Published on 12, July, 2020
I have noticed questions by carers about their children during lunch breaks. This got me thinking of my own experience.
I left school over 40 years ago and it is only in the last few years I realized I was autistic.
When I was at school a lot of lessons were quite formal which suited me. However when it came to lunchtime as all the schools I went to were nearby I went home for lunch. In the Junior school quite a few people went home for lunchtime which was nearly an hour and a half. Most occasions when I stayed it was for a club but I didn't like being at school for the whole day and especially the long lunch break.
I wonder if modern schools are more of a challenge for autistics.
Thank you for all your replies. I have just thought of a couple of historical things. My grandfather was at school post World War I and told me there were no teachers in his playground so the children had to sort out any problems between them. My father was at school during the second World War and said all the children at Primary went home lunchtime except a few who came in from the farthest side of the town.
The further back you go in time, it seems the worse children were treated.
I worked with a Catholic chap about a decade older than me and he went to a Catholic school where his left hand was repeatedly hit with the side of the ruler by a teacher to force him to use his right hand.
My mum went to a school for delicate children but was shut in a cupboard for hours on end for talking.
Interesting re your family.
In my first year at senior school (age 11-12 yrs), there was a teacher, fairly elderly, whose nickname was 'Bulldog Taylor'. He taught English; while everyone was working, he would have children bring their notebooks to him, one by one, for marking. If you had made a spelling or punctuation mistake, he would rap you over the knuckles with a wooden ruler. Hitting small children, not even for being unruly or disruptive, just for making a mistake. No wonder I hated school!
It was appalling, I remember one lad in my class holding off a teacher with a chair, like a circus lion-tamer. I tell these sort of things to my kids and they think I lived in Victorian times!
The ruler and the lion-taming were at the school I attended from 11 to 14, it was a comprehensive, but a former Secondary Modern. At 14 I moved to another Comp. but it had been a Grammar School, it was much more civilised and there was very little corporal punishment.
Yes. Teachers got away with anything in those days.
I was pulled out of the class by my hair in the junior school.
Some girls were turned upside down by one teacher so their underwear was on show.
Another teacher forced a boy to stand with books being piled on his hands.
Other children were made to stand in the corner of the classroom all day.
There was the slipper and the cane too.
My husband was terrified of the teachers.
That's what he mainly remembers about school.