• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    25·
    12 days ago

    My middle school was a stupid place that looked like a prison on the outside, but on the inside, the classrooms had no back walls and were separated by accordion dividers. Occasionally, they would open up the dividers and show the whole three-classroom block a video on three of those carts all chained to one VCR.

    The one I remember was on a fun day where we all got to watch Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which had just come out on video. They fast-forwarded through Napoleon’s, “Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde! Merde!” being translated as, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” in the subtitles, but we could all see it and we were all like 13, so it was pretty funny.

    Here is the school. It still exists. Batchelor Middle School in Bloomington, Indiana. I hear the inside has been renovated and there are now actual walls.

    And I’m not exaggerating when I said it looks like a prison. It’s not the most comforting sight the first time you go.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      12 days ago

      Honestly, as far as brutalist architecture goes, that one’s not too bad. I kinda like it, especially the cantilevers.

    • SuzyQ@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      12 days ago

      My elementary school was an old Timex watch factory. It was a “temporary” building that ended up lasting 13 years. The only windows in the building were in the office and kindergarten wing. Last I checked, which was over a decade ago, the building had been turned into a firefighter training course.

      So, school being a prison? All I have to do is remember my elementary school days.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
        3·
        12 days ago

        This is obviously not that bad, but there was a continuous rumor going around the school that it was going to be a women’s prison but they decided to make it a school instead.

    • Cypher@lemmy.world
      4·
      12 days ago

      My school’s bus, which was used only for sporting events and trips, was an actual prison bus. It still had restraint attachment points and the bars on the windows.

      It was brilliant for psyching out the other football teams.

    • ansiz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      I went to a similar looking middle school, but each grade was in one giant room probably the size of a gym. No class had an actual wall unless it was on the edge. Probably 10-11 classes in each big room for the grade. The only dividers between classes were like rolling bulletin boards and maybe a metal cabinet or two. I couldn’t imagine having to teach in those conditions because it always was pretty noisy.

      I also remember the school’s gym had a full locker room with showers but students weren’t allowed to use the showers and none of the bathrooms in the school had stall doors. And the stalls were those short ones were your head was higher than the top of the wall. It was super weird.

    • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
      3·
      12 days ago

      I had a Shakespeare class in high school and we convinced the teacher to let us watch 10 Things I Hate About You because it’s very loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. She turned it off with the dick drawn on the kid’s face.

      • hangonasecond@lemmy.world
        3·
        12 days ago

        I did a comparative study on 10 things I hate about you and taming of the shrew for a term in school. In fact, a lot of our Shakespeare was dressed up as comparative studies which did make it interesting.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
          2·
          12 days ago

          So this class was called Playing Shakespeare and I put it on my schedule because I’d never had a drama class and I had fulfilled all my high school shit early plus a few college credit classes. It wasn’t drama at all. It was based on a board game called Playing Shakespeare. We never played the board game at any time all semester. I did learn a few things. The class was mostly made up of jocks and rich girls because they knew it would be an easy A.

  • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
    5·
    12 days ago

    First grade, they piled all the classes together, because it’s 1993 and we only have one laserdisc player, and we need to watch a video on pollution. Main topics were acid rain and smog and that shit has been with me for 30 years, I will never forget it.

  • snowboardbum@lemmy.world
    3·
    12 days ago

    Beakman’s World

    Bill Nye

    Reading Rainbow

    Edit: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Mr Wizard, or Antiques Roadshow are also possible outcomes.

  • ABCDE@lemmy.world
    3·
    12 days ago

    This is being wheeled in to our geography class because the main teacher is sick. It’s gonna be Jurassic Park.

  • JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    12 days ago

    Once when we were studying in biology class, when I was maybe 14 or 15, the teacher leaves the room and comes back with this sort of telly on the wheelie stand thing; he was trying to surprise us with an educational distraction from textbooks and, it was good on paper.

    He must have forgotten to rewind the VHS or something, of a nature documentary, and the entire class got an immediate scene of two wildebeast trying to repopulate the Savannah by themselves.

    I mean it did work, since it was a great distraction whilst he frantically Goku punched the Stop button as fast as he could, before pressing rewind.