Yeah, we called them “Portables.” They were there long before I came, and will be there long after I am dead. Long live our plywood fortresses.
For me it was containers like these:
Long live our tin fortresses
At least you had windows. My kids are in a pretty new school building, but most of the classrooms are located in the middle of the building without windows and natural light. Seems like another one of those “only in America” things.
Yeah the “middle” was the school yard surrounded by narrow buildings
My school had several holes in the middle of the building to avoid this. Most of them just have gravel at the bottom
I’m sad to report it’s very much not limited to America. My local university had these things pop up to some considerable height because one of the buildings was condemned due to mold. Condemned about three years ago and is still standing. There’s also a number of schools using these things because they burned down or got condemned or whatever, I’m not entirely sure. At least one of those has been going two years longer than it was supposed to.
Oh, I’m not talking about these “temporary” container-like structures. I’m talking about newly built permanent school buildings that have no windows in the classrooms. I’ve never seen that outside the US.
I would guess that it depends on health regulations. For instance, in some (most?) countries it’s illegal to have a hotel room without a window and I presume, the same is applied to school rooms.
Makes me wonder if there are school rooms without windows in China, where you are allowed to build hotels without windows 🤔
What’s with the cable at the top between sections?
Not only at the top, there’s also cables at the bottom between sections and what looks like a cable duct mounted in front of it with a bunch of cables coming out at the top
The cable duct looks like ac lines, and the yellow cables at the bottom are probably grounding
Grounding, to make sure the containers stay at the same electric potential
Demountables for us
Did you go to Summer Heights High?
Not far off
I’m pretty sure ours was asbestos… back in the 80s.
Portables
Yup, that’s what I was told they were called.
I’m pretty sure ours are still there 23 years later.
I was searching the thread to see if everyone called them that or if it was regional.
I remember showing up for tenth grade, looking at the list of assigned classrooms in the first day of the school year. Instead of the usual the digit number, it said “C1”. My classmates showed up, and we’re just as confused as I was.
The C turned out to be short for “container”, which we found in a corner of the school grounds.
That said, being able to quickly go outside in every break was pretty neat. And the school actually did get a second building only a few years later.
Walking through the snow in the Canadian winter from your warm school hallway to the portable for that one class was always torture.
I went to school in Aurora in the 90s but didn’t have to suffer any of these containers. Moved to Virginia and had a bunch of classes in them
Welcome to government funding.
School District: we need a new school
Enrollment: 4200
Government: Awesome, here’s $4.2 million, go build the 4200 student school.
SD: Uhh, won’t that take a few years? Should we add some buffer space to the plan?
Government: ehh, naah
Spongebob 3 years later: Welcome to Springfield High School!
Enrollment: 6900
Springfield: see, gooberment, we needed more classrooms!
Gooberment: heh, would you look at that. Lol. Well, use your budget to build some portables.
SD: Us? Why don’t you pay!?!?
Gooberment: Oh, haha, yeah, that’s an operating expense. We only fund capital projects! Don’t worry, give us a plan to expand and we can fund you in 10 years
10 years later: Ok gooberment, our numbers say we need 15 classrooms. But for the expansion, we should do 25 for future proofing
Gooberment: Oh, but you only need 15 now? Yeah here’s money for 15
2 years later: Here’s 15 classrooms!
SD: We need 25…
Gooberment: Oh, yeah, get some portables and talk to us in a few years!
Rinse and repeat
was really confused how spongebob fit into this story for awhile
Happened to me except the plan was the school to expand the number of grades in the school year after year to prevent pulling kids out of their current schools
And they built it to be at capacity day 1
For anyone interested: This meme has been posted by bots to a Reddit community I was active in back then very often.
A bot would mirror these Reddit posts in a Discord server and because this exact meme has been posted there so often, it became an insider at some point, with various people always posting this meme again (because that was itself funny).That’s why I can’t take this meme seriously at all.
Why the hell are you taking a meme seriously in the first place. You see it, laugh if it resonates and move on.
laugh if it resonates
That’s what I mean with taking it seriously. You see it and its contents genuinely as the joke it displays.
In our group, it just became a meta-level-joke because we’ve seen it so often by spam bots and the joke was to re-post it as the newest most original joke one has ever thought of (but without it mattering what’s actually on the image); and that was funny.
But reposts trigger me beyond belief! I feel bad downloading them even though we’re on a completely different platform. I can’t control my emotions though so I just had to justify my feelings to everyone otherwise I’d feel bad.
Geez, what are you talking about? I just wanted to share a fun story I remembered when seeing this image.
It just felt a bit sad and jaded like someone needed to get off internet for a bit but is still addicted lol.
It does give off serious REPOST vibes but… Longer lol.
That sucks man. Hopefully you’ll stop caring one day.
Thank you for well wishes. I’m tormented by reposts nearly as bad as incels are tormented by PizzaCakeComics.
I’m online quite a bit, so really surprised I haven’t seen this one before
So the meme itself is as moldy as the portables? Fitting.
In our town, one of the schools was just built 5 years ago. They built it without classrooms. Not a single one. They had a gym, common areas, admin offices, IT infrastructure (office with a server room became the councillors office and the IT guy needs to ask permission to use it lol), bathrooms and library. They designed it so it could be made entirely with portables. From the onset.
They designed it so it could be made entirely with portables.
wtf…
Right? To be fair, they used some of the nicest portables I’ve ever seen. Two portables to a class, windows, a semi permanent foundation, plumbing, HVAC hookup, networking, the works. I had to install WAPs in the drop tile, and it was not the worst thing I’ve had to do there.
swanky!
My charter school operated similarly to this. In a sense it’s kinda smart on dwindling budgets. If the portables are decent enough it allows the school to rearrange or expand without massive construction/demolition costs.
In the end most classrooms don’t need a whole lot, right?
Speculation, of course. Just for once I hope there’s not some evil cynical reason behind the way things are done lol .
Hell the house I live in was also made to be temporary, for factory workers almos 100 years ago
You’re temporary.
Sometimes when I consider how literally everything is temporary, it does help me set my priorities and let go of some things.
Yeah a kind of positive nihilism. I’ve used that too. I’ve since learned that this kind of “big picture-ing” (just keep zooming perspective out until problem goes away) is a coping mechanism sometimes referred to as “intellectualising.”
That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it is a way cope by putting some emotional distance between you and a problem, which can sometimes–what am doing… this is the shit posting community right? My apologies lol
I have actually used the term “positive nihilism” before, lol.
It is very freeing to consider that meaning, value, happiness, and what you “should” do with your life - the right answers come only from within. Finding those answers is easier said than done, and you have to un-learn the expectations you think live has for you. (Insert Yoda quote)
Super easy personal example: I’m an engineer with a bunch of degrees. Covid caused some job changes and pain, but right now I am just over a year into the best job I’ve ever had. But even though work is great, I realized that my career does not matter for shit when it comes to my happiness. Having an infinite growth mindset in one’s career might make your money numbers go up faster, but for MY brain the overall experience of life would be diminished.
I totally agree right down to your example (I’m a software dev). The pandemic was very good to us. I never thought I would have this kind of financial stability. It’s kind of led me to an anti-hustle mindset.
Now I’m taking jobs that let me work less, even though I know I could earn a lot more if I really put my back into it. It’s just not worth it, though.
I’ve only got N years to smell the roses, may as make em good ones.
Funny enough, that current best job of mine is as a software engineer, replacing the amalgam of electronics, software, automation, quality, etc that came before. Intentional choice of course.
Fortunately there are many entertaining and enriching things you can do with adequate time and just a little extra money. Leaving yourself with more money but little time is going to make it tough to improve on what you already had.
Plus even if working less, the working hours are a significant part of your life. Is it really worth 1/3 of your life being more stressful/boring/unfulfilling just so that you get to drive a Mercedes to that shitty place?
I wish all the plastic shit I’ll leave behind me for thousands of years would be more temporary too 😩
Neighborhoods go through booms and busts of school age kids. These are actually a great solution to get through the boom, then you move them to the next booming neighborhood. Though the schools should be designed so they butt up against the main building and you can go down a hallway into them.
One school I went to has like a third the school with them, but they were down a hallway connected to the school. I didn’t even realize they were portables until years later.
Does anybody remember the way the floors had a springiness to them and how they squeaked and creaked as you walked across them?
How about the mental kind of threshold-looking strip in the middle of the floor from wall to wall where I believe they had connected two halves together, if I recall?
I remember that. Along with the distinct smell they all had, the scent of whatever the portable materials were used.
And because of the compact size, all the sound has this sort of reverb to it. It’s not really an echo, just an elevated hum of busy noise, with only the higher pitched ticking current going through the fluorescents.
And how that size also affected the lighting. Somehow even with the florescents it all was oddly sepia toned, no doubt because the only colors on the inside were white, grey, tan, and beige…
The most permanent solution is always a temporary solution
I remember they had air conditioning when the rest of the school didn’t.
Ours didn’t (in the 1980s). They were hot in summer
My school in the 80’s only had AC in the main office.
Didn’t yall call them “portables”? At one of my first public schools, they had a big long installation called a “portapac”.
Might be a Canadian thing judging from some of the comments.
Here in socal we called them portables.
NorCal as well
Same in NM
And my Tex!
In the south east we called them trailers.
Yar
My elementary school in Utah, we also called them portables. Ah the memories!
It just makes me happy that the ramp is compliant with regulations. I’ve seen some pretty shitty ramps.
Removed by mod
We called them portables.
