# Miseries of School: An Ongoing Anthology of Accounts, True and Fictitious



## Extollager (Dec 20, 2018)

Oliver Twist! 




Jane Eyre! 



Wackford Squeers's academy, Dotheboys Hall!  



Gradgrind! 



C. S. Lewis's autobiography's account of "Belsen"!  Maybe your own experience.  The miseries of school.

C. T. Randall's thread on moral blind spots won't let go of me.

moral blind spots

Once you start trying to think about bad things of which our culture is oblivious or that our culture is more or less willing to shrug off, quite a few come to mind.

I got to thinking about school -- in the United States, that'd be kindergarten through twelfth grade.  A person might start kindergarten at the age of 5 and have turned 18, or be nearly 18, when he or she graduates from high school.

*This thread invites discussion of three related things:*

*(1)Personal narratives relating to one's own experiences, or the experiences of people one knows, relating to various forms of suffering encountered in school
(2)Nonfiction accounts of unhappiness in school from any time or place, as long as the word school is appropriate; thus, so as to keep this thread, already capacious, from being even more expansive, accounts of troubles inflicted by live-in tutors in the old days, etc. would not be appropriate
(3)Fictional accounts of unhappiness in school, e.g. from great Victorian novels, etc.*

I'm starting from this, that it seems certain that a great deal of unhappiness is (still) experienced by some children in school, whether from individual bullies or gangs, unfair teachers, and so on.  Children who begin school as reasonably cheerful little beings become fearful, or cruel, aggressive, dishonest, etc. after being in school.  Some of them will cut themselves or even kill themselves.

It may be suggested that gathering a bunch of young people based simply on age and keeping them together in a compulsory situation is not going to work out well for some of them.  I am more than a bit skeptical of the claims -- not so often trotted out now as 25 years ago? -- about the benefits of school for "socialization" even if its outcomes with regard to the attainment of knowledge were, admittedly, not so hot.

Yes, I realize that school is a refuge for some youngsters from bad families, and, for many, a place more or less passively accepted with good and not so good elements -- which is pretty much what it was for me, by the way.  It's remarkable to me how much I don't seem to remember of school, considering how many hours I spent in school.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2007-2008!), the average American student puts in almost seven hours a day, and 180 days, in school per year.   That suggests, for grades 1-12, a total of 2,160 days, or 15,120 hours.

Obviously an institution like this is going to have a great impact on someone's life.  "Like this" -- but what, in fact IS like school?  Is _anything _like school?

Yet we think of it as natural or as a necessity, though compulsory school attendance such as this is, historically speaking, an abnormality.

Now, those hours will probably be divided up into various subjects, especially in later grades (the "platoon school").   The "lessons" of 19th-early 20th-century factories were applied to schools.

(I have only glanced at this item, but it appears to give much of the content of _Education and the Cult of Efficiency_, a book I read about 40 years ago:
Raymond Callahan: “Education and the Cult of Efficiency” – RE-EXAMINING EDUCATIONAL POLICY)

The point is that the structure of school is not necessarily based on attention to the way individuals learn and flourish.  I am glad that homeschooling is available in all 50 states so that some children can benefit from it.  Likely enough their parents are pretty well-educated as compared to their predecessors, at least as regards possession of post-high school education.)

We'll probably get glimpses of other places and times in nonfiction and fiction.  I have some ideas myself for posting.

*The above is some context.  It's not the intention of this thread to get into lengthy discussions of educational policy -- please!  What I hope to see is plentiful interesting anecdote and source-citing for the topic's three aspects as listed above.  *

If you present any personal information, be sure before posting that you are comfortable with it being publicly available.

It's fine if someone wants to start a thread for good things about teachers, education, etc.  As a retired career teacher myself, I hope there are many people here who had really good school experiences.


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

George Orwell, in "Such, Such Were the Joys," about St. Cyprian's:





......the greatest outrage of all was the teaching of history.


There was in those days a piece of nonsense called the Harrow History Prize, an annual competition for which many preparatory schools entered. It was a tradition for St Cyprian's to win it every year, as well we might, for we had mugged up every paper that had been set since the competition started, and the supply of possible questions was not inexhaustible. They were the kind of stupid question that is answered by rapping out a name of quotation. Who plundered the Begams? Who was beheaded in an open boat? Who caught the Whigs bathing and ran away with their clothes? Almost all our historical teaching ran on this level. History was a series of unrelated, unintelligible but — in some way that was never explained to us — important facts with resounding phrases tied to them. Disraeli brought peace with honour. Clive was astonished at his moderation. Pitt called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. And the dates, and the mnemonic devices. (Did you know, for example, that the initial letters of ‘A black Negress was my aunt: there's her house behind the barn’ are also the initial letters of the battles in the Wars of the Roses?) Flip, who ‘took’ the higher forms in history, revelled in this kind of thing. I recall positive orgies of dates, with the keener boys leaping up and down in their places in their eagerness to shout out the right answers, and at the same time not feeling the faintest interest in the meaning of the mysterious events they were naming.


‘1587’


‘Massacre of St Bartholomew!’


‘1707?’


‘Death of Aurangzeeb!’


‘1713?’


‘Treaty of Utrecht!’


‘1773?’


‘Boston Tea Party!’


‘1520?’


‘Oo, Mum, please, Mum—’


‘Please, Mum, please Mum! Let me tell him, Mum!’


‘Well! 1520?’


‘Field of the Cloth of Gold!’


And so on.


But history and such secondary subjects were not bad fun. It was in ‘classics’ that the real strain came. Looking back, I realize that I then worked harder than I have ever done since, and yet at the time it never seemed possible to made quite the effort that was demanded of one. We would sit round the long shiny table, made of some very pale-coloured hard wood, with Sambo goading, threatening, exhorting, sometimes joking, very occasionally praising, but always prodding, prodding away at one's mind to keep it up to the right pitch of concentration, as one keeps a sleepy person awake by sticking pins in him.


‘Go on, you little slacker! Go on, you idle, worthless little boy! The whole trouble with you is that you're bone and horn idle. You eat too much, that's why. You wolf down enormous meals, and then when you come here you're half asleep. Go on, now, put your back into it. You're not _thinking_. Your brain doesn't sweat.’


He would tap away at one's skull with his silver pencil, which, in my memory, seems to have been about the size of a banana, and which certainly was heavy enough to raise a bump: or he would pull the short hairs round one's ears, or, occasionally, reach out under the table and kick one's shin. On some days nothing seemed to go right, and then it would be ‘ All right, then, I know what you want. You've been asking for it the whole morning. Come along, you useless little slacker. Come into the study.’ And then whack, whack, whack, and back one would come, red-wealed and smarting — in later years Sambo had abandoned his riding-crop in favour of a thin rattan cane which hurt very much more — to settle down to work again. This did not happen very often, but I do remember, more than once, being led out of the room in the middle of a Latin sentence, receiving a beating and then going straight ahead with the same sentence, just like that. It is a mistake to think such methods do not work. They work very well for their special purpose. Indeed, I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried on without corporal punishment. The boys themselves believed in its efficacy. There was a boy named Beacham, with no brains to speak of, but evidently in acute need of a scholarship. Sambo was flogging him towards the goal as one might do with a foundered horse. He went up for a scholarship at Uppingham, came back with a consciousness of having done badly, and a day or two later received a severe beating for idleness. ‘I wish I'd had that caning before I went up for the exam,’ he said sadly — a remark which I felt to be contemptible, but which I perfectly well understood.


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

Philip Hamerton's autobiography contains passages relating to cruelty to a pet dog at Doncaster School, I see.  The author (1834-1894) was an essayist and art critic.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million

An idealistic new Yale grad learns up close and personal just how bad inner-city schools can be—and why.


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

The article linked below is the text of a speech by John Taylor Gatto,  accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990.   Note the historical material on Horace Mann &c.

Why Schools Don't Educate - The Natural Child Project


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## sknox (Dec 21, 2018)

I wonder: would you carry the critique into high school? 

If so, would you carry it into college?

If so, would you carry it into graduate school?


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## Hugh (Dec 21, 2018)

Most of those who call the shots in the UK politically and economically have been through* the British Boarding School System* in which from the age of 8 (or younger) until 17, boys (and girls too) from well-off families would spend 8 months of the year in these institutions.  Until relatively recently there was little room for visits in those eight months.  The books below have attempted to provide insight into the psychological effect of this parental abandonment....

*"The Making of Them" by Nick Duffell*





https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0953790401/?tag=brite-21

*From the Publisher*
*Publisher and reviewer comments*
"Nick Duffell's tender and ruthless analysis of the effect of boarding school life on girls and boys, both at the time and later in life, will strike many painful chords and unlock many painful memories. On almost every page one encounters a sentence, a quotation or an incident that prompts a mental, "Oh my God, yes!" This book should be read by everyone who was sent to boarding school, above all by those who barely survived the ordeal. " ( Angela Lambert, Former ITN reporter, columnist for The Independent, and Daily Mail, author of 8 books)
A remarkable new book which will be essential reading to anyone interested in the nature and culture of English, their education system, their attitude to children, and the psychological and social effects of sending their privileged sons and daughters away to boarding schools.

*From the Author*
*Socio-historical and psychological reasons for UK boarding*
At the dawn of the 21st century British society is still shaped by a private education system devised to gentrify the Victorian middle classes and produce gentlemen to run the Empire. Yet it is not on the political agenda. It is rarely the subject of public debate, and we remain blind to its psychological implications. Can we afford to go on ignoring this issue? Will we continue to sacrifice the welfare of our children to satisfy our antiquated social aspirations?
Why do the British still send their children away to boarding school? What are the attitudes underpinning this practice which mystifies foreigners? What does it mean for a child to be sent away from home and immediately have to survive in an unfamiliar custom-ridden world, without love, family life or privacy? Will it be the making of him, or will it be a trauma from which he may never recover?
In this thought-provoking book psychotherapist and ex-boarder Nick Duffell reveals the bewildering dilemmas confronting the boarding school child, and discovers a dark secret at the heart of the British psyche. Drawing on more than a decade of working with Boarding School Survivors, he describes the process towards living beyond strategic survival, and offers pointers towards a philosophy of education which honours the needs and the intelligence of the natural child.


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## Hugh (Dec 21, 2018)

And here's the other one:

*"Trauma, Abandonment and Privilege" by Nick Duffell*





https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1138788716/?tag=brite-21

_Trauma, Abandonment and Privilege_ discusses how ex-boarders can be amongst the most challenging clients for therapists; even experienced therapists may unwittingly struggle to skilfully address the needs of this client group. It looks at the effect on adults of being sent away to board in childhood and the problems associated with boarding, which have only recently been acknowledged by mainstream mental health professionals.

This practice-based book is illustrated by case studies, diagrams and exercises and is divided into three parts: ‘Recognition; Acceptance; Change’. It aims to help readers understand the emotional processes of boarding and the psychological aspects of survival, outlining the steps toward recovery and the repercussions of survival. The book also explores how ex-boarders frequently struggle with intimate relationships with spouses and partners and offers interventions and strategies for those working with ex-boarder clients.

_Trauma, Abandonment and Privilege_ will be of interest to therapists, counsellors and mental health workers across the UK. It will also be relevant to those who are well acquainted with boarding schools based on the UK model, for example in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India.


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

sknox said:


> I wonder: would you carry the critique into high school?
> 
> If so, would you carry it into college?
> 
> If so, would you carry it into graduate school?



I'd stick with kindergarten through high school, since grades 1-12 (in the US) are customary.  The school-leaving age here is 17, which I suppose means, more or less, that attendance is compulsory through the junior year of high school. 

School-leaving age - Wikipedia

I would prefer that this thread, already pretty expansive, omit post-secondary school education, which isn't compulsory.

By "compulsory," I mean that the state maintains its right to keep the child in its own schools or private schools.  (The states do permit home education, which is not a topic for this thread.  In not a few cases, children are educated at home because of problems such as this thread has identified and will identify.)


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

Hugh, I will ask my university library to buy at least one of those Duffell books.


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## Hugh (Dec 21, 2018)

Extollager said:


> Hugh, I will ask my university library to buy at least one of those Duffell books.


Excellent!


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## Edward M. Grant (Dec 21, 2018)

Extollager said:


> The point is that the structure of school is not necessarily based on attention to the way individuals learn and flourish.



It was never meant to be. In most Western countries, the government school system is based on the Prussian system whose main goal was to produce large numbers of compliant drones for the factories and military, and a smaller number of less-dumbed-down managers and officers to tell those drones what to do.

It's an indoctrination system, not an education system. It actively harms smart kids, and does little to help dumb kids. If it benefits anyone, it's the midwits who are smart enough to learn some things but not smart enough to teach themselves.


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## sknox (Dec 21, 2018)

Got it. The key variable here is compulsion. I have to agree that *any* system of compulsion is necessarily going to be repressive and have some unfortunate consequences for its victims.

Which makes "stay in school!" a curious imperative.


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## Edward M. Grant (Dec 21, 2018)

You don't have to force kids to learn. They're naturally curious and inquisitive. If schools were actually teaching kids useful things, they'd want to go there, not to get away.

You do have to force kids to sit in a classroom and be indoctrinated. None of them want to do that.

Either way, government schools have a very short lifespan. One way or another, they'll be gone in twenty years.


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

Edward, thanks for your comments.  The present thread should develop primarily for discussion of the _what_ rather than the _why_ -- in other words, it's primarily for accounts of experiences of schooling past and present, real-world or fictional.  Discussing _why_ educational systems do what they do might swamp this thread at the expense of the more (auto)biographical and literary accounts.  I hope you don't mind my making this suggestion.  I'm going to start a separate thread for the _why_.

Here it is:

Why Is School the Way It Is?


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## nixie (Dec 21, 2018)

My worst moment at school: I was 8 years old, the teacher decided the majority of the class had mastered writing with a ballpoint (the three lefties hadn't) time to move on to a fountain pen. Disaster for me, completely indecipherable blue blots all over the page, left hand covered in ink, the other two had the same result. The teacher said we had deliberately sabotaged our work and brought out the belt (long leathered strap) and gave us the strap 3 on each hand, not gentle taps, both hands covered in blisters. Mum went up to school next day, I had two weeks off and never went back into her class, a friend told me my mum was asked to leave after threatening to wrap the belt round said teacher's neck.

By the time I went to secondary school corporal punishment was being phased out, banned by the time I was in third year.
When I see people petitioning to bring it back, it sends shudders through me, some teachers were complete sadists and I hope it is never brought back.


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## sknox (Dec 21, 2018)

>You don't have to force kids to learn. They're naturally curious and inquisitive. 
Curiosity and inquisitiveness is not the same thing as learning. Any master electrician training an apprentice will vouch for that.

>If schools were actually teaching kids useful things, they'd want to go there, not to get away. 
Children tend not to be real big on utility. And the things they find useful are often transient. Let the kids follow their head and we'd have a nation of Minecraft experts.

Yes there are bad teachers, but one must surely grant the reverse: there are also good teachers. And there are a great many teachers who are good for a while then just mediocre or get plain burned out. School is not a single thing.

The phrase is "mass compulsory education" and people tend to focus on the middle word, but that first word is also a problem. It assumes first that *everyone* can be educated equally and at the same time with the same material. But the more egregious error is the assumption that there will be enough good teachers to teach millions of children. There won't and there isn't. 

Teaching is a rare skill. When you require everyone be educated, the immediate corollary is that some will be taught badly. A further corollary is that any given teacher for any random classroom will be fine for some of the students, terrible for a few, and be remembered fondly by others.

This is why all attempts at institutional reforms fail. Teaching is a gift and we don't have enough gifted. You can establish curricula, increase pay, shrink class size, but that one fact is irreducible. Happily, education is not formulaic. Just as good people can come from bad parents, so can good students come from bad schools. It happens all the time. Even more good students come from mediocre schools. In the end, it's more about the student as an individual human being than it is about institutions or even about teachers.


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## nixie (Dec 21, 2018)

Sorry I made a mistake, corporal punishment was still in place when I left school,  secondary school I went too had took it upon themselves to dispense with it.


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## Extollager (Dec 21, 2018)

But there's a thread for discussing the "why" of school elsewhere.

Why Is School the Way It Is?

I am afraid this thread is going to be overtaken by discussion of opinions about why schools are as they are...


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## Dave (Dec 21, 2018)

sknox said:


> In the end, it's more about the student as an individual human being than it is about institutions or even about teachers.


An excellent teacher, thriving in an excellent institution, will recognise what motivates that individual human being, their potential and their limitations. They can then use their knowledge of the wide range of different learning techniques, and use the most appropriate to that pupil. 

However, when teaching is instead governed by the ideology of political masters, and a regimented and narrow national curriculum is set, then that teacher's hands are tied to use only those techniques and that curriculum which is currently deemed to be fashionable.


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## sknox (Dec 22, 2018)

Agreed, Dave. One of several reasons why I taught college and not high school is exactly because in college I was free to each according to my own lights. That was changing just as I retired. Nick o'time.

I don't believe in adapting to a student's learning style. One of the more important things I learned as a student was to recognize different teachings styles and how to adapt myself to them. It made me a better student.


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## sknox (Dec 22, 2018)

I had a good experience. High school. One fine day, some way into the semester, the history teachers (or were they government? It's been a very long time) took some of the students aside (teachers from two different classes). They put on a movie or something and took a handful of students, fewer than a dozen, into a separate room. They chose their words carefully, but the message was this.

We are going to teach you some stuff. We can't teach everyone. Some are unteachable, some are simply uncooperative. Rather than try to find a way to teach everyone the same way, we're going ... effectively, show movies all semester ... teach them differently from how we teach you. 

From that point on we learned what I imagine to be something like Advanced Placement Political Science. It's the only class I remember from that year. For the most part, my classes were a waste of time simply because I refused to participate. I knew it was a farce. To prove it, I graduated with a 1.9 GPA. Hah. I sure showed them.

I hope personal anecdotes is what the OP was looking for.


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## Dave (Dec 22, 2018)

I was speaking more from the point of view of being an ex-school governor and the husband and father of teachers. When the UK brought in the National Curriculum in the 1990's and a heavier emphasis on Maths and English teaching the format was very prescriptive and the instructions were to use particular methods only i.e. one hour of reading at a set time in the morning and reading and writing taught using phonics. What works for one student is not a one size fits all, and good teachers know this very well. They should not be straitjacketed but allowed to do their jobs. Some of the best teachers at the school I was a governor simply retired and the school began to suffer following that.

My own school memories are a little dim and distant. I was bullied and my only memory of that really was when I finally summoned up the courage to face my bully and to fight back, I was the one who got the cane.

However, I think many of these very poor experiences in England that have been written about, come as a result of the Second World War. All of the most useful men either went off to war or worked as engineers in the factories. Those left to teach were men who had been broken, physically or mentally, by the earlier Great War. My father was taught during this period and I often listened to his stories with horror. (Children made fun of by teachers because they couldn't read. Books deliberately thrown across the classroom at children's heads.)

Women, on the other hand, did not have to suffer any of that. Girls Schools had some of the brightest women as teachers because it was one of the few occupations women were allowed to take up, and they did not lose their best teachers to fight in the war.


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## Dave (Dec 22, 2018)

Just to add, I'm sure that kind of school experience is exactly what Roger Waters drew upon when he wrote "Pink Floyd's: The Wall." The imagery shown in one segment of the film, to the tune of "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)," is of a surrealistically oppressive school system in which children fall into a meat grinder, while singing "We don't need no education, We don't need no thought control." I do remember that my Biology teacher was vehemently disgusted with that song, and he saw it as an attack, not only on the whole teaching profession, but also as a personal attack on himself.


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## Extollager (Dec 22, 2018)

sknox said:


> I hope personal anecdotes is what the OP was looking for.



*Yes, yes:* one's own, those of persons known to oneself, published accounts in nonfiction writing, and even published fiction such as that of Dickens!


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## Extollager (Dec 22, 2018)

Dave said:


> Just to add, I'm sure that kind of school experience....



 Here's Blake's "The School Boy"

I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,-
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay,-

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?


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## Parson (Dec 22, 2018)

sknox said:


> Just as good people can come from bad parents, so can good students come from bad schools. It happens all the time. Even more good students come from mediocre schools. In the end, it's more about the student as an individual human being than it is about institutions or even about teachers.



Sorry to be a spoil sport here, but although the above is true. It is not usually true. For example in New York students in the public school read and do math at level less than 20% of the time. At the Success Academy, which intentionally takes the students from the worst of the neighborhoods have students working at level above 95% of the time. And these schools are located right inside the public schools. The differences are STARK!! The Success Academies are regimented to an almost unbelievable degree. They are clearly very successful, but one of the criticisms of the Success Academy is that they don't make enough allowances for students to "learn in their own way." --- Letting each teacher and each student find their own way is a recipe for disaster for the vast majority of the students. I would suggest that if you want that kind of teaching we should do away with schools entirely and let each family decide for themselves how they will teach and what they will teach. ---- I doubt that works out any better over all.

If you are interested in Success Academy including some of the most valid criticisms you can listen to this podcast. Actually it is several episodes, but you can pick and choose. I would definitely listen to the first one.  StartUp


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## Scookey (Dec 22, 2018)

Worse than school, I narrowly escaped misery expulsion in my final year at uni. The Dean (who else to possibly play fire with) was at the front desk, bending over a student's work in front of me, top of bald head facing me... Well, what else could a conscienscious student do but polish it? 
I wasn't rude enough to make contact but he somehow noticed the motion and looked up, to see my very best ever poker face. Got away with it, just....


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## sknox (Dec 23, 2018)

>at level 
This is the phrase that gives me trouble. At level? Human beings have levels? To me, that flies in the face of what it means to be human.


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## Parson (Dec 23, 2018)

sknox said:


> >at level
> This is the phrase that gives me trouble. At level? Human beings have levels? To me, that flies in the face of what it means to be human.



That is the standardized test terminology attempting to quantify what would normally be considered appropriate ability and understanding for a child of a certain age. 

But for a more clear definition of how these schools are failing: More than 50% (in some schools near 90%) of those inner city graduates of a none demanding elementary and secondary education in New York are functionally illiterate. Meaning that upon graduation they cannot understand and fill out things like job applications or pass a drivers test and other basic things like that. 

Wonderful philosophy of education is of no use if the people who are raised under it cannot function adequately in a technological world.


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## sknox (Dec 23, 2018)

>normally be considered appropriate ability and understanding for a child of a certain age. 
Exactly! Be considered by whom? 
It appears to make sense when it says "a child," but let's try it with "every child"
_... appropriate ability and understanding for every child of a certain age._
Because that's what standardized tests are predicated upon--that *every* child ought to be at some level, that is materially and meaningfully different from some other level.

"Adequately" is also problematic. People live in a technological world (they always have, but let's leave that aside). They function. Some function better than others. There's a whole array of reasons why this happens. 

In any case, I wasn't putting forward a philosophy (not a pejorative word). I made the observation that not all children are the same and not all progress in lock-step. That's an observation.

I suspect there's no quick agreement to be had here, so I'm going to duck out--@Parson is welcome to a final retort, of course!--and let this thread go back to its OP (original purpose ... noice)


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## Hugh (Dec 23, 2018)

This isn't a memory of real misery at school as such (though like most  I can provide some personal reminiscence), but my first days at kindergarten have always intrigued me...

Age 4 @1956.  I was decidedly unhappy at being left there by mother, and at having no choice in the matter.  For the first two days I remained resolutely standing at my place by the long table refusing to sit down or participate or interact in any way.   On the second day the teacher became a little worried because another small boy had decided to follow my lead.  On the third day (I think it was probably the third, and not the fourth or fifth) there was a turning point: the class were issued with plasticene.  This interested me and I sat down and began to participate.  This involvement was commented on by other children, but the teacher quickly shut them up in case I were to change my mind.

My parents remembered this differently.  On my return home on the second day I assured them that I had sat down and I was backed up by my friend who lied on my behalf, but we were found out.  After some discussion my parents decided that some action needed to be taken and my father took me into another room and hit me on the behind with his slipper.   I don't remember this as painful as much as a loss of dignity.   My parents have always thought that this physical punishment resulted in my cooperation at the kindergarten.    I on the other hand have always felt certain that the punishment was irrelevant, that I only started to cooperate the moment I noticed something that was actually interesting.


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## sknox (Dec 23, 2018)

I have two anecdotes that together explain why I graduated high school with a 1.9 GPA (then went on to get a PhD ... not that that proves anything other than an adequate supply of _Sitzfleisch_).

1. Fourth grade. At the beginning of the year I was in Portland and was doing so poorly the teachers called for a teacher conference. This was in 1959 when such things were comparatively rare. I was a student with potential, they said, but I wasn't living up to it. I didn't much care; I just remember anxiety and frustration in my parents.

Now it's the end of the year and I'm in Medford. We moved *a lot* when I was in grade school--my dad played in night clubs; two weeks here, a month there. Anyway, it's end of year and I'm getting mostly A grades and doing so well that they put me in a special advanced class for fifth grade (Anaheim, by then). 

The thing is, I'm like ten years old and I smell bullsh*t. I'm the same kid. I'm not working any harder than I had been in Portland. The whole parent conference thing made little impression on me. The only thing that had changed, I saw, was the school. I have a clear memory of realizing that this grading and failing and advancing stuff was arbitrary at best, nonsense at worst.

2. High school junior. Back in Portland, where I managed to go two entire years at the same school. One day, some career advisor wonk comes to class to tell us about college. Blah, blah, blah; I'm doodling, which is what you do when you want the teacher to think you're taking notes. I remember a grand total of one thing from the blah.

Community college.

The wonk is talking about how important it is that we do well in high school, work hard, get good grades. And he mentions that there are these things called community colleges where there is no minimum GPA requirement.

Aaaand, we're out.

I just stopped even pretending. I did the stuff that seemed interesting, or where the teacher somehow managed to motivate me, but in the end I decided that none of it mattered. And it didn't. The year after I graduated high school, I paid cash money to a community college and immediately got straight A's for the first two years. Because college made sense to me. It was actual learning. It was not what I had been doing on my own, which was finding-out-a-bunch-of-stuff-about-a-bunch-of-things. Learning was a discipline. And different fields had different disciplines. Some fit, some didn't. It was great.

But the taxpayers wasted a good deal of money on me up until then. There's not an institutional reform that could have touched me. All I did was learn the basics, which could have been learned most anywhere and certainly learned in half the time. When I got older and read about how compulsory public education developed, I went yeah, of course, that explains it. 

end of anecdotes


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## Extollager (Dec 23, 2018)

sknox said:


> end of anecdotes



Thank you for _anecdotes_.  That's what I hope to see lots of on this thread.


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## nixie (Dec 23, 2018)

This thread has made me think of teachers.
There are only two teachers from primary school whose names I remember.
Miss Brown, my very first teacher who on discovering I could read put me straight onto free reading and brought in Enid Blyton's Secret Seven  so I wouldn't be bored by the Peter and Jane books.

Then when i was about nine  there was Mr Gallagher, who had the knack of bringing history to life. He rarely used books he'd sit on his desk and tell stories, he'd also occasionally  get the class to act out scenes.


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## Extollager (Dec 23, 2018)

I'll bet I moved around comparably to you, sknox.

Around age ten, I began to read comic books & to draw my own.  It seems to me that, for the most part, teachers allowed me to draw these comics; I wasn't disruptive, got acceptable grades, etc.  A math teacher in 6th (?) grade confiscated one of my home-made comics, but I don't think he was too tough on me about it. During 6th grade I discovered Marvel comics and Tolkien and _Star Trek_ premiered.  These things became enormously important to me, confirming my creative efforts (the home-made comics, etc.) and confirming to me that the written word, in library books, could be a tremendous source of satisfaction.  Probably these things contributed to my development of vocabulary, etc.

For the most part -- this is my impression -- the school figures neither commended my private activities nor censured them.  That is, they were largely passive towards me.  Conversely, I was largely passive towards the school; I virtually never rebelled, indeed accepted almost everything I was told and that I was told do to.  It doesn't seem to me that I was forced to do a lot of stupid stuff, or told a lot of things that I could see weren't true, etc.

This sort of thing probably helped to shape my sense that, to a considerable degree, many kids _just need to be left alone_ -- or at least, that this was true of kids of my generation, growing up without computers, smartphones, etc.  Indeed, I grew up with limited TV, in the sense that there was just one TV channel where I lived -- with NBC programming.  A friend's family had cable, but I don't think it ever even occurred to me to ask my parents to get it.  By and large, I was content with what I had, not only as regards TV, but as regards things I owned, things to do, etc.  I was more or less content with school.

In my 9th grade year I learned about Fandom, after letters of mine to several Marvel comics were printed (with full addresses, as was the custom then).  Fandom -- almost entirely something, for me, conducted through the mail -- became, one could say, my center of gravity, or anyway very important.  As regards school, fandom reduced the importance school might otherwise have had.  Again, my teachers and even most of my fellow students seem to me to have been mostly passive about it, not censuring it or being intrigued by it.  I drew a lot (not necessarily for fanzines) during school hours and read a lot; I'd have been the kid with some Ballantine, Lancer, or Ace paperback that he was carrying around and reading in slack moments, of which there were quite a few, it seems; hence I wasn't much bored by school.

So -- I don't think of myself as having been very miserable at school -- certainly not as compared to a friend who had stayed behind when I moved, just before 9th grade.  I think I would say that, rather, I realized how much less happy I had sometimes been formerly, when I reached 12th grade, and especially when I graduated.  But I don't remember a time ever when I dreaded going to school. 

I do seem to remember dreading that I was going to see a horrible movie, around 7th grade.  The science teacher had got hold of some movie that, I think, was made by the Shell Oil Company.  It was about tropical diseases such as yaws and elephantiasis.  My memory is uncertain, but I think I could hardly bear to watch -- though I liked "monster movies."  Does anyone here remember such school movies?  It seems kind of strange to me that the teacher got away with showing this, although I don't remember any of the kids seeming to have been traumatized.


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## Parson (Dec 24, 2018)

sknox said:


> I suspect there's no quick agreement to be had here, so I'm going to duck out--@Parson is welcome to a final retort, of course!--and let this thread go back to its OP (original purpose ... noice)



No retorts. We simply disagree and have likely had different experiences that shape our view. My experiences as a teacher were that the more I let people direct their own learning the less they learned of the subject I was required to teach. And I suspect nondirective teaching is a significant reason so many inner city schools fail to educate so many of their students.  ----- back to the thread's purpose.


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## Dave (Dec 24, 2018)

Parson said:


> My experiences as a teacher were that the more I let people direct their own learning the less they learned of the subject I was required to teach. And I suspect nondirective teaching is a significant reason so many inner city schools fail to educate so many of their students.  ----- back to the thread's purpose.


I certainly think that people learn better when they have to discover those facts and principles for themselves rather than learning by rote. If they are enthusiastic about a subject the learning will be deeper and they will retain it longer. I'm also a great believer in life-long learning. I don't think adults should stop learning after school. Higher education is about giving people the tools to learn independently and that should start much earlier if we want to educate more of the population who stop learning after leaving school.

However, we need to differentiate between elementary Maths and English where learning by rote and direct teaching to a class of very young children certainly has a place, and is possibly the only way to do that in practise; and with secondary and higher education where that kind of teaching doesn't always work, and some kids will be sitting looking out of the window instead. Young children are not able to direct their own teaching, while older children could be taught to. However, as I said earlier, one size does not fit all.

There has been much talked about in the UK regarding our schools performances in Maths and English versus those in China, where the learning is much more structured and directed to a much older age. We are being told by "experts" that we need to be more like China. There have even been TV programmes with failing UK students being sent to China. However, my daughter taught EFL in China. We went to visit her, I have visited a Chinese school and have seen teaching taking place in a Chinese classroom. The brightest and best students are sat at the front of the class and ask all the questions and perform well. My daughter was told not to bother with the students at the back of the class; that they didn't matter. This would never happen in a school in the UK. There were no special schools or remedial classes. and my personal experience leads me to dispute that "expert opinion" is valid.


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## Extollager (Dec 24, 2018)

Parson and Dave, as original poster I'd say your comments immediately above might be better placed in the thread complementary to this one:

Why Is School the Way It Is?

I hope you don't mind my saying that -- it's not that the comments aren't valuable, just that I'm hoping the emphasis of this particular thread can be on "anecdotes" (in life & in literature), so that it becomes a kind of anthology that de-emphasizes commentary *on* education.


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## Parson (Dec 24, 2018)

Extollager said:


> Parson and Dave, as original poster I'd say your comments immediately above might be better placed in the thread complementary to this one:
> 
> Why Is School the Way It Is?
> 
> I hope you don't mind my saying that -- it's not that the comments aren't valuable, just that I'm hoping the emphasis of this particular thread can be on "anecdotes" (in life & in literature), so that it becomes a kind of anthology that de-emphasizes commentary *on* education.



No problem. And I think I should apologize for responding to what I thought was a flawed philosophy being presented. (Parson bites his tongue, he wants to say more but doesn't.)


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## Cathbad (Dec 24, 2018)

I had some great teachers, and a couple of bad ones.  But, although I had bad instances _outside_ of school, but my in-school life was pretty good.


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## Extollager (Dec 24, 2018)

Thanks, Parson!  

Moderators, would it be possible to add to the thread title?  It could read something like this:

Miseries of School: An Ongoing Anthology of Accounts, True and Fictitious


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## Scookey (Dec 24, 2018)

In my secondary school, there were two pupil streams: basically high and low. I had been moved to the high so new a guy from the low when he came into our classroom to ask for a signature from the teacher. Many laughed at his not shining intelligence as he left but I knew he was a guy with a good heart and all they were doing for me was showing how unkind and shallow they were. :-(


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## Parson (Dec 24, 2018)

Perhaps the most remembered moment of my elementary school years was a movie. I went to a very small elementary school (about 25-30 per grade and even that was a step up from the one room school house in which I began my education.) About 1958 (when I was 8) one of the students in the school had a birthday and his father arranged for a theater movie to be shown in school. --- I haven't a clue how such was managed back then. --- We rarely had Educational movies so this was a red letter day. The whole school gathered in the gymnasium and watched a kind of Swiss Family Robinson style story. There was a scene in that movie that still effects me to this day. The older brother (14?) was helping his sister to catch a pretty butterfly that in the course of the chase got caught in a spider's web. As the boy was tearing it out, a huge spider drops down and bites him in the neck. He very nearly dies. ---- I rarely see a spider today that I don't think about that scene. ---- I've often wondered if that movie was age appropriate and if I would be less scared of spiders if I hadn't been exposed to it.


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## WarriorMouse (Dec 25, 2018)

My education started the day I graduated high school.

Seriously!


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## Extollager (Dec 25, 2018)

Extollager said:


> Thanks, Parson!
> 
> Moderators, would it be possible to add to the thread title?  It could read something like this:
> 
> Miseries of School: An Ongoing Anthology of Accounts, True and Fictitious


THANK YOU!


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## BigBadBob141 (Dec 29, 2018)

I vividly remember a teacher in my old school, he was an ex - copper, stood well over  six feet tall, and was built like a brick out house!
One day in a lesson a boy was sent in who had done something bad, what I have no idea,  he just picked him up and shook him like a rat!!
This was back in the sixties, and could never happen today, am not saying he was bad!!
He wasn't, he was a good and fair teacher, and maybe scared the boy straight, but now days he would never be given the chance to do that.


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## Extollager (Jan 2, 2019)

Thanks for that anecdote.  It reminded me of a memory I'm not sure is trustworthy.  It seems to me that one of my teachers had a paddle or even oar on the wall that was understood to be an instrument of corporal punishment.  Holes had been drilled in the paddle to reduce air resistance during its movement from above the teacher's shoulders to its destination on the pupil's buttocks.  But I'm not sure the memory is accurate in all respects, nor am I sure that paddle was ever actually used.  It might have been placed there in our sight like the dead dog in Kipling's "Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," as an _in terrorem_ measure that was not, perhaps, effective.


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## sknox (Jan 2, 2019)

Oh heck, I got those. My 7th grade teacher used a wooden yardstick, which laughs at wind resistance and has a nice flex to it. He didn't use it on girls, but the boys did pushups while being whacked. I don't recall it ever being terribly painful. Then again, I also recall being advised by a classmate to invest in a wallet. 

My eighth grade teacher had a different technique. She could hit just about any student in the classroom from a distance. Her projectiles of choice were chalk or eraser, which in those days were always ready to hand for a teacher.

I don't remember anyone being outraged by any of this, nor traumatized by it. We were unruly, disobedient, ungrateful, and regularly disruptive. I'm sure logic and sweet reason were attempted by every teacher, but ... well ... I did mention the grade level, right?

Here's one other anecdote; one which I regard as significant. I was a terrible student in public school. I wasn't often disruptive, but I was often defiant and utterly disengaged. In the waning months of my senior year I would often simply get up and walk out of class to go do something more interesting (which included walking, breathing, and blinking). Many other students were somewhere along the disrespectful-disinterested line.

That was in the spring. In the fall, I went to college. Nothing much, just a local community college. One of the first things I noticed was a near-miraculous transformation. Those students who a few months ago constituted a discipline problem so chronic and grave as to occasion regular meetings of adults, were now polite and attentive. They did their work. At first I supposed this was only that the discipline problems simply never went to college but then again, *I* was one of those problems. And here I sat, taking notes, doing the assignments. The teachers were no more brilliant. The subject matter had not suddenly become interesting. We can't have grown up in a matter of three months. 

I'll leave it to others to consider causes.


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## Extollager (Jan 3, 2019)

sknox, I sympathize with you and your teacher(s) about your public school career.

I wonder when outright brutality, teacher-to-student, in most American and British schools.

My mom mentioned occasionally something I don't remember, in which, around second grade, I was rapped on the pate by a teacher with a metal bracelet.  Probably I wasn't paying attention.  Her name was Mrs. Cassinelli or Casanelli, but I don't remember what she looked like -- not even sure what the town was.

Aside from that, I don't remember receiving any what I'd call corporal punishment, and I'm not sure I remember any other kid getting that, either.

At my wife's school, the kids were not allowed to use the restroom during between-class breaks.  They had to ask during class time.  (Her memory is that kids could not use the restroom during lunch break.  Maybe they could if they asked.)   She knew of a girl who didn't manage to make one gym requirement and was held back from high school graduation, having to make it up during the summer.  That must have been embarrassing.

When I was a student in Town X, there was a girl (SC) who was the kids' criterion for homeliness.  I moved to Town Y and it was RG at one time and DA at another (or perhaps this was concurrent).  Later I taught high school and it was MH.  Kids could be rotten about such things.  The most recent of these occurrences is about 40 years ago, and if I remember, what must it have been, and be, like for them?


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## sknox (Jan 3, 2019)

You bring up a good point. For all the stories about terrible teachers doing terrible things (and there are plenty because ... mass education), the things kids do to each other can pretty well match story for story.


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## -K2- (Jan 3, 2019)

The following took place approx. 1971-'72 in a rural Smokey Mtn. school district in E. Tennessee (I'm hesitant to name the school or community in that I 'hope' it has changed).  *It is an unpleasant and long (condensed) accounting (though much of it will be vague), so base your decision to continue reading knowing that.  School specific aspects (in that a lot of associated information is required) are in bold.*

A girl, "X," of 7 or 8, had never attended school.  She had three times (partial days by three women) been forcibly (via threats to X's father) been taken by some of the women from one of the local churches to their homes over the two years prior, 'doing their "good deeds"' which cost X terribly.  Otherwise, X had never left the farm.  So, their next idea was to have the Sheriff demand that X's father let her be taken to school.

By that age, X did not speak, yet being an excellent mimic she knew a few words.  All of those words were the only ones she ever had said to her by her father, and they were the most vulgar profanities.  She did not have a name (her father only called her those crude terms), or a birth certificate and X's taught responses when she thought she was in trouble were unacceptable in any society.  X had never seen a book, a magazine, heard a radio, or seen a TV.  She had only been exposed to her father and his 'friends' which would bring him liquor.

*The first day she was taken to school by the constable, she had not bathed in some time, and only had one of her father's old shirts to wear, nothing else and no shoes.  When she arrived at school, she discovered (all determined in retrospect years later), that the teacher did not want her there, nor the school district and all of the other children had been told by the teacher (assumed) who likely had been informed by their parents to not let them interact with her.*

(this is where you need some cultural background... X's father was known as a drunk that had never held a job or worked his farm.  The girl that bore X, snuck off within hours of X's birth, because X's father was abusive to unfathomable degrees.  With X's mother gone, that abuse was levied on X, and the entire community knew all of that.  X's father was what was called "white trash," also being a drunk, and known to be violent, sadistic and abusive, he was shunned by the community.  What made it worse was X's mother was full blooded Native American.  So, X is what was called a 'half-breed,' which was considered the lowest of the low racially in a community of unapologetic racists.

What that translates to is as you might suspect, due to what X was, her father was, and the abuse she experienced, no one wanted their children exposed to her (to protect their own children))

*X was shown to a chair in the back corner of the class and told "she could sit there" a solid 15' away from the other children.  X through habit slipped off the chair and moved under a table in the corner, sitting on the floor facing the corner and remained there until the end of the day.  The day ended with the teacher giving the constable a note to give to her father.  (Assumed) The note read that X was to be bathed and dressed in proper clothing before the next day.*

Because of that note and because he was already furious that X had gone to school, X was violently bathed in the concrete cattle trough, "punished" into the evening, and then did as she typically did when he returned home that night, drunk, furious and with a single sack dress... she hid till dawn in the barn.

*For the next two weeks roughly, two of the women from church took turns picking up X in the morning, taking her to school, wherein X would sit under the table in the corner with no one including the teacher approaching her.  At the end of that two weeks, the morning came when no one showed up ever again and X never attended school again.*

That all said... X by thirty had still never looked in a magazine, a book, listened to the radio or watched TV because it was too confusing (all of it was too alien to what she knew in her life).  Naturally, she was illiterate, and could only count somewhat due to a 'mentor' she knew briefly around 12 years old halfway around the globe.  At thirty X met a man who changed her life from the one extreme she had lived to the positive opposite.

At 32, X with some help from her Husband and ultimately a companion he arranged for her to have, taught herself to read and write and basic mathematics.  She began studying anything she didn't know (which was everything about the world, society and so on as you know it), and ultimately became an expert in many odd areas of study, because as she was told, "just pick a subject, any subject, and learn it until you become tired of it."  ...and she has never stopped doing that.

X now reads slowly (trying to comprehend) but advanced to the point that on the internet, know one knows that she had such beginnings, many assume she is college educated.  However, X still cannot get the words out when speaking, typically reverting to her own made up over the years pidgin.  X for the past 20+ years has written daily, still feels she has much to learn, but, writes historical shorts, fictional stories and a number of novellas and a few novels (all unpublished).

X will tell you flatly that her life since 30 is heaven, and because her Husband let her make the choice to learn instead of forcing her to, is why she has accomplished what she has so far, and cannot imagine that life for anyone is better.

In any case, that is "X's" experience with school.

K2


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## Alex The G and T (Jan 3, 2019)

This is one of my very first memories. I must have been barely more than three years of age.

My mother was still at university.  She'd drop me off at a pre-school/childcare institution while she went to class.

I remember very few details about the place, or the staff, or the other inmates.  Only this one heinous instance of misplaced justice.

In the middle of the playground stood a sort of Gazebo/Pagoda sort of thing. It contained bins full of wooden building blocks, in front of tables to place them upon.

I was busy building a monumental feat of engineering, stacking blocks into a veritable Tower of Babel as high as I could reach. It was glorious thing.

Another inmate was next to me, shuffling blocks around, in a mindless mess.  He reached over and snatched the keystone from the base of my tower; bringing the entire edifice down into a heap of rubble.  I was appalled that he, with an endless supply of loose blocks at hand, would choose to vandalize my glorious construction, with such thoughtless larceny.

So, I snatched a piece out of the ruins and bashed the ******* on the head.

Then ambled off in search of a less disappointing pastime.

Whence, I was snatched off of the top of the slide and incarcerated indoors; left to peering dolefully out of the window, at the continuing joyful antics on the playground.

My overwhelming feeling was of the gross miscarriage of justice; where a larcenous vandal was pitied and I was punished for a perfectly reasonable response. I had no voice in my defense.  My protestations were ignored. No one appreciated the magnitude of my achievement, nor my dismay at its destruction.

20 years later, I was driving down a street, glanced out the side window and there it was.  The same playground.  _And it all came rushing back to me; like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist._ (Tip o the hat to *Firesign Theater* for that line.)


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## Extollager (Jan 3, 2019)

K2 and Alex, I can't bring myself to "like" your accounts, but I appreciate them.

In my #50 above, here's the missing verb:

I wonder when outright brutality, teacher-to-student, in most American and British schools, *ended.*


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## BigBadBob141 (Mar 13, 2019)

REF: Alex The T And G.
Yes I can remember when I was young how massively outraged I would sometimes get at what I felt was a terrible, terrible miscarriage of justice!
Whereas nowadays I would probably just shrug it off.
I suppose it is true, you do mellow with old age.


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## svalbard (Mar 13, 2019)

I


Extollager said:


> K2 and Alex, I can't bring myself to "like" your accounts, but I appreciate them.
> 
> In my #50 above, here's the missing verb:
> 
> I wonder when outright brutality, teacher-to-student, in most American and British schools, *ended.*



I can remember when corporal punishment ended in Ireland. It was in 1982 and I was ten years old at the time. That did not mean teacher to pupil and occasionally pupil to teacher brutality ended. However the year stands out for me in that it was at this time that a certain 2 foot bamboo stick, lovingly called Fred by it's master, was retired much to the joy of cheeky little boys(it was an all boy's school run by a certain sadistic religious order) who endured a terminal 6 years of primary education within the drab and depressing corridors of that damnable institution.

Secondary education was a much lighter experience. Secular and a mixed sex school( which brought it's own torments).


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## Danny McG (Mar 20, 2019)

*Terror of the nuns*

Aged four and a quarter I was taken to the Catholic school.
Within a couple of days we were in the gym and split into the two teams "vests and skins". At that point my birthmark (now long faded away and covered by chest hair) was seen.

This birthmark greatly resembled a third nipple. To further add to this outrage it was noted in class I was left handed. My fate was sealed, these fanatical women with their Irish peasant accents and very basic one year teaching certificates decided to "beat the divil" out of me.
For three years I was rapped viciously (without warning) across my left hand with a long wooden ruler whenever they saw me using that hand.

By the time I transferred to junior school aged seven I had a very bad stammer, nervous twitches even when standing still and a habit of cringing when an adult was nearby.

Junior school, even though caning was common, was like a breath of fresh air to me, only punished for breaking the rules, not for my nature and a birthmark.

To this day I tend to frown if I see a nun and have made very sure that none of my kids or grandkids attend a Catholic school


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## Hugh (Mar 20, 2019)

dannymcg said:


> *Terror of the nuns*
> 
> Aged four and a quarter I was taken to the Catholic school.
> Within a couple of days we were in the gym and split into the two teams "vests and skins". At that point my birthmark (now long faded away and covered by chest hair) was seen.
> ...



Ignorance! Madness! Superstition!  The capacity of humankind for malevolence, be it unknowing or deliberate, always amazes me.

May you live well!  May you prosper! May you outlive this ignorance!


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## nixie (Mar 20, 2019)

I've had good and bad experiences with nuns. Sister Michael terrified us, speak out of turn your ear was twisted, run in a corridor she would deliberately trip you


 Around thirteen a boy joined halfway through the year, disruptive, a bully, a thief. He came into class one day covered in bruises, when he started playing up as normal she gripped his ear he retaliated, leaving her with a busted nose, she physically subdued him. Everyone expected him to be expelled. 

What she did instead was keep him after class for a couple of hours, then  drove him home. Him and his brother were taking into care and parents charged with abuse.
She mentored him, got him caught up with school work, I still see him now and then and he never lost touch with her.


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## Parson (Mar 20, 2019)

dannymcg said:


> This birthmark greatly resembled a third nipple. To further add to this outrage it was noted in class I was left handed. My fate was sealed, these fanatical women with their Irish peasant accents and very basic one year teaching certificates decided to "beat the divil" out of me.
> For three years I was rapped viciously (without warning) across my left hand with a long wooden ruler whenever they saw me using that hand.



This brings tears to my eyes. I just can't understand how "religious" people can get so unbelievably far from Jesus' ideals.



nixie said:


> What she did instead was keep him after class for a couple of hours, then drove him home. Him and his brother were taking into care and parents charged with abuse.
> She mentored him, got him caught up with school work, I still see him now and then and he never lost touch with her.



But this also brings tears to my eyes. Someone who saw beneath the behavior and poured herself into the life of someone who needed someone to stand up and help them.


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## Extollager (Mar 20, 2019)

These latest postings are worth this whole thread.


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## Extollager (Mar 26, 2019)

I'm reading *Sprightly Running*, an autobiography (1962) of John Wain (1925-1994).  There's much here about the miseries of being a boy at school in the 1930s and a child's capacity for a sense of loss as well as of fear.  His schooldays helped Wain understand totalitarianism.


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## BigBadBob141 (Apr 27, 2019)

This is not that big a thing but it still annoys me to this day, it just shows how stupid and vindictive some teachers can be.
It was announced that we were to have a school trip to Cadbury's chocolate factory in Bournville on the out skirts of Bimingham!
Everyone signed up for it, my sister had gone the year before and said it was great, you even got free chocolates at the end, which I was really looking forward to!
Then the woman teacher who took our class said there would be a flower arranging competition, and that it would be nice if the boys would take part in it as well as the girls, this was just a suggestion not an order.
Needless to say when the contest came around not one boy had entered, this was in the 60s, what respecting boy would go in for that, I mean what the hell did she expect!!
She was so annoyed that not one single boy had took up her suggestion that she cancelled the trip for the whole class, which I thought at the time and still do to be outrageously mean, and very short sighted!!
I don't know if any of the parents protested, but if they did nothing came of it and the trip stayed cancelled.


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## Extollager (Apr 27, 2019)

Yeowchh.


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## Boneman (Apr 27, 2019)

Arriving at this thread late.... where to start? 

I unfortunately won a scholarship to this school in 1961: Christ's Hospital School  Every one said what a marvellous school it was, how lucky I was... The level of bullying was appalling, and the level of indifference to it by the masters was incredible. But you didn't 'sneak' so the bullies got away with it, year after year. There are some 17 year-olds that you should never give power to, they can be absolute sadists. Look at the school uniform, then imagine you are dressed in rugby shirt, shorts and blue socks. For an imagined infraction ( I was accused of talking during  a'stay-silent' period imposed by one of the prefects, when in fact it had been boys passing our house) I was given a 'double mile': change from the sports gear into the hideous uniform, present yourself to the prefect, change back into sports gear, run a mile, and then repeat the changing process, run another mile. 24 minutes to do this. If you didn't manage it, you did it again. And again. And again. If you never managed it the prefect might give up trying and find another punishment for you. Or you'd keep trying on a regular basis. 

Playing rugby, I got cramp in my calf. The junior housemaster refereeing told me to remove the elastic garters  and  roll my socks down. Senior housemaster called me into his study later and gave me four hard hits of the cane on my backside for not wearing garters during the game. Didn't listen to what I had to say, he got a sadistic delight in beating small boys. Six of the cane for swearing: "Blinking heck, that's good!" my friend said, as he looked at photos of the house play...

Result for me? An abhorrent hatred for the boarding school system, and an easily-kept vow, that I would never send my children to such an institution.


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## Extollager (Apr 27, 2019)

Thanks, Boneman, for those reminiscences, a real contribution to this thread.


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## Cathbad (Apr 27, 2019)

My GPA in high school finished at 3.13 - with the main causes of the lowness being:

1)  Sophomore year, I took Journalism I, and was thus on the school paper.  Day One, the teacher (Mrs. Davis) said to us chosen as writers, "Don't worry about getting a by-line, no first year student has ever gotten a by-line".  My first assignment was to cover a basketball game - that had already been played.  Not deterred, I said, "All righty!", grabbed the photographer, and took off for the gym, to interview the coach and some players.

My story lead the sports section, half a page - by-line included.

Mrs. Davis immediately took me off writing and immediately put me on proofreading.  A few months later, our Editor told me I was the best proofreader she had.

Then report cards came out.  Mrs. Davis had given me a 'D'.  With the Editor standing up for me, we went to the Dean, who said he couldn't change the grade, but changed me over to a Creative Writing class.

2)  Senior Year.  I took Humanities, which _should_ have been my favorite class!  It soon proved otherwise.

The teacher assigned us *Moll Flaunders* to read.  I loved it!  Read it in one evening.

Next day, she gave us a pop quiz on it.  I aced it!  So I thought... when the paper was returned, it had me marked 7 of 10 wrong.  I waited until after class, then approached her about it.  "Mrs. (Johnson?), you know these answers are right... why did you -"  At which point she throws down her pen and shouts at me, "They were right for the _end_ of the book, not the pages I assigned!"  I was flabberghasted, and didn't know how to respond!

Other incidents occurred, minor to the final episode.

We entered class, and the teacher, obviously excited, told us, "Today, we are going to put the Ten Commandments in the order we feel they are important!  I love seeing how ideals change over time!"

I raised my hand.  "Ma'am, Moses refused to do that, and Jesus put only two in order.  I'm not better than them; I can't do this."  Her response:  "You do it, or you'll get an 'F' for the day!"  "Check."

She reads the first commandment, asks who thinks its most important.  I raise my hand.  She reads and asks about the second.  I raise my hand.  She throws down her chalk, sits at her desk and announces, "You get an F!"  I picked up my books, left the front row seat I always sat in, and took a back row seat.  I never participated in class again.

Only class I ever failed.


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## WarriorMouse (Apr 28, 2019)

Its nice to know I was not the only one to have teachers that quite honestly should have been banned from the profession. Quite how we as a society got to the point of allowing people with out an ounce of ability in teaching to teach "our "children is mind boggling.


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## Hugh (Apr 28, 2019)

Boneman said:


> Arriving at this thread late.... where to start?
> 
> I unfortunately won a scholarship to this school in 1961: Christ's Hospital School  Every one said what a marvellous school it was, how lucky I was... The level of bullying was appalling, and the level of indifference to it by the masters was incredible. But you didn't 'sneak' so the bullies got away with it, year after year. There are some 17 year-olds that you should never give power to, they can be absolute sadists. Look at the school uniform, then imagine you are dressed in rugby shirt, shorts and blue socks. For an imagined infraction ( I was accused of talking during  a'stay-silent' period imposed by one of the prefects, when in fact it had been boys passing our house) I was given a 'double mile': change from the sports gear into the hideous uniform, present yourself to the prefect, change back into sports gear, run a mile, and then repeat the changing process, run another mile. 24 minutes to do this. If you didn't manage it, you did it again. And again. And again. If you never managed it the prefect might give up trying and find another punishment for you. Or you'd keep trying on a regular basis.
> 
> ...



Appalling.


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## Parson (Apr 29, 2019)

Cathbad said:


> My GPA in high school finished at 3.13 - with the main causes of the lowness being:
> 
> 1)  Sophomore year, I took Journalism I, and was thus on the school paper.  Day One, the teacher (Mrs. Davis) said to us chosen as writers, "Don't worry about getting a by-line, no first year student has ever gotten a by-line".  My first assignment was to cover a basketball game - that had already been played.  Not deterred, I said, "All righty!", grabbed the photographer, and took off for the gym, to interview the coach and some players.
> 
> ...



Sigh. this kind of teacher probably gave rise to this:

Those who do, do. (Corrected line: Those who can, do.)
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach teachers.


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## Danny McG (Apr 29, 2019)

I commented earlier about the canings etc in infants school because I was left handed, luckily that passed and I moved on at another school and did fairly well.

However when I turned 11 it was the 'secondary modern' school and corporal punishment for the slightest rule break. 
The school leaving age had by then been raised so you had 16 year old kids still being caned in front of their peers.

Then, after two years at this school, a change... Suddenly we were given a choice, the cane or detention, awesome!
This instantly became the 'wimp measure', scorn and derision at anybody who opted for detention, myself and contemporaries always chose to tough it out and be caned (peer pressure can be terrible)

After a year or so of this the policy changed yet again, the girls got automatic detention (not one had ever opted for the cane during the trial run) but the boys retained the option.

In my final year the cane was finally banned and detention was imposed instead. This caused trouble at home because the parents then realised you'd been in bother at school, however that's another story


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## svalbard (Apr 29, 2019)

On the subject of canings we had one particular teacher, who shall remain nameless(although he should be named and shamed the alcoholic, sadistic so and so), who would pick up a rubber eraser, position it at a students forehead and proceed push with all his considerable might until the rubber was indented into your forehead. Normally this was followed by a few, quick smacks across the face. We were 7 year olds going on 8 and to our shame would sometimes laugh as this so called teacher ridiculed his next unfortunate victim.

And this guy wasn't even a Christian Brother so he had no excuse for his barbarity.


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## BigBadBob141 (May 1, 2019)

REF: Boneman, dannymcg, svalbard ect.
I've always thought it a bit odd that some teachers could be so trigger happy with the use of the cane, definitely something very, very odd going on there!
In Infants School I had a 24 Caret, dyed in the wool, solid gold b***h of a teacher, each year she would single out one vulnerable child ( I was a little bit slow and shy ) in her class to bully, humiliate and mock in front of everyone else, needless to say that year it was me!
I even got into trouble because she saw me when my dad took me for a drive in his new car, which ended up a little past my usual bed time!
Some years later I talked to a friend about her, he was two years younger than me, and he said he had had the same treatment as well.
That stupid, ugly, moronic, sadistic c*w should never been allowed closer then a mile near any child, as you can probable tell I still hate her guts to this day!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## BigBadBob141 (May 1, 2019)

You don't have to be really stupid and have a sadistic streak a mile wide to be a P.E. Teacher!
But it sure as hell helps!!!
P.S. As you can no doubt tell I really hated P.E. and Games!!!
Would rather have done maths or history instead.


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## Cathbad (May 1, 2019)

I never had much problem with gym teachers.  However, there was one who took me aside after soccer one day and told me, "I need you to tone it down a bit:  Most of these boys aren't jocks, or even good at sports.  Can you try not to be so rough?

HAH!


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## Extollager (May 1, 2019)

When I started this thread, I did not expect there would be so many firsthand accounts of mistreatment.


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## Graymalkin (May 2, 2019)

Apparently my education required I be struck by hand, belt, plastic and wooden ruler, cane and rolled up magazine. I narrowly avoided a heavy wooden blackboard eraser thrown at my face, the use of a length of heavy rubber hose (?) and a potential heart attack through being harangued into PE while experiencing an asthma attack.

Last year at junior school I was accused of cheating in exams because I 'didn't pay attention throughout term' and therefore shouldn't have achieved the marks I was getting, so was placed into lower classes first year of secondary.

I was threatened with the police when another pupil pushed my girlfriend and myself (while embracing) down a flight of stairs. She was knocked out. She came round and said I was innocent. But the teacher (a retired wing commander I'd slightly electrocuted during a science class) _knew better._

Uniforms got chalked, ripped and stolen. Everyone was somewhere along the bully food-chain. Mass fights, vandalism, organised go-slows, assaults on staff, a FuQ attitude: many kids were a pain in the arse. Not an excuse for outright sadism but surely must have added to teacher stress levels.

Other than a B in Art, my grades were unclassifiable. 

I was a rubbish pupil but would be a far worse teacher. I'm glad someone's willing to have a go.

_Could try harder_ couldn't we?


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