I remember moments of everyone being lined up and told to use the bathroom at a certain point, for example before a school outing. (More recently, I saw this happening with a school group at a tourist place: the children, all wearing hi-visibility vests were lined up, and sent into the toilets two at a time, while teachers stood guard to prevent other adults from entering.)
There was a routine which happened at lunchtime every day, and the elderly "dinner ladies" (now known as "lunchtime supervisors") would look after us while the teachers had their lunch. We were escorted to the toilet, while the dinner ladies looked on to make sure we washed our hands, with two children using each basin, then we had to line up again, and stand with one child on each square on the tiled floor. During lunch, the dinner ladies would be circulating mopping up spills, helping children to cut up their food, telling children not to put a knife in their mouth, not to talk with mouth full (or preferably, not to talk at all), to eat up quickly before their food got cold, to use a knife and fork instead of fingers, ringing a bell to demand quiet, or to tell groups of children to line up for "pudding", to tell children how wasteful it was if they left a lot on their plate. After lunch, we all sat on the classroom floor while they read to us, or played games such as Simon says (I found the arm movements exhausting, I used to get myself "out" as soon as I could), tell us to sit up straight; children who fidgeted would be made to stand apart from everyone else. If we were lucky, we played a game where one person was blindfolded and had to guess who was speaking in a funny voice. (I loved this game!)
I mostly loved school, by the way. But here are other things which happened in the school day, up to when I was aged 7, which were inherently infantilising:
- The bell being rung at the end of playtime. Everybody then had to stand dead still; anyone who moved would be made to miss their next playtime, which involved being sat in a place where everyone could see you.
- Lots of lining up, before moving around the school. A dreaded collective punishment was to practise doing this, instead of playtime.
- While being told off, being yanked by the wrist, and sometimes dragged around. (No slapping was allowed then, but older teachers would reminisce fondly about it.)
- Naughty children often being told off in front of the class, or even the whole school. On one occasion, the head teacher wheeled out a pushchair, and invited two boys who were "behaving like babies" to sit in it.
- Two children who laughed when told off were then made to laugh in a mirror.
- Sitting cross-legged on the floor for story time: probably totally normal all over the world. Naughty children often had to sit by the teacher, or to stand with hands on head.
- For PE (gym class), being almost naked, up to age 7, wearing only underpants. We would get undressed in the classroom, then put shoes on our bare feet to walk to the gym, and take them off (lining them up neatly) when we got there.
- One of the worst sins a child could commit was to do something without being told, even if it was something perfectly sensible. I fell foul of this a few times: for example, I'd start packing away because I knew it was soon time to do so. Another time, a teacher wrote the word "kitten" on the board, and more than half the class did so. The teacher marched slowly round the room, tossing children's books on the floor, then she made them stand at the front, and hold their books up. Their crime was to have written "kitten" without actually being told to.
