My school actually had a shooting team and kept guns (well, Feinwerkbau target air-rifles) locked in a gun cabinet in the PE office in the late 1990s. Of course, “Air-rifles” weren’t considered “Guns” in NZ then (and I don’t think they really are now), but you can imagine how people nowadays would react to that.
We did that too. It didn’t seem shocking at the time, and it still doesn’t. It was neat.
Compared to all a-y’all, my school experience was pretty boring. No corporal punishment, no obviously unconstitutional religiosity. Ho hum.
Would it be alright with the OP if I listed some stuff that went on when my parents were in school? Early '50s to early ‘70s.
Let’s corporal punishment, yep. It was the norm all though both parents’ school experiences, though mainly for the boys. Girls rarely got it (never by HS) and only a female teacher could administer it to a girl and always away from the boys. Any teacher could paddle a boy and they could do it in front of the class (on fully clothed behinds only, apparently the only bare bottom pattlings took in the principal’s office or the lockerroom). And my father had women principals in both grammar school and high school (though the HS had a dean of boys and a dean of girls to handle discipline).
And speaking boys’s bare asses; my father & both my uncles got to swim naked :eek: in gym class (also at the YMCA & in summer camp). The girls had to wear suits, swam at seperate times, and no women were allowed in the pool area (except one time when a boy slipped and hit his head on the diving board and the school nurse was rushed in). None of really minded it or thought it was strange. Neither did any of their mothers (& even did mind she’d probally be the last person on Earth they’d complain too). Imagine thathappening today. We didn’t even have to take showers after gym. I’m actually kinda sorry I missed it. 
Oh, and one of my uncles grammar school teachers was an alcoholic, had a temper, and would sneak a flask in school. One day he shoved my uncle’s head into a wall. My uncle had to go the ER to get stitches & an X-ray. My grandmother (who did use CP at home) was lived. She complained to the school. The principal did apologize to her, but her suggestion that the teacher also apologize to her & her son was completely ridiculous (& totally “demeaning” for him). She was told to calm down because they were going to let him go quitely at the end of the year. That wasn’t good enough for Granny so she transferred her kids to a school in the next town (& was admonished for overreacting). She also had to get her attorney brother involved to get the school to reimburse her for the doctor’s bill.
Years later my other brother broke his leg in high school. He was excused from gym with a doctor’s note. When the cast came off his doctor still didn’t want him in gym and wrote another note. This wasn’t good enough for the coach who insisted that since his cast came off he had to do something instead off going to study hall. So he had him climb to the top of the gym’s (folded up) bleachers to clean them and the windows.
He fell, broke the same legagain, and ended up needing pins put in. No lawsuit, and the coach still had a job. My uncle isn’t bitter though; those pins got him classified 4-F. 
Also my mother was expelled from high school for pregnancy in her junior year (her weddign clued the school in). No alternative pregnancy school, no homebound instruction, nothing. Of course her husband was allowed to stay 'cause it was so important for him to get an education. She’s still bitter.
Early 1970’s. We had a smoking area outside on the lawn, I think you had to have a parental note but there were no laws against minors possession tobacco like there are now so 16 year olds smoking was fine.
We had a minor riot the last day of 8th grade when during an assembly in the gym we wrassled the PE teachers into the showers and everyone got soaked, all in good fun. The only penalty anyone got was to wear your wet clothes for the rest of the day.
Open campus where people would hop in their cars and leave for an hour to do god knows what.
On Friday during homecoming week we would pile into pickup trucks and race around the neighborhood collecting scrap wood to build a huge bonfire to be lit on Saturday night after the football game. This was a class competition to get the most loads of wood by the end of the day. This was done during school hours.
Guns in cars were no big deal at all since it was a rural community with a lot of hunters.
We operated all kinds of power tools building furnature in shop class and learned welding too.
Campus Life Christian club met during school hours, this was public school.
A shower after PE class was required, there was no privacy at all.
School lunch was .35c and was pretty good, there were no nutrition police yet.
You could walk home, ride a bike, drive a car, ride the bus, nobody kept track of how you got to and from school.
Vertebrates. 
Ok but what about stuff that doesn’t fall into “vegetable” or “mineral” but also doesn’t have a spine?
Wolves here, but close enough. We took the class ten years apart.
Of course, you mean Angels We have Heard on High don’t you?
When I was in 5th grade, in 1957, my teacher held me down and cut my fingernails. They were clean and filed, she just didn’t thing they should be longer than hers. I was a timid child and never even threatened to scratch anyone. My grandfather was livid. He went to the principal, but was told it was the teacher’s option.
One chem prof gave is a packet of papers with lists of chemicals and how not to combine them with procedures not to be used so we could avoid making certain things =]
We had a lot of the stuff mentioned above. This was all in a public school 1968-75.
Sixth grade teacher was also a minister of some sort and was very religious and liked to talk about it.
Entire student body walked two blocks from elementary school to a church for Christmas services.
Lots of religion in Jr/Sr high school, Bible “lit” class, Campus Life etc. Upper grades bussed across town to see The Cross And The Switchblade with discussion sessions after.
Corporal punishment.
Smoking was not allowed for students but many would sneak outside for a smoke and little effort was made to stop it.
Many students carried pocket knives.
Invertebrates.
Sounds like you had a bunch of Finlanders for teachers. :dubious:
I used to carry a small pocket knife to grade and high school. I’m sure it was not illegal, and it came in handy as an improvised tool for many things in science classes and lunch. I don’t remember any teacher complaining, and if he did, it probably would be something like, “You be careful with that, now, y’hear?”
Nowdays you can get expelled just for thinking about a knife.
My older sister is profoundly deaf in one ear, but thankfully has excellent hearing in the other ear. Every single year my mom had to raise hell at school because some teacher or another assigned her a seat with her deaf ear towards the class and teacher. This insensitivity would not be tolerated these days, thank goodness.
My younger sister has a problem with a finger on one hand from a childhood accident that left that finger weaker and less flexible than usual. When she was taking typing class, the teacher refused to assign her an electric typewriter (there were only a few in the class. FYI for the young’uns: manual typewriters took more strength to strike the keys.) the teacher said that all the typewriters were first come, first served. I still don’t get why such a tiny accomodation was so impossible.
Guns in pickup trucks were common, many boys carried knives in their pockets or in a sheath on their belt, and no one thought a thing of it.
Pregnant students were banished pretty quickly. When one of the senior cheerleaders got married during the school year, she was forced to drop all extracurricular activities on the basis that she “needed to focus on her marriage.”
I can remember a fairly regular “side dish” that consisted of a little paper cup full of raisins and PEANUTS!!! At my Catholic school, lunch was made by the moms, who were all volunteers, or getting a break on tuition.
My BF’s daughter tells me that she is not allowed to carry a purse, in the eighth grade. Apparently, they worry about contraband. By the end of 6th grade, I was carrying a purse full-time so as not to call attention to my period by carrying it one week a month.
In my purse, by high school, I usually had a pack of matches or a lighter, nail clippers and a file, and a bottle of Tylenol or some other such OTC to battle headaches and/or cramps. A number of girls took their birth control pills at the lunch table. Today, you practically need a notarized letter from God to get a Tylenol from the school nurse.
I did, however, in 1987, get a detention for “public display of affection” because my very tall boyfriend kissed the top of my head right before I walked into a classroom.
We used to play Mumblety-peg during recess. The key was that we knew not to stick them in each other.
Oh yeah, I think that drilling classes in “Duck ‘n’ Cover” would make the news these days…
My grade school was a private and secular, and I don’t that there were any institutional issues there that would turn anyone’s head.
My first high school (I started in 1985) was all girls and Catholic. We had a smoking area that required no parental permission to use, though parents could ask for (and receive) notification if their daughters were seen using it, it was informally monitored by the teachers whose classrooms were closest. Pregnant students were “encouraged” to complete their education at the public “alternative” educational center “for their safety” but were not expelled. There was one girl who stayed in school during her pregnancy and she was doted on by everyone, and perfectly safe.
The high school I ultimately graduated from was part of a K-12 protestant Christian school. Students up to grade 5 were subject to corporal punishment. I did workstudy in the elementary principal’s office during the elementary lunch/recess period, which is when paddlings were given. It was miserable hearing all of the little kids getting whacked, usually 5 times, with the thick sorority oar of the principal. It happened roughly twice a week.
More appalling to me now, though it’s still practice in (non-accredited) private schools throughout Pennsylvania, was the hiring of non-qualified “teachers” for the high school, in classes which were decidedly meant to be college preparatory in nature, like advanced sciences and maths. Our trigonometry teacher held a BA in elementary education and history. In his prior employment he taught middle school social studies. Our history teacher, on the other hand, was an ordained minister in the Brethern in Christ Church, but had no qualifications to teach on any level or in any subject.
Public school, 50s-60s:
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Second-grade teacher locked misbehaving kids in the “cloakroom.”
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Same teacher would not let kids eat lunch until their morning assignment was finished.
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High school music teacher throwing batons and music stands at kids, and swearing at them (in Italian), and making antisemitic remarks.
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Nude swimming for boys only. If you were sick, with a doctor’s note, you had to spend the hour walking around the pool, naked. The boys had a new pool, but the girls had to use the old pool from the 1920s, that had green and black mold and crumbling walls and ceilings.
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Mandatory showers after P.E., with one of the teachers watching kids in the shower through a window in his office.
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Having girls kneel, then get sent home if their skirts didn’t reach the floor. And no patent leather shoes. No pants or shorts.
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Boys: no hair over the ears or back collar. No facial hair or sideburns. No beltless pants. No jeans. No sneakers. No shorts. No t-shirts.
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An excellent English teacher was fired because there were rumors that she was a lesbian.
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Allowing fights between students, including bullies, including kids getting “pantsed.”
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Only Christian music in holiday shows.
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No visibly pregnant girls. Nobody knew what happened to them; they just disappeared, and sometimes came back the following year.
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7th-grade teacher was a Communist (:rolleyes:), always putting down the U.S. for being behind in the space race.
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Corporal punishment, of course.
A teacher that teaches electricity. It was a shop class on electrical theory with class projects on everything from house wiring, to soldering, to bending conduit, to making your own printed wiring board. Good stuff.
Brought blank ammo to school and gave it to another student in front of a teacher.
OK. That wasn’t “routine” by any means, but it would be in the news today.