When I was a young boy I spent my days in school rather than doing the things I really wanted to do (riding my bike, playing football). I remember our classrooms were very basic and, if they were decorated at all, had posters supplied by book manufacturers pinned to the walls.

We had wooden desks that had lids we could lift up and inside the desk we kept our pens, books, PE kits, and collectable cards. During periods of boredom we chatted, passed notes and tried to trade our cards without getting caught.

There was always a kid who wasn’t interested in anything the teacher said or did and who hated being in school. He, for generally it was a boy (at least it was when I was a lad), would while away the hours by flicking small pieces of wet paper at people, spitting on the end of his ruler and flicking it to see how far it would go and picking his nose.

As I write this I can see a procession of spotty faces in my mind’s eye – it’s all the kids who behaved this way lesson after lesson, day after day, trying their best to disrupt the class any way they could; trying to recruit those on the border of wanting to learn and wanting to cause trouble.

Looking back at my school days, and knowing what I know now about people learning in different ways and illnesses such as ADHD, I feel sorry for the kids who were disruptive. I think a lot of them almost certainly had some kind of attention deficit disorder.

Back then they were quickly placed into special classes for kids’ who may not learn quite as quickly or easily. This did little to help them with their schooling and education.

These days, in the modern classroom and through the use of visualisers and interactive projectors, there are many more ways to learn. Practical lessons are more common place than ever; I remember my classmates and I whooping for joy when we got to do something other than listen to the teacher dictating and writing on the blackboard as we frantically scribbled down notes.

I wonder what my schooldays would have been like if we had the tools and equipment available to today’s students? No doubt there would still have been troublemakers, but I often wonder if some of the really bad kids I knew who became drug addicts and criminals would have turned out differently if they had come to school and enjoyed the lessons delivered by teachers who no doubt wanted to fully educate the next generation.

For the unlucky kids from my generation I guess it’s too late, but I’m sure the kids of the current generation are benefiting from the new developments in interactive learning and the developments in recognizing learning disorders much earlier than they ever used too.

JP UK provides a range of educational IT supplies such as projector lamps and digital projectors.