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Loic · Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:56 am Post subject: Back to the Old School

Well, this has not much to do with the world of academia, but everything to do with childish pranks and a litany of other scholastic misdemeanours which you had committed while you were only so high.

Having only left formal education 4 years ago, I still hold dear those halcyon years back in school where making faces at the teacher when his back was turned was not only commonplace, but encouraged amongst us.

When I was in primary school, I was a bit of a swot and a goody-two-shoes. I curry favoured with the discipline master to the extent that I was made a prefect, much to my delight. A prefect has quite a few privileges and one of them includes the right to mete out punishment to his hapless peers.

Of course, I never went overboard. I remembered being assigned to taking down the names of latecomers who could usually be found climbing over the school gate after morning assemblies. I did remember having to stand my ground against over-zealous parents who were upset that I actually had the temerity to take down the names of their precious sweethearts.

On other occasions, I remembered making boys do silly stuff for petty misdemeanours such as shouting exuberently in the corridors, as exuberent hyperactive primary schoolboys are wont to do. I'd make them do jumping jacks or star jumps until their shirts were soaked with perspiration. But I never abused my powers as some of my prefectorial peers did.

On hindsight, I think it was rather dangerous delegating so much powers to a prefect who although was already a senior in primary school, is only 11 or 12 years old.

Our school was a Roman Catholic missionary school so we had morning prayers. It'd be the duty of a prefect to lead the entire school in prayers, including the headmaster and the teaching staff. There was this incident where a prefect, despite his Buddhist background, led us in our usual prayers. Nobody suspected anything until we realised -to our dismay- that he was not a baptised Catholic. Needless to say, he was relieved of his 'religious duties' immediately.

But well, it was quite a laugh. We were all taken for a ride.

So, do you remember anything from your schooldays? Little events which still make you smile upon reflection? Share them with us. It never hurts to stroll down memory lane.
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Yelina · Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:49 pm Post subject:

In France, we don't have such a system with prefets.

I remember that in 3rd grade, boys in my class were very unruly, and to remedy the problem, the teacher created a traffic lights system.
It consisted in judging our behaviour. If we behaved well, we got a green light. If we did few "stupid things" or were a bit rude, we had a yellow light and if we had a bad bahaviour, automatically we got the red light. Every end of week we did the recapitulation of the past week and at the end of the month, those who had red lights were punished.

As far as I'm concerned, I always had green lights except once where I had a yellow one, just because I pushed a girl in the corridor!

When I think of this, I find it so stupid!!!! But well, that's the only solution my teacher found to control her "little rascals"!!

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Loic · Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 3:57 pm Post subject:

Oh! And why did you push the girl in the corridor? Lol.
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Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.

Yelina · Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:51 pm Post subject:

Well, actually in our class we had floor, and to avoid to scratch it we had to wear slippers. So, each time we were coming back the break we had to take off our shoes to put the slippers. And while doing this, I pushed the girl next to me because she prevented me from slipping on my slippers!

Sounds stupid, I know!!

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Karout hep bezañ karet
A zo kriz ha kalet

Uriel · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 7:12 pm Post subject:

We had nothing like the prefect system, either. There was no imposing a hierarchy between children by teachers or principles -- we did that enough on our own!

I was very quiet and bookish in grade school and middle school, and then quiet and strange in high school, when I started wearing all black and dying my hair funny colors. I became as I am now in college.
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An apple a day....

André in Zuid-Afrika · Site Admin Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 1908

We used to have prefects, but now we have student representative councils...

I just can't understand why one needs to change a system that works!

On the other hand, we did mostly ignore the prefects...

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André in Zuid-Afrika · Site Admin Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 1908

Deborah · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 11:05 pm Post subject:

I went to public schools (local government funded), so we had no overseers such as prefects. As for punishment, by the time I started to school (1956), corporal punishment was a thing of the past in our area. However, in the first through third grades I was part of the childcare program at my school. It was for young children who would have no one to look after them if they went home at 3:00, so we had structured activities after school until someone could come to pick us up. We were under the care of several women who were not teachers. I fondly remember one of them, a very caring and fair-minded person, but one of the women was a terror. She used some punishments that were so cruel and unusual that when I told my mother, she simply refused to believe me. Once when some kids had been misbehaving, she gathered us around and asked what we thought would be an appropriate punishment. No one answered, so she asked how our parents punished us. Two twin brothers said their father would crack their heads together (poor kids!), so our caretaker said, "Like this?" and grabbed the heads of two of the guilty kids and slammed them together. God! They started crying loudly, of course, and the rest of us sat in stunned silence. Another time, she put a tack (point up) on a chair and forced a boy to sit on it. But even if my mother didn't believe me, apparently enough parents believed their kids, so that this woman was removed from her post.

I never was punished for anything, though, because I was an extremely well-behaved kid and never did anything to be punished for.

Uriel · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 11:27 pm Post subject:

I also went to an afterschool day care for my first few years of school -- not at my own school, but at another way across town, so I had to endure an hour-long bus ride from one to the other -- with nasty children that the bus driver didn't take it upon herself to discipline (well, she was busy driving). I remember one little boy who was retarded that they used to torment every day -- he just looked so miserable, trying hard to ignore them and mind his own business. I wonder if his parents ever knew what he went through.

But our daycare ladies -- none of whom were teachers, all of whom were pretty young -- were pretty nice to us, and we just played games or did homework in the school gym until we were picked up. After I was about 8 or so I just became a latchkey kid -- I went home after school and was alone for several hours until my parents came home. My mother is now appalled to think that she let me do this -- she says nowadays she would never be so naive! Since my half-sister's father is a stay-at-home dad, she has never had to make daycare arrangements for her.
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An apple a day....

Loic · Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:57 am Post subject:

Andre: You must be a brave little tyke to have ignored the all-powerful prefects. As we used to say when we were prefects, boys ignore us at their peril.

We had quite a few privileges which I particularly enjoyed, one of them being allowed to cut queues at the canteen.

In the past, it was worst. A prefect had a 'slave' assigned to him. During my time, such a system had been totally demolished, much to the detriment of the education system, I must say.

Deborah: It is amazing that corporal punishment was already outlawed back in the 1950s. When I was in primary school in the 1990s, it was commonplace. I was once hauled to the discipline master's office and told to bend over till I can touch my toes. That sadistic beast then proceeded to administer the three quickest swoosh I have ever heard -and felt- in my life. Needless to say, I could hardly sit down without giving a slight yelp for the rest of the day.

Another common sanction meted out was making us bite a chalk for talking in class. The unfortunate victim would then have to bite it until someone else made the mistake of talking. Only then would he be relieved of the onerous duty of balancing the chalk in between his teeth without touching his tongue.

But in the end, I think the most pointless punishment was to write lines. It is time consuming and energy sapping. It deprived us of time out in the sunshine. I wonder if such punishments are still meted out today.

Deborah · Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject:

Benjamin [inactive] · Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 8:30 pm Post subject:

Yelina · Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 8:45 pm Post subject:

One of my maths teachers did the same when we didn't know by heart our theorems. Fortunately, the only time I had to write (the 100 lines), my father went to tell my teacher off and from this time, I was the only student who was deprived of the chore! Thank you dad!!

I want to add that's because of this teacher I started to hate maths and everything related to numbers!!
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Karout hep bezañ karet
A zo kriz ha kalet

Deborah · Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:01 pm Post subject:

André in Zuid-Afrika · Site Admin Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 1908

Pauline · Guest

In my school when I was about 9 year-old there was a nasty teacher, and he was *very* annoying, boring and stupid. I don't remember but during the year in his class I smahsed up things and my work was very messy and not possible to read it

I remember one time he told me that I had to write many times that I must rememebr to use a ruler. I had to go to the school library for write those lines, and it was *wonderful*. I wrote some of the words then I looked to the books and was during the entire day in the library. Then after I've completed the lines (I can't remember how many, probably 20 or 50) it was the end of the day so I went to the teachers' room and walked to the teacher who told me to write this lines. He was absolutly surprised and told me that it's interdiction for the children to enter the teachers' room and asked why was I there, then I gave him the paper. He did forget (some hours before LOL!!!) for sure that I was writing those lines

Other punishment what I can remember: a teacher hitted me but after she told me that she was sorry. This was more recently and I don't know why. The teachers in my secondary school are nicer (mostly).

Deborah · Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 2:30 am Post subject:

I believe my high school had very few serious discipline problems. It was a magnet school for academic excellence (how the hell did I get in there?), which probably had something to do with it. I remember something I read in the yearbook one year -- there was only one fight on school grounds the entire year, and that was staged for the Legal Club.

Walker · Moderator Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 758

Detention was the only punishment you'd risk getting when I was in elementary school. I received that punishment once. It might've been in 4th grade... another kid convinced me to cut a class. He insisted that I go with him to a grove that was nearby. So we went there and sat under a big rock. After a little while I was so bored that I went back.

I was quiet and kept to myself a lot, except from now and then when the entertainer in me came out. But we had a lot of troublemakers during my first years of school. They'd shout foul words in class, take other kids' shoes outside and toss them so that they'd land on the roof, turn on the fire extinguisher and bully other kids - and teachers too sometimes - amongst other things. Transfering those kids from one class to another, or from one school to another in some cases, was the only thing the teachers could do.

In Junior High School the teachers were so clever that they put most of the troublemakers in one and the same class -- my class. Although the worst bad apple of them all was not in my class, thank goodness. They'd start rows and behave like complete assholes sometimes. Us guys they'd usually call jävla svennar (fucking "Swedes" - svenne refers to the name Svensson), but "cunt" and "whore" weren't uncommon names either. And how about taking a shower after gym class when somebody's urinated and masturbated in the shower? Mmm... They'd get thrown out of class sometimes but that was about it. One guy was literally carried out once, hehe.

High School was relatively calm, and the only bullying I ever saw or experienced there was verbal. Except of course for that time when those business field guys filled a guy's bag with water.

André in Zuid-Afrika · Site Admin Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 1908

Benjamin [inactive] · Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject:

Walker — what you've described sounds rather like my previous school, where I went from when I was 11 until I was 16. My class was apparently voted worst behaved class in the school at one point by the teachers. I think the worst time was Spanish in Year 9 (aged 13-14) — I don't really remember learning any Spanish at all that year, just having to put up with people making a huge amount of noise, going 'woooooo!', throwing paper around, getting out of their seats, kicking footballs about... the teacher gave up trying to teach us verbally, and she just gave us sheets of paper to copy out instead.

I used to be too scared to go outside at breaktime at my previous school, so I used to hide in the library (I was actually a librarian anyway).

The school I've been at for the past two years (and am now just about to leave), however, is completely different. It really is great, and the atmosphere is so much more positive. Unlike my previous school, it's an all-boys school (although there is a girls school adjacent), and I can be openly gay there and not experience any problems because of it — heck, my boyfriend goes to the same school, everyone at school knows about it, and it's all completely fine.

(I wasn't openly gay at my previous school, so I don't know what sort of response I would've got there — but I was accused of being gay all the time when I was there, and it was intended to be malicious).