# Things that your school did routinely which would be in the newspaper now **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 12, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475 "2010-11-12T20:15:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Baracus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2bfe46/32.png) [@Baracus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baracus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/21 "2010-11-12T21:58:03Z")
We had the student smoking area right in front of the school, so the first impression when pulling up was that the school was filled with “burnouts”. Our sports teams went by the “Plainsmen” and our mascot was a dude dressed up in Native American regalia. I don’t know if that is allowed anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/22 "2010-11-12T21:58:53Z")
I got the strap in elementary school at least twice. I don’t know what they have in high school chemistry labs these days, but the private school I went to for high school had some fun chemicals to [del]steal[/del] do experiments with in an unlocked storage closet (at least, it was unlocked whenever I tried). Concentrated sulphuric acid is fun stuff to pour on sugar (makes a foamy mass of carbon); however I did learn when I played with it at home that you shouldn’t try that in a plastic container :eek:! Had fun playing with mercury (why do I keep twitching and drooling these days?). I still have a scar on the palm of my had from some chromic acid I held in my hand. I somehow doubt that if I was I high school student these days that they’d let me anywhere near the stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/23 "2010-11-12T22:08:56Z")
At the schools in my little Southern burg, we mostly had the typical things for the era–corporal punishment, bits of Christ-pushing (prayers at football games and graduations, mostly, nothing as extreme as Algher’s talking about), not much else. I was given pretty much free rein in the chemistry lab; some of the things I made there might have made the news, if anyone had known about them–a circumstance I carefully avoided. The only thing that stands out in memory is the English teacher in 11th grade throwing a guy out of her classroom…desk and all. She got pretty good air on him, too–all the way across the hall and into the lockers on the far side. Formidable lady, she was. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/24 "2010-11-12T22:22:30Z")
Not a routine thing, just my mother throwing her weight around to get an exception that would NEVER fly today (and I suspect she played the “I’m an immigrant/this is how we do things in the Old Country” card): She has a thing about cold beverages (drinking them would … damage your stomach, or something) and so, in elementary school, every morning, I would be pulled out of class by a hall monitor, escorted to the cafeteria so I could pick out my milk for the day, and walked to my locker so that I could put my little carton of milk into my locker for two or three hours until it was niiiiice and room temperature. That was the only milk she would permit me to drink and believe me, even though she wasn’t standing right there in the lunchroom, I dared not disobey. (It was \*years \*into adulthood before it occured to me that no, I don’t have a sensitive stomach, but hey, how come I threw up so much as a kid … ?) How the hell she got the principal to go along with that I have no idea, but the woman has a will of steel. ---
**Author:** ![Engywook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bc8723/32.png) [@Engywook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Engywook)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/25 "2010-11-12T22:25:48Z")
Some of this is really :eek:. You could bring your guns into school? :eek::eek::eek:! Thanks for all the posts! I’m reminded of a couple of other things. Some of you have mentioned that they had a smoking area for students. My High School did, too. Even though I think the legal age to buy cigarettes was 16 at the time. That school has since split three (or maybe even four), and I’m sure that not one of them even allow smoking in the teacher’s lounge. [QUOTE=Randy Seltzer] By some definitions, she’d be right. This blew my mind when I learned it, but in some dialects of English, “animal” is synonymous with “mammal.” My question has always been: okay, then what word do you use that encompasses mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, etc.? “Critters”? Ours is a funny language. [/QUOTE] Learn something every day. Today, I learned that the dictionary is wrong. 😃 [QUOTE=Cat Whisperer[/QUOTE] I recall one student pushing the physics teacher too far one day, and he went over the desk and took the student down. We all marvelled at that, but it wasn’t a big deal. [/QUOTE] I didn’t see this happen, but the librarian told me that one of our chem teachers - a **BIG** man, I might add, got into an altercation with a senior. Finally he stood a couple of feet in front of the backboard and told the student to take a swing at him. The student did. Hard. The teacher was knocked off his feet and crashed into the board. When got up, he said “that was a good swing.” And that was it. Neither the student nor the teacher faced any disciplinary action. [QUOTE=Haunted Pasta] The real draw, though, was the second half of the semester, which included a speaker series. Basically, the teacher had people from all sorts of fringe political groups and parties come in and speak to the class- the KKK, the Commies, the Moonies, the Nazis, the Moral Majority, and so on. [/QUOTE] It’s a shame that this would no longer be tolerated, IMHO. We learn to reject bad ideas by being exposed to them. Not by sticking our heads in the sand. > [@Kolga](#): > > S.C. public high school, early 80s. > > Mandatory school-wide assemblies where we were forced to watch the cheerleaders and football players put on skits about the beauty of fundamentalist Christianity. “Guest speakers” who were pastors at local Baptist churches who preached to us in the guise of religious education. “Talent presentations” where people sang hymns or played hymns on various instruments. No religion other than fundamentalist Christianity was presented or discussed. My high school **did** get in the news because of a candlelighting ceremony that we did the last day before the winter break. It was much more mellow than what **Kolga** describes. We had a choir sing some Christmas hymns. A couple of prayers said, a couple of readings from the Gospel. And the school had been doing that for years without controversy. You’ll never find anybody less religious than me, but I just thought it was rather nice. Then the ACLU got wind of it. The **Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo** episode was pretty much what happened in our fair town. A school board member said that the students who were making a big fuss out of this were going to go to Hell. No jolly brown turd in a Santa hat ever came to our rescue with a plea for calm and reason, though. The controversy exploded each December for the next two years. Finally, there was a student sit-in to support the candle lighting ceremony. I guess the reason I forgot to put this in the OP was that this hardly raised an eyebrow with me when it happened. But it really does top the list. ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/26 "2010-11-12T22:29:30Z")
We had a kid who laid in wait with a .22 rifle and tried to shoot another kid who had ‘stolen’ his girlfriend. Never made the news, didnt get expelled, no massive parental reaction. Fairly baffling really. Edit: Oh, this was on school grounds. Otara ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/27 "2010-11-12T23:08:04Z")
Private school 74-84, public school 84-87 Corporal punishment: and the teachers were allowed to use what they wanted as paddles, some had drilled holes in theirs, one teacher used a “switch”. I cannot even tell you how many times I was spanked at school, mostly for goofing off and talking in class Writing lines: do they still allow this? If I had nickel for every time I had to write some variation of “I will not talk in class” I would so own the world. Smoking circle: where student could go to light up In the biology classroom, the teacher had animal fetuses in some preservative solution in jars…including some human fetuses. ---
**Author:** ![pohjonen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pohjonen/32/423_2.png) [@pohjonen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pohjonen)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/28 "2010-11-12T23:30:42Z")
When I was in elementary school in the 50’s the teacher passed around this nifty stuff that didn’t burn for each of us to inspect: Asbestos. I don’t recall if anyone tasted it. In the seventh grade drama class, the teacher told a black girl that sometimes her race had trouble with enunciation on account of their lips, and she should overcome this by practicing saying “Me Moe Me Moe” over and over. I shit you not. It was so appalling I still remember feeling bad for that girl - 50 years later. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/29 "2010-11-12T23:42:53Z")
I went to school in the 70s and none of this stuff would’ve flown even way back then. We had corporal punishment, but I never witnessed any of it nor could ever find any truth to anyone who claimed they got hit. Teachers probably would be a little bit more rough with their words, like “Stupid,” or “Moron” and stuff, but even that wasn’t too bad. We had a smoking court and you were supposed to have a note from your parents, but this wasn’t enforced. I was sad, as it was a nice area that no one could use, 'cause it smelled awful. You definately couldn’t do drugs or marijuna there as you’d be hauled in by the local police. The teachers would smoke out there too. ---
**Author:** ![emmaliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emmaliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emmaliminal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/30 "2010-11-13T00:25:06Z")
Graduated US public high school in1987. We had some of the things mentioned above, like a student smoking area, plus: The photography teacher taught us how to mix (from powder) and use chemicals using no protective equipment other than a stirring stick and a pair of tongs – which he himself didn’t even use. He had brown-stained skin from his fingertips to his elbows, a little darker than your average farmers’ tan, due to this. I stopped chewing on my hangnails that year – one of the steps in B&W developing is a solution of acetic acid, which stings somewhat on broken skin. The very next year, in college, the darkrooms had all kinds of hazardous material handling procedures posted everywhere. I was more than a little surprised. Same teacher loved to sing, loudly and at odd intervals, “If I had a hammer . . . I’d hit you on the head!” and giggle. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/31 "2010-11-13T00:48:11Z")
> [@Haunted\_Pasta](#): > > The coolest class I took in high school, and one of the most popular, was a social studies elective for seniors called “American Political Thought and Radicalism.” The first half was about various counterculture movements- the Hippies, the Dada-ists, those types. The real draw, though, was the second half of the semester, which included a speaker series. Basically, the teacher had people from all sorts of fringe political groups and parties come in and speak to the class- the KKK, the Commies, the Moonies, the Nazis, the Moral Majority, and so on. The next class after each talk was spent discussing (which typically ended up meaning shredding) whatever way-out-there points and arguments the speaker had offered. It was totally cool and gave young people a chance to hear and deconstruct these messages in a controlled setting, with a friendly but dispassionate teacher serving as foil, ombudsman, devil’s advocate, etc. > > I’m fairly confident that it would never fly today. “SCHOOL INVITES KLAN TO SPEAK!!! FILM AT 11:00!” “THE LIBERAL SCHOOL ESTABLISHMENT IS TRYING TO TURN OUR KIDS COMMUNIST!!!” “I HATE ILLINOIS NAZIS!!!” etc. I had that exact same class. Wonder if you went to my high school? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/32 "2010-11-13T01:00:08Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > My own list: > > 1. Smoking areas in the high school. For students. Also in one of the computer labs (for teachers), but it was a student lab. Let a parent find that out today, and it’d be on the news at night. We weren’t allowed to smoke on school property, but as long as you were on the sidewalk you were safe. In the city where I grew up it was illegal to purchase cigarettes if you were under 18, but there was no age for smoking. This was true for at least a few years after 1998 (when I turned 18). When I was in collge (98-02) I took some summer classes at UW-Milwaukee. There was huge lounge type area where you could go hang out on the couches between classes. Smoking was allowed in there. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/33 "2010-11-13T01:09:46Z")
> [@Canadjun](#): > > I got the strap in elementary school at least twice. > > I don’t know what they have in high school chemistry labs these days, but the private school I went to for high school had some fun chemicals to [del]steal[/del] do experiments with in an unlocked storage closet (at least, it was unlocked whenever I tried). Concentrated sulphuric acid is fun stuff to pour on sugar (makes a foamy mass of carbon); however I did learn when I played with it at home that you shouldn’t try that in a plastic container :eek:! Had fun playing with mercury (why do I keep twitching and drooling these days?). I still have a scar on the palm of my had from some chromic acid I held in my hand. > > I somehow doubt that if I was I high school student these days that they’d let me anywhere near the stuff. You might be surprised. My high school chem teacher wasn’t allowed to give me anything, but he did advise me on where to legally purchase the chemicals I was looking for, and loaned me goggles (“For a costume, right? Right?”) so that I could be relatively safe. He was gung-ho about students doing this kind of thing on their own, but he had to maintain plausible deniability. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/34 "2010-11-13T01:28:16Z")
fifth grade- as a practical demonstration of density, our science teacher had us pass around a small glass jar full of water. along with another identical jar full of mercury. ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_C.Semone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/cc9497/32.png) [@Ronald\_C.Semone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronald_C.Semone)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/35 "2010-11-13T01:56:49Z")
I went to school so long ago we didn’t have junior highs or middle schools; elementary school went from grade one to grade eight. Beginning by about grade five (ten years old) all the boys carried jackknives to school and at recess we would play knife games in the school yard. One of them involved two boys standing facing each other about three feet apart and taking turns throwing their knife just outside the other one’s foot. If the knife stuck in the ground, that boy had to slide his foot over to it. He then threw his knife at the other boy’s foot. This kept up until one boy fell over. And in the eighth grade the teacher used to punish pupils who had misbehaved by moving their seat next to the windows where, he said, they would get hit by all the glass if the Russians dropped an atomic bomb on the city. ---
**Author:** ![Angel\_of\_Doubt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Angel\_of\_Doubt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angel_of_Doubt)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/36 "2010-11-13T01:59:50Z")
Had the smoking area, too. Small vestibule connected to the outside. I’m sure it was very comfortable at 30 below! We had the wierdest science teacher in the free world - he collected dead dried animals and displayed them. He brought in a half-skeletonized mummified THING - I still don’t know what animal it was - but it looked horrible. He hung it from the ceiling. Guess over whose seat. He also decided the dissection specimens the school bought were not good enough and decided to euthanize a rat right then and there in a jar of some sort of chemical gas. Bet PETA would love that. I’d be all over the news now. We also made the “rotten egg” chemical and sent it through the ventilation system. Good times! ---
**Author:** ![Haunted\_Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/94ad74/32.png) [@Haunted\_Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haunted_Pasta)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/37 "2010-11-13T04:38:13Z")
> [@Drain\_Bead](#): > > I had that exact same class. Wonder if you went to my high school? Almost certainly, because you’ve posted the city you live in before, and I took note because I grew up there. And for middle school and high school, its north-side suburb. Go Cards! WHS Class of '85 here. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/38 "2010-11-13T04:40:35Z")
public school in rural Utah from 1989-2000: –religiously themed Christmas shows every year. –We had Christmas parties and Valentine’s Day parties where everybody brought a shit load of candy and passed it out in reckless abandon. Then, after we played several games for 90 minutes after lunch, we’d watch some movie. As a whole school. I can’t imagine that kids are allowed to gorge themselves for 90 minutes on chocolate while watching Disney movies these days. –In high school, no matter the extra-curricular event, there was always a prayer circle beforehand. It wasn’t officially sanctioned by anybody, but everybody (including teacher) joined in, and I never got the impression we were allowed to opt out. And I mean everything from football games to standing backstage before curtain on the school play. –Our elementary school playground had four tire swings of varying length. Giant heavy tires hanging from very thick chains–which we would twist into tight circles, pinching our fingers in the process. Another favorite was to stand in the middle of the hollow formed beneath the swings and push the tire up and back and around in circle, trying to get as high and fast as we could. Then run away real fucking fast before it slammed into our back and sent us sprawling. There was also a merry-go-round, which was just sheet metal on a wheel. I know for a fact those things are long, long gone, and all the splintery, heavy wood equipment has been replaced with plastic. The sand is gone, too, replaced with wood chips. –We’d have a school-wide costume parade every Halloween. I don’t know how common that is now. It worked well for our elementary school, which only had four class rooms for each grade with room to spare. You know, in hindsight, elementary school was a lot of fun. ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/39 "2010-11-13T05:20:41Z")
I graduated in 2005, and we had none of this stuff. Except for open campus. My high school was in a downtown area and as long as our parents signed a form, we were allowed to leave campus during lunch. There was a brief 3-week period where they suspended it because of the Beltway sniper (one of the first shootings was half a mile down the street), but as far as I know they still have it. They actually went to great lengths to preserve it: we were on the only HS in the county at that time that still had only one lunch period for the whole school. Nobody was ever subjected to strange punishments first of all because it’s now illegal in Maryland and second of all because it was a rich county where a lot of the kids’ parents were lawyers and somebody’d get sued for sure. I remember one sub getting mad at our behavior and punishing us by giving us a pop quiz on some random passage she read aloud from a book on the spot, and when the regular teacher came back, we pulled out the Student Rights & Responsibilities Guide that the school system handed out at the beginning of the year and started arguing with her about it, citing the rule that “groups may not be punished for the actions of individuals.” She threw out the quizzes. Looking back, we were pretty bratty. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475/40 "2010-11-13T05:34:09Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > …In grade 11 my electricity teacher gave me some money, and his car keys, and asked me to go get him a replacement headlight for his car: during class time… Class of 2003. My home ec teacher in high school had a habit of sending her students on errands during the middle of the school day. Usually it was just a quick drive to the local general store, but occasionly a supermaket (& at least one time to a _bank_). She also ran a catering business and overy so often we’d have really odd assignments like making a 100 Cornish game hens in the middle of a unit on baking. She recruited waitstaff duing class & gave extra credit for it (& also allowed the sneaking of the occasionaly drink unless other faculty were at the event). Kept wine & liquor in a locked cabinet _and_ had us cook with it (although she’d measure it herself and poor it directly into the pan). She finally took “early retirement” last year. PS What’s an “electricity teacher”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-your-school-did-routinely-which-would-be-in-the-newspaper-now/560475.md?page=3)