Making an ashtray in elementary school. Didn’t matter if you went to public, private or parochial school, at some point in the elementary grades, you formed an ashtray out of clay, and pressed a pencil into the edges to make the cigarette rests.
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In college, we did multivariate regression by hand. It was awful.
My daughter is blown away by that.
I remember kids fighting in school and the teachers telling them to go fight outside.
My daughter is horrified by that.
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Oh yes, slide rules! We knew what they were when the engineers were all trying to figure out how to ‘slingshot’ Apollo 13 around the moon and back to earth.
My father brought home a calculator from work in about 1970. We were told it wasn’t a toy and not to touch it as it cost $150; today it would be about $10 as it was just a basic, not fancy.
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Slide rules….and keypunch computer cards….
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Dresses only for girls in my public school until I was in 6th grade. We walked home & back for lunch every day (no school cafeteria in our neighborhood school), and we wore snow pants under our dresses so we wouldn’t (literally) freeze our butts off.
In middle school, our assistant principal had a paddle & wasn’t afraid to use it. I was a good kid , as were my brothers, so we never had to experience that.
Everyone took shop, home Ec, drafting and sewing in 8th grade. I enjoyed all of them - even drafting, because it was more about learning how to read blueprints and use drafting tools than actually doing drafting ourselves (as I indicated on another thread, drafting is not something I am good at).
In high school, boys and girls took separate gym classes. Girls had to do modern dance … we each had to take turns doing what the teacher did. And we had to each make up & perform a dance in front of the class. My D danced, but even she said she would not have liked doing what we did in gym.
In high school, we had an area outside the cafeteria that was known by all to be only for the cool kids. Even passing through to go to class or to lunch was stressful for uncool kids like me. My kids were appalled that the administration allowed that.
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My hubby and kids didn’t believe me until I took them to visit my old house on the “mountain” in Oregon in 2019. It was a very windy road, right through the woods, up a hill. Later, they all confessed to me that they thought I was exaggerating all those years 
. Put hair on my chest.
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Oh, the square dancing!! So much square dancing! And programming classes with punch cards (in the 80s, long after they were obsolete)!
We had fun things like making our own fireworks in physics class. And there were the appalling things too: ESL teachers only knew Spanish, so when we had a huge influx of refugees from Cambodia and Laos, the teachers just handed these poor kids to those of us who were “good readers,” and told us to teach them English. I remember being seven and after working with a girl for months, learning that she had seen her whole family shot in front of her. A week later, she was handed to me for an education. There was no counseling and no help. And her teacher was seven.
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Yes, great idea💡 There were some pretty smart students in there. But these were new concepts, and I don’t think a lot of the kids knew about fractions in formulas and basic algebra.
Oh and we had smokers bathrooms and a smokers quad!
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In high school, there was a “smoker’s corner” off to the side, where no one who did not smoke would have any reason to go to or pass through. Of course now, the high school is no smoking everywhere.
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When I lived in Alabama in the late 70s they still could paddle kids for bad behavior. We also didn’t have recess, only P.E. And after lunch we had to sit at our desks with our heads down. I was so glad we only lived there for 1 year!
Yup!!!
And of course, most of us had smokers in the family so it made sense!
We learned maypole dancing and morris dancing in elementary school. I’m not sure I could even explain what those involved to my kids…
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The President’s Physical Fitness Test, featuring the humiliating shuttle run done for everyone to watch, sticks out as unbelievable. Also, girls had to change into shorts or pants before climbing the metal jungle gym at recess. Segregated gym classes and remember gym uniforms!?!
And yes, our teachers could paddle us, and often did. My art teacher preferred to smack us with a ruler; he’d have me hold out my hands and he’d lever it back and then let it go. Never did teach me to stop talking.
Girls had to line up in elementary school through 6th grade in underwear only to have a scoliosis test. It was so awkward waiting in line for what felt like an eternity with everyone crossing their arms trying to have some modesty. I still cringe.
Yes to swimming, square dancing (NY) and President’s physical fitness test too, ha!
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Home ec! I was terrified of the sewing machine and had to have my grandmother finish my project. We also had those ugly one piece gym outfits.
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Showering. They can’t believe the showering. After gym class, sports. All in big, joint shower rooms.
Also, there was a smoking section for kids when I was in HS, and we were allowed to chew snuff until they passed a rule against it when I was in 11th grade. (Late 80s.)
Finally, many, many of the kids cars in the parking lot had firearms prominently displayed in gun racks. Lots of kids went hunting before school and came there directly from the woods.
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I never had to shower or swim in HS during the school day. I think the showers were for those participating in rigorous team sports. It wasn’t a requirement for regular PE. Gymnastics practice was after school, so I showered at home.
I hadn’t thought about this one when considering this topic. Our son wouldn’t have been surprised about showering at school, but he was completely weirded out by it. He had never participated in any sport until he left for boarding school where team sports were a four-year requirement, and he dreaded it, especially anything to do with sharing a bathroom. By the time he entered the academy, though, and had to shower simultaneously with 40 of his closest naked friends, he was a pro. Now THAT weirded ME out. Maybe we need an inverse thread–things you can’t believe your child had to do in school. 
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My kids did this in elementary and middle school. And my S remembers only too well the swimming in high school PE, because some kid called in a bomb threat to get out of class while he was in the pool, and he had to spend 2 hours standing on the football field in nothing but his swim shorts while the police searched the school. Fortunately it was only October so not too cold.
Anyone from my HS will remember that this happened first period EVERY November 22 (anniversary of the assassination of JFK). And yes, we stood outside in the cold. BUT there were families with houses across the street, and they invited as many kids as would fit into their homes…and we were happy to go inside. THAT wouldn’t happen now either!
My 8th grade science teacher was driving to work one morning and passed a road kill beaver. What did he do? Of course he loaded it into his car and brought it into class, put it on a desk and dissected it in front of all of us who were standing in a circle. No gloves, no masks, maybe a newspaper underneath, maybe not. This was rural Connecticut in 1984 
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