School Dentist experiences

Does anyone remember the school dentist?

Here in uk once a year the school dentist would arrive , we would be lined up and one by one sat down with our heads tilted back , told to open wide while the whole queue of kids watched the dentist pull your mouth around and shout out numbers.

If you were unlucky you would get a note to take home and an apt was scheduled in a mobile until parked on school grounds.

the same tools used for each child in the queue , just dipped in a solution between each check up .

I remember the dentist telling me to open wider , and announcing i had a large cavity at the back , everyone could hear. he told me i needed fillings and i felt chastised .

A week later the nurse arrived at the classroom door to collect those who needed treatment , then walked them to the makeshift surgery .

i remember her coming for a boy and almost enjoying telling him it was time for his fillings .

the surgery was basic , and the dentist was very strict , the chair went back very far and anyone waiting in the waiting area could see and hear most of the apt , i remember him stretching my mouth wide to get to my upper back tooth , feeling helpless as the drill whizzed , knowing it could be heard from the outside .

then leaving with big silver filling back to class

no idea if they still do this .

what’s your experience ?

In the US in 1970s and 1980s I have no memory of a school dentist

We had no school dentist when I grew up.

Part of me is glad about that. I'm already a bit scared of being in the chair myself and a school dentist probably wouldn't have helped with that.

But I also think it could have been a neat experience. Even back then I was already interested in dentistry and sneaking peeks at my classmates' teeth. I remember one girl in particular who once showed me her multiple amalgam fillings, I sure wouldn't have minded seeing her in the chair!

I don't remember there being specifically a school dentist, but I do remember a dentist coming in to check everyone's teeth. Everyone got in a line, went into the hall and one-by-one, we sat in front of the dentist and they checked our teeth. I had already been told I needed braces, so when that dentist said the same, I wasn't exactly surprised.

I can't remember any dental experiences done by the school. Not in the US nor in Belgium (1950s-1960s).

Not that it would have mattered, since my parents had me in the dentists chair often enough on their own.

Never had anything like this, but it does sound interesting - the kind of thing that would have been traumatic at the time, but exciting to remember.

I would have felt very self-conscious about having my dental condition broadcast for all to hear, but at the same time I would have been very interested to hear about others!

Never heard of a school dentist. This is a first for me.

We had a dentist come to School a few times up to age 11 and if you needed anything doing they would give you a note to take home to attend the local clinic, not a pleasant experience I understated. I was excused because I had my own dentist.

Never heard of a school dentist. This is a first for me.

I vaguely remember one at a catholic school I attended in the US in the 1950s. He was not a school dentist attached to the school, but from a travelling dentists examination going from school to school.

Like most things in catholic schools at the time, the nuns managed to turn it into a guilt trip and make us young kids feel we did something wrong, simply by having a dentist look at, our no doubt inadequate, set of teeth. It seems that no matter what went on in those places, nuns were always perpetually pissed off at kids for some reason or another.

I am in the United States and entered Kindergarten in 1967. In all that time, never heard about a school dentist. The nurses office in my school did have an old style dental chair like this one at https://live.staticflickr.com/8358/8407047331_9a973185b7_w.jpg but it was just the chair without the accompanying instrument unit. Never saw it used for anything and one day it was gone with only dirt ring on the floor remaining where it had been (I used to visit the nurse every day to take a pill at noon so I noticed when it disappeared).

The Dentist used to give you a note for your parents saying you would need to have gas.

I can still remember it well. We all had to wait dutifully in a row. The dentist very rudely checked the teeth and dictated something. In the end it was "naturally healthy", "restored" or "in need of restoration".

Those without need of treatment got a white slip, those where caries was found got a yellow slip that had to be signed by the parents.

Those who got a yellow slip had to endure the ridicule of their classmates.

I was usually lucky that nothing was found. Once something was found. I was very embarrassed. But even worse was that an unpleasant visit to the dentist awaited you. My dentist at that time was merciless with the drill.

Here is a nice video, which brings back memories. The poor thing has 9 cavities. She does not yet know what to expect at her next visit to the dentist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYKGY4pK0Tk&t=730s

There was a dental room with chair etc in my school health office and a quick look at your teeth was part of all the mandatory school physicals. So, was done on the same day as your school medical exam.

I have only one similar experience when I was about 12 years old. We were walking in single file to have a dental check-up. There was no dental chair and the dentist used a dental mirror to check our teeth. Hopefully, mirrors were changed between patients. The dentist filled a form to take home. In my case, it was written that I needed to consult a dentist to remove a temporary tooth.

I can remember this quite well it happened yearly in primary school on the day the dentist would examine every child in the school we were all sent to the office as a class line up outside and one by one would go and have our teeth checked nothing ever really came from the check ups all they did was look into your mouth with a dental mirror and that was it they then would write a few notes on some form and the exam was over and you went back to class not sure if they still do this now

As a child, I lived in the countryside and went to a small school with about 20 pupils. Once a year, we were taken together by bus to visit the school dentist in the nearest town. In the vestibule of the practice, there was a basket of disposable plastic shoe covers we had to put on our shoes before entering the waiting room with a strong smell of steriliser. Then, we were called to the treatment room in alphabetical order, and I remember how the feeling of anxiety was growing as my turn was approaching.

The first visit was always just for a check-up, and the unlucky ones with cavities had to come back for treatment at a later date. Our teacher gave the appointment cards in the bus on our way back, so everyone knew who had cavities and who didn’t, adding an element of humiliation to every such trip. Everyone also got a note of the findings to bring back to the parents, but it was handed by the dentist directly.

Usually, I didn’t have any cavities, but in the age of 11, it was eventually my turn to face the drill. I knew in advance that I might have a cavity as one of my molars felt a bit sensitive to cold, so I was even more anxious than usual in the waiting room. While I was on the chair, the dentist charted and the explorer approached the sensitive tooth, and the closer it got, the more nervous I felt. I recall the dentist scraped the tooth, saying something like “number 36 has caries on the occlusal surface”, and although I didn’t know exactly what it meant, I understood immediately that it was my time to have a drilling appointment scheduled.

A few weeks later, I was back for treatment. In those days, school dentists didn’t use numbing for simple fillings, so the drilling started straight away, inflicting a sudden sharp pain. As the drilling went on, the pain got intermittent and less intense but still lasting for the whole process. However, the humiliation of losing my clean record of no fillings felt much worse than the pain. I got a small amalgam filling as a permanent memory of that encounter, and I still have it today, almost 40 years later.

The school nurse would do an exam every year but otherwise no dental work done at school. I remember my parents taking me out of school early to go to the real dentist office on many occasions though