Guess The Item 🤔

Top Contributors
Yes, magnifying glass. Need it about once a week for something or other.
I missed your school query for some reason; apologies. I was luckier than you in that we migrated here just before I was due to be precipitated into "King's, Canterbury" which was the traditional family path. So I just had 6 years in a Northamptonshire 'prep" school, 4 and a half as a boarder. With the students being young, the level of staff savagery and peculiar vices was very low. To confirm a sterotype, the most feared master actually was the Latin teacher. I didn't know that there were schools here that did the whole (12?) year package. It does not sound like a good idea. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
You might enjoy reading "Galloping Foxley" by Roald Dahl.
Oh - one very English touch about my school, concerning the tiger skin. The stuffed head of it or another animal was mounted high in the main hallway, an an informal staff privilege was to flick dead matches into it's roaring mouth. Only the physics teacher could reliably do it.
 
Vince said:
I didn't know that there were schools here that did the whole (12?) year package. It does not sound like a good idea. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Click to expand...
Junior school was held on the school grounds, for senior we attended a local school. This was about the only normality to a proper childhood upbringing we had. The rest of my time was very rigid, regimental almost and savage with capital punishment served up often.
 
Ritchie said:
Junior school was held on the school grounds, for senior we attended a local school. This was about the only normality to a proper childhood upbringing we had. The rest of my time was very rigid, regimental almost and savage with capital punishment served up often.
Click to expand...

That must have been awful for you Craig.

My eldest brother went to a boarding school run by Christian cruel botherers and my sisters to another girls boarding school run by Nuns.
They all hated it! From ages 11 to 17.

My brother tells me one of the brothers kept picking on this big slow kid until the day the lad lost it and beat the bejesus out of the teacher. Nothing reported and the bully teacher modified his ways quickly.

Later my Dad regretted sending them to boarding Scruel and let myself and middle brother go to day schools in Belfast, with the Christian brothers of course. My Latin teacher could get violent at times, for the sake of our eternal souls.
Loquere duriter puero tuo, et cum sternuitat tundendo. Id solum carpit ut scit ludit.
Or in English:
Speak harshly to your child and beat it when it sneezes. It only does it to annoy as it knows it teases.

I even taught country boarders myself in Perth. They were housed elsewhere and were bused to my school to mix in with local kids. They were a different type of kid, ages 11 to 17 again, and rarely mixed in with the local students. Fruit fights were common. They were well behaved in classes, better than the local kids.
 
Grier said:
They all hated it! From ages 11 to 17.
Click to expand...
I know how they feel Terry. Were they caned on the bum only wearing underpants, I was, did they have to eat soup with weevils in it, I did, were they forbidden seeing their family because they had to polish the common room floors for what they termed a serious (more minor) misdemeanor, I was. I went there at 7 and left at 16. My entire childhood was spent there. The day I finally walked thru the gates of that hell hole was the happiest of my young life.

Then there were the schools unwed mothers were sent to in Ireland. I saw a doco and a feature film with this narrative. Shocking abuse at the hands of sadistic nuns.
 
Last edited:
Ritchie said:
forbidden seeing their family
Click to expand...
Christ on a Bike.
That's a characteristic of cults, even in moderation. I can imagine them carefully calculating how much of that parents would let them get away with. My headmaster was a reformer and a bit of an outsider: previously ran a big Christian school in Jerusalem, but I only learned that years later. I count myself extremely lucky to have had him.
It sounds like you had the full english breakfast. Cult, sadism and institutional framework.
We did have pretty bad food too (except Sunday dinner). I think all boarding schools did - supposed to prepare us for the battlefield or governing distant provinces, I think.
 
Ritchie said:
I know how they feel Terry. Were they caned on the bum only wearing underpants, I was, did they have to eat soup with weevils in it, I did, were they forbidden seeing their family because they had to polish the common room floors for what they termed a serious (more minor) misdemeanor, I was. I went there at 7 and left at 16. My entire childhood was spent there. The day I finally walked thru the gates of that hell hole was the happiest of my young life.

Then there were the schools unwed mothers were sent to in Ireland. I saw a doco and a feature film with this narrative. Shocking abuse at the hands of sadistic nuns.
Click to expand...
Each time you share an aspect of your schooling with us it makes me ponder over how certain opponents of the East German educational system might receive that since it simply would run completely counter to what they thought they knew about it. In their biased view such an experience, which you have had, couldn't possibly happen in a free and democratic system but should be confined to the communist one. Legions of self-appointed world clarifiers described it as the spawn of Satan to even think of having pre-school children follow the same daily routine between educational or physical activities in a daycare which included washing one's hands and joint potty training before the nap. That would lead to irreparable long-term damage of the young souls. The same people who said that turned a blind eye to wide-spread severe child abuse in church-controlled institutions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top