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Last edited by Guest on 05-05-2004 13:20; edited 1 time in total

I'm wondering if anybody else can remember being subjected to a horendous (at the age of 11) 'test' whilst in their first year of comprehensive school? We (the class) were taken into a room whilst doing social studies and told to wait whilst the projector was set up. I can remember the room being very hot, thus making you feel uncomfortable, then a teacher ran into the room, whispering to the other teachers about breaking news on the television, the television was turned on, and there was a sort of teletext ( i don't know if teletext was out then ) but it said that there had been a major disaster ( worldwide ) where there was no water available or it had been polluted? and people were dying of diseases everywhere! A couple of the class ( including myself ) started to panic and were led from the room by elder children. Once outside, they ( the elder children ) informed us that it was just a test they do to the first year kids, They turn the heating right up to make you feel sick, and not to worry! It had happened to them! Was this just something they did at my school or does anyone else have any recognition of a similar experience. nothing else was said to us (that i can remember) and i was left baffled! Can anybody shed any light on this matter?

Posted: 04-05-2004 14:04 Post subject:

But what was the point? To see if you would panic or cry or what? Nothing like this occured in my school although we were subjected to a wonderful programme about how the world would end by some disaster, either war, pollution or something else.

Posted: 04-05-2004 17:34 Post subject:

Can't find the thread now, but some people have said that in the early 80s, they were told in school to expect "something big" to happen the next day, and nothing happened except some kind of military planes flying past.

Was your school peculiar in any way? eg. was it a super-liberal private school or something? (the kind where you could answer back and had no uniform)...

Posted: 04-05-2004 17:40 Post subject:

Anyone recall "The World will end on a specific date at a specific time" happening when they were at school?

Any idea where this Urban Myth originated from? I remember my mate Andy saying he'd seen a guy on telly foretelling the Earth's demise over the summer holdiays. I can recall clearly sitting in English waiting for 1.30 to come as that was the appointed date. But then my school also had a "bunch of nasty kids from the other school coming down to fight us". We just loved them UMs at my school!

As for the experiment above, it never happened to me. Could it have been a test of character, did any of those who paniced make it to prefect?

mooks out

Posted: 04-05-2004 17:45 Post subject: reply

No, there was nothing special about the school, just an ordinary comprehensive school in cheshire, uk.
I've lost touch with the people who were there that day, but we used to talk about what happened. It was very weird, there was no explanation given for this 'test'. All I can think is that it was to see who the people were, who would be good in a crisis and who the panikers were, I don't know if it was anything sinister. was it part of the curricullum or did this school (or teachers ) have a sadistic streak! I would love to find out the reasoning behind this.

Posted: 04-05-2004 19:11 Post subject:

Reminds me of a letter in FT a while back where someone described how their teacher told the whole class that the world was going to end at a certain time that day and would be preceded by a sonic boom from a high flying aircraft. They were all trooped out onto the playground at the apointed time where there was indeed a sonic boom but obvioulsy no end of the world. IIRC someone else wrote in to say something very similar happened to them at school.
(DISCALIMER:- all the above was written from memory which has never been my strong point.)

I always thought my teachers were wierd.

Posted: 04-05-2004 19:19 Post subject:

When I was in first school the dinnerladies there had a thing about scaring us during thunderstorms by saying the world'll end. I also had a teacher who brought in an audio book version of HG Well's War of the Worlds shortly before christmas, played half of it through (till thepoint where the guy gets trapped in the house by a cylinder iirc) and then asked us what we would do if the martians landed round here (errrr, panic and run probably).

Sounds like a drama class gone badly wrong to me . . . err

[edit]Nuclear War fear maybe?

just reminded myself, the same teacher who did the War of the worlds stuff was also responsible for us getting a booklet entitled "South Yorkshire and Nuclear War" from the library . . . a booklet which basically said "you're completely stuffed if you live round here (this was when finningley air base was still operating), as 7 people in the area you live will survive"

Posted: 04-05-2004 20:38 Post subject:

I took part in several strange psychological tests at my primary school in the very late 70s/early 80s, the 2 that stick out most in my mind were one where we were told to sit in a room and view moving monochrome images on a VDU, this was on a chunky old BBC computer, it didn't take long before me and my friend who was also there got exceedingly bored with the whole thing, and started randomly typing in comments. At one stage we typed in "this is very boring" and a single word flashed up "Why?" so of course we spent the rest of the time trying to make the PC respond again, which of course it wouldn't. The second one was equally strange, a group of older children were set upo to record themselves reading stories to younger children and then interview them about the stories and also record the results.
Looking back, it had a whole progressive teaching method feel to it (like the phonetic spelling fiasco of the 70s) creepy none the less

Posted: 04-05-2004 21:43 Post subject:

i remember one lesson where we had to work out the areas which would be affected if a nuclear bomb dropped on the school, for some reason...

Posted: 04-05-2004 22:48 Post subject:

I don't remember anything weird like this being done by the teachers at any of the schools I attended.
Sounds like they played an evil trick for their own amusement, or for evil government research.

Posted: 05-05-2004 03:03 Post subject:

Posted: 05-05-2004 12:54 Post subject:

It seems to me that many school teachers during the 80s/90s were obcessed with nuclear armageddon. My secondary school was terrible, we got it in physics, geography, history, even english! All my history lessons were depressing as hell-WW1, the Holocaust, the Aberfan disaster,ect, ect.
I always blamed it on their being at uni and teacher training college during the 60s and 70s.

Posted: 06-05-2004 06:44 Post subject:

i just recalled something else from school, the whole class was taken out into the playground, and me and a friend saw what looked like a plane, but without wings fly past in the distance, and we pointed it out to everyone, yet the next day everyone who was there denied seeing it, but me and my friend.

Posted: 06-05-2004 13:03 Post subject:

We had the Nuclear Armageddon shoved at us too, to the extent that we would sit around at lunch breaks discussing what we would do during the few minutes after we heard the warning, to when we got vaporised ( which we apparently would in this town as there are so many Air Bases near it ) I'm sure we all developed serious mental health issues in later life because of that. roll eyes (sarcastic)

Posted: 06-05-2004 14:15 Post subject:

One of my brothers had a few terms at primary school taught to him by a serious alcolohic (status confirmed - as my father was one of the Governors involved in dealing with the issues that this raised).

Every now and then, after a particularly bad skinful at lunchtime, he would sit the kids down and talk about "Nuclear War." The essence of this involved impressing on the kids (9/10 year olds) that it could happen "any time, any where - no one is safe - no where is safe - the world will end in a flash"

My brother said that break-times after these sessions were always particularly subdued and, as our school was near an air-base, the sound of an approaching aircraft caused all the kids to freeze and listen in fearful silence.