WITH today’s namby-pamby ‘child protection’ laws, kids are missing out on a character-building 1980s education. Here’s what they should be subjected to.
Doing PE in your Y-fronts
Forgot your PE kit? Time to do gym in your pants, strange as it sounds in these post-Savile times. Still, it was better than the nutter PE teacher deciding on a whim to do boxing, resulting in weaker 12-year-olds bursting into tears, which set them up nicely for another battering at lunchtime.
Watching f**king boring programmes on a TV on huge legs
In the 80s, primary schools had a TV on big legs which towered over the kids like a Tripod. Why this beast of a telly was needed was unclear, because you only ever watched cack BBC Schools programmes or ‘important’ events like the raising of the Mary Rose, which was just a bunch of planks with no hideously rotted corpses.
Frozen milk in winter
This was not some sort of healthy contemporary slushie with fruit in, just full-fat milk that had frozen solid in the bottle. Any health benefits were probably cancelled out by always consuming it with a Kit Kat and a bag of Space Raiders.
Weird practical lessons
Fancy making some ninja throwing stars or a dangerous knife? That’s what the unsupervised bits of Metalwork were for. In Woodwork you could learn how to craft a crude wooden box with dovetail joints. This took at least 20 man hours, making it an economically useless skill that hasn’t been needed since the Industrial Revolution.
Bullying that would involve the police nowadays
If you’ve all just had BCG injections resulting in a large blister, why not grab a classmate’s arm and punch it violently until blood and pus are dripping everywhere? Or stuff glass fibre down someone’s back and rub it in? Strangely these (real) examples of brutality didn’t so much ‘build character’ as ‘make them cry’.
Watery tomato ‘quiche’
A staple of school canteens, this travesty of quiche was weirdly popular with pupils and teachers alike, possibly because it was less horrible than the other school dinner options in the pre-foodie 80s. The fact that it was dripping with lukewarm tomato juice also helped you swallow your incredibly dry chips without choking.
