Quick Look at my former HS and middle school via satellite imagery still shows the temp buildings exactly where they were when I was there. Looks like new roofing on them though. So 35 + years? And they were there for years before I attended.

My middle school had an entire wing built from these things. There was even an enclosed hallway with a carpeted plywood floor, and doors directly into the dozens of “temporary” rooms.

I didn’t realize it was such a trend. Somebody must have really been pushing those things for school districts that weren’t rich enough to just throw up a building.

Aka: My 6th grade classroom.

We had a couple trailers for lunch while they built the cafeteria.

They did get it done while I was there though.

Hell the house I live in was also made to be temporary, for factory workers almos 100 years ago

Walking through the snow in the Canadian winter from your warm school hallway to the portable for that one class was always torture.

I thought these were temporary in that they last several decades, not several years. Permanent school buildings are intended for several generations.

My school had the library in a portable unit like that. The thing was ancient, and had barely any insulation and a leaky roof. In the winter months you could see your breath while reading a slightly damp feeling book.

It was eventually demolished, it was too unsound to be portable enough to move any more.

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.

Fun fact: you don't need a DA for these*, so they are a hell of a lot cheaper to install. *Subject to jurisdiction

You know something's afoot when those are signicantly better than the regular buildings.

That happened when the school refused a number of students. The local politicians didn't like that and said the school was not allowed to refuse students anymore. When summer vacation came there were a few dozen more students signed in than they're were chairs in the school. The politicians had no choice but to do some expensive cabin building before school opened for the next year. After that, refusing new students was allowed.

These are incredibly useful. In Iceland we have mobile classrooms that can be moved by truck. If you need only one or two classrooms then these do the job but as soon as you get to 5 it justifies building a new wing of 10 classrooms. Incrementally building 1-2 classrooms is not the best use of public money.

Ah, Latin class.

The most permanent solution is always a temporary solution

we called them demountables.

they where never demounted.

Needs more jpeg

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.

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.

They're still up at my school I believe

It just makes me happy that the ramp is compliant with regulations. I’ve seen some pretty shitty ramps.

I was taught grade 4 in one of those