The biggest one my kids don’t believe is that there was a smoking area at my high school. The next is that I could just leave and walk home for lunch or go to the deli and the walk back to school without telling anyone. First, fourth, fifth and eight periods were open campus.
We did square dancing in PE in Ohio before I moved to NY. I had to walk almost 2 miles to school by myself from K til 7th grade. Even in the snow. We said the pledge every morning. In high school I had typing and home ec, the boys had shop.
My son said that he couldn’t believe we had this yellow tape for computer and we had to go to the janitor’s closet to read the tapes. My boyfriend used to stick tapes in my locker that were messages to me and I had to go run them through the reader in the closet during passing period.
I’m not sure if you’re talking about younger grades, but my kids’ high school allows them to leave campus.
Our elementary school students can leave as well.
Do y’all’s schools not currently say the Pledge of Allegiance? I think it’s a state law in my state because even in my ultra-liberal town they do the pledge.
We had the smoking porch, too.
I was curious, so I looked it up. It is in the Virginia Code that “Each school board shall require the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in each classroom of the school division and shall ensure that the flag of the United States is in place in each such classroom.”
Apparently it’s the law in NJ, who knew?
I attended an urban parochial HS about 10 miles from my home in a neighboring city. I was in a carpool driven by my 16 year old (older) sister. I don’t remember parents ever picking up kids from school which seems odd today.
Because of my sports team schedule, I would often miss the carpool home. So I would end up going home on city buses after dark through some pretty rough parts of town.
And at times, my 30 something year old male English teacher would drive me home since we at least lived in the same city! When I think of that now, it seems unbelievable. But I was blissfully unaware of any possible risk. As was the English teacher, I suppose.
My husband is a retired HS teacher and would never even be in the classroom with a lone student (especially a female student) for fear of being accused of some impropriety.
750 boys aged 13-18 in chapel singing Jerusalem.
From ages 7-13
Leather gloved boxing (not boxing gloves) for all boys every week, where you stood toe to toe and were only allowed to left jab and right guard. The match ended at first blood.
52 boys listed by year in order for every single subject sport and activity on the main board of the school -:changed weekly.
The school was heated by open fires only and the boys cut sawed split and stored the wood as well as building and maintaining the fires throughout the day.
No heating in dorms and the window has to be open.
Full immersion in a cold bath one after the other every morning.
Food you would not serve to anybody these days, and not that much of it.
Bare feet all year after breakfast (oats and water porridge) playing ‘base game’ outside.
The honour of breaking the ice on the swimming pool so everybody could do the weekly compulsory length.
If you cursed your punishment was to go to each female member of staff and repeat in shame what you had said.
(The rational being was that men could curse but if a teacher heard then a lady could have heard 
)
… And our parents PAID for this.
I would love to know which school this was.
I went to boarding school in Canada and had many teachers that would tell us stories like this about their days at Gordonstoun or Harrow.
Boarding school is a weird place. My kids wouldn’t believe the stories if I told them.
My high school has a shooting range in the basement but it wasn’t used during the school day plus it was a designated bomb shelter. The fence around the school is very tall and had barbed wire wrapped around it like a prison. We had a teen health center that was completely free and just across from the cafeteria. You could get your sports physical, treatment for minor things like allergies, colds to more severe issues like diabetes. I got my first Pap smear and birth control pills there. They gave out bags of condoms to anyone who wanted them and treated STIs. I do miss the simpler times of elementary school square dancing and playing Oregon trail!
Where you got to learn about all of the ways that people died trying to get to Oregon?
You can relive the game here: The Oregon Trail - Play game online
Aymestry - very small school that shut down probably 30 years ago now. There is a Facebook page dedicated to it.
My Partner read it and said ‘OMG - I thought you were a bit triggered by your schooling but this is like a support group for survivors with PTSD’ … She’s not wrong 
Oregon Trail - I always either starved or died of dysentery. There was no middle ground.
Someone mentioned showers in gym and being observed. In my junior high we had to shower and prove that we did - we had to come out of the shower room wrapped in a towel and show the skin on our side, to show no one was concealing underwear under the towel.
I remember having to pull sweatpants down to show I had uniform shorts on in gym if we were going outside in the cold.
My 6th grade teacher would make misbehaving male students stand at the front of the room and then say “touch your toes!” And whack them with a yardstick. We thought it was hilarious.
I wore my gym suit OVER my pants (why mess up my pants sitting on the ground?). It irritated my PE teacher but she couldn’t really say anything about it.
We weren’t allowed to do that, I think because it would make it easier to escape (we crossed a couple of streets to get to a park, attendance was only taken at the beginning of class).
I don’t think my kids believe anything about what PE entailed as a course so long ago because they didn’t even have PE. They never had to endure gymnastics because it was basically outlawed because of law suits. Did the guys have to do that? Heck no.
Most swimming has disappeared to private lessons or swim team.
Communal showers went down the drain fortunately. That was just a power play. And should never have been allowed IMO. A teacher watching and checking to see if you showered? Really?
Swimming and diving with untrained PE teachers–a sore point with me because I YELLED at a PE teacher to not make a student dive into the pool who was literally shaking with fear to do it. The kid was paralyzed as a result of a dive into the shallow end of the pool right before my eyes. She finally walked again at graduation with crutches. That lives with you a long time. Still does.