Sisters of Saint Joseph, corporal punishment was an art form. The education though was first rate.

quote:

Were the public schools experimenting on the students?

We had a university near our grade school. We would regularly have "graduate students" as they would call them, come in and do experiments on our 5th grade class.

They would set up a scenario and watch how we reacted / responded.

The worst one was a scenario which was VERY CLOSE to the Stanford Prison Experiment, complete with corners of the room where we would have to stay if told to do so by other "master" students.

After about half the students were in tears, they finally stopped it. and as you can imagine the next day parents were calling the school, and there was a follow up apology.

These days it would have been a lawsuit.

I'm still sore about it. WTF were they thinking. To this day, every "graduate student" in psychology or a related major is identified as an asshole by me.

Yes, early 1970's

I don't remember any experimentation, but I did have to do dishes in the cafeteria. Our class rotated a 2 to 3 person cleaning crew that helped do dishes and clean up. I still remember the hot steam coming off of those dishes as they came put of the washer.
I can't believe they made us do that. I wish that I could find someone who went to that school during those years. It'd be fun to laugh about it with another dish washing veteran.

The 1, 2, and eyes “experiments” reminded me of something I experienced in the Army during the same early 1970s era. At the time there were still draftees on active duty and racial tensions were a big concern. Classes on “race relations” were mandatory and I clearly recall an “exercise” that was part of the class I attended. I think it was called “Star Power,” and was a game that was intended to demonstrate how people in positions of unaccountable authority tended to become corrupt and make policies and rules that benefited them and to the detriment of others.

I suspect the experiments described above were probably intended to teach the lessons of how arbitrary discrimination was harmful, and were probably something the teachers were exposed to in teachers conferences or magazine articles. Such games/experiments would of course have been totally inappropriate for children who were too young to understand whatever lessons they were intended to impart, but as I imagine most of us here know, there is nothing about being a teacher at any level, especially at low elementary grades, that guarantees they are smart or even particularly concerned about the welfare of their students.

But just as Star Power was an artificial demonstration of how immunity corrupts (and not just power per se), in the days when teachers could hit students with hands, rulers, thrown erasers, or paddles with impunity, they could also conduct experiments like that. Unfortunately, if anything today teachers have even more power to mould students’ beliefs and ways of thinking by other means.

I definitely don’t recall anything like that. I started school in fall 1978.

My mom was a teacher in another school same district and knew most of my teachers as well as the curriculum and my folks would not have allowed hat nonsense. I could not get away with anything. My 3rd grade teacher was a family friend and went to same church and was my Sunday school teacher. Seeing her not only 5 but 6 days a week was rough. I saw her often at church when visiting that church with my folks and even at almost 50 I still referred to her as Mrs XYZ. Even though she had long ago after I was an adult she said to call her by her first name. 40 year old habits hard to stop.

I don't recall any experiments, but I did have a teacher in high school playing minor head games with two students. We had these two identical twin "wiz kids", who I always assumed were skipped several grades growing up. They fit the Hollywood stereotype nerd image in behavior and in dress (sports coats, dress shirts with ties and sweater vests, not the typical 1980's public school garb). No doubt extremely high IQs. I've always joked they're probably in some Think Tank somewhere now secretly ruling the world.

Anyway, I was in a Health class with them, and the teacher would give a weekly quiz where he'd ask the questions aloud and we'd write the answer. Afterwards we'd go over the questions as a class. And every week he'd have say 3 (supposedly) extra credit bonus questions that were not related to Health. Most obscure subject matter most of the time. I think I recall knowing one or two of them the whole time. The thing was every week before class, the teacher would go to three separate students and give them an answer.

When we'd go over the questions aloud the two boy genius's head's would nearly explode that random "regular people" knew these things and they didn't. This went on for a couple months and it drove them insane.

Once when it was my turn to know the craziest most obscure thing, they got mad and challenged me on it, how I knew it. Luckily the teacher had said when asking the question that it had been an answer on Jeopardy the night before. I was able to say I'd seen the show. Which was good because I had no idea what the hell I'd just said as the answer.

Nothing like that happened to me. What did happen was when I began to fall behind in any subject, nobody gave a damn. And I was booted up to the next grade, apparently just to get rid of me.
I cant say my public school experience was all that great, especially from junior high until graduation.

Never had anything like that in my school, and I was in elementary from 1967-1973... so during the timeframe in question. Actually, I never had a "mean" teacher! Some were not as good or nice as others, but nobody I remember being mean.

The soldiers were the ones that served as experimental subjects. link; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...al_human_experiments

These conversations always break me a little. This even went back to the 40's and 50's and much earlier.

You had Quaker Oatmeal and MIT feed some kids plutonium. really

Then there was the ' open classroom ' schools in the 70's, large classrooms, smoking pot experiments, those that want to learn would, those that didnt would find something they were good at and do that.
Funny story, this was not new and had already tried and failed before in the 1900's but now we 'knew' better.

This was not everyone that is why many never experienced this. But some cities, were more 'progressive' and tried whatever trend got them funding.

I could keep going but we did a lot of experimentations on children, many with no consent etc. When I started grad school at North Texas they had classrooms that had two way mirrors, the hidden 'rooms' behind the mirrors were observation rooms. These had not been used as such since the 70's and were (in the early 2000's when I started) a computer lab (old classroom) and Graduate student offices (one was mine).

I was a public school teacher in 1970, 6th and 7th grade. There was none of that going on and this was in Washington state.

quote:

Originally posted by redstone:
<<snip>>
Then there was the ' open classroom ' schools in the 70's, large classrooms, smoking pot experiments, <<snip>>

That is what my elementary school was. I remember them being called "pods". Each grade was one huge room, with each room having 4 sections shaped and fit together like a honeycomb, with a central meeting place in the center. Each section would be teaching a different subject, and "changing classes" meant getting up and moving to another section. My school opened in 1966 and is still going today...

Graduated in ‘76 as a B or C student. New Jersey schools. As far as I know nothing like that went on there.
Wasn’t a very good student in public schools. Didn’t figure I was college material. Went US Navy instead.
Then a B.S. in Education - Shop Teacher.
Then an M.Ed. Shop Teacher
Then a D.Ed. College Professor - teaching kids to be Shop Teachers.

Never heard, in all of my years in Education, anything like this being done.

College sophmores were the usual subjects back in the day. Zimbrado's prison experiment would never fly today.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Nothing like that happened to me. What did happen was when I began to fall behind in any subject, nobody gave a damn. And I was booted up to the next grade, apparently just to get rid of me.
I cant say my public school experience was all that great, especially from junior high until graduation.

Similar experience here, I skipped a lot of school especially in my last two(Senior) years. Realized late that second year and started to make an effort to change.

I found a way “out” of the train to nowhere but was rebuffed by the Co-Op coordinator as it required my getting out of school three hours early. His exact words were “I only work with students that will be a success in life. You will be a loser!”

So that door being slammed shut I found another job, dealership in a sketchy part of Detroit. Left school at two, drove about forty five minutes each way for the next few months.

My “payback” to him was several years later, he came into the dealership (different one) I was at. I was consulting with the body shop manager on a problem and that coordinator was there waiting to speak to that manager.

He looked at me and said “Excuse me, weren’t you one of my students?” My answer was “Technically no, you refused to help me saying you only worked with students that would succeed in life and I wasn’t one of them. So I did this myself, went back and got my diploma in night school and seven years later a good career as assistant parts manager here, all no thanks to you!”

Yep, dick move on my part but he needed to hear it. The look on his face was priceless….

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Yes. They LOVED to experiment with twins psychologically back then so they could get their name in some book.

Out of nowhere they would accuse us of cheating to see if answers on tests would change on subsequent tests.

It's probably some of the reason I sought to destroy the school system I worked for.

I remember I had been at the system for a few years when I encountered one of the old psychologists that so happened to drop by my classroom. He was "amazed I turned out so well". I told him no thanks to YOU, your experiment failed and all you did was cause harm. It took me decades to recover and to try to become normal! and politely asked him not to step foot back in my room again without orders from the superintendent. Never saw him ever again after that.

That was Sacornbucjk. He lived up the street from me on 7th avenue.
I saw him in his front yard in 1987, I was with wife #1 in the '57 VW.
I was far from pleasant to him. I called him a predator.

I graduated high school in 1972, never heard of such a thing.

quote:

Shop Teacher.

Bless you. Some of the most useful and versatile education I ever received.

I went to a public elementary school in a small town in south Louisiana from 1967-1973. No experiments on us that I recall. We did have multiple classes for each grade, clumped by ability, apparently so similarly leveled students could be taught together. I think that worked out okay.

In high school I had a great teacher, and he had our class play “Star Power”. It was very enlightening and has left a lasting impression on me. But we played voluntarily and it was a learning experience.