Yes! Hadn't remembered that in 50 years.

Yes, this brought smiles, thanks!

Yes, turned inside out so you didn't see the grocery store logo. 😊

Yup. Lol

@ethan Shelby skateboarding I sure do it was so much fun to make them and then drawing on the covers. Great times I sure do miss!

We never had the fat pencils. They would have been very difficult to write with. Starting in 1st grade at age 5, I was using a standard pencil.

We had to buy our milk (in cartons yes) from the janitor in the basement lunchroom even if we brought our own lunches. He was terrifying, always in a bad mood. We could only buy chocolate milk on Fridays.

@@bite-sizedshorts9635: We used the fat pencils - easier to grip with small hands . We had ‘wide line’ practice paper too . I remember having to write each letter 10 times each .

I remember everything U mentioned . Those small milk cartons could give U a splash of milk in your face , trying to open them, was a little tricky . We ate a cookie with our milk . Us kids took turns bringing in a package of cookies for the whole class . It seemed those windmill cookies were a big hit .😀

I started kindergarten in 61 as well. We always sang The star spangled banner and God bless America after the pledge of allegiance every morning. We sometimes had square dancing as P&E and Oh Johnny Oh was usually the song the teacher picked for us to dance to.

We had an afternoon nap with background music. You'd think the music would be varied, but no. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, every time.

I always felt so grownup going to the public library on a Saturday, with classmates, to do a report from those giant books. Tracing maps of other countries, writing about their farming and crops, history of the place, peoples customs, fashions, and livelihood, etc. Making a report book covered in construction paper to present to the class.

Hey, hey, hey, it wasn't plagiarism! I always changed the minimum number of words to make my reports my own :)

Yes my parents fretted that they couldn't afford a home set for us. But we had 2 dictionaries that if we asked how to spell....we were sent to first.

World Book. We even had a set at home.

@@marissaweston1685 The World Book encyclo's at our school were all graffittied up with drawings of pee-pees and wee-wees drawn in by naughty little 4th and 5th grade boys. We never had a library cop like Mr Bookman protecting us.

Don't get me started. I encountered a worker in my local Post Office who didn't know that New Mexico was one of the states in the USA. When I wanted to buy some of the pretty stamps that come on 10 x 10 sheets, I was surprised to see her counting out the 30 I had requested one by one rather than just tearing of three rows of ten. When I questioned her on this, she replied that she wanted to be absolutely accurate and didn't believe in that "new math." Multiplication is new?

Not for much longer...

@@paulawashington3175 - Try giving them change/cash...bloody clueless. Parents fault. It will be easy stealing from their accounts in the future. They won't know anything went missing.

I didn't think of that, and I know there are probably many more skills that require cursive. My grandchildren do not know how to write cursive, nor how to read it.

Or how to make change.

Wow. That's so cool.

I agree with you about schools not changing much until the 90's. I graduated high school in 1989, and everything from this video was present with me up until I graduated. Today's school are not even recognizable.

When they were corporatized for “efficiency.” Ironically, it’s when American public education began to spiral into the cesspool it is today. I cannot believe some of the things my high school-aged teen has related from his “teachers.” And I’m not talking about nutball conspiracy tripe. I’m talking about bias and misinterpretation. I have a master’s degree and I read and engage with the world. Teachers today don’t seem to do much of that. Far from academics, they seem to fall into categories previously constructed for employees of corporations, their skills measured and evaluated annually like some kind of corporate stooge. And we wonder what’s wrong with education? It begins and ends with money. If there is a way to insert a corporate entity into a public service for the purpose of making it better, we will do so. But far from improving things, they cheapen them to the point of worthlessness and keep the “profit.” Meanwhile, teachers are starving, kids go without necessary resources, eat lunches made of pre-packaged crap, and do more and more homework to make up for the dramatic failure of the process. Technology is not improving education, it’s destroying it.

@@codacreator6162 I wish I could give this comment a dozen thumbs up. So many excellent points. When my children were of school age, I was astonished to see the level to which the educational system had turned into an industry. My own memories of having been taught mostly by Catholic sisters (who received no pay and taught largely from a sense of dedication) seemed to be incredibly quaint all of a sudden. With all due respect to the brave men and women who were struggling to deal with a host of new problems and mandates, my children were encountering more and more "teachers" who seemed to have gotten into the field as a "job" of last resort. One unkind second grade teacher seemed to have zero awareness of what autism even was, and so resorted to making fun of the one autistic boy in the class, traumatizing him for life. Another could not pass her own elementary spelling tests and needed to use the teacher's "key" to be able to grade them. At that point I removed my kids from the school system and home schooled them -- not for religious reasons -- but just so that they would have basic academic skills. (Although they weren't getting a coherent religious education at the one religious school they attended either.) They're both doing fine today. They have solid academic skills and -- probably even more importantly -- they're not narrow-minded bullies either. But that's a topic for another day.

And you always looked at those library cards.

Absolutely

I'm your age and we never had TVs in class. Even in high school we watched reel-to-reel films on a pull-down screen in front of the chalkboard.

Thank you for your dedication to educating kids. Sometimes going down memory lane is both sad and happy moment.

I'm 49 and I think a lot of things nowadays need to go back to the basics

I'm an ancient relic at 54 , you sound like the type of teacher that actually taught, today's teachers are a joke , this was an unexpected trip down memory lane as well for me . Such a a different and better time. So glad I grew up in the Era I did I feel lucky. Remember all this stuff. Peace......

I think you're thinking of the slide projector. Not as good as a real movie, but still better than practicing script.

@@RaptorFromWeegee No, Erich knows whereof he speaks. They were called filmstrips. They were like slides in that they showed still pictures, but they were connected together on a strip of film the same way moving pictures are. Erich is obviously a little younger than me. Most of the filmstrips I remember had a caption at the bottom. Either the teacher would read the captions out loud, or the duty would be passed around the room from one pupil to the next. There were no cassette tapes, but I do remember some space-age filmstrips that had records to be played along with their viewing--complete with the beep when it was time to turn the filmstrip to the next picture. Seeing actual moving pictures from a projector was a real rarity in a classroom back then. I don't ever remember seeing a slideshow in school.

@@bigscarysteve Yeah, I think you're right. Filmstrips, they called them. I remember hearing the narration from either cassettes or 33 records.

One brand of the film strip machines for individuals to use was Ducane. We had those at community college in the 1970s.

@@bite-sizedshorts9635 Any relation to Duncan yo-yos?

I always loved the scholastic catalog here in the US. I had to read each little blurb and narrow down my picks. Even better when the book fair would come to the library. All those books to read!

My elementary school actually ordered extra books out of that catalog to stock our very own little bookstore. This was in 1967.

We had that in NYC in the 80s.

Yes, they still have those but they are all online. It's not as exciting.

In California we had the Schoolastic bookmobile come to the school and we took turns stepping inside and choosing books. Later they added school supplies.

Same

Certain things. Certain things.

yes we had just boys and girls ...not 10 genders of today LOL

A wonderful time!

Yup. I started in 70

Yeah, the girls looked like proper little girls, and the boys looked like Beaver Cleaver. Mothers back then knew that sending your kid to school improperly turned out meant, at best, community gossip, and at worst, a visit from child welfare.

​@@RaptorFromWeegeebeaver cleaver🤣🤣

@@blair3047 I bet you're fairly young.

@@JoseyWales44s you too, I bet you're younger

@@blair3047 Whats your point? Tell us your age in comparison to Blair, from 'Facts of Life'?

The white paste tasted good...lol...it was minty...

We tasted the paste; it was kind of minty!

Wow I haven't heard the term "long hand" in a really long time!

Long hand.. forgot about that you're correct they did NOT call it "cursive" back then!

That's what I always called it - Longhand. You have a good Dad.

taught you what a dad is at the same time too.....

👍👍 to your Dad.

I do!!

my old school still use those 5 chalk lines

As a teacher who used those you are absolutely right, the blackboard compasses were kind of useless, at least in my hands 😂

I remember that 5 peice chalk mechanism! I was a child of the 50's so remember everything this video spoke about.

@LTNetjak ?? The device only drew straight lines. It couldn’t reproduce what you’d written so ... ??? How did you do this ??

I got to learn cursive in the 2nd grade but my cousin lived in another state where they taught cursive in the 3rd grade so when i told him I knew cursive he thought I was lying and demanded that I prove it so I did and then he got mad because I learned something before he did.😂 kids!

Exactly 🎯!

I didn’t learn cursive until 4th grade

@@psnb1069 better late than never

I learned cursive before 1st grade because I had older siblings that taught me. In 1st grade, we were told to write our name at the top of the page. The teacher called me up to her desk after we turned in the work to tell me she meant “print”... We would learn “cursive” in 2nd grade. 😂😂

Back when I was in 3rd grade (2012) my teacher still read to us. She was the only one I have come across that still did that

Heh. My 5th grade teacher (late-'60s) read to us - J.R.R.Tolkien's "The Hobbit"! She wasn't able to finish the book, and I dunno about anyone else, but I hadda know the end! Got the book, read it, and omg there were MORE books?!! LOL! Turned me into a lifelong Tolkien fan... Anybody remember the "Frodo Lives" buttons (pins)? 😆

Today, they have trans and Cross Dressers come in to read.

I read to my students EVERY day after lunch for 20-30 min. The kids loved it!

@@CatalinaThePirateawww this is too wholesome 😊❤ I bet your teacher would be happy she converted at least one student into a Tolkien fan 🥰🥹

And it was always a good day when the teacher wheeled in the 16mm projector.

I recall library books explaining how to connect one side (left or right) from the audio player such that beeps on that channel would advance to the next slide. Never had the pleasure of rigging it in practice, where used it was part of an AV kart or fixed display running in a loop. But yeah, I was the tech nerd who knew every detail on all those AV karts. Also did a few presentations with overheads made on the photocopier from my own originals (had to get very particular blank transparencies to not damage that expensive copier). Learning a flowing writing style (simplified compared to the past) was literal 1st grade stuff. I remember some math classes where we were all doing different calculations on the blackboard at the same time, and the DND (Do Not Delete) box in the corner where teachers put semipermanent messages. The convenient pencil trays on tables were long relegated to the past and a few old rooms, but hand cranked sharpeners were often on a windowsill or teachers desk and did much better and faster than the small personal sharpeners that I still use occasionally. I recall as an adult crafting some of the tech that replaced blackboards, but I also recall the multi-storey blackboards in science rooms and lecture halls all the way up to 18th grade. Blackboard erasing sponges were kept wet and clean in a classroom sink, using them dry worked for light erasing when not dried into a brick-like husk.

I remember in 1971 we went to a big classroom where they opened up the wall, wheeled in the color tvs and we watched the Apollo astronauts on the moon.

You mean like being a teacher's pet? In 6th grade there were 2 kids who always set up the projector and other stuff for the teacher they thought they were big shots but nope they were the teacher's pet

@@midnightcaller200 You completely misunderstand being a nerd and loving to fix up the tech.

Amen.

I believe that's "EMP", for electromagnetic pulse

Who would have thought that a child needed to be taught how to use a pencil sharpener!

Would you mind answering a question if you can, please? I’m 50 - I don’t know why it bothers me so much but you’ve probably seen the majority of people on this site do not/can not/will not understand “too” v “to or “loose” v “lose” and on and on. Did the curriculum just stop teaching these things? My hat is off to you and I thank you so much for doing what you do.

@@Mugwump7 I think kids today are bombarded by games and phones and tablets, and thus can't remember anything at all from school. They can't do simple math in their heads, locate their own state on a map, or name the three branches of the federal government. Facts were drilled into our heads way back, so we wouldn't forget. Ever. Rote learning of basic facts really works, despite all the new ideas of school management.

Add grammar to the list. When did it become acceptable to say “Me and him went to the game…” 😢

The past was the worst. I'm so glad I'm not stuck in the 50s and 60s.

@Luca Angelo I’m well thank you! Grew up in North Florida, living in the Florida Keys now. Happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate the holiday!🦃

@Luca Angelo today was a perfect 80° sunny and nice ocean breeze!

@Luca Angelo widowed, grown sons.

We found out who our teacher was the next year in grade school on the last report card.

it better been, lol

ABSOLUTELY remember the SRA reading program. Mostly I remember it fondly, but one memory sticks out for a different reason. In 1976, we kept hearing about the bicentennial and freedom. Somehow I got that mixed up in my head with the fact that part of our reading time was spent on what was called "independent study." I didn't realize, being only nine, that this didn't mean we could make independent decisions about what to read, but merely that we were reading our SRA assignments independently of the other students. So when my teacher came up and fussed at me for being engaged with the wrong set of SRA cards (I think I had simply picked a different topic because the one I had that day was boring), I retorted, "I thought this was a _free_ country." SUSPENDED FOR THREE DAYS. 🙄😱😳

I have an SRA box!!! Not sure my students would know what to do.

@@merrillhill1633 Seem to recall it being fairly self-explanatory. There were passages to read on the card and maybe some questions to answer afterward?

I remember SRA. A few of the more enterprising students in my class started trading color-coded story card answers the way other kids traded baseball cards: "I'll give you the answers to Goldenrod if you'll give me the answers to Lavender."

I loved those SRA boxes! I still remember getting stumped on a question where I had to find a word in a paragraph and the clue was ‘coffee’- the answer was ‘ground’; I’d never seen coffee grounds in my life at age 10, we only had instant in our family. Our teacher was tough and would keep sending us back to work out the answers.

public schools as well until the 60s in the mid-west. followed by the sleek/modern chrome w/ glossy polished Formica - seats of smooth, form-fitting contoured resin in muted pastel hues. they really sprang for it!

Mine had an ink bottle.

@@FRANKHDIETRICH😮

Still here.@@faithintheunseen1294

We had the same desks in grade school in New York. I loved them so much. Some years ago we stumbled upon one that was for sale in an antique store. Listening to me reminisce my husband suggested we buy it. It took me a long time to resist the urge to purchase it, but only because I didn’t know where we would put it. If our son had still been school age we would have purchased it in a heartbeat.

It would probably be considered a violation of somebody's privacy nowadays.

@@Lava1964how ridiculous,lol!

Or older friends from the neighborhood.

I always loved learning how often a book was checked out. Sad about that now, one can't tell.

I use to be fascinated by that too.

And Film Strips!

another thing you forgot to add was the #firealarmhorns used for firedrills in the 50's,60,70's,80's and even 90's before the ada strobelights law and the #spectralerts.

I remember going to the library in the late 70s and watch filmstrips.

Since when have they or teachers been compassionate? I was a child in the 80's and teachers watched violence happen. They did nothing. My experience isnt uncommon.

@@ShockResistor It probably depends on where you live. My daughter teaches school, and she's spent quite a bit of money buying kids gloves and hats. She's even bought a couple of coats. She's bought markers and all sorts of supplies for her kids. If teachers aren't compassionate, they have no business teaching.

@@ShockResistor As a recently retired teacher, I can tell you that your example has nothing to do with "Compassion". Today teachers are taught to NOT get involved as you may end up losing your job, and possibly in prison for simply touching students, even to break up a fight. It was in the news just a few years back, when a family tried to sue the school bus driver for not getting involved and protecting their child. They failed as the bus driver was "Not Allowed" to get involved past giving orders and demanding they stop. I know a bus driver was arrested for helping a young girl who's hair got caught in the bus heater (under the seat). In trying to position her to make slack in her long hair, his hand accidently touched a part of her body, and he was arrested. I understand that you should never touch someone in certain areas, but when you are being helped from an emergency of some sort ... If I firefighter has to grab my package to save me from a burning building, I hope he doesn't hesitate. But this is the world we live in.

I have been staying in touch with students and schools by substituting. In small towns where I teach, students are still very respectful.

There should be a video on how the school culture has changed.

I was a kid in the 70's.. some of the most happiest times in my life!!

I grew up in the 70's. I remember all the things in the video. Btw, those medal lunch boxes are collectables now. Some worth alot of money. Some of those things carried over into the 80's, when I started high school years.

It's "days," not "day's." ?Were you happy, or just stoned?

Now now Lettuce and Bill, I think I have the word you’re looking for, it’s “daze”.

@@Lettuce-and-Tomatoesyou're the one who claimed that the time of much racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, and ableism gave you your happiest times. I'm glad we've advanced to the current society. It's not perfect, but at least I can leave my house.

King Edwards, or Ivory.

@@lelandgaunt9985 The boxes I remember are White Owl and El Producto. They were so handy for so many things!

@@Mick_Ts_Chick We had those and Dutch Masters.

And sometimes the pencil boxes where some people kept cigars! 😮

We never used cigar boxes. In elementary school, the thing to use was a "pencil bag" a large vinyl envelope with three holes along one side. It would clip to your three-ring notebook. By high school, they were out of style, and you just used your pocket.

When the 10 Commandments, Bible reading, and prayer went out of schools, it wasn't long before violence and mass shootings became the norm.

I recall the songs from TV "hooked on phonics works for me! "

I went to Catholic school in the 90s and 2000s. I had 2 Irish nuns that taught us "proper English" and cursive. 10 years later, the nuns were asked to retire because they weren't teaching using modern methods and their standards were too high.

Matt your comment is right on but there is another reason that nuns are no longer teaching which is that Vatican 2 lowered the status of nun to that of the laity. As a result thousands of nuns left the their calling. Big mistake made by the male dominated Vatican 2.@@matthewjbauer1990

Ditto was the brand name of the mimeograph machine. Just like Frigidaire was a brand of refrigerator.

@@glennso47 Gotcha.

A Ditto machine and mimeo machine are two different printing devices. The ditto machine used an alchohol based fluid to apply to the paperb then the paper would come into contact with the master and a purple ink was deposited onto the paper. A mimeograph machine was a stencil that the black ink used to bleed thru the stencil and onto the paper

I wonder when 'they' will decide that the smell caused cancer and all the schools 'from the past' will be part of a billion zillion dollar lawsuit, like the bad water suit in Camp LeJeune... Oh, as a former 48 year music teacher just retired, I remembered everything you presented... those were the days! odd, though - apparently administrators haven't changed much. Now they are allowing gender issues... they really don't have a clue, never did and I am sure, never will.

I never used a machine but I used carbon paper with a squeegee type rubber thing that you would rub over top of the paper to make copies

Best days ever!

Me too

Have a blessed day at your reunion Heaven will be a non stop family reunion hope to see you real soon

I feel very sad for my younger grandchildren...6, 8, 10 and 15...what kind of life do they have in store for them the way our world is now...😢😢😢😢

Unless, you were the left handed student!

There are still scholastic books & scholastic book fairs. My elementary age son just had one at his school recently. The books just aren’t as cheap now hah. They have a website now too in case you don’t want to wait for the school handout

i was the lefty, had to adapt as all the desks were not made for me.

yep I was the only lefty in my grade school class out of 30 children! They did not know how to teach me cursive! only 7% of people are left-handed. My father was also left-handed. One advantage though with lefties is that we're more ambidextrous than right handers. Little things like being able to use a power saw with either hand... comes in handy. I was also a switch hitter in baseball (although I threw only left-handed). Remember Junior Scholastics & Weekly Reader? those were the days.

As a lefty I found those desks more annoying than the righty ones. I liked the desks that the chairs weren’t attached to better.

Don't listen to the obvious fake troll account who replied to you. I'm reporting it for impersonation.

You nailed it.

Totally agree and yes it brings me to tears too.

I watched this and just got so sad. But one thing that I thought was interesting is that classroom presentations are now done in PowerPoint - the same as for businesses today. So Kids are actually better prepared for the work world today than if they had beautiful penmanship.

I agree. We did not realize how blessed we were to be alive in a simpler time.

And the teacher asleep in the back of the room while it played.

The clattering of the movie projector, as it ran the film, was part of the whole experience. I think every teacher must have taken a course in film splicing, as the film would occasionally break.

@@PBryanMcMillin Also the teacher (me) had to know the intricacies of threading the film and also of finding and replacing the light bulb inside.

We also had the Bell & Howell sound projectors in the 1960s. My music class had a large reel-to-reel “Wollensak” 3M tape recording systems. Everything was large back then because of the vacuum tubes they put in everything. A school record player was portable but still built like a tank and very heavy. TVs would be wheeled into rooms and plugged into the central antennae system. Our school library was actually one of the larger ones.

Our school got a Video Recording machine, not a cassette-type. But there were no learning tapes on the market yet so the Vice Principal took it around to record classroom sessions for a girl who'd been in a car accident and had to spend 3 months in traction.

Micro film we called it, but it was the same thing.

@@glennso47 I think they still use that.

I remember micro fiche, used it in high school.

5:13 "Ditto" machines? "Ditto" sheets? If these were before photocopiers, then duplicators, perhaps? Never heard them called "ditto" before.

Mimeograph's were around before Ditto's

We said the Pledge of Allegiance up until about the 4th grade.

@@lifespanwellnessbeauty-60i64 I remember The Pledge and the Lord's Prayer. My kid's got something called Chanel ONE that explained if you eat enough chocolate it's the same to your brain as getting high on drugs. Wonder were we went wrong.

I particularly enjoyed selecting the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books!

I loved buying the books.

Dynamite, the posters, joke books and books about baseball. Encycolpedia Brown and Three Investigators. Great stuff.

In Dallas they were monthly and the parents had to pay for them. This was late 60’s early 70’s.

Loved those! Always something good to buy.

You probably had a History teacher that was dead 40 years ,but no-one had noticed,so he was still getting paid

My wife used to fill in all the certificates at school. She was the "library lady" as the kids called her.

It was totally customizable. Unlike the ones that the local car dealership gave us, that was covered in their advertising.

Just imagine what Roman schools were like.

Television? VCR? Not in my day. I was proud that I could correctly thread 16mm film into the projector.

@@666toysoldier I can imagine how that'd be difficult with no color in the world and dinosaurs trying to eat you.

@Dale Gribble I'm glad I never had to endure that. People in power tend to punish perceived offenses as well as real. One of our female church leaders spanked my little brother for clenching his fists on a cold Autumn evening because she thought he was being defiant over having to come indoors. We were so young then, but I have never forgotten.

We got some nice books that way!

That's a good memory, thanks for sharing.

i recently bought a gum eraser

I LOVED the field trips! it was our way of getting out of the classroom and out of the school and ride the schoolbus to somewhere interesting.

@sjdrifter72, Yes! From Chicago area here-Field Museum, Adler planetarium, Shedd aquarium, MSI (they once had a giant washing machine mock up!) Also the class trip to DC.

Yes, I remember being required to cover all my textbooks and workbooks. We could use paper bags or buy some, but the ones you bought weren't always long enough. So we opted for the paper bags that we got from grocery shopping. Then we'd draw all over our covers. The required materials for school shopping were much simpler back then: a folder, a three ring binder, loose leaf paper, subject dividers, pencils, pens, erasers, crayons. My school was built in 1898 and had a bell tower. When teachers wanted to show a movie, the class would go downstairs into the audio/visual aids room where the ONE film projector was. Our school did not have a library, so each year, teachers would take us on a trip to the local public library down the street, where the librarians would give us a tour, show us how to use the card catalog, the encyclopedias, and type writers! I certainly remember the blackboards and teachers having us go to the board to write our problems down. Half the kids didn't know how to hold the chalk correctly and tried to hold it like a pencil, causing really loud squeaking sounds, like finger nails on the blackboard.

The field were fun.

We were a part of our education. It was practically hands-on.

You got that right friend, school is too easy now kids just use Google to cheat on their test.

@@melissagoings1 you got that, there wasn't no phone distraction back then unless you used the wall payphone in the gym.

I don't think modern kids learn less. They just learn different things. Kids today don't need to use the Dewey Decimal system because not all libraries still use the Dewey Decimal system. In fact, the Dewey Decimal system is considered a controversial organization system these days because it classified books by non-white authors under different categories from white authors. Some public libraries now use more general categories, like the ones book stores use, and university libraries tend to use the Library of Congress categorization system. On the other hand, by the time kids are teenagers, many of them know how to digitally alter photographs, edit digital videos (and audio) and post them to KZfaq or Tiktok, create their own websites, sell things they made themselves online through Etsy, start learning how to code, and can communicate with people in other countries, even play games with them and translate written languages they can't even speak. Nostalgia is interesting and fun, but it's not everything.

Kids today have it easy, claiming they have it rough. Woke Leftist culture have softened society.

I still remember my" Land of the Giants" lunchbox. I also felt the sting during hot dog days, but was never ashamed my Parents were the best. How I miss then now,

Very sweet comment. ☺@@user-jd2pl8tu4v You know, we are all still the same child inside us now as we were then.

Scholastic

@@aprilscarl5010 Ah! That was it!! Thanks!!

I had Scholastic book orders in my classroom and Arrow Books.I made sure there was a book for every student even the ones who didnt order one!The teacher is given free books every order .I knew that fun moment and I also knew the sad faces of those who didnt get a book.

Oh yes! During Book Fair Week, the teachers took their students to the library so they could see what books were available to buy. We were given a paper form to write down the i d number of the books we wanted to purchase. When we were through writing our orders, we gave the form to the librarian and could pay for them at the main desk or given the option to pay for them later. A few weeks would pass by until our books were delivered to our classroom. Boy ,we were so excited when our names were called to pick up our packages and return them to out desk. Then we proceeded to savagely rip open our packages to see the books we ordered. That is one of my fondest memories I had about my elementary and middle school years.

@@karllieck9064 At the book fairs that my wife held in her school's library, the books from Scholastic were brought in on huge fold-up bookshelves on casters. Students could pick out books to buy and take them with them right then.

yes, I remember that!

They didn't let my children bring books home from school because they are so expensive. Or, maybe they're hiding something! Schools have got to improve.

Yes, I recall those. Lockers later on were small for us, though - no tall ones; these were three to a stack. You could cram in a coat and books, but it was tight!

Looking things up with the decimal system and file drawers encouraged initiative and persistence that makes a person experience a certain joy and sense of accomplishment upon finding something really meaningful. The online ways have their advantages as well.

I had to learn the Dewey Decimal system and still remember it.

I question the use of the computer for ease of lookup. I agree that computers do show availability (when one gets an exact match on your lookup text).

The last time I went to a library, a few years ago now but not that long ago, looking up on the computer and finding the book still needed an appreciation of the Dewey Decimal system.

@@matthewlivermanne4441I work in a library. Anyone working in a library has to know it. That is how the books are sorted on the shelf, making it easier for everyone to find the book they're looking for.

I loved square dancing in elementary school in the early 70's 😍 it was the easiest way to hold hands 👫 with the girls I had crushes on!!!

My all girls' high school had a class in the 60s that everyone took called Social Graces! We learned how to introduce people, how to have small talk, table setting, lots of dancing like fox trot, waltz, cha cha, stroll, lindy hop, etc. Formal and familiar manners, types of written correspondence, a bit about personal grooming, and more. Some needed this more than others, but we all came out polished!

@@susancorvalan6765 that’s wonderful! I recall my home life being a lot like that.

My fifth grade teacher had us square dance all the time...he called it "listening skills" lol.

I don't want to live in a society where having a disability means there's something wrong with you.

When I was going through school it was just called long hand. The first time I heard cursive was when my son was learning how to write.

I dont understand why cursive has fallen out. I still use it on checks or if I write a letter. They say the easiest way to befuddle a youngster today is lock them in a straight shift car and leave instructions in cursive.

@@Daehawk put a manual choke on the vehicle and it will never be started

Thank you for your service. I hope your students succeeded in life and remember you.

That third pedal is the best anti -theft system going.

Same that is why when I become a teacher I will teach my students the skills I learned. I will be dammed if my kids don't know analog or basic map reading skills.

Then you must have missed film strips, and sometimes you would have a record player playing and changing the slides.

Oh boy do I remember the movie projectors. The worst part of them was the snap, snap, snap you heard if the celluloid broke! Movie time was over!! So was nap time!

The projectors disappeared in the late 80s.

Anyone remember the bookmobiles? The vehicles that would park outside of schools and we would go inside them and look at the books inside it and we would also get a catalog and we could circle the books we wanted and iorder them!

I always looked forward to the weekly reader and ordering Scholastic books! Read them cover to cover.

@@dawnmason2882 I'm in Calgary, Canada and I got to order Scholastic books in elementary school. One of my best purchases was the Girl Guide Cookbook from the late 60s-early 70s.

The Scholastic Books...I just loved going through the catalog and choosing the books I wanted. Great memories. ..it was something so simple and ordinary ..but I miss those times. 📻 📚 📺

Oh, that was such a wonderful time. I was in grade school and junior high and high school in the 50s and 60s. Girls wore dresses and boys wore khakis. We actually learned reading, cursive writing, history of our country and other countries, mathematics, science, biology, chemistry, home economics, foreign languages, art, and physical education class. Sex education was left up to our parents. We had total respect for our teachers. We may not have liked them but we respected them. My heart breaks for the “education” children are getting nowadays. It’s not education, it’s indoctrination.

@@Felidae-ts9wp You hit me where I live. During my fourth and fifth grade years, Scholastic Book Services (and their subsidiary TAB-Teen Age Books) were part of my typical school day.

100% agree.

We didn’t have inkwells but every desk had a carved out place at the top of the desk to leave one’s pencil.

I walked a whole block to grade school in the fifties, no tv, no library, beat the erasers on the brick walls outside, walked home for lunch, no AV, old lift top desks, cloak rooms. I could wait for school to start (only child).

Oh, they did all of that in Montana where my mother went to school and my grandmother taught school. Kids learned more by 8th grade back then than high school graduates today! 'They also learned some Latin so as to understand the etymology of words.

I remember walking 7 miles to school and 2 blocks from school to home. 😅

@@Hogger280 It helped if your parents were Catholic since in the past, mass was in Latin.

@@marilyntaylor9577 I remember that in kindergarten my teacher would make me sit on a chair in the cloak room for misbehaving. But the cloak room was just a little way beyond the sandbox and so I simply scooted the chair a little at a time until I got to the sandbox and I was able to still sit in the chair and play without the teacher noticing, 😅

Funny how that happens huh??

I could smell the B.O. of the kid sitting next to me.

And digging thru the trash can looking for the ditto master for tomorrow's test. ;-)

I remember the teacher passing out the freshly mimeographed paper and every kid lifting it up to smell it.

@@AllieinCali My teacher passed out too. Oh wait...

Me too. 54 here.

55 here, and back those school days, kids actually listened to good music that was current, whether it came off MTV (80s) or from American Top 40 (70s and 80s). Most music today is trash.

Not for the better I think!

@@whooleo10 definitely not for the best.

......and it all (life) seems so short. :/

We went to a whaling museum on Long Island 🐳

Do they even still go on field trips anymore?

Our school goes on a lot of field trips.

I even remember being on a trip to a newspaper printing room. We elementary school children were led though the loudly clacking machinery and told to keep our hands at our sides and not to touch anything. I was very apprehensive because I could see how easy it would be to lose a body part in that loud, crowded space. Today's children would never be trusted to navigate such a place. Somehow, we all left unscathed.

@@mindyschocolateyep!

In northern California we also had the transom windows. When I went to university on the Central Coast (Cal Poly) some of the university classrooms had them, and the pole was 16' long or more.

Had the same setup at Sinsheimer elementary in SLO. Being one of the larger kids i was allowed to open the top windows and close them.

I remember the paste in grade school, it smelled and "tasted" minty

@@dianadurr-ramsey567 Yes! and it was fun to peel off our fingers!

Ha! I remember those windows. The schools I went to in NJ were built around 1900 or so. In the late 70s, our schools finally replaced the original windows to the ones you described.

Yes!!! I went to Jesuit high school. The typing teacher was a priest who wore a cowboy hat & at the beginning of class told us to “Fire up your Kawazaki’s!” 😂😂😂 Oh how I miss Father Doyle. I finally bought a refurbished Selectric. I missed the rhythm of typing so much.

Yes! I learned to type on a big manual typewriter in middle school. I remember how hard it was to press the letter p, about bent my pinky backwards. In high school we had electric type writers and took the first computer class-- on an old Apple 2E.

I took typing in high school in 74. I did it to meet girls, never in a million years did I imagine I would be using a computer keyboard for my career in management. Odd how things work out. :)

I started high school with typewriters and ended with computers.

In the mid 70's I did typing as an elective subject. Probably only one of two males doing the class. I can still touch type (perhaps not as fast) and every computer has a keyboard. 😀

I am glad I went to school in the 70's & 80's, too, before things got so crazy!

I remember when the pre-orders came in and i got the new Wimpy Kid before everyone else xD

I’m glad my kids are grown. The schools are insane and way too woke for my taste.

Book orders were the best!!!

And then we'd pour the remaining salt into our mouths.

Yep.

was bad teachers you just didn't know any

Now a lot of the parents misbehave and their children do no wrong. Teachers have lost authority in the classroom because parents spoil their children to an extreme, so that note sent home has lost its intent, sadly.

@@onlythewise1 Yeah, teachers could get away with more in those days. There were always good ones and bad ones.

Kids had more respect for teacher's back when I attended school. I think most of us didn't want that dreaded note to our parents sent home. My wife has been a elementary teacher for 30 years and she said her students behavior gets worse every year!

Cursive, music, creativity? My cellphone is all I need. That and the quickest way to get through the metal detector.

Not only that, but it is actually an important skill in later education. One of the big advantages of cursive is that you can write much faster, which is essential when you are trying to take notes while keeping up with a lecture. When I worked as a teacher, none of my students could write cursive, and, as a consequence, none of them could keep up with my lectures, so I had to slow down, which meant it took longer to cover the same amount of material. And what happens when they go to college, or need to take notes of a meeting at work? Do they ask a university professor or the speaker at a meeting to slow down so they can keep up?

As a drafter, I only ever use cursive to sign my name. Engineering drawings are ALWAYS done with printed letters, and the only cursive you will find on a drawing is the approval signatures. In drafting, printed letters are called "lettering." They are used because it is more clear, especially at smaller sizes than cursive. I haven't written cursive since I was in elementary school about 40 years ago... although I think it's important to be able to READ cursive.

I agree. Cellphones and computers are overrated.

@@redrackham6812 Though I write in cursive, I brought my laptop to some of my harder nursing classes and typed out my notes, so I could keep them organized, add my notes from the reading assignments, and create my study guides. (Of course I was the Summa cum Laude nerd, and everyone wanted copies of my study guides, lol.) Every child in my son's elementary school has a laptop assigned to them. Soon, we may be lucky if our children know how to hold a pencil!

What you listed is emotional.

Our mobiles aren't allowed in class. They have to be left in your locker and can only be used at recess or lunch.

Unfortunately, most schools in my county don't have lockers anymore. Only the high schools have lockers, and they can only be used for P.E. So, students are supposed to keep their phones in their back packs. Of course, as you can imagine, that doesn't work out. It's a constant battle throughout the day to keep students' hands off their cellphones. Most high schools I've been at have basically given up trying to strictly enforce cellphone bans during class. As long as the student is not making a phone call, playing video games, or watching a movie, teachers will often turn a blind eye.

I heard on the news today that one Australian state will ban (with exceptions) mobile phones from government schools from 2023.

@@Kevin-go2dw They are not banned from school, just from using them or having them during class times. It's not just one state (Victoria), it's most states and the NT. A lot of schools have had bans in place for awhile, I guess the government is just making it official for all government schools. 'Mobile policy' at my school came into affect at the start of this year, our phones have to be in our locker during class

The same thing it's doing to the minds of students today. Brain washing them.

I am 72 and have a pencil sharpener in my barn screwed on to a beam !

My 50th high school graduation will be next year. When I think of that I wonder where all the years went.

I have one in my garage. We have one at work too, and people always ask what it is.

wellguess what my mom bought us a pencil sharpener like that its red plastic case and the rest made of steel who nows when she got it but my aunt who is 92has a eletric one who knew

A piano in every classroom is MUSIC (and I say that intentionally) to my ears, as well as my mind, heart and bones. In the words of the Bard of Avon--you know who that is--"if music be the food of love, play on". Schools, public, private, and parochial, should have pianos in the classroom.

Yes that was the way it was!!

No pianos in any of my schools. Except on the stage.

Old custodian here. Those pianos were HELL for us custodians to move around during summer clean up and classroom transfers!

Just a little younger than you, and we didn't have those. In the auditorium, yes, and a music room, but not in the classrooms. We did learn, though, and had art contests yearly as well.

Yeah, but the kids called it a "ditto machine".

I was born I 1944. All this is true. In kindergarten we were given milk in small class bottles and a Graham cracker .

Thank you for sharing your memories

Fancy fountain pens can be a valuable tool that costs a lot but customers buy them

@@karenglenn2329 only one graham cracker?! That’s it?

@@oooh19 We are talking 1949. We did not care. The treats and snack thing had not mushroomed.

THE SCHOOL OF TODAY DOESN'T TEACH MANDATORY FIRST AID CLASSES THAT TO ME IS UNACCEPTABLE THE KIDS OF TODAY WOULDN'T KNOW WHAT A JUMP KIT LOOKS LIKE OR EVEN GRAB IT WHEN HEADING OUT FOR THE EMERGENCY BUT I KNOW WHAT A JUMP KIT IS I'VE GRABBED A GOOD MANY OF THEM WHEN MY OLDEST BROTHER WAS AT HIS WRESTLING TOURNAMENT AT HIGH SCHOOL I WAS FAST ASLEEP CURLED UP IN A QUIET CORNER THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR ASKED MY DAD IS YOUR FIRST AIDER HERE MY DAD SAID I'LL GO GET HER HE CAME TO WHERE I WAS SLEEPING HE GENTLY WOKE ME UP AND THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR ASKED ME FOR HELP I ASKED HIM WHAT WAS THE TROUBLE HE SAID THE FIRST AIDER HAD QUIT I GOT UP GRABBED MY FIRST AID SHIRT AND PUT IT ON I SAID LET'S GO SEE WHAT THE TROUBLE WAS I LOOKED AT IT PRETTY EASY SIZE UP JAY HAD A SHOULDER SEPARATION THE SLING AND SWATH WAS USED I SAID TO DAD GET JAY TO THE HOSPITAL THAT NEEDS TO LOOKED AT NOW WE NEED THE BLOOD FLOW TO BE MOVING AT ALL TIMES AFTER JAY WENT TO THE HOSPITAL HE CAME BACK TO THE WRESTLING TOURNAMENT FOR PRESENTATION OF MEDALS FOR THE WRESTLING TOURNAMENT JAY STILL GOT A MEDAL EVEN THOUGH HE WAS INJURED HE SAID I OWE MY LIFE TO MY FIRST AID GANGSTER SISTER THANK YOU I SAID YOU'RE WELCOME

I agree with you. The kids have access to more information, but they don't know how to distinguish between what is accurate and what is not. The glossy presentation is the same on real and bogus websites.

Like I said - we learned gooder.

In religion class, we had beautiful color filmstrips accompanied by a record with the narration. A beep would tell you when to push the projector button to advance to the next scene. Pushing that button was a coveted privilege. In high school, we advanced to AV carts with TVs, but they were never met with the same enthusiasm. We all had TVs at home, so they were nothing special.

i think public education has moved away from life prep to college prep. effectively allowing the teachers to pass the buck to those college professors. the colleges also do this, but they pass the buck to everyone else. so you got hordes of useless people who fake it till they make it, displacing the nerds in the workforce who actually know what they are doing.

@@larrybd100 gooder?