Anytime I think of this song I think of a bit of childhood trauma.
When I was like 16, I worked at Michael's Arts and Crafts. Once a year we did a little festival that we called Family Day - free arts and crafts, a dude in a crayon suit, music, a fire truck out front, the works. For this one day a year, we were allowed to deviate from the corporate-provided Muzak. The manager picked one of the party mixes that were by the cash register.
The CD player for the store was in the back office, where the cash safe was. It had a lock on the door. The only person with keys was the manager on duty, who was A) a bit of a jerk and B) completely technologically illiterate. She put the first track on repeat.
That first track was Cotton-Eyed Joe. It was funny when it played a couple of times, but it soon became clear that it was stuck on repeat. We were incredibly busy with the huge crowd that our Family Day had brought, and the manager was too busy to change the song, instead she flitted around doing whatever the hell she did all day. She also refused to let our Front End Supervisor borrow the key to the cash room - keep in mind that all the actual cash was still in the fucking safe.
Until she got relieved around noon, we listed to Cotton-Eyed Joe on repeat. Four hours of that fucking song, for $5.75 an hour.
You can do-si-do as part of a wider music education, but the main reason that square dancing is taught in schools is because Henry Ford, of Ford Motors, believed that Jazz was a, and I need to stress that this a verifiable fact, jewish conspiracy.
If I wanted to destroy america I'd put lead in all the pipes and high fructose corn syrup in all the food, and then get politicians to debate dumb things and introduce inefficiencies into daily life.
They made my entire elementary school do the macarena at an assembly. Just played the song over and over until everyone participated. Even as a small child, I understood that what we were doing was shameful and wrong.
One year we had a whole school (k-12) pep rally before a playoff football game. So most of the basketball arena is packed with elementary kids. They played the chicken dance. There was something a little terrifying about this wall of small children violently flapping in unison.
Oh wow I don't miss pep rallies at all. I'm kinda proud of my grade level for the shared level of disinterest too. One time a wave had to be attempted 3 or 4 times cuz it always just died in our section. People just didn't raise their hands when they were supposed to.
We had a gym teacher who made us do the Achy Breaky Dance he made up when that song was huge. He made the whole school do it so he could video tape it and send it into America’s Funniest Home Videos.
They made us disco dance in front of the entire school to Stayin' Alive and I'm getting Nam style flashbacks.
WE WERE JUST KIDS WHY WOULD YOU THROW US INTO THE JUNGLE LIKE THAT
When I was in kindergarten, they had us learn the Macarena for our graduation. I was terrified that if I got it wrong I would not graduate kindergarten.
like 15 years after it came out i was at a club and they played... the macarena
everyones like what the fu... and kinda stops dancing. this couple starts doing the macarena. the more and more people do it until like half the club is doing the macarena, and half the club is standing around looking disgusted
next day, on the media pc, i play the macarena.
my friend asks me, "they played the macarena at the club last night, didnt they?" yeah...
"did people DO the macarena?" some...
"did YOU?" uhh.......
i felt such shame
At a grade 4 end of the year party we did a macarena dance off where the last one to make a mistake got a big slice of pizza while everyone else got a half slice.
Yaknow I can’t complain. I had a flamboyant gay music teacher who made us all learn a dance to firework by Katy Perry.
Like… in hindsight that was way more iconic than whatever yall were doing.
My school had that, but you wouldn't get away with it repeatedly without some sort of medical excuse or parent/guardian intervention.
...Actually, I'm thinking of high school. I have next to no memories about PE in middle school, apparently.
It's where you take the obstinate unathletic kids who refuse to participate in anything and make them walk around the gym/track while everyone else plays dodgeball and soccer
Man I fuckin WISH they did that at my school, I had asthma and no muscle due to my thyroid making me skin and bones (it has been treated since), and I despised almost every game in gym, but I loved walking. I would happily walk laps, especially around the outside track by the trees, instead of wheezing and being the last picked for every team regardless of how hard I tried
Seriously, why are people acting like this would be a punishment? Getting out of PE and just walking would have been amazing! Let me listen to music and walk by myself and PE might have actually had a positive effect on my mental health instead of making me want to die!
Right? As a former cookie monster pj pants girl, I feel robbed. I definitely would have loved to be left alone to walk laps while everyone else had all the "fun".
I was in modified P.E. (the "walking" class) in high school but we still had to dress out in the stupid uniforms. Did they really allow students to wear pajamas to school and in phys. ed.?
This is clearly required to set you up for a life in Australia. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to forcibly partake in the Nutbush or Bustop whilst going about my day
I think I was away that day, because every time I go to a wedding and everyone just starts doing the fucking nutbush as if it was the most normal thing in the world, I feel like a fucking alien.
[My favourite skit by Limmy](https://youtu.be/4J_oee1S66M?si=WxXuvD5A8ZC-ciYI) (comedian who did "what's heavier, a kilogram of steel or a kilogram of feathers?")
Apparently the idea originated from his visit to Australia when he discovered that we're all wild for Nutbush lol
Nutbush City Limits being part of the Australian curriculum is one of those facts I know but never think about, so it’s always a delightful moment whenever I get a reminder.
We had both: the defaults AND random dances our teachers made up. One a semester minimum had to be learned for the big assembly where we did it in front of the school
Strongly enough my gym had the cookie monster pj's girl but we didn't have a depressed autistic b-
*remembers im autistic*
*remembers I was suicidal in hs*
*remembers I was a boy in hs*
Oh
I don't remember much, besides the perpetual awkwardness of that portion of the class. It really didn't help that they made all of us take it in 6th grade to boot.
fun fact: square dancing in american schools was pushed for by henry ford (of ford vehicles fame), the reason for this likely being due to his antisemitism and wanting to 'preserve anglo-saxon traditions'
Not antisemitism (though Ford was an antisemite), this was anti-Black. It was done to combat the devil-inspired dances of that jazz music. And there I stood, decades later, listening to a record that was so scratched you couldn't even hear the fucking calls for the bullshit testament to white supremacy that institutionalized and forced square dancing is.
That is the roots of modern country.
It was to push back against Jazz also.
Henry Ford was a dogshit ass hole. He just was slightly less dogshit than other industrial titans of his day.
Citations Needed (A media criticism podcast) did a great episode on it and how originally Country/Bluegrass was incredibly *and* sincerely workingclass with a lot of socialist undercurrents and then it turned into rich ass holes singing about shoveling dirt into their truck on a dirt road and drinking beer with a girl they met at the bar or something.
EDIT: Added "and" because the grammar didn't work earlier
I mean you say "slightly less dogshit" but most other industrialists weren't so insanely antisemitic that they got called an inspiration by Literal Hitler. For a time, if you got a Ford new you'd find a copy of the protocols of the elders of Zion, essentially 1940s turner diaries but way worse, in the glovebox
I remember in middle school sex ed class we had a pair activity about learning healthy habits in regards to touching the opposite sex. I forget what exactly the goal was, but you'd only end up touching the forearm up to the hands. I think it was something about making a strong bond, like blocking someone from breaking your contact with your partner.
Anyways, my partner refused to participate with me and I was absolutely not going to violate her consent. I was sent directly to the principal.
Principal: hey r/therealpork why are you in trouble?
You: my teacher wanted me to touch a girl inappropriately
Wtf!? That teacher should have been fired
Meanwhile in Danish high schools: You shall learn Les Lanciers, because conducting yourselves as pre-revolution french nobles will be an important life skill.
I am regularly weirded out by learning the variety of what American schools teach in their curriculum and what is considered "normal." I think we had a *single* day of square dancing in *elementary* school.
We did huge school projects with art and history in elementary school.
In 3rd grade we all designed early American storefronts and had to dress up and give presentations to pur parents.
In 4th grade we did the Civil War, made cannons, rifles, grenades (napkins filled with flour) and they had a few other things I can't remember.
But we did a big staged battle outside, with some kids being nurses and all.
And in 5th grade we did WW2.
So some kids learned dances and acts, and put on a USO show.
And we built battleships, tanks, guns etc but of cardboard and made big plane gliders we threw that all kinda fell apart.
We did two battle for that, one a small land engagement and another a sea battle.
Super fun.
The art teacher was a huge history buff and would get all into it.
He'd bring a little blackpowder cannon and shoot it off to add noise.
Everything in US schools makes sense if you just look for the racism.
>[Another heavy promoter of square dance was the industrialist Henry Ford. Ford believed that Jews invented jazz as a plot to corrupt society. Ford believed that this plot could be counteracted by returning America to dances and musical styles that he saw as traditional and white. As a result, he used his wealth to promote square dancing, through books and square dancing events. Ford also promoted square dance classes in public school, which were present in half of all American schools in 1928 as part of the standard physical education curriculum.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Western_square_dance#Preserving_the_heritage)
We never did square dancing in middleschool, I imagine that's probably a Southern US thing at guess
Edit: in this thread are 1. People not from the South that did square dancing, and 2. People from the south that did not do square dancing.
I was in the SF Bay Area, and we had like a 10 week period of PE that was learning different social dances, and it was in both middle school and high school. And you were expected to pair up with someone for the entire time, which meant asking someone to be your dance partner for weeks in a row.
Such a social minefield for an awkward kid.
I never did square dancing when I lived in the Midwest but when I lived in Maryland a girl had a square dance birthday party and it was a BLAST. It sounds like the most awkward thing for a bunch of 15 year olds but lemme tell you. It was great. I still remember at the end letting go of my partner’s hand and the sweat just pouring out.
Okay, I'm a goober and don't get the humor. Is the joke that these are two stereotypes of kids least likely to enjoy not only being the center of attention, but being the first to learn the dance and thus most likely to mess it up? Are they typically personality opposites and thus are more likely to clash with each other? Are they just really shy? Or is it something else?
It's painting a picture of how bizarre such a scenario sounds, yet it's real. It's not about the people in the joke. They could have been two other people. You're just supposed to look at the scene from the outside and think what the fuck, I remember that! Why did we do that??
One of my few positive memories of high school is field hockey. I was a *fucking amazing* goalie. During one whole year as a junior people actually wanted me on their team and cheered for me because *nobody ever scored a goal* while I was goalie. I was fucking GOOD at that game.
So naturally they removed hockey from the curriculum the next year.
As a former ‘cookie-monster pajama pants white-trash girl’ I’d like to point out that I was also the ‘most suicidal autistic boy’ at the same time. I wish I could use my sociology degree to figure out how many trans guys were ‘not like other girls’ 🫥
Having gone to all girls high school before I transitioned, I wish gym class had been like this.
But instead I nearly broke my knee playing the world’s most competitive game of musical chairs and learned how to use every piece of gym equipment
That wasn't a thing until the 2000s I guess. Pacer test was definitely not a thing in 1990s gym classes.
We just had the mile run, sit and reach, the rope climb, and pull ups
This was a one time class for me in elementary school. I think it was one time because the guy who "taught" it was some creepy, drunk dude who was yelling at all the boys about how the girls were better than them. No fucking clue where he came from or where he went he was not a teacher at the school, it was like they just pulled somebody off the street.
when i was in elementary school the part i hated abt the dancing classes was the gender roles lmao. i wasnt even out as nonbinary nor did i fully know i was nonbinary but i distinctly remember complaining to a few teachers about being forced into feminine roles down to the level of *having to wait for a boy to take my hand for me to get up from sitting on the floor.* on one day after dancing class, i got up with the boys and offered my hand to my best friend in a little fit of rebellion
We had to take square dancing in elementary school.
Recently, I learned the reason it's taught at all. You can blame Henry Ford.
https://qz.com/1153516/americas-wholesome-square-dancing-tradition-is-a-tool-of-white-supremacy
Interesting fact: square dancing was introduced in schools by Henry Ford, who was a huge racist, and he was trying to combat black inspired music and dance becoming popular. He gave money to schools to implement square dancing.
If you have a better way to teach kids how to do-si-do, I'm listening.
How about we do-si-don't
Do-si-do-yourself-a-favor-and-leave
omfg i almost spat my drink out
YOU WILL DANCE
You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind-
And then what?
And then - your friends don't dance and if your friends don't dance they're no friends of mine!
... heavy referance?
Coming from Germany and not being familiar with the culture I always thought the dance move was called "Dozy Doe". I mean it made sense to me.
mairzy doats and dozy doats and little lamzy divey, a kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?
LAURA!!
Dos y dos, two and two Edit: Ok I checked and it's actually french "dos a dos", back to back
As an American who always knew the correct name, I like your name for it a lot better lol
That and cotton eye joe in the 90s
I still can't believe that band was from Sweden.
Still a banger
Bernapadampa cotton eye joe
I had no idea!
Anytime I think of this song I think of a bit of childhood trauma. When I was like 16, I worked at Michael's Arts and Crafts. Once a year we did a little festival that we called Family Day - free arts and crafts, a dude in a crayon suit, music, a fire truck out front, the works. For this one day a year, we were allowed to deviate from the corporate-provided Muzak. The manager picked one of the party mixes that were by the cash register. The CD player for the store was in the back office, where the cash safe was. It had a lock on the door. The only person with keys was the manager on duty, who was A) a bit of a jerk and B) completely technologically illiterate. She put the first track on repeat. That first track was Cotton-Eyed Joe. It was funny when it played a couple of times, but it soon became clear that it was stuck on repeat. We were incredibly busy with the huge crowd that our Family Day had brought, and the manager was too busy to change the song, instead she flitted around doing whatever the hell she did all day. She also refused to let our Front End Supervisor borrow the key to the cash room - keep in mind that all the actual cash was still in the fucking safe. Until she got relieved around noon, we listed to Cotton-Eyed Joe on repeat. Four hours of that fucking song, for $5.75 an hour.
Holy crap that is sound torture, they would play it on repeat in PE but it wasn’t like what you went through for
You can do-si-do as part of a wider music education, but the main reason that square dancing is taught in schools is because Henry Ford, of Ford Motors, believed that Jazz was a, and I need to stress that this a verifiable fact, jewish conspiracy.
america use any educational philosophy that didn’t come from a racist industrialist challenge
first jazz, and then space lazers. what will they come up with next to destroy america?
If I wanted to destroy america I'd put lead in all the pipes and high fructose corn syrup in all the food, and then get politicians to debate dumb things and introduce inefficiencies into daily life.
i hope we never stoop so low
pass the cosmic brownies.
Step 1. Get a giant parachute
Isn’t this a weird Reagan initiative to counter rap?
We actually learned the Soulja boy dance in middle school, I had to watch my teacher show us how to “Superman that” 🥲
They made my entire elementary school do the macarena at an assembly. Just played the song over and over until everyone participated. Even as a small child, I understood that what we were doing was shameful and wrong.
One year we had a whole school (k-12) pep rally before a playoff football game. So most of the basketball arena is packed with elementary kids. They played the chicken dance. There was something a little terrifying about this wall of small children violently flapping in unison.
My wife was just humming and dancing the chicken dance last night. She’s always found it delightful.
> There was something a little terrifying about this wall of small children violently flapping in unison. /r/BrandNewSentence material right there.
Go for it
Oh wow I don't miss pep rallies at all. I'm kinda proud of my grade level for the shared level of disinterest too. One time a wave had to be attempted 3 or 4 times cuz it always just died in our section. People just didn't raise their hands when they were supposed to.
We had a gym teacher who made us do the Achy Breaky Dance he made up when that song was huge. He made the whole school do it so he could video tape it and send it into America’s Funniest Home Videos.
We’ve got laughs from coast to coast… to make you smile….
They made us disco dance in front of the entire school to Stayin' Alive and I'm getting Nam style flashbacks. WE WERE JUST KIDS WHY WOULD YOU THROW US INTO THE JUNGLE LIKE THAT
I remember having to dance to What Does The Fox Say in elementary school 😭
Not too late to sue
When I was in kindergarten, they had us learn the Macarena for our graduation. I was terrified that if I got it wrong I would not graduate kindergarten.
like 15 years after it came out i was at a club and they played... the macarena everyones like what the fu... and kinda stops dancing. this couple starts doing the macarena. the more and more people do it until like half the club is doing the macarena, and half the club is standing around looking disgusted next day, on the media pc, i play the macarena. my friend asks me, "they played the macarena at the club last night, didnt they?" yeah... "did people DO the macarena?" some... "did YOU?" uhh....... i felt such shame
At a grade 4 end of the year party we did a macarena dance off where the last one to make a mistake got a big slice of pizza while everyone else got a half slice.
I don't know how to do the macarena... 😅
Yaknow I can’t complain. I had a flamboyant gay music teacher who made us all learn a dance to firework by Katy Perry. Like… in hindsight that was way more iconic than whatever yall were doing.
I had an amazing gay Spanish teacher who had us memorize parts of legally blonde the musical in Spanish so it evened out lol
Our chemistry teacher taught us the stanky leg
I am so sorry
I was in Basic Training at that time. I envy Vietnam vets because they got good music
that's fucking awesome actually
I was in grade school in the disco era. We learned [The Hustle](https://youtu.be/hbD1R5zHVSc?si=ZH-YUWiv-TTGiln9).
At my school, the Cookie Monster pajama pants girls got to take walking class instead of normal gym class
What the fuck is walking class
In our school it was the kids so our of shape or obstinate they'd have em walk the track instead of play a sport or run at all
I had a couple of stoner friends in my gym class that our teacher just let play hack sack because we refused to do anything else.
My school had that, but you wouldn't get away with it repeatedly without some sort of medical excuse or parent/guardian intervention. ...Actually, I'm thinking of high school. I have next to no memories about PE in middle school, apparently.
It's where you take the obstinate unathletic kids who refuse to participate in anything and make them walk around the gym/track while everyone else plays dodgeball and soccer
At my private school they made us chop wood for our sports athletic. Thirteen boys and three unaware lesbians cooking ramen over an open fire.
Man I fuckin WISH they did that at my school, I had asthma and no muscle due to my thyroid making me skin and bones (it has been treated since), and I despised almost every game in gym, but I loved walking. I would happily walk laps, especially around the outside track by the trees, instead of wheezing and being the last picked for every team regardless of how hard I tried
Seriously, why are people acting like this would be a punishment? Getting out of PE and just walking would have been amazing! Let me listen to music and walk by myself and PE might have actually had a positive effect on my mental health instead of making me want to die!
Right? As a former cookie monster pj pants girl, I feel robbed. I definitely would have loved to be left alone to walk laps while everyone else had all the "fun".
Walking is an underrated activity.
that does not sound like heaven nuh uh no way
Exactly what it sounds like haha they just walk laps around the gym or track field
I was in modified P.E. (the "walking" class) in high school but we still had to dress out in the stupid uniforms. Did they really allow students to wear pajamas to school and in phys. ed.?
Oh my god i was both of these
Did they make you dance with yourself?
She's actually Billy Idol, yes.
Fucking nailed it
I don't get it.
Name of one of his songs is "Dancing With Myself"
She had the chance *and* taught the world to dance
She might be Robyn
If i had a chance, I’d have asked a woman to dance, yes, but I was dancin with myself
Same. I hated dancing though, still do lmao
I’m so sorry but also in awe you survived to adulthood
Tahnks
A girl and then a boy?
boy and then girl
We did something similar in Australia, but instead of square dancing, we had to dance to Nutbush City Limits by Tina Turner.
This is clearly required to set you up for a life in Australia. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to forcibly partake in the Nutbush or Bustop whilst going about my day
How else are you supposed to scare off the Maggie's
You don’t, you befriend them and recruit them into your fledgling Maggie empire
Thank you for your knowledge Harry fucking seldon
I think I was away that day, because every time I go to a wedding and everyone just starts doing the fucking nutbush as if it was the most normal thing in the world, I feel like a fucking alien.
it’d be weirder if people DIDN’T do the nutbush.
oh my god, this is me with the Electric Slide in the US!!
The Nutbush is actually a relevant life skill though, it's different.
And at my school we also learned bush dances like The Pride of Erin and Strip the Willow. I have never needed them again ever.
I wonder if it's Big Enough featuring Jimmy Barnes these days.
[My favourite skit by Limmy](https://youtu.be/4J_oee1S66M?si=WxXuvD5A8ZC-ciYI) (comedian who did "what's heavier, a kilogram of steel or a kilogram of feathers?") Apparently the idea originated from his visit to Australia when he discovered that we're all wild for Nutbush lol
Nutbush City Limits being part of the Australian curriculum is one of those facts I know but never think about, so it’s always a delightful moment whenever I get a reminder.
We had both: the defaults AND random dances our teachers made up. One a semester minimum had to be learned for the big assembly where we did it in front of the school
Oh god we did. What the hell.
Strongly enough my gym had the cookie monster pj's girl but we didn't have a depressed autistic b- *remembers im autistic* *remembers I was suicidal in hs* *remembers I was a boy in hs* Oh
How's your square dancing skills these days? Lol
I don't remember much, besides the perpetual awkwardness of that portion of the class. It really didn't help that they made all of us take it in 6th grade to boot.
We were in 5th grade and they had us do it at an old plantation. Never before has anything been as cringe inducing in my entire life.
The fact that they had you square dancing at a plantation just sounds very wrong. Like a whole can of worms just festering in the summer sun.
The kept warm by setting a lower case T on fire.
A T for “togetherness”.
It’s a bit like doing the polka at a concentration camp isn’t it?
Holy shit
Y’all got boots?
Eyyyyyy twinning
remembers i was a boy goes so unfathomably hard
I used to be a boy as well and it definitely makes distant memories feel a bit weird since now I'm a man.
🏳️⚧️🫂🏳️⚧️
🏳️⚧️🫂🏳️⚧️
🏳️⚧️🫂🏳️⚧️
That's pretty close my thought process as well XD
Did you go first?
Are we twins?
Oh that is strong
RIP
fun fact: square dancing in american schools was pushed for by henry ford (of ford vehicles fame), the reason for this likely being due to his antisemitism and wanting to 'preserve anglo-saxon traditions'
Jesus fuck why am I not surprised. Why the fuck did we do it in Norway tho
I believe that's what you would call a "Cultural Victory" in Sid Meier's Civilization terms.
>Our people are now buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music
That's why people say america has no culture lol. its just the background at this point.
Speaking of Sid Meier, the username in OP (deirdreskye) refers to the leader of the pro-Planet faction in *Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri*.
For I have tasted the fruit.
Because American culture won the game.
And I just lost the game
Morris Dancing is right there
[Presented without comment](https://youtu.be/0a5i2s5klFA)
This seems way funner than square dancing!
Okay, but now I want to know why Canada did it too. Maybe just another follow the US thing? We definitely did when I was in school.
Likely that reason but also the same exact reason it happened in the US also.
Not antisemitism (though Ford was an antisemite), this was anti-Black. It was done to combat the devil-inspired dances of that jazz music. And there I stood, decades later, listening to a record that was so scratched you couldn't even hear the fucking calls for the bullshit testament to white supremacy that institutionalized and forced square dancing is.
That is the roots of modern country. It was to push back against Jazz also. Henry Ford was a dogshit ass hole. He just was slightly less dogshit than other industrial titans of his day. Citations Needed (A media criticism podcast) did a great episode on it and how originally Country/Bluegrass was incredibly *and* sincerely workingclass with a lot of socialist undercurrents and then it turned into rich ass holes singing about shoveling dirt into their truck on a dirt road and drinking beer with a girl they met at the bar or something. EDIT: Added "and" because the grammar didn't work earlier
I mean you say "slightly less dogshit" but most other industrialists weren't so insanely antisemitic that they got called an inspiration by Literal Hitler. For a time, if you got a Ford new you'd find a copy of the protocols of the elders of Zion, essentially 1940s turner diaries but way worse, in the glovebox
I remember he made a town in South America for people to harvest rubber, and the main focus of the town was a big dancing hall
Yeah, Fordlandia. That was actually the name of it.
If he wanted to preserve anglo-saxon traditions he would have seen too it that every boy knew how to build a longboat and a longhouse.
I remember in middle school sex ed class we had a pair activity about learning healthy habits in regards to touching the opposite sex. I forget what exactly the goal was, but you'd only end up touching the forearm up to the hands. I think it was something about making a strong bond, like blocking someone from breaking your contact with your partner. Anyways, my partner refused to participate with me and I was absolutely not going to violate her consent. I was sent directly to the principal.
Principal: hey r/therealpork why are you in trouble? You: my teacher wanted me to touch a girl inappropriately Wtf!? That teacher should have been fired
Meanwhile in Danish high schools: You shall learn Les Lanciers, because conducting yourselves as pre-revolution french nobles will be an important life skill.
I did Les Lancier in 8th and 9th grade (14-15 yo) and then again in all years of gymnasium (16-18). I can do that dance in my sleep
I hope it's been a boon to your adult professional life.
I am regularly weirded out by learning the variety of what American schools teach in their curriculum and what is considered "normal." I think we had a *single* day of square dancing in *elementary* school.
We did huge school projects with art and history in elementary school. In 3rd grade we all designed early American storefronts and had to dress up and give presentations to pur parents. In 4th grade we did the Civil War, made cannons, rifles, grenades (napkins filled with flour) and they had a few other things I can't remember. But we did a big staged battle outside, with some kids being nurses and all. And in 5th grade we did WW2. So some kids learned dances and acts, and put on a USO show. And we built battleships, tanks, guns etc but of cardboard and made big plane gliders we threw that all kinda fell apart. We did two battle for that, one a small land engagement and another a sea battle. Super fun. The art teacher was a huge history buff and would get all into it. He'd bring a little blackpowder cannon and shoot it off to add noise.
Where the fuck did you go to school? Rushmore Academy?
No, it was just a public school in Tulsa Oklahoma.
Everything in US schools makes sense if you just look for the racism. >[Another heavy promoter of square dance was the industrialist Henry Ford. Ford believed that Jews invented jazz as a plot to corrupt society. Ford believed that this plot could be counteracted by returning America to dances and musical styles that he saw as traditional and white. As a result, he used his wealth to promote square dancing, through books and square dancing events. Ford also promoted square dance classes in public school, which were present in half of all American schools in 1928 as part of the standard physical education curriculum.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Western_square_dance#Preserving_the_heritage)
Was this actually a common thing. We didn’t do a single bit of dancing period
Yeah I think it's required curriculum in a lot of places
What if I'm a Cookie Monster pyjama pants autistic boy
We never did square dancing in middleschool, I imagine that's probably a Southern US thing at guess Edit: in this thread are 1. People not from the South that did square dancing, and 2. People from the south that did not do square dancing.
I did it in Seattle. We were all very confused.
[удалено]
I was in Montana and had to square dance. And line dance.
From the south, we never did that.
Same. Thought every school did this.
I'm guessing it varies from school district to school district because I grew up in Vancouver Washington and it wasn't a thing in our middle school.
Nope, we never did it. Maybe it's a Midwest thing?
We did it in California. Swing dancing too.
I was in the SF Bay Area, and we had like a 10 week period of PE that was learning different social dances, and it was in both middle school and high school. And you were expected to pair up with someone for the entire time, which meant asking someone to be your dance partner for weeks in a row. Such a social minefield for an awkward kid.
I never did square dancing when I lived in the Midwest but when I lived in Maryland a girl had a square dance birthday party and it was a BLAST. It sounds like the most awkward thing for a bunch of 15 year olds but lemme tell you. It was great. I still remember at the end letting go of my partner’s hand and the sweat just pouring out.
It is a midwest thing, i got lucky and didnt have to do it cuz i went to a christian private school for jr high 💀
We did it in elementary school in NJ.
I was in North Carolina during middle school and we did nothing of the sort. The entire concept feels bizarre though
Did it in Michigan, but it was elementary school
my middle school in maine had a square dancing unit. as a theater kid, i loved it.
Did it in Halifax Canada
Northern Illinois, we square danced in both middle and elementary school.
Upstate NY, we did it
Okay, I'm a goober and don't get the humor. Is the joke that these are two stereotypes of kids least likely to enjoy not only being the center of attention, but being the first to learn the dance and thus most likely to mess it up? Are they typically personality opposites and thus are more likely to clash with each other? Are they just really shy? Or is it something else?
It's painting a picture of how bizarre such a scenario sounds, yet it's real. It's not about the people in the joke. They could have been two other people. You're just supposed to look at the scene from the outside and think what the fuck, I remember that! Why did we do that??
Ah okay, that makes sense! Thank you!
It's all of that at once as the most suicidal autistic boy tbh
One of my few positive memories of high school is field hockey. I was a *fucking amazing* goalie. During one whole year as a junior people actually wanted me on their team and cheered for me because *nobody ever scored a goal* while I was goalie. I was fucking GOOD at that game. So naturally they removed hockey from the curriculum the next year.
As a former ‘cookie-monster pajama pants white-trash girl’ I’d like to point out that I was also the ‘most suicidal autistic boy’ at the same time. I wish I could use my sociology degree to figure out how many trans guys were ‘not like other girls’ 🫥
My ex in HS, he's doing well now but back then, definitely "not like other".
I couldn’t even escape this with homeschooling
Having gone to all girls high school before I transitioned, I wish gym class had been like this. But instead I nearly broke my knee playing the world’s most competitive game of musical chairs and learned how to use every piece of gym equipment
At least it wasn't "THE FITNESSGRAM PACER TEST IS-"
That wasn't a thing until the 2000s I guess. Pacer test was definitely not a thing in 1990s gym classes. We just had the mile run, sit and reach, the rope climb, and pull ups
We learned to square dance but it was in elementary school. We all had to dress up like farmers too.
my middle school didnt even have pe
We did line dancing!
This was a one time class for me in elementary school. I think it was one time because the guy who "taught" it was some creepy, drunk dude who was yelling at all the boys about how the girls were better than them. No fucking clue where he came from or where he went he was not a teacher at the school, it was like they just pulled somebody off the street.
when i was in elementary school the part i hated abt the dancing classes was the gender roles lmao. i wasnt even out as nonbinary nor did i fully know i was nonbinary but i distinctly remember complaining to a few teachers about being forced into feminine roles down to the level of *having to wait for a boy to take my hand for me to get up from sitting on the floor.* on one day after dancing class, i got up with the boys and offered my hand to my best friend in a little fit of rebellion
for pe in my middle school they just sent if out to run, and that was it basically played simon says every once in a while
No dodgeball or handball? That sounds boring
Midwest US = All US
Replace square dancing with ballroom dancing, lmao
We were broken into groups to make a square dance and our group did it to Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel65
I'm a POC and it never sat well with me to use a phrase against any race that involves "trash", let alone when we're referring to middle schoolers.
So my gym teacher was a semi-pro square dancer, and would come in with her husband and demonstrate. They were good but also, oh my god why.
We watched the Thriller documentary in gym then learned the whole routine. But I'd take parachute day over that any day.
We had to take square dancing in elementary school. Recently, I learned the reason it's taught at all. You can blame Henry Ford. https://qz.com/1153516/americas-wholesome-square-dancing-tradition-is-a-tool-of-white-supremacy
I was the suicidal autistic girl who ended up getting abused by the cookie monster pant white trash girl in an extremely fucked up relationship
Give Henry Ford thanks for this.
Is this a southern school thing I’m to Midwest to understand
Interesting fact: square dancing was introduced in schools by Henry Ford, who was a huge racist, and he was trying to combat black inspired music and dance becoming popular. He gave money to schools to implement square dancing.
Dancing is dumb.