Reply #10: Born in 1952 [View All]

[LiberalEsto]

Went to public school in suburban NJ, 20 miles west of NYC. To my regret, I didn't meet or interact with black or Hispanic people until college because they didn't live in our town. We purposely chose a multi-ethnic, multi-racial school system for our kids in Maryland.

Lunches were 25 cents in elementary school and milk was 2 cents, but some of us who lived close to school walked home for lunch.
We had the same strict cafeteria rules and overall school behavior rules.

Kids did not get away with disrupting classes or talking back to teachers. They were sent straight to the principal, and the parents were called in. Corporal punishment has been illegal in NJ since 1876, but suspensions and detentions were used to enforce rules when needed.

We actually learned in school, but we also had fun. In elementary school there was an upright piano in every classroom, and every teacher had to know how to play. We sang a lot, patriotic songs and holiday songs and fun songs and songs that were once part of America's cultural heritage.

We had recess every day, even with a foot of snow on the ground. We frequently went outside again in the afternoon for games, nature walks, story-time.

Girls had to wear dresses. The only exception in elementary school was on extremely cold days when girls could wear pants under their skirts going to and from school. These had to be taken off as soon as you got in the classroom. In high school, skirt hems had to reach our knees, or we were sent home. Dress codes were eliminated in 1970, the year after I graduated.

Boys could not wear jeans or any pants that had outside seams, even to dances, unless the dance was specifically a "hobo hop." You also had to wear socks with sandals, or else. The year before I graduated, about 300 boys protested and disobeyed that rule on the last day of school. The vice principals rounded up every guy with sockless feet, herded them to the cafeteria and gave them detention. They had to write essays on why they should wear socks with their sandals. (yes, this was a public school!)

We also had dances almost every weekend in high school. Every club sponsored at least one dance as a fundraiser. When my kids were in high school, they had two dances a year, Homecoming and Prom.

My kids graduated in 2001 and 2004. They have often said they wished they could have grown up in the 1960s. They said their schools were full of disruptive kids who made learning impossible, and there was very little discipline in some classrooms.