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I Was Given Lines At School

Detention was combined with lines so that you could not use the detention time productively in any way whatever. Instead of lines that could be repeated, you were asked (really, required) to copy symbol for symbol dictionary pages. Phonetic symbols were the hardest. I didn't learn anything during detention. It just was unpleasant and embarrassing. Probably "worked" as a substitute for something more physically painful like running laps or licks with a paddle and definitely strokes with a cane.

There was no attempt whatever to make it morally educational or a positive experience in any way. Just judicially administered unpleasant moments.

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ThatMusgraveWoman · 70-79, F

I hated lines- a complete waste of time. The teacher never read them anyway. One boy in our class used to write : 'and a dragon ate the teacher' in every tenth line, just to see if he was caught. He never was.

MaryJanine · 70-79, F

@ThatMusgraveWoman Clever! Makes me wonder if the teachers who assigned things like that EVER read them. We used to have teachers when we reached the upper grades assign "Penalty" compositions if she felt we deserved it (I got my share, yes) ever read them. Those hated things had to be turned in at the start of the next school day along with your homework from the previous night and were usually a tome of 500 words or more, but never less.

ThatMusgraveWoman · 70-79, F

@MaryJanine Ah, the good old days. Penalty compositions sound awful.

MaryJanine · 70-79, F

@ThatMusgraveWoman They were. I'd love to start a fire in the old school furnace with a stack of them. (Incidentally, these were the years 1966-1968.)

ThatMusgraveWoman · 70-79, F

@MaryJanine I wonder if they are stored somewhere, in some archive with an old, old teacher gloating over all the thousands of wasted hours.

MaryJanine · 70-79, F

@ThatMusgraveWoman I'm pretty sure most of my old teachers are dead. Or retired. My nephew went to my old grammar school, and he reported on the first day of first grade his teacher was a young black woman. I found out later my old teacher, who was a young woman then, had retired two years before.