My mom and I were discussing school memories and I remembered three that would never happen today:
[list=1]
[li]The Gideon people visiting my class and handing out little bibles[/li][li]Learning and reciting the Lord’s Prayer in both French and English[/li][li]Being shown “the strap” by the elementary school principal as a warning to the whole class[/li][/list=1]
What sorts of things do you remember?
Reciting the official New York State school prayer:
“Our father, we acknowledge our dependence on you. We ask your blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.”
Well, as of 4 years ago, the Gideons were still on campus every fall pasiing out the New Testament on every corner and outside every building. Of course this was a public university, not a public elementary or high school.
They also came when I was in 2nd grade, and I remember thinking it seemed kind of pushy then when I’d never even heard of the separation of church and state.
Freshman year of college, my history teacher told us that 30 years ago, 3/4 of the class would have been smoking. In class!
Kids bringing pocket knives to school. They were practically issued in the town where I grew up.
Kids talking about guns and shooting in school. We usually got the first day of hunting season off, cause no one would show up anyway.
That was in elementary school of course.
I frequently thank Bob I’m not in high school in 2002. I’d be dragged out in cuffs for some of the stuff I did back then-like write extremely violent stories in Creative Writing for laffs.
Oh, that’s another thing, being able to write and read horror stuff without being dragged to the principal.
My elementary school was about 97% white. When I was in the second grade the only Black person in the class, Calvin Ann, was assigned a seat with an empty desk on all sides. 
This was in 1967.
I can remember my mother and her siblings (older and younger), talking about their high school(the same one I went to) having a smoking area for students. I believe (though I’m not sure) that it actually had one until the early 80’s, though by that time you had to have written permission from your parents to be there.
There was a smoking area in my high school (I was there from 1978-1982), and smoking was permitted on my college campus in the hallways, but not classrooms.
My first thought when I opened this thread was a scene I saw in an old Bowery Boys movie – an old lady invited the boys in for cake, and then skipped serving the one black boy, telling him, “I have something special for you.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with half a watermelon, which she set in front of the black boy. His eyes got big and wide and he said “Oh, boy, ma’am! Thank you, ma’am!” When I saw that (probably in the early 90s) MY eyes got big and I thought, “How on EARTH did they get away with THAT?”
High schools don’t have smoking areas any more?? Then where do you go to neck and fool around with your SO? Or for that matter, discuss the fact that the principal is a fascist, the home ec teacher is a lesbian or that the gym teacher likes little boys? Where does one now go to talk to your friends about firebombing the school, show off the 9" bowie knife you just got or talk about shooting squirrels?
All of that was standard fair in the smoking area near the dumpster outside the lunchroom at Andover High School in Linthicum, Maryland in 1977, 78 and 79. But come to think of it, all of that was standard fair pretty much everywhere at that school back then - when we weren’t obsessing about pimples and new boyfriends, that is 
How about fights? I got in a couple fistfights when I was in elementary school, and the most I got was a lecture from the principal.
This isn’t just about schools, right?
When I was little, Mom or Dad would go into a store and leave us kids sitting in the car. gasp
When I was little, eleven-year-olds were considered old enough not only to be left alone, but to baby-sit younger children and even babies. gasp
We never had bible-thumpers visit the school, though.
Oh, man, when I was a kid, getting left in the car was a treat, cause you got to turn the steering wheel and honk the horn and stuff. You guys realize that, to some of these kids now, half the Calvin and Hobbes strips don’t make sense? Isn’t THAT depressing?
elshatan, yes, it is depressing. And it’s one of the reasons I’m glad I don’t have kids. I’d have been put in jail long ago for allowing my children to play without direct supervision.
I feel really, really sorry for today’s kids, who have to be driven to supervised play time and have a parent watching them 24 hours a day.
I graduated from high school in '82 and we had a student smoking area outside at my school. It was right outside the cafeteria, in a little courtyard area.
We didn’t need permission from our parents to use it, either.
I remember in elementary school every year a note went home to school with us.
It said that corporal punishment was considered a necessary part of discipline, and explained the procedure. If a parent did not want their child paddled at school, they had to sign and return the note.
The procedure was the child was taken out into the hallway, another teacher was called as a witness, and the child was paddled twice with a wooden paddle.
We didn’t have kids shooting up schools when I was younger.
Now, my son gets in school detention for defending himself from a bully.
Sigh.
What was that drill they used to do for the bombing raids? Stop, drop and cover or some shit like that?
'85-'86 or around there, 7th or 8th grade. GopherGod gets smacked in the ass with a wooden board by the vice principle for fighting. No other adult witness either. However I WAS given the option of detention instead.
I read something that said any mother today who let her kids go out to play with nothing more than a “Be home for lunch” would be swiftly dragged into court and her kid taken away. The sad thing is, it’s TRUE.
And yea, that’s another thing, when I was a kid, I could just take off on my bike for hours at a time.
Yeah, I pretty much spent all the time I wasn’t doing my homework roaming the acres and acres of woods around our house in Maine, completely alone. That probably wouldn’t fly now, would it?