It’s weird how different school life was only a few decades ago, and some of the things teachers were allowed to do would never fly in a modern classroom.
The swimming lesson without swimsuits
Many American boys were expected to swim completely naked during school lessons. Yes, really. Schools believed that it was meant to be cleaner, as they thought wearing swimsuits would cause hygiene problems. They also believed swimsuits would clog pool filters.
The policy continued for several decades in quite a few schools, and some of them required boys to swim nude right until the 1970s. Girls, however, were allowed to swim clothed. There’s absolutely no way any parents would accept this kind of policy today.
Different classrooms, different futures
Speaking of girls, their school experience was very different from boys’ school experience. They did completely different lessons, for one. Girls were expected to take classes like home economics, where they’d learn to cook and sew. They’d also learn to manage a household.
You know, standard stuff that women were ‘supposed’ to do back then, while boys got to learn things like woodworking and metalworking. Gendered lessons like that aren’t allowed anymore. Thanks to Title IX in 1972, gender-specific classes were banned in federally funded schools.
The prayer before lessons
There was one thing that students used to do every morning in American public schools. No, it wasn’t opening their textbooks. They would have to listen to a Christian prayer and could potentially be made to recite it.
There were some places, like New York, where education officials wrote a prayer for schools to use. But it all changed in 1962. That was when the Supreme Court ruled against schools organizing official prayers, even when participation was voluntary. Students can still pray by themselves if they want, of course, but schools aren’t allowed to organize that praying.
The language nobody could speak
One of the darkest school practices involves how Indigenous children were treated. Those who were sent to boarding schools were expected to speak English, and talking in their own language would lead to punishment. These punishments were often physical.
That’s right, simply talking to a friend in your shared language was a problem. It gets worse, however. A lot of children were given English names and had their hair cut. They also spent years separated from their families, just because of their race.
The problem with the other hand
Left-handed students had a much harder time at school than they do today, and that’s because they weren’t allowed to use their left hands. A lot of teachers would make sure that they didn’t. In fact, they’d punish lefties, even though writing with the opposite hand felt unnatural.
Some teachers would strike children’s fingers with rulers when they saw them using the ‘wrong’ hand. That’d never happen today, and thank goodness for that. We simply allow children to write with whatever hand works for them. Leftie discrimination is a thing of the past.
The unusual birthday tradition
Celebrating your birthday was quite a different experience in the past, especially in schools. You didn’t get a simple birthday card or present. Instead, principals would sometimes spank the birthday child in front of the class, with one smack for every year.
Physical punishment isn’t banned in every American state. Still, the idea of a teacher giving birthday spankings to students sure is weird, and it’s definitely something we’d consider to be inappropriate.
The fundraiser with a troubling name
The majority of modern school fundraisers involve selling cookies or asking people to sponsor a walk. It wasn’t always that way. There were actually some American schools that organized a kind of fundraiser called a ‘slave auction.’ It was exactly what it sounded like.
Students would bid money for another student to do work for them, like carrying their books and completing chores. Sure, the goal of these events was admirable, as they were raising money. But there’s no way that anyone would run a slave auction today.
The punishment everyone could see
Some school punishments relied on embarrassment to be successful. Take, for example, wearing a sign to explain what you’d done wrong. Many kids had to suffer this punishment, and the goal was to humiliate them in front of the whole class.
The majority of schools nowadays try to avoid public shaming, however. They know that it’s not an effective way to get students to behave or to help them learn, so they avoid it almost entirely.
The room behind the door
There was a time when troublesome students could end up spending part of their school day locked inside a small room. These were known as seclusion rooms, or sometimes isolation closets, and children weren’t necessarily allowed to leave when they wanted to.
Things could get pretty serious, too. Reports of injuries and deaths involving restraint and seclusion eventually prompted a federal investigation in 2009. These days, federal guidance says seclusion should only be used when there’s an immediate risk of serious physical harm. But the practice hasn’t disappeared entirely, as individual states still have different rules about it.
The experiment involving live animals
Science classes were pretty brutal, too, but not just for the students. Some schools would give their students live creatures to experiment on. Maybe they’d give the animals electric shocks, or maybe they’d expose them to dangerous substances.
It was meant to teach students about biology, but today, we recognize how cruel this actually is. It’s horrible for both the animals and the students performing these experiments. Animal welfare rights are a lot stricter nowadays.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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