My father went to a “grammar school”; it had grades 1 thru 8. By the time my mom would’be gone there it was just an elementary school (1-6) (grandma transfered her kids to a different district after an incident with one of the teacers). By the time I was in school the building was no longer a school at all; it houses the administrative offices for the area school district.
I also got to visit a “grammar school” in New Zealand when I was 15, but that was the British/Commonwealth version (ie a secondary school).
Mine had kindergarten followed by the first six grades. For my cohort, after that came junior high school, grades 7 - 9, and then high school, grades 10 to 12. That’s a little misleading however, because for the purposes of college admission and GPA computation, the 9th grade was counted as part of high school, even if you completed it in a junior high school.
If we had to refer to the type of school my “grammar” school was, we just said elementary school. In the official nomenclature of the LAUSD, elementary schools are simply “X School”. Middle schools and high schools have those labels in their names.
A lot of older elementary schools were named for the streets they were on, like San Pedro Street School. For some reason, the district has taken the word Street out of all those names, unless it was a numbered street. One possible reason is that many streets have had their names changed.
About 300. In those days classes graduated each half-year, and for the most part each half-grade of kids corresponded to one classroom, in which we remained for the whole day not counting lunch and recess.
Three or four.
Zero not counting Facebook.
My class buried a time capsule when we graduated in 1969, but AFAIK it’s been forgotten by everyone but me. I can’t remember even one thing we put in it.
The term ‘Grammar School’ in Australia identifies the school as a private school, and would mostly come under the auspices of a religious denomination. The Anglicans (in particular) are very fond of calling their schools Grammars. Grammar schools usually take kids from Prep to Year 12, but might have different campuses for the different year levels of the students.
In the public education sector, it depends on the state as to what the different types of schools are called: in Victoria, Primary Schools take children from Prep to Year 6 (age app 5-11yrs), and then they attend a Secondary College which takes them from Yr 7 (12yrs old) up to Yr 12 (17 yrs old) when they ‘graduate’ with a VCE qualification that will enable them to attend university or a college.
Apart from some minor regional differences, all the states follow basically the same pattern.
Aside from “grammar school” what other names do you know that are synonymous?
Primary school, grade school, elementary school
How many grades did you have in “grammar school”?
At my school we had 7, Kindergarten through 6th grade
How many kids were in your “grammar school”?
350-400 maybe, we had two classes of each grade with around 25 kids per class
How many kids did you have in your friends or buddies group(s) in those days?
4-6 very close friends, but I was friends with most of the kids in the class
How many kids from those years do you still know the whereabouts of?
until facebook, I was probably aware of only 2-3, now through FB about a dozen
Depends on what you mean. When I was attending my elementary school, there were all 6 grades, kindergarten, and a preschool/daycare attached. However, I only attended from one year of preschool up to fourth grade, and then went on to a public middle school, which was relatively recently split from the elementary schools and included only fifth and sixth grades.
Later the school actually reduced itself to max out at fourth grade.
I’d guess about 25 students in each room and 30 or so in daycare, so a total of 50 students and just over 100 in preschool/daycare.
I was, in general, friends with everyone in class. It was hard not to be. There were sub-groups, but I hung out with different ones at different times. Usually no more than 3 or 4 of use would play together at one time, though, unless we were playing sports.
Five or ten, although probably more if I were to look on Facebook. I still remember a lot of names.
6a) How many of these people did you continue to hang out with in later school years?
Occasionally one or two of us would get together, but, in general, none.
6b)What was the student teacher ratio, or how many classes did you have?
We had 2 or 3 teachers in every classroom. So, like 1:10. It was a Montessori school–you needed a lot of hands on time. There were a total of two actual classrooms, three preschool rooms, two toddler/daycare rooms, and a nursery.
In Britain a grammar school is (or was when I went) a state* high school for students who are deemed more than averagely academically gifted. I had to pass an exam called the Eleven-Plus to get in, but some districts in my time used different selection methods and some did not select at all, but ran what were known as “comprehensive schools” instead. The grammar school I attended was also for boys only (although a handful of girls attended our science classes in the 6th form, because their schools did not have the facilities), although there was a girls’ grammar school right next door, on what was effectively the same “campus”.
*[In Britain a “state school” means roughly the same as what Americans mean by “public school.” A British “public school” is a particularly exclusive, expensive and long-established (centuries old) private high school.]
British schools do not have grades. We had seven years: First through Fifth, then Lower Sixth followed by Upper Sixth. The Lower/Upper Sixth thing was, I believe, an affectation borrowed from the public schools (see above).
IIRC about 1,000.
I can think of about a dozen people I was fairly close with over those years, some for the whole period (and before and/or after), some for just part of that time.
Grammar schools here are one type of ‘secondary’ school for pupils of 11 years and upwards. The intake is normally selected by competitive examination. They are the one remaining part of the ‘Tripartite System’ created by the 1944 Education Act (sometimes known as the Butler Act). Some private schools which have fled the public education sector rather than submit to be converted to ‘comprehensive’ education also retain the ‘grammar’ name in their title, although in this case it does not really have any meaning.
Grammar schools usually take kids from Prep to Year 12, but might have different campuses for the different year levels of the students.