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 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.
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.
Don’t need to see sunlight if you’re making watches 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.
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.
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.
“You can never go back. YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK!”
oh my god yes
i thought Scarface’s name was Carface when I was little and obsessed with this. had a stuffed animal named Mr Carface (I obviously couldn’t ‘steal’ the name Carface, I had to be original) that would watch the movie with me all the time. 16 years later and I still have them lol
Depending on the year/grade, could be Harriet’s Magic Hats, could be Brave Little Toaster, could be creationist propaganda.
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!’
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.
321 Contact.
Ferngully
https://g.co/kgs/uNhJedM Toxic Love
Oh shit hexxus waddup
Beakman’s World
Bill Nye
Reading Rainbow
Edit: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Mr Wizard, or Antiques Roadshow are also possible outcomes.
This is being wheeled in to our geography class because the main teacher is sick. It’s gonna be Jurassic Park.
Do they test you on where the island is located?
Costa Rica bitch! Always getting an A in JPark.
Ah the first 40 minutes of The Princess Bride countless times through K-12.
Watching the teacher get irritated.
I still have one of those somewhere!
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.
Oh man, a friend and I were the AV crew for a while in high school in the late 90s. Basically we’d deliver these TV & VCR wheeled stands to the teachers needing them in the morning. If there wasn’t any need, we got to hang out in the equipment room instead of home room.
We got to use the elevators and even wield “the key ring” from time to time.
Aww yeah it’s time for some Eyewitness.
Ok that thing? Probably reading rainbow or nova
Does anyone remember Channel 1? They made contracts with schools to play the propaganda every day and they put a shitty TV on an arm in every room. I don’t know who paid Channel 1. This would be late 90s.
I sure do. In exchange for those free TVs we had to watch 30 seconds of awkward middle schoolers doing a news report followed by 6 teen spirit perfume commercials in a row every homeroom period.
I used to be good friends with one of the guys who did the anti smoking ads. Do you remember “Why do they put all this crap in dip?” That guy. I met him at a huge college party, outside, smoking a cigarette. I was like holy shit you’re a fucking hypocrite, how does that feel? And we were friends for years after.
Are you charlie from always sunny in Philadelphia lol
Sometimes
