me the laughing stock of the class because they of course shared the letters with each other. Sophia. That was my main crush. I've since heard she lives in Australia these days and is a yoga instructor. She popped up on my facebook suggested friends. Absolute mutant these days so lucky escape there!

Despite being openly gay these days, I of course denied it as a teenage boy and my first kiss was with a girl called Amelia, one of the emo gang, when I was 12. God knows what happened to any of that lot, haven't heard a thing about them since I left school.

As I've matured as an adult (shut up @graveyard johnny) I realised I'm of course not God's gift to literature, or Casanova but have embraced simply being a working class Yorkshireman, something I think I was trying to run away from as a teenager. I'm just a simple, nerdy bloke these days who is into watching hours of snooker, exploring churches, bingeing sitcoms and rummaging around old bookshops.

To quote one of those great sitcoms, "Ich bin ein nerd!"  

[Maximus Decimus]

17 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

When I was a teenager I was convinced that I was gonna be a writer in the future and actually wrote a couple of novels in school. They were rubbish and no one wanted to publish them but it is something I think I want to revisit at some point. I was a bit of a pretentious w️ in my teen years and did have a bit of a superiority complex but I was also very immature and naive looking back.

I know it's not strictly on this thread but I think this is very normal. I once saw a video that referenced it (the personal fable I think after looking it up) and it made me feel a bit more normal.

I certainly had a high opinion of myself and thought I was destined for greatness, not in a vocal way but deep down. The main avenue of this was singing, and until my early 20s I thought I would be discovered out of thin air even after I finished all my gigging etc.

It also didn't help that I was pretty much the cleverest kid in primary school and one of in secondary. It wasn't really until University where I met people that I realised were operating on a different level to me.

Believe it or not, I'm extremely humble these days!

[Maximus Decimus]

As for school, I started primary with a headteacher who walked around smoking a pipe. Seeing as though it the early 90s it wasn't that old.

He also famously used to get children to box if they'd had a fight on the playground. It wasn't unusual to walk through the hall and see two kids having it out.

Secondary school I've tried to forget. I wasn't bullied or owt, it was just a bad time of heightened emotions, death-like levels of mortification and borderline cruelty. I can remember actually having known enemies who were would just argue with in the most personal way.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

2 hours ago, Maximus Decimus said:

I know it's not strictly on this thread but I think this is very normal. I once saw a video that referenced it (the personal fable I think after looking it up) and it made me feel a bit more normal.

I certainly had a high opinion of myself and thought I was destined for greatness, not in a vocal way but deep down. The main avenue of this was singing, and until my early 20s I thought I would be discovered out of thin air even after I finished all my gigging etc.

It also didn't help that I was pretty much the cleverest kid in primary school and one of in secondary. It wasn't really until University where I met people that I realised were operating on a different level to me.

Believe it or not, I'm extremely humble these days!

This sounds similar to myself. I actually got the highest year 6 SAT test scores my primary school had ever achieved. It was the scummiest primary school in the town, right in the heart of the worst streets on the biggest council estate.

While certainly not being the smartest kid in my secondary school, I was up there. That school was an odd one in terms of demographic because it was the state comprehensive but it was in the posher part of town. As a result, most of the council estate kids went there but a lot of lower middle class kids and posher village kids went there as well. 

Growing up in a very closed working class environment is what made me think so much of myself, I think. When all the other kids on the estate were out scaring grannies and smashing up park benches for no reason whatsoever, I was sat at home reading books on medieval history and watching programmes about architecture! 

After leaving school and entering the real world and starting to travel a lot, I was certainly humbled when suddenly I was meeting people who not only were into the same things as me but knew masses and masses more. 

[graveyard johnny]

the school run is now an everyday normality but when we were kids you would have died of shame if one of your parents came to chauffer you home 

[hindle xiii]

Simply drinking straight from the cold tap in the cloakroom after PE or playing in break time on a warm day, stuck my mouth under the tap. I can still taste the slightly soapy residue from the metal tap.

Edited September 7 by hindle xiii

[Sidi Fidi Gold]

In the second year at middle school, I would have probably been about 11 year old, there was a saying, it said that if a girl stuck her tongue out at you, it meant "kiss me now, me later", I don't know if this was a local saying or something common up and down the country, anyway, we were sat in the small classroom library, the teacher was sat in his chair with his back to the window, talking to us, when a girl in the playground knocked on the window and stuck her tongue out at him, a girl in our class said "Sir, you know what it means when a girl sticks her tongue out at you, don't you, it means kiss me now, man on top of a woman later" the teacher said "ooooh" and started sticking his tongue out at several girls, the whole class cracked out laughing. Now I'm sure it was totally innocent but you just never know.

When I was at high school, 1982-85, there was an English teacher, he didn't teach me but sometimes he would fill in as a PE teacher if we were short, you could have a laugh with him but he wouldn't take no nonsense, anyway, earlier this year I was talking to a woman who left high school in 2004, we were talking about school and about teachers who may have taught us both, I mentioned this English teacher and her reaction was "Oh, him, he was a right pervert" she didn't elaborate but literally 3 days later he was in the news, charged with sexual offences against teenage girls in the 80s and 90s. Since then I've spoke to a lot of people, both male and female who would have been taught by him and was surprised by how many of them had an idea that he was like this, it just totally shocked me.

[graveyard johnny]

13 minutes ago, hindle xiii said:

Simply drinking straight from the cold tap in the cloakroom after PE or playing in break time on a warm day, stuck my mouth under the tap. I can still taste the slightly soapy residue from the metal tap.

luxury - we had to drink out of a lead pipe sticking out of ground in farmers field next door- but only  if the cows weren't drinking from it 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Mrs. Ash - French teacher and absolute witch.

Mrs. Foster - Stuck up English teacher and swinger.

Mr. Worthington - Science teacher who was married but definitely gay.

Mr. Smith - Legendary old school science teacher who when on a school trip to Bradford said when we were returning home, "you can tell your parents you've been to Bradistan and survived!" Legend!

Mr. Prescott - German teacher and my arch-nemesis who I once squared up to nose to nose and told to f off in front of the whole class after he had mocked me like an immature little toddler. I got a lot of respect off the cool kids after that! 

Mr. Bull - geography teacher and knob who discriminated against poor kids.

Mr. Cassidy - PE teacher and ex-Hull player who was always up for a laugh. The only PE teacher that didn't ignore the non-sporty kids. One of the best teachers.

Mr. Henderson - science teacher and complete creep who was almost certainly a paedophile. 

Just a few teachers off the top of my head there!

[The Phantom Horseman]

2 hours ago, Sidi Fidi Gold said:

In the second year at middle school, I would have probably been about 11 year old, there was a saying, it said that if a girl stuck her tongue out at you, it meant "kiss me now, me later", I don't know if this was a local saying or something common up and down the country, anyway, we were sat in the small classroom library, the teacher was sat in his chair with his back to the window, talking to us, when a girl in the playground knocked on the window and stuck her tongue out at him, a girl in our class said "Sir, you know what it means when a girl sticks her tongue out at you, don't you, it means kiss me now, man on top of a woman later" the teacher said "ooooh" and started sticking his tongue out at several girls, the whole class cracked out laughing. Now I'm sure it was totally innocent but you just never know.

When I was at high school, 1982-85, there was an English teacher, he didn't teach me but sometimes he would fill in as a PE teacher if we were short, you could have a laugh with him but he wouldn't take no nonsense, anyway, earlier this year I was talking to a woman who left high school in 2004, we were talking about school and about teachers who may have taught us both, I mentioned this English teacher and her reaction was "Oh, him, he was a right pervert" she didn't elaborate but literally 3 days later he was in the news, charged with sexual offences against teenage girls in the 80s and 90s. Since then I've spoke to a lot of people, both male and female who would have been taught by him and was surprised by how many of them had an idea that he was like this, it just totally shocked me.

This is not the same thing as you describe above, but it's hard to believe now that relationships between teachers and school pupils (over the age of 16) weren't made illegal until 2003. I remember in my first job in the late 1980s a female colleague, who was a smart and well-balanced person, telling me that she had been in a relationship with a teacher pretty much throughout 6th form, that everyone (teachers and pupils) knew about it, and that it wasn't considered a big deal.

[Sidi Fidi Gold]

12 minutes ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

This is not the same thing as you describe above, but it's hard to believe now that relationships between teachers and school pupils (over the age of 16) weren't made illegal until 2003. I remember in my first job in the late 1980s a female colleague, who was a smart and well-balanced person, telling me that she had been in a relationship with a teacher pretty much throughout 6th form, that everyone (teachers and pupils) knew about it, and that it wasn't considered a big deal.

Likewise, not the same as you describe, when I was at high school, there was a girl in our year, she'd have been 14 or 15, every Tuesday afternoon she'd play truant and visit a 36 year old mans house, she wasn't shy, she made it clear to everyone at school what she'd been up to, this went on for weeks and weeks, when the school twigged what she was doing they called her parents in, the school wasn't interested what she'd been up to with the man, they were just concerned that she'd been skipping school, nothing at all happened to the 36 year old man at all and there were other stories like this as well.

[Futtocks]

In my time in various schools, there were three teachers I knew had an unhealthy interest in their pupils.

One of them I definitely knew was at it with least two underage girls from the same class; the other two almost certainly were, based on hearsay.

None of them were brilliant or natural educators; one was admittedly competent, the other two useless. You always knew why the latter pair made that career choice (cf Rod Liddle).

Edited September 7 by Futtocks

[Copa]

I remember my primary school teacher demonstrating smoking tricks in class.

He’d put the cigarette in his mouth backwards and blow out through the filter, he’d turn the whole cigarette around while it was inside his closed mouth and a few other “tricks”. He had names for each trick too.

We thought it was great!

The same teacher also had a rattan cane that he’d use for corporal punishment. He’d sometimes display his caning skills by throwing a long piece of chalk in the air and then cut it in half with a fast powerful stroke of the cane.

[Sidi Fidi Gold]

Another tale from George Street Middle School, round about 1980. There were quite a few kids from Streethouse went there, at home time a few of them would go over the stacks to Acton Hall pit yard, there they would climb on to the sides of the coal wagons and hitch a lift to Streethouse . The Police came into school a few times to warn of the dangers about doing it but I don't think it made much difference.

One of the boys that did it was as daft as a brush, he fancied himself as a bit of a hard case but he was a decent lad really, he was just daft, he had a reputation of having a hard head, which isn't surprising because he had a forehead like one of the men in the Tefal adverts from the 1980s, anyway, he used to have head butting competitions with another boy, they would stand there in the playground face to face and take turns in head butting each other, it didn't last very long and I can't remember who won. Those were heady days 

[metallithrax]

Scabby knuckles

[Vambo]

School memories..

I have a few ... Do I wanna remember them however?

I went to Billinge High School in Blackburn.

Google it. It's been through some changes to say the least

I didn't want to go there. All my friends were going to Witton but my mam in her wisdom put Billinge down for me.

Amongst many things that happened to me was setting the school record for the most days nicked off in a single year. They used to count days as half days for some reason and in the fourth year (as they called it back then in 1982) one of the 'Teacher's' announced in assembly that someone (ie me) had 'missed' over a 100 days.

He seemed to take great offence when I stood up and took a bow to cheers. 

Had the home visit from some 'department' who I can't remember and didn't nick off quite as much after that. Still did one every Fri afternoon though along with a few other mates 

Also remember getting took home in a cop van (not my last time lol) in the fifth/last year after loads of us invaded another school and kicked off big time.

Also nicked off the final RE exam. They tried to charge me £4. I never did pay it.