Skooldaze

[ubu_roi]

I attended a private Baptist parochial school, though I did not believe in a God - they used to joke the I was their "token atheist." They didn't care as long as my father paid the tuition.

They were pretty good on the education front, and aside from a morning prayer and gospel song, they really didn't push a religious agenda.

I wasn't into sports at all, and this was a sports-minded school. So I wasn't considered a very cool kid. But when I was twelve or thirteen I discovered marijuana , and started playing in a couple of local bands soon thereafter - suddenly I was fairly popular . Funny how that works....

[NIN]

I mentioned in a previous post the necessity not to have a plastic bag to carry your books in, for fear of getting it 'ragged' and consequently loosing Text or Notebooks, it was most common in my school to get an 'Army Surplus Store' haversack,
The top flap would usually be elaborately decorated with band logos or football club symbol, to give it & yourself an individuality/identity. I had inked the Sex Pistols ransom note style logo Inked on mine, later painted with Humbrol Enamels when I'd seen one of the Upper Sixth Form guys' cool Irom Maiden image - Man I envied the Rockers & Hippies for their choices in their artwork & the choice that their music gave them. The rest of the canvass would inevitably get graffiti'd during class, you'd only find out at the end of class that it'd been passed around half the class behind your back

This would over time, make your haversack individual & distinctive.

I had heard tale of one of the lads in my class, who was a bit of a wrong-un' and often in trouble, a couple of years after we'd all left school, He was caught trying to rob a Post Office. In fact he did successfully hold it up & as the money (a few tens of thousand pounds) was conveniently stuffed into a cotton money bag by the counter staff, before he left, he decided he didn't need the canvass bag he'd brought with him, and being surplus to his needs he threw it into the corner of the room as he made off.
Big mistake - although it was just before CCTV became commonplace and he seemed to have gotten away.., it was his school haversack , complete with his full name, nickname plastered all over it & being well known to the Police, he was swiftly picked-up

[palo5]

Originally Posted by Estreeter

Both



Here, Have this





Never too late to start palo
Might even lead up to a degree in physics and rocket science

We already have enough rockets, Comrade



I am working on hightec t-shirts - do you want one?

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by NIN

I had heard tale of one of the lads in my class, who was a bit of a wrong-un' and often in trouble, a couple of years after we'd all left school, He was caught trying to rob a Post Office. In fact he did successfully hold it up & as the money (a few tens of thousand pounds) was conveniently stuffed into a cotton money bag by the counter staff, before he left, he decided he didn't need the canvass bag he'd brought with him, and being surplus to his needs he threw it into the corner of the room as he made off.
Big mistake - although it was just before CCTV became commonplace and he seemed to have gotten away.., it was his school haversack , complete with his full name, nickname plastered all over it & being well known to the Police, he was swiftly picked-up

Truly a Napoleon of crime. My uncle, who was a policeman, once caught three men who had burgled a working mens club. They did it after snow had just fallen and he simply followed their footprints home.

[otokonomidori]

Originally Posted by NIN

it was most common in my school to get an 'Army Surplus Store' haversack,

I used my father's canvas gas mask bag to carry my books .

[Ace1965]

From 4th grade on I went to a private Christian school where the Bible was a large part of the curriculum. We had weekly chapel which was like a 90 minute regular church service, singing, preaching, etc.

We probably had less than 200 kids in all grades total. My graduation class was only 12 students. I never thought I was on the smart side but I did make good enough grades to get into the National Honor Society in the 10th grade. But I really think that having such a religious doctrine did leave me unprepared for college and life afterwards.

I did find it funny that I was probably the only kid in that school whose mom got them a Playboy subscription at age 14 and had his first group of porn tapes before he graduated high school.

I have always been on the thin side so the only athletics I could participate in was basketball. I played from 8th grade until graduation.

[billybunter]

I hated school. I've never liked being told what to do. I bunked off many times and went to the bookies. Though just like collage I did pretty well in exams and never revised. Arse holes who say "school is the best days of your life" must live terrible lives. I left and started work the next day. Over here school was a bit different than GB, you had bomb drill. A bit like fire drill but you had to get as far away from the school as possible. Everything was political here, everyday bombs went off there was gunfire and it just became normal to us. Growing up in Belfast was not normal. It was a war zone. But somebody decided to call it "troubles".

[GailFan]

Seems to be a common thread here - I, too, had a Christian upbringing, and went to a boys Catholic Brothers school.

I hated it. Can't really remember any part of it I really enjoyed.

We didn't have Breakfast Club-type clicks, but you absolutely had to belong to some kind of group. All the Pacific Island boys hung out together. All the "bad kids". All the sport types. And although I was a bit of a black sheep and didn't hang out with anybody, I did fall in with the geek crowd, who played Dungeons & Dragons and stuff like that.

My teachers were absolute psychopaths. One of the reasons I'm a devout atheist was because I witnessed these hypocrites. One was rather good, he taught english, drama & music, and encouraged me to write & explore my creativity. He gave up teaching for acting full-time and played the king of the undead in LOTR:Return of the King.

But one was just plain insane. I came back from morning break only to find my entire class lined up in the middle of the quad. He caught sight of my friend and I and screamed at us to "stand on the line". He then ran up and down yelling at everybody. I eventually found out what had happened: he had a strict rule of no eating in the classroom during breaks. And someone had eaten in class. Now this lunatic had a stick he kept specially for threatening students with. A big long branch. He stepped up behind the offender, and raised his Stick over his head, intending to thump it down on his desk. Only the idiot smashed the flourscent bulb overhead, showering everyone with broken glass. Like most people in authority who have done something monumentally moronic, he decided to blame everyone but himself for this stupidity, and took it out on the entire class.

Like NIN, I remember other kids had canvas bags which they decorated with the names of their favourite bands. Only I didn't give a damn about music. I remember staring at one kid's bag in class, trying to work out what the hell an INXS was (Inks???). These days, I'm thoroughly amused that some of the artists that, if you enjoyed you were considered really tough, are now laughably passe (remember MC Hammer???)

I was bored most of the time. Smart, but with uneven academic results.

These days schools claim to have a zero tolerance policy for bullying. Back then, they had a zero interest policy. Especially if it was the teachers themselves doing the bullying. (Actually, I think these days they have a zero "please don't sue us" policy).

I'm glad my school days are behind me, but I'm still haunted by that awful period of my life.

[NIN]

I was thinking of this earlier this week, my school was split into 6 houses in each year, around 30-32 pupils in each registration class which (even with my poor maths) totals around 180 kids in each year, I don't know if there are many schools with that size of yearly intake these days?
I don't know, simply because every school I attended has since been demolished for housing to be built upon the land
something I said?

Anyhoo, our School Colours (colors if you're American ) were Black & Gold and had 6 Houses, named after some of our school & Towns' founding forefathers & each had a tenuous skit strap-line (depending upon which house you were inducted into) ..

Atkin - Stupid F*<kin' Twatkin
Cohen - The Best/Worst House Goin'
Davies - Mavis (!?)
Tate - State !
Stitt - A Bit Shit
Westminster - Not a lot rhymes with it so we used to bastardise various words

My house, Cohen, was disbanded (along with Davies) in 1982, two years into my years of 'serving my time' and i became a Twatkin

but we did have a fairly decent school badge the motto translated from latin is,
"The wise man always has riches within himself"


another thing I remembered was that you never used the straps on your havasack, unless it was just to dangle close to the floor - One kid joined us late in the year and was from South Africa , he wore his on his back and was constantly ribbed for it (it did look slightly odd as he was the Only person who used it correctly) but the accepted way to wear a canvass bag was over one shoulder or to put your forearm through the top as if it were some sort of shield or weapon

I hated those days but it's good to look back on it now

[otokonomidori]

At my school in the 60s the hooligans wore Army web belts with big brass buckles - not to hold up their strides - they were used as weapons for battering f*ck out of other boys.