We called that game Stretch. If you hit the other person’s foot you had to take two for flinching…or in that case, two for sticking your friend with a knife - you’d think that would merit more than two hits. Major points though if you could stick the knife in your own shoe without hitting your foot.
I carried a knife all through school but I know that I would have been in serious trouble if I’d been caught in the later post-Columbine years. Come to think of it I had teachers that would borrow my knife so they probably just turned a blind eye. I think most of the faculty thought Zero Tolerance was utter bullshit.
OTOH, A kid got expelled for a year for pointing out that a person could pull the fire alarm and shoot everyone on their way out of the building. He wasn’t threatening to do it he was actually making a very good point that the increased “security” in the wake of school shootings was bogus.
Our local middle school still has gun safety and hunting safety certification classes for the 8th grade students.
Elementary school:
Corporal punishment: Male students were taken out into the hallways, dropped their pants and underwear to their ankles, bent over and took at least 5 swats on the bare butt. Female teachers were allowed to be there for the spankings if the student was acting up in their classrooms.
Open campus at lunchtime: Students that lived close to the school were allowed to go home for lunch as long as there was a parental consent on file in the office.
Students were allowed to attend a local church for religious lessons on a weekly basis during school hours with parental consent.
Junior High School:
Sex ed classes: we were allowed to watch films of actual penetration during intercourse. Anal and oral sex films were also shown. Also allowed to sing " I Got the VD Blues" in the hallways between classes.
P.E.: Actually had “Who has the biggest penis?” contests in the lockerroom with the P.E. teacher taking the measurements. :rolleyes: The teachers were allowed to take showers with us at the end of the last class of the day.
High School:
Open campus: We were allowed to leave campus at any time for appointments or lunch, although some students never returned after lunch!
Smoking: Smoking was allowed anywhere on campus as long as the smokers didn’t enter the building with a lit cigarette. Teachers smoked with the students at the outside lounge.
Guns were allowed on campus as long as they remained in the students’ vehicles. This was a rural area and many of the students hunted before and after school.
I’m sure there were other things, but trying to remember things from over 25 years ago!
Tons of kids carried a pocket knife, even after Columbine. The “unofficial” rule was it had to have a folding blade, and the blade had to be 3" or less. I think the official rule was probably no knives period.
We had a semi-open campus. Technically, only seniors who were on the honor rule could leave campus during a study hall, mid-morning break, or lunch, but in practice a lot more did. Basically as long as you were there for actual class no one really cared.
Real shop classes, metal and wood. Drill presses,table saws, welding stations, the works. Plenty of kids made swords in metal shop.
Like knives, guns were technically against the rules, but like other dopers mentioned, being in a rural area having one in your truck/car during hunting season wasn’t questioned.
For several years we had a “physics war.” Every student taking one of the three physics classes (essentially beginner physics (which was in practice more like a glorified woodshop,) regular physics, and advanced physics) would build a “cannon” out of PVC pipe, wood, and bungee cords/surgical tubing designed to launch tennis balls. Most of the project was learning about projective motion . We’d launch the tennis ball at varying degrees, measure the time and note the distance it went, and “work backwards” to get the equations. It was actually really helpful in learning how it worked. But at the end of the project, the physics teachers would get every one together on the practice soccer field and everyone would choose a country to be (first pick when to whoever’s gun shot the furthest, and so on down the line.) Each country got X amount of “resources” based on what that country has. Obviously the US got picked first, and they got a lot of “guns and ammo” (tennis balls,) as well as a “big piece of the pie” (a couple pizzas) France got the most tennis balls, since back then they had the most nuclear warheads? I guess? Columbia got a lot of “coke” (soda,) and if you had a crummy gun and got a small third-world country, you maybe one small loaf of bread, or some rice.
You also had empty paint and coffee cans representing your resources, and the point of the war was to either all live in peace and harmony and share food and drink, or shoot the cans. If you shot someone’s can, you got it and therefore that resource. But in practice, we all just shot the tennis balls at each other’s faces. The only safety gear required were goggles.
I can’t imagine how having eighty students shooting each other with 100 MPH tennis balls wold fly today…I almost got my nose broke one year, and got a massive swollen and bloody lip the next year.
I heard in the couple years after I left they switched to shooting softer things at each other…at one point it was jello…how they managed to get it not to fly apart in the air I’ll never know…but I don’t think they do it at all anymore.
Private and public schools, Evansville IN, and Nashville, TN
1970-1981
2nd grade teacher put horse blinders on me to keep me from looking out the window.
Then: mom yelled.
Now: lawsuit, jail for teacher.
2nd-5th mandatory naked shower after PE. All ages together. Once I saw the seniors naked & whipping towels at each other as a 7yo, I never wanted to go in the locker room again. I faked taking a shower for the next 4 years.
Then: common
Now: you can’t make my angel get naked!:mad:
7/8 grade-all boys military-type place. Virtually all male teachers. Any number of which would snatch you up by your ear or sideburns & drag you around as needed.
Littering? Drop & give me 30! Boisterous? Walk on your hands to your next class.
All fours if you just didn’t have the balance.
Minor infractions? 1-4 hours detention, served Saturday 8-12noon. School was 30 miles out of town, so no one’s folks were happy about that.
Then: it’s discipline.
Now: lawsuit & jail, you big brute!
Corporal punishment: all the way thru 1981. big wooden paddle; principal only.
Standard offer: 3 licks or 3 days, your choice. Since my folks wouldn’t hear about the licks, but would ground me for suspension (again), I took the licks.
Knife? Common, but frowned on by the time high school came around.
A huge 6’4’’ senior threatened me (freshman, 5’3’’, 110lbs) one day. He grabbed my throat, I grabbed my knife. He went & tattled! Principal came and got me out of class, put his arm around my shoulders as we moseyed down the hall…
“You have a knife on you today?”
“Yessir.”
“Can I have it?”
“Yessir.”
“Three days sound good?”
“Yessir”
“OK, we’ll see you Friday.”
No cops, no paperwork, no histrionics. Just practicality.
Now? I’d still be in the pokey.
Guns? Rural=hunting. Leave them in the car & no one cared.
Today? Lockdown, expulsion, jail.
17yo senior sleeping with my 22yo typing teacher?
Then: awesome.
Now: still awesome for me, not her. Buncha prudes!
The '70s?
I went to a public high school in the late 60’s, so I have a few:
In chemistry class, we were allowed - under supervision, but still - to drop flakes of sodium into a fish tank of water. Turned out some flakes were of greater mass than others. Interesting.
Female students were not allowed to wear trousers to school. Skirts only, except for that one day a year when we had Jeans Day (yay!).
I was forced to leave school when my counselor found out I was pregnant. This was ostensibly for insurance reasons, but in reality was to keep us whores from corrupting the rest of the student body. Note: 22% of my graduating class were parents at the time of graduation. I guess I got a lot of influencing in during my first trimester.
Every year the psychology class got to go to the local (same town) state mental hospital for a full day field trip. They toured every ward and were even allowed to spend time unchaperoned in some areas. This was a hospital where, among other things, the Los Angeles court system sent arrestees for mental evaluation. These folks included Tex Watson, one of Charles Manson’s posse.
The best/most newspaper worthy: There was a tradition at our high school where the members of the incoming freshman class were sold at auction to members of the other classes. The proceeds of the auction went to the freshman class’s treasury and were eventually used for events and stuff. The acquired frosh were required to do their owner’s bidding for three very long days. Examples of “owner’s bidding” included scrubbing the hallways with a toothbrush, standing in a trashcan in the cafeteria throughout the lunch hour, wearing bikinis and wigs (for the guys) or the 6’8" basketball star’s jeans (for short girls). All of this was whatever the owner and his/her friends could think up; not much was disallowed. There were some really bad and crazy things but I can’t think of any at the moment.
This was of course officially sanctioned by the school and district, but not surprisingly was dropped not long after I graduated.
Are high school students not allowed to come and go from their high school grounds now? We had the same rule as noted above - show up for class, and no one cares where you were between them.
Wyoming - mid to late 80’s (as student)
Wyoming - mid 90’s (as teacher)
Wyoming - today (as parent)
As student, teachers asked to use our pocket knives if they forgot theirs.
I was aked to walk home (3 miles or so) and back to get my missing homework. (Actually late 70s, when I was in 5th grade.)
If you were taking advanced woodshop and metal shop, you could build a rifle from a kit in class, bought by the school.
As teacher, in a public speaking class I taught, students were given permission by the pricipal to film a 10 minute demonstative speach on how to build a pipe bomb (to blow up stumps, reportedly) and to clean and safely operate a rifle. How to use a condom was vetoed, though.
In all three situations - religious music sung in choirs throughout the year, though not exclusively, and not unconstitutional, either.
Student led prayer at the vast majority of extra-curricular activities, though a small minority of students opt out without comment.
We still have scheduled prayers at graduation ceremonies.
Open campuses (except for elementary students)
We didn’t get to do that until HS. The teacher also demonstrated his potato gun for us on the football field.
When I was in elementary school we had some sort of side class which required our parents to sign a waiver. The class? Church. We marched through a small wooded area, across a street, went into the Lutheran church and read the bible and watched Christian propaganda cartoons. It wasn’t graded I don’t think. Does that still happen anywhere? I’m not exactly sure what they called it.
