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.
Honestly, as far as brutalist architecture goes, that one’s not too bad. I kinda like it, especially the cantilevers.
Yeah, that’s brutalism done right.
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.
1970s build?
Windows are terrible at efficiency. Yes, even modern ones with three panes and filled with argon. A building with minimal windows is generally going to have better thermal efficiency than one with lots of them, and that started to be really important during the 1970s oil crisis. The result was a bunch of schools like this that look like prisons.
If you get some local mural artists to paint the concrete in bright, whimsical images, it fixes a lot.
Only problem is that the paint fades eventually, and if no one cares to redo it it’ll end up looking like those sad old fading Soviet murals.
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.
I don’t get the idea. Prison on the outside, anarchy on the inside. Who came up with that concept?
Looks like it might have been a county lockup at one point.
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.
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.
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.
Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill Nye the science Guy!
“You can never go back. YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK!”
It’s the 6th grade. The girls are taken to the gym for a presentation about menstruation. Us boys are put in a room with this cart to watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Hell yeah.
I watched a VHS dupe my father had made of this so many times. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the proper cover art of it.
‘See you later, navigator!’
Ferngully
https://g.co/kgs/uNhJedM Toxic Love
Oh shit hexxus waddup
The first thing that came to mind (assuming this is being wheeled into my classroom) was that 90s birthing video they used to show in sex ed. It culminated in them showing the baby’s birth; though the poor thing probably got rug burn coming out.
Yeah I think that’s the one
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.
In class it was always
- Shrek
- Shrek 2
- Remember the Titans
- Jurassic Park
- Any Rando Jim Carrey Movie
Although in grade 9 law class we got to watch Heat, Dirty Harry and My Cousin Vinny, that teacher was cool
Probably DS9 on repeat. Nothing hits the spot like hopeful 90’s Star Trek.
Mhm yes I love a good occupation, terrorism, war, genocide and religious fanatics in the morning.
The fantasy is the competent opposition to all of those things.
The Bell riots are on the menu, boys!
Don’t forget Chester!
Depending on the year/grade, could be Harriet’s Magic Hats, could be Brave Little Toaster, could be creationist propaganda.
Fun fact about me, the first time I watched the original Star Wars trilogy was in high school. My teacher didn’t really want to teach us anything, so he put on episodes 4, 5, and 6 over the course of a few days.
Your teacher may or may not have been on a bender.
Well…maybe, but my original teacher stopped teaching in the middle of the school year. There were rumors of him getting a BJ from a student and being fired. He might have just retired. You know rumors. They moved in a couple different temp teachers to fill in for the last half of the year. One of them was bored one week and just started playing the trilogy. Good old ‘principles of technology’ class.
321 Contact.
And MathNet
Beauty and the Beast.
But it’s Spanish class. So La bella y la bestia.
Señora Lopez has a hangover and she just ain’t doin shit today.
I’m sure somebody had to watch that. Not me, but somebody.
