Ooh, I went to a Catholic high school that had anti China posters on the walls, too! And anti Soviet posters! Walking in the front door of that place felt like stepping back in time into the Cold War! The globe in the Social Studies room still had the USSR on it! (And you should have seen the elementary school’s combination gymnasium and lunchroom, there was a “flags of the world” display around the walls, countries in alphabetical order. I remember distinctly they still had a Soviet flag up, and they had both East and West Germany, I don’t recall about the rest of the Eastern Bloc.) I don’t know whether to blame outdated equipment and the dreadful state of education in North America, or some washed up Cold Warrior in either the school district or the Catholic diocese who was intentionally curating that stepping-through-time effect. Funnily enough, my mother had kept her old clothes from when she was a teenager all those years, and they fit teenage me, so at least I got to walk into that Cold War living history museum every day dressed the part. I remember a “student poll” posted on a bulletin board asking if we’d rather have to live in Communist China or the USSR for 10 years. Was a tough question for me, but not for the same reasons most of those teenagers struggled to answer that! I was definitely thinking “do I have to come back?” rather than “ten years of hell…” I also got called to the principal’s office and asked the infamous Communist Party question more than once. That was funny. I’m just glad there weren’t rumours of “being forever frozen in the tail end of the Cold War has finally caught up with us, an actual 80s Soviet sympathiser has somehow shown up! At least, she’s dressed like one!”
Ooh, I went to a Catholic high school that had anti China posters on the walls, too! And anti Soviet posters! Walking in the front door of that place felt like stepping back in time into the Cold War! The globe in the Social Studies room still had the USSR on it! (And you should have seen the elementary school’s combination gymnasium and lunchroom, there was a “flags of the world” display around the walls, countries in alphabetical order. I remember distinctly they still had a Soviet flag up, and they had both East and West Germany, I don’t recall about the rest of the Eastern Bloc.) I don’t know whether to blame outdated equipment and the dreadful state of education in North America, or some washed up Cold Warrior in either the school district or the Catholic diocese who was intentionally curating that stepping-through-time effect. Funnily enough, my mother had kept her old clothes from when she was a teenager all those years, and they fit teenage me, so at least I got to walk into that Cold War living history museum every day dressed the part. I remember a “student poll” posted on a bulletin board asking if we’d rather have to live in Communist China or the USSR for 10 years. Was a tough question for me, but not for the same reasons most of those teenagers struggled to answer that! I was definitely thinking “do I have to come back?” rather than “ten years of hell…” I also got called to the principal’s office and asked the infamous Communist Party question more than once. That was funny. I’m just glad there weren’t rumours of “being forever frozen in the tail end of the Cold War has finally caught up with us, an actual 80s Soviet sympathiser has somehow shown up! At least, she’s dressed like one!”