I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

[darren]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

Oh yes i remember those plimsoles really thin soles on them running around in them in the sports hall ur feet where aching like mad.

80schav, i well remember those awful plimsolls. Pe was one of the worst things i remember about junior school. There was a spare classroom in the school, but no proper changing room. Boys would change in the classroom, girls would change in the spare classroom. You had about one minute to change back into your clothes from the pe kit before the bell would ring for break. At the moment the bell would ring, kids from all other classes would be swarming out of their classroom. Heaven help the poor kid, boy or girl, who was not dressed properly. One incident comes to mind. One girl had her skirt hidden has a joke by another girl. Of course, the bell rang. Seconds later, there were kids swarming past. The girl in question was now hiding behind several columns of stacked chairs. Suddenly, her skirt was thrown by an anonymous girl back into the spare classroom. It landed in the middle of the classroom where there was no cover. The girl in hiding now had to retrieve her skirt in front of every wide eyed boy. The perpetrator was never discovered. After this incident, changing times were always five minutes before break.

[Richard1978]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

PE at my Primary was quite good Marc ... though basic too! we just got changed in Cloackrooms really. Your experience in Primary more resembles Secondary School - having little time to be changed ... especialy before Lunch and at first whe we wasn't A1 doing our Ties up in First year and asking Dinner Lady's/older Years 9who'd wreck um_) to do them

I can still just about recall the "Fish Smell" from Plimsolls - kids today would be amazed (if all they have ever known for PE is their Stan smiths etc)!! How times change!

80sChav

I remember how bas those pumps were, stinking of fish, grips that wore smooth after 2 months, over long laces etc.....

[havasack]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

I always wonder how anybody could have enjoyed primary school during the 1970s. My mother found primary school tedious and dull. Most of the lessons were reading, writing, and arithmetic. More writing, copying off the blackboard, copying out of books, and filling in worksheets. A PE lesson a couple of times a week, and children who worked hard and behaved well were treated to lessons in art and drama towards the end of the week. History and geography lessons were sporadic and covered nowhere near as much of those from the 1990s to today. Science was not taught apart from a bit of nature study. There were no computers in the school at the time.

I guess a lot of that comes to the teachers, then as now, good teachers can make a good lesson and you can give a **** teacher all the gadgetry you want and they'll still do **** lessons. Also, back then teachers were allowed off topic more. Just seems like your Mother had rubbish teachers.

[Richard1978]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

Amostly everyone I know has mentioned about how a good or bad teacher can make or break a subject for them.

At my secondary school this was certainly true.

[darren]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

Without a doubt having a nice teacher one who can have a bit of a giggle with the students can make time go in quicker.

My form teacher in primary school mr abraham was one of the strict ones.
As was mr gordon in secondary school who took me for metalwork 3 consecutive periods.

And on the other hand having a teacher thats too strict and has little patience can make it a nightmare.

Its fair to say id a fair share of both..

amostly everyone i know has mentioned about how a good or bad teacher can make or break a subject for them.


At my secondary school this was certainly true.

[Richard1978]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

Both the business studies teachers at my secondary school were considered less than ideal.

One almost always had a bad temper, & used do things like teach the correct way to write out accounts, only to tell pupils they were doing it wrong even when they had followed very closely.

The other was a bit better, but was totally clueless how to use computers.

My older brother took business studies for a GCSE & said it was a complete waste of time with the above 2 teachers, as did some of my friends when they did.

[Arran]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

My mother didn't think that her primary school teachers were all that good and were less than inspiring. One teacher even taught the class to do mixed calculations from left to right rather than according to BIDMAS despite my mother knowing that it was wrong which resulted in a big argument. What gets to me is the narrowness of the school curriculum during the 1970s compared to when I was in primary school that had lessons in science, history, geography, and music. This is why I find it difficult to believe that educational standards have fallen across the board since the 1970s. Maybe the top quarter at secondary with O Levels vs GCSEs, but not in primary. I even know children of the 1980s (the last before the National Curriculum) who say that the KS2 English and maths course from today is more advanced and a broader curriculum compared with that which they learned at primary school.

[Richard1978]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

It's the right wing media constantly banging on about falling standards & how everything was better in the past that makes too many people think that way.

[Arran]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

The right wing media holds the stance that the 1950s was the golden age of education and the role model for the future. O Levels vs GCSEs are about the only thing from the 1970s educational scene that the right wing media thinks was better. Primary schools in the 1970s are likely to have been worse overall than today because that was the decade when all manner of radical educational experiments thought up in the 1960s were implemented. The introduction of the National Curriculum put an end to most of these questionable and less than successful ideas and actually moved education more towards that from the 1950s albeit with a broader curriculum. Teachers at my primary school used to regularly teach the entire class the same subject whereas it was quite common for teachers in the 1970s and early 80s to function more as supervisors than teachers whilst kids got on with worksheets or project work, sometimes different kids doing different things at the same time.

[havasack]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

You're right about the experimentaion, my wife was taught phonetically ie "kik" for "kick". My school, a run down council estate primary and middle (the middle school with a core of fantastic staff) and I was doing O level maths at 13 without being particularly clever. In primary school we did a lot of local history but it wasn't a history lesson. We'd have a theme which would include a trip, something like the roman wall in which we'd do history, geogoraphy, art, drama, without realising it was history etc as the subject was our "theme" for that term.

I get what you mean to a degree about different kids doing different things at the same time but that happens now at primary (my wife works in one).

[Arran]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

There were all sorts of weird concepts tried out like open plan classrooms and hexagonal classrooms but few of them really worked out well.

When did ball and stick handwriting (teachers called it printing at the time) become popular? I have always done cursive handwriting from the outset but I'm aware that at one time kids were taught to write ball and stick in reception class then start writing cursively around the age of 8 or 9. This had a result of screwing up many kids handwriting as they never managed to transition to cursive.

Themes were quite a popular concept in primary schools during the 1970s to around 1990 and were used to teach much of the science, history, and geography rather than official lessons. They still had a project of the term when I was in KS2 but it was mostly additional to the NC subjects although it covered things like local history.

Schools teach phonics today. There was a less than successful concept called the whole word approach that was around the 1970s.

The history of education in England

http://www.educationengland.org.uk/index.html

[havasack]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

I was taught "ball and stick", had to look it up as we never called it that,to start writing, then cursive as our grammar got better. Use a mix to this day, some words just look rubbish all joined up. We were told the reason for cursive writing was that in the days of quills and fountain pens, putting the pen on and off the paper would cause blots so keeping the nib on the paper as much as possible was a better method.

[Arran]

Re: I miss School from the old day's 80s/90s

Cursive handwriting has its origins in the Roman cursive alphabet which was used for personal and business purposes in the Roman empire but never for formal situations or displaying on monuments and buildings where upper case was always used. This developed into lower case during the early middle ages and was written cursively because it was faster and joined up letters often correlate to joined up thinking. Non-cursive lower case only came into existence with the development of the printing press which is why ball and stick handwriting ended up being referred to by printing by teachers. It is not a natural style and only became publicised in the late 19th century but didn't catch on in British schools until the 1960s.