This is something I don’t understand- back when I was in HS (graduated in 1981) it was certainly possible to carry all my books and supplies for the day. I would have preferred a locker for my coat and to hold certain items that I never needed at home but did need sometimes for class (such the dissection kit I needed once or twice a week for biology or the calligraphy supplies for an art class) but what I needed everyday consisted of maybe two notebooks ( I always used the five subject type), pens and pencils, possibly a compass and protractor and whatever book I was reading for English. Didn’t need to carry textbooks around and in fact, I don’t remember using them in class at all.
Brief tangent:
Having relocated from the States to Europe, the question my teenage daughter’s friends ask us about American high schools, more than any other by far, is— “Do you really have this ‘prom’ thing? Is that real, or is it made up?” There are student dance events here, certainly, from time to time, but they’re casual affairs; what blows these European teens’ minds is the whole formal ritual of it, with the limousines and the gowns and the tuxedos. They can’t believe it has any basis in truth, and they assume it’s basically a movie fiction.
Very much like the locker question, actually.
As kids? Most of the chatter here on the Dope is from elders with a similarly afflicted perspective!
…and gym clothes, boots, hats, scarves, gloves, umbrella, and (if not enrolled in the school lunch) a bagged lunch from home.
As far as I recall, there were coat hangers for coats, but I definitely had to carry my PE Kit all day as well as all necessary books.
I can’t help but also contrast the way things were with many modern work environments. The era of hot desking and work from home leads to a workplace where even desks are not always home, and lockers for personal things start to appear. It isn’t exactly new. Even 15 years ago I was working though a virtual desktop on my laptop that worked perfectly well at the workplace or at home.
I kept asking for a coat stand for my jacket and hat next to my desk. I even threatened to buy one and bring it in.
I lived in the Bay Area (Walnut Creek, Lafayette) of CA in the late 50s and early 60s as I started school. For the first six grades, I was in schools that were completely open. All classrooms, the gym, and the cafeteria opened directly to the outside. In fifth and sixth grade, we shared a campus with a junior high. They had lockers…we did not.
When my family moved to VA and I started seventh grade, I felt like I had been imprisoned. The schools were big brick lumps and you could go the whole day without stepping into fresh air (unless you had a note from your parents that you could smoke). Every student had a a locker and it was a big deal if you got assigned one that was “convenient.”
Even now, I can point out to my wife when a TV show or movie was shot in CA (or a similar area). The school corridors are open and stuff that shouldn’t be in the rain is just sitting around outside completely uncovered. Hollywood often forgets that most parts of the country do not have “rainy” and “no rain at all” seasons.
Our gym lockers were little baskets that slid into shelves and had a tab for a combination lock on the front. The open wire mesh gave your stuff a halfway decent chance to dry out.
Another German, and I can only confirm this. I went to two different schools (primary school and Gymnasium), and none of them had any lockers. My bags were always big enough to carry all my stuff. As for leaving the coat/jacket, all classrooms had enough coat hangers. Later at university, there only were lockers at the entrances of the libraries (we had several), because bags and coats weren’t allowed inside to prevent theft.
When I was still at school, every time I saw a high school scene from an American movie or show, I wondered why they needed lockers. I only knew them from locker rooms at work places where workers changed their clothes and had to store them somewhere.
My college had them. They weren’t automatically handed out, you had to pay a small fee to rent one. I got one right away and kept it the whole time I was there. It came in very handy.
It was also a commuter school, which explains it a bit.
I don’t recall seeing them at other colleges I worked at. But I wasn’t really looking everywhere.
my son is currently in high school so I have occasion to visit every now and then. You are right that there are many changes from when I attended, including the use of chrome books by everyone and the extensive relaxing of dress codes (for example, button up shirts and ties and dress shoes when I attended, to quarter zips and sneakers now). There are still lockers in the hallways however, and the students still use them to store bags, coats, etc.
My kids went to the same schools as my wife - public, middle, and high school - so she’s had an inside view. None of the buildings had major changes in the 3 decades between her and the kids, aside from a minor addition at the public school when kindergarten went from half days to full days.
The only real differences are around technology - chalkboards replaced with white or smartboards, projectors in the classrooms, and laptops all over. My kids likely used the same desks and chairs as my wife did in the late 80s and early 90s.
Oh, and the fact that the high school is now grade 9-12 since grade 13 was dropped in Ontario about 25 years ago.
My American public high school in the 1980s had the bog-standard, locker-lined halls common in movies and TV shows. Until your senior year you had to share one with someone else; seniors got their own lockers. Hell, I even saw jocks try to shove nerds inside more than once (although the kid would have to be hella skinny to fit inside one).
I never actually locked mine. I figured that if there was anything in there that someone wanted badly enough to steal, they could have it.
I imagine the situation is the same for the kids there today, although I don’t know any parents of kids enrolled there, nor am I inclined to go inside and take a look (as if they’d even let a random adult inside), so I don’t know for certain.
We define had lockers in my Canadian high school back in the 70s. They were big enough to store winter clothes and snow boots.
My son is a freshman in high school, and as others have said, things have changed. Although there are lockers along all the corridors, my son doesn’t use one. I don’t even think he knows which locker is his. All textbooks and all assignments are handled online, on the Chromebook he carries with him everywhere.
Our schools were designed with that intent, but subsequent overcrowding ruined it. My high school was designed for 800 students, but had about 1200 when I was there. At least in grade 9, we had to share lockers.
We did have lockers lining almost every hallway, but we also had one large and one small locker bay, that were rooms with just lockers.
I grew up going to big brick buildings around 41° North, then switched to campus-style high schools around New Orleans for Sophomore - Senior years.
Here’s where I spent my Sophomore year:
The 21 Jump Street movie was filmed in the other school I went to so, if you’ve seen that…
I remember when my American cousin, a high school teacher from Princeton, NJ, told me about something called a “pep rally”. I had a very hard time believing her at first; it sounded like something from North Korea (for the record, she agreed with me - she absolutely hated them).
In their desks. The kind with a lifting lid. And a hole for your inkwell. Exactly like this:
The school I last taught in removed the lockers a few years after I retired, maybe 2015-ish. They were the metal kind that used a combination padlock. For years kids had the habit of toting everything around in backpacks and rarely used the lockers anyway. Now the school system issues a Chromebook to each kid at the beginning of school and collects them at the end, so more textbooks.
I had a desk with an inkwell back in fourth grade. Had the same style desk without the hole in the other elementary grades. For fifth and sixth grade we each had a locker in the hall, but we just used those for our coats and hats.
When I was in primary school (grades 1-4) we stayed in the same room all day, so you had A desk and the halls had no lockers. But when you have a different desk (and different massive textbook) every hour, that is no longer a solution.