I was a good academic student and did well across the board. The students at our public high school were smart and most took “advanced” courses. A few took “enriched”. Some took “general” courses. There were also technical courses such as carpentry, auto mechanics or electronics. I was a bit of an outlier since I was more academic but also chose courses like electronics and auto mechanics.
Our electronics teacher once told the class it was foolish to be scared of electricity. He had a device that gave you an electric shock. He had everyone in the class hold hands and form a chain and zapped them with electricity to see who would be the first and last to let go and break the chain. Kind of like livewire musical chairs. The sensation was odd, even shocking.
At the time, it seemed fun. But looking back at this years later, I’m not so sure this sort of thing would be encouraged. I have no idea whether the voltage was consistent with mains, but am pretty certain that this would now be discouraged for liability reasons, like the three story climber at my first school which was also awesome at the time.
Did you have a teacher who used a weird demonstration, or your school use equipment or teaching methods that would not fly today?
Ninth grade (school year 1968-69) general science, and the associated science fair. One project was distilling a fermented fruit drink to a very high proof. The teacher had a small amount of the final product and an eye dropper. Anyone who wanted could get a few drops squirted into their mouth.
I did. It was nasty tasting and it burned a bit. And I can’t imagine a teacher doing that today. In fact, I expect a still would not be allowed in a science fair.
He was a really good teacher, and I learned lots in his class.
In eighth grade science, we made wine to learn of the chemical process of fermentation. Each day we would see the balloon capping the jug get larger and larger as the process progressed.
I recall from the small sample i got that it was disgustingly sweet.
Our shop teacher did that to us. I was the last. TMI:I kind of liked it. Years later I have a purple wand device in the bag of kink toys that my partner uses on me..
When I was in grade school i was working hard at understanding arithmetic. I did not have a talent for it and it was difficult for me. All of a sudden, they dropped arithmetic and we were learning The New Math
from the article:
By this time the damage was done. It was too much for me, as a third grader, to wrap my head around. I hit a math wall that I was never fully able to get past. It took me three tries to get through Algebra 1
Practicing mental arithmetic. We all sat at desks, facing the front with our right hand held out, palm up.
The teacher stood at the back and called out a name: “Smith! Square root of 81?” If Smith failed to snap out the answer fast enough, he got a whack on the hand with a ruler. “Jones! 16 times 7?” Timmins! A third of a gross?"
For me at least, the questions were not difficult and I was rarely whacked. Some boys left the class with their hand tucked under their armpit.
That, in and of itself, means nothing. There very easily could have been a transformer involved.
Your teacher was foolish–just because some forms of a certain thing are safe, is no guarantee that all forms are safe. But the device itself sounds perfectly ok.
Oh, I agree. I am sure (and hope) it was transformed into a lower voltage. FWIW, the record someone could stay connected was four seconds - it was not just a little spark like brushing your dog or biting a Wint-o-Green Life Saver.
I learned different bases in 4th grade. 19 years, in a Navy electronics school working with binary and octal, I was astonished to be almost the only person to already know the concept.
We had what was called a Wimshurst machine. Someone had to wind a handle and it generated static.
Take eight or ten boys and get them to hold hands. Give terminal to the boys at each end, crank the handle and laugh as everyone’s hair stands on end. Of course, there will always be two with burned fingers because one disobeyed the stick instruction not let go.
I would suggest that tolerance for burned fingers has changed over the years. The experience was in no way traumatic, just surprising when I think about it now.
As I have said elsewhere, our school once had a three story climber with a zip line. Everyone loved it AFAIK. It’s all gone now. At conferences, they tell me 20 children in the US every year used to become disabled or worse due to playground equipment. This is bad, but I have mixed feelings about it. It may just get moved around if there are people who naturally take excessive risks.
Not me but my family for a couple of generations have produced a more than average proportion of left handers.
My Mothers elder brother was completely sinister and at the very small primary school in our district (rarely more than a dozen kids) he was the only one and the teacher hit him with a ruler any time he used a pencil with his left. This caused complications for him on several levels.
When my younger sister started at the same school, though obviously many years and different teachers later) Mum, who wasn’t known for such things, bailed up the teacher, told him that Sue was left handed and if he tried to change her wrath would be brought down on him.
In elementary school (early 60s) recess was co-ed, but the girls had their own “monkey bars”. Boys were forbidden to be near the girls’ bars lest we look up their dresses. Any boy caught nearby and peeking was forced to shed his pants and wear a dress the rest of the day. (The principal kept a frilly dress in her office for this occasion)
I assume being paddled in front of the class definitely wouldn’t fly today, but middle school teachers were enthusiastic about its use. In one class, continuous misbehavior earned me (and a few others) regularly scheduled paddling. The teacher said he was weary of keeping up with our hijinks and just brought me and the others to the front every Friday afternoon for 3 hits each. He assumed we troublemakers had done something but wasn’t going to figure out the details.
The vast majority of people who complain about New Math and say we should go back to the old way, like they learned it, the “old way that they learned it” is, in fact, New Math. A few details were changed, but most of it did not go away, because it was in fact significantly better than old-style math instruction.
Likewise, unless you went to school in a really crappy state, Common Core didn’t involve doing anything new. All it meant was doing the same things that math classes had done for decades, but on the same schedule as other states, so that it’d be easier for students moving around the country. The people complaining about it were just the ones who never remembered anything they were ever taught in schools, and would have complained about any instructional model with a convenient label, because none of it would have been what they remembered.
My 9th-grade geometry teacher used to throw blackboard erasers at anyone caught daydreaming, with surprising accuracy. They weren’t the ones with the hard backs so basically you got hit with a soft brick that covered you in chalk dust.
Excellent math teacher, though. And to be fair he probably only pegged about two kids each year, early on, after which everyone paid attention.
