When older S went to our local uni for Calculus, he had an older teacher who refused to have dry erase boards installed in his class. He got to witness the chalkboards in action! Even the ones in college where you would slide them up and have another underneath!
Dancing is still huge here in the elementary schools. I wouldn’t call it square dancing, though I think H still teaches that a bit, or he used to. But a good bit of the last semester, each class learns a dance that they all perform at the opening ceremonies for the parents/guardians at field day. I would have hated this, but apparently here the kids all love it. And I believe all of the elementary schools do this.
This past year a girl from a rough background who had lots of issues had a good day, and H told her her reward was she got to help teach the class the dance. She pounced all over that, took a great deal of pride in it, and recruited her friends to help teach it.
My mom talked about the nuclear blast drills. And she always quips “like those little desks were going to do anything if a nuclear bomb hit?” So no, we didn’t have those. We had tornado drills and fire drills. Nowadays here they have that plus the active shooter drills, which involved stuffing a whole class of kids into his tiny closet and locking the door for 15 minutes. Oh how H hated those drills!
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Totally forgot about home ec & wood/auto shop! My kids’ school didn’t have either one.
My BIL’s girlfriend is a retired home ec teacher and she got very offended when my husband and I referenced the name “home ec”. Apparently, it’s referred to as some more fancy now - I want to say, “Family Science”?
We had tornado drills too - which looking back was a bit of overkill as I grew up in NY, not exactly Tornado Alley.
I hate when adults criticize today’s kids for not knowing how to ‘adult’ when really, a lot of us got our adulting skills through home ec and wood shop classes!
For me it would be open campus. Even in elementary school, if you were a walker you could go home by yourself for lunch. I wasn’t one, but my friend was so we would go to her house and make our own cinnamon rolls from a can for lunch in 3rd grade. And in high school, open campus led to so many bad decisions…
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Probably most kids do not believe that their parents had to walk 5 miles to school each way, in the rain or snow, uphill both ways…
Actually, given today’s norm of helicopter parenting, many kids might not believe that their parents went to elementary school on their own.
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We had to learn cursive. I’m sure many kids don’t even know what that is.
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My daughter’s school cut cursive between 3rd and 4th grade. We continued to teach her at home so she could at least read letters and cards from the grandparents, and for signing official documents with a signature.
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𝓦𝓮 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓵𝓵 𝓽𝓪𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓼𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓲𝓷 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵
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We raised our kids in the town we grew up in (I attended the same grammar school as my dad, our kids attended the same grammar school as H). Still open lunch for elementary (kids can eat in, walk home, or go out for pizza or deli), high school still has open lunch from 11 - 12, 1200 students roaming Main Street (cafeteria has enough space for maybe 100). Only 7th and 8th are locked in.
Honestly, very little has changed, more rigorous courses, no auto shop.
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My kids started walking alone to school in 2nd grade, before that I walked with them.
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I love this thread!
- Yes to square dancing! I lived in Oregon and did it for all of middle school. I absolutely loved it!
- Yes to drop and cover drills.
- Yes to home ec and wood shop, though I never did those classes. Instead I took typing.
- Yes to walking alone to school from 1st grade until I finished high school. @ucbalumnus , when I lived in Oregon, I did walk uphill in the snow with bread bags covering my shoes, haha. It didn’t snow that often where I lived.
- Yes to cursive. Interestingly, my dyslexic son was taught cursive at his Montessori school and had beautiful handwriting. Then he went to a regular school and still writes like a 3rd grader, lol.
- Yes to the smell of mimeographed sheets.
- Yes to swim class. I lived in So Cal then and always drew the short straw by having swimming first period for 9th and 10th grade. It was cold in the morning! I hated it. Then showering in front of everyone else, so awkward. I much preferred when swimming was over and we did volleyball or track.
- My kids’ minds were blown when they found out I, me, mom, goody two shoes, got paddled. IN HIGH SCHOOL! It was called swatting. I chose it over serving detention because I was late two days in a row. I walked three miles to school and my alarm clock broke, so that was my excuse.
The horrible woman who administered swats to girls was named Mrs. _affle. She was a sadist. She truly enjoyed whacking as hard as she could. On the dreaded day, I went in wearing an extra pair of underpants. After she whacked me, she immediately told me I had to go into the restroom, take off the extra pair, and take the swat again. I did. Wow. It is incredible to believe corporal punishment was used in the 80’s anywhere in America, let alone California.
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I walked to and from school starting in the first grade (No, not uphill both ways). Everyone in town did. In high school, those who lived further away took a city bus. School busses were something kids rode out in the boonies.
Also, in 7th grade, we were filing out of school (we actually filed out) and the sister had the class bully by the shoulders and was slamming him against the wall, saying “I am going to beat the devil out of you”. We were all smiling.
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We had to say the Pledge of Allegiance every day. I guess some places they still do that? But none of my D’s schools have ever had it. My D doesn’t even know the words and is a bit mystified by it. She doesn’t believe we had to say it every single day and thinks that weird. I also think that’s kind of weird. I remember a lot of kids were against it and crafted detailed arguments about why pledges shouldn’t or even can’t be compulsory. But we still had to say it.
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How about after school, just going to friends’ houses or a nearby park for unsupervised play time? (No parentally arranged play dates.)
How about the norm of taking SAT or ACT without more than a 15 minutes of prep? Or taking Achievement tests and AP tests with no prep other than taking the associated high school course?
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Not sure about other colleges, but I know UC Berkeley still has many classrooms with blackboards, so D definitely knows they exist(ed).
Oh, and to add the square dancing discussion…We did it, too, in Florida. It was a nationwide phenomenon apparently. I still remember: Duck for the oyster, duck, duck, duck, and dive for the clam, dive. I kind of loved it lol
I know our public schools still do.
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My daughter has attended four different local schools (a district elementary school, then a charter elementary school, then a different charter school for middle school, then a district high school). Not a single one of them did the pledge of allegiance.
When I tell them we had to do mandatory PE every day where they actually made us run drills doing push ups, jumping jacks, running, etc., they can’t believe it. PE for them was basically time to walk around the track at a lieusrely pace while chatting with friends or listening to music in their airpods.
I think some things are frozen in time here, lots of kids go to the parks, stores and friends homes after school starting in elementary (don’t even think about going to Starbucks after school, the middle schoolers are there), pledge is said every day in school, and at the beginning of every local meeting. PE is daily in middle/high school all 4 years, with physical tests like the mile run and pacer tests. One main difference is that schools are locked down tight instead of having every door unlocked, which is sad.
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Yes, fear of crime is much higher these days, even though actual crime rate was higher a generation or two ago (peak around 1991).
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