Last edited by captainpreppy (2008-11-30 11:48:58)
I will forever view my own memories of my rather spartan existence attending a Catholic school in a slightly rosier lens after reading your account above! One thing that was always drilled into us at this place was the importance of a clean and polished appearance. I almost broke many of their hearts years later when I convinced my parents to send me to a public high school, and started to express myself! Many of the nuns were patient beyond belief, in contrast to the old stereotypes of rulers across the knuckles.. It was here that I learned there was no such thing as a short sleeved dress shirt..
I too went to a boarding school from hell, where I did my best to survive for three years. It was less the other students who dealt out the cruelty than the staff. The school has since closed "amid allegations of psychological and sexual abuse." The group of religious looneys that ran the school has been classified by the US government as a cult. The end was too long in coming and many suffered far more than I did. It was my step-father's bright idea to send me there, and I hope that even if he's in heaven now, the flames of hell lick at his ass every time I think about that place and how much better my life might have been had I never set foot there.
As for taunting others about clothes, I was possibly the worst offender.
Care to tell us what the cult was?
In my case, the students were incomparably more cruel than the staff. The staff turned a blind eye to it. I think the former headmaster had quite liked the brutality, the headmaster while I was there was trying to curb it. The year after I left, they banned corporal punishment altogether after the First Prefect whipped a little Quaker boy until he bled. The matter ended with the First Prefect having a row with the headmaster and leaving the school. The retired headmaster, the founder of the school, wrote him a letter of support.
The erstwhile First Prefect was one of my closest friends for many years although we have drifted apart in recent years. Another friend, no fan of the First Prefect, said the little Quaker boy had it coming in spades. He screamed and cried like a baby as he was beaten, which was considered very contemptible under the code of conduct regnant among the boys in my day.
The wife of the First Prefect, many years later, said she would not have married him had she known of these "tales of sadism" that I related about him.
Last edited by captainpreppy (2008-11-30 19:52:51)
Corporal punishment was still in when l went to school. Blokes were belted with the strap everyday. l used to laugh when the teachers would say: "you've been very naughty young man. Now get my strap out of my briefcase, i'm going to smack you". lt's a pity the strap got banned from the school....boys can be hard to control at school without it.
l still look upon my school days very very fondly, it was the perfect school for me and i'm very proud to having been sent there. My school was like a club, if you went there you were `in the club' and it's traditional for old school members to visit the school on occasions. Lots of good disapline and good academic values ruled the roost.
Last edited by The_Shooman (2008-11-30 20:35:35)
Last edited by Voltaire's Love Child (2008-11-30 20:38:51)
Last edited by The_Shooman (2008-11-30 21:53:38)
The cane was common when I was at school.
It was amazing the variety of colours of bruising produced - as could be seen in the showers after PE.
Punishment for clothing failings was administered too. If your plimsolls were not sufficiently white you were liable to get a few belts with a gym shoe. As a consequence, boys were usually applying white gloop to their shoes just before the lesson started. I never got caned for giving the wrong answers though like pupils in other classes. We did, of course, receive the occasional Nazi-style caning of the whole class when an individual culprit failed to confess.
Biggest punishment was expulsion. Our school was very good academically.
Last edited by eg (2008-12-02 09:06:20)
Amid this discussion of "schools from hell," I didn't want to give the impression that I disliked my school. Quite the contrary: it was located so that I could go hiking, quail hunting or target shooting with ease. I liked the rugged, hearty masculine ambience without the distracting, tormenting presence of girls, the camaraderie, the community of a shared suffering, etc. A number of the friendships I formed there endure to this day.
The school has very much changed. As I mentioned, they abolished beatings shortly after I left. The winds of change swept over it in the '60s and '70s, and it is radically different from what it was in my era. They began admitting girls and large numbers of non-whites. (The only non-Aryans in my day were two Jewish boys and a Turk; one of the Jews and the Turk were widely hated, not for ethnicity but for general obnoxiousness; the other Jewish boy was deemed innocuous and not bothered. He came to a sad end. He had a beautiful Guatemalan wife who left him, whereupon he went gay and died of AIDS.) The whole ethos of the school changed and is now, from what I hear, sort of retro-hippie and ultra-eco-sensitive. I am told a large percentage of the girl students are of the lesbian persuasion, which no doubt further enhances diversity.
Geez, thanks guys, all this freaky Jim Jones/Moonies shit really derailed this thread in a hurry..
On another note, has anyone noticed a change in the tone of Snoozer's posts these days?
Scratch that, he's just posted again in the very same thread, this time about his recollections of life in the 1950s..
Cruiser's persona - his ersatz egalitarianism - is carefully crafted to allow him the maximum amount of indignation.