75 School Things That Quietly Disappeared Over The Years (New Pics)

For those of us well into eye-cream territory, some of the objects on this list are instant reminders of our formative schooling years. You can almost hear the faint hum of the overhead lighting, feel those slightly sticky patchwork linoleum tiles, and even smell those pencil shavings (please tell me I wasn’t the only one obsessed with cranking the sharpener until every pencil had the perfect point).

But as nostalgic as these kinds of classroom relics are, they tell only part of the story. Because, as some of the vintage school photos on this list highlight, it wasn’t just the equipment that changed. School policies, safety measures, technology, and even cafeteria menus have evolved dramatically over the decades, often in response to new research, shifting social attitudes, or major historical events.

Naturally, what students are taught has changed too. Along with the double space after periods and—apparently—even cursive, schools have quietly left behind plenty of “facts” many of us once thought were set in stone. Some have been debunked outright, while others have simply turned out to be far more nuanced than we were led to believe.

And it’s hardly surprising, really. After all, teaching complex topics to children often means simplifying them. But as James W. Loewen shows in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, those simplified lessons can sometimes become misconceptions that persist for generations.

I’ll leave the history to Loewen and instead point to a famous example everyone knows by now: Pluto’s demotion to dwarf planet status—throwing a temporary wrench into the classic mnemonic “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.” (Now the wise woman serves Nachos, apparently.)

Pluto is hardly alone. Other popular classroom “facts” that have been revised over the years include the fact that George Washington didn’t have wooden teeth, that there are more than three states of matter, and that chameleons don’t, in fact, change color to hide themselves as much as to regulate their temperature and communicate.

It’s not just old facts getting revised, though. Entirely new subjects have entered the curriculum—ones that would have sounded like science fiction to earlier generations.

Coding has become commonplace in many schools. Environmental education now extends far beyond simple lessons about recycling, while social-emotional learning (SEL) encourages students to develop skills like emotional regulation, empathy, and conflict resolution alongside more traditional subjects.

The shift is easy to see in the numbers. By 2023, nearly 60% of U.S. high schools offered computer science courses. SEL has also become increasingly common, with 83% of schools reporting some form of SEL curriculum during the 2023-24 school year. Climate science, meanwhile, continues to gain support among educators, even as curriculum requirements vary by state.

In other words, today’s classrooms aren’t just correcting yesterday’s mistakes—they’re preparing students for a world many of their parents couldn’t have imagined while they were busy memorizing their home phone number.

With AI, online databases, and more information than ever right at our fingertips, it’s easy to laugh at library cards, TV carts, and bulky encyclopedia sets. But today’s classrooms won’t stay frozen in time either. And one day, eye cream in hand, today’s students will probably tell younger generations about the interactive whiteboards and Chromebooks of “their day” in the same way some of us talk about pull-down maps and chalk dust. The classroom is always changing—it’s just easier to notice in hindsight.