Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

One can, however, by examining the mental state of a boy a week after he has left school, form some estimate of what he has learnt at such considerable expense to his parents.

In the first place, he has acquired an extremely valuable social technique. A public school education is a passport. Its assailants would describe it as the membership of a select trades union. An old public school boy can enter a new mess without feeling any great embarrassment. He knows how to comport himself in the more superficial of the situations in which he will from time to time discover himself. All of which is distinctly valuable.

He has also learnt to understand the type of man with whom he will have most dealing. He is admitted, that is to say, to terms of good fellowship with a very large number of persons. He will be treated by them as a decent chap till he proves himself otherwise. He will have enough in common with them to be able to bridge superficially the uncertain moments that precede friendship. If he were introduced to a man at his club, he would have no difficulty in finding a congenial topic of conversation, during which conversation he would be able to decide whether or not the man to whom he had been introduced was likely to prove a sympathetic companion.

He would have learnt, through the exercise of these qualities in a communal life, patience and tolerance of a certain kind. A tolerance, that is to say, that might condemn a man on the cut of his coat, the colour of his ties, or the use of an incorrect idiom, but would allow each man to lead his own private life provided he wore the conventional uniform. Such a tolerance may be described as snobbish and narrow, but is an admirable social lubricant. An old public school boy would be unlikely, for instance, to cause trouble to a mess or company or cricket club by injudicious interference. He will have learnt that it is not easy for an assorted collection of men to live together without occasionally getting on each other's nerves, and he will have learnt, in consequence, the value of tact and compromise.

He will also have learnt a version of his duty towards his neighbours. He would not tell a lie to a friend unless it was absolutely necessary, and he would never let a friend down. He has the sense of loyalty developed to a high degree. All of which goes down on the credit side of the ledger. On the debit side, however, there are enough entries to make the cashier wonder whether, or no, the account is overdrawn.

It is amazing how little knowledge the average public school boy has managed to acquire. He has rushed from one class room to another, learning French for one hour, and history for another, and science for a third. He has worked at each of these subjects spasmodically according to the particular form and set in which he has happened at the time to find himself. For a whole year on end he may have neglected French because he was under a lazy master. Then, at the end of the year, on finding himself in a higher and more strenuous form, he may have made feverish efforts for a couple of terms, to the detriment of his mathematics and history, with the result that there is an enormous gap in his knowledge. Whole periods of history are a blank to him. He has acquired a certain quantity of uncorrelated information. Within a few years what little connection there was between the appreciation of these isolated facts will have slipped away. There will remain a few phrases, a few catchwords, a few dates—an admirable framework indeed for social, moral, and political prejudice.

The average public school boy knows, I imagine, a great deal less than the continental school product. Not only has he learnt little, but he has not been encouraged to use his brains. He does not, indeed, regard his brain as a possession to be valued highly and carefully trained. He will get out of bed five minutes earlier than he need do in the morning to wave his legs about his head and do exercises with his arms that will improve his physical condition, but he would never think of learning a dozen lines of English verse to improve his memory. No one ever appears to have impressed on him the fact that at thirty-five he will have to abandon football; that, by the time he is fifty, he will be bowling very slow stuff indeed, and will be grateful to the opposing captain who offers him a runner. Yet, at sixty, his brain will, if properly cared for, be as powerful as it has ever been.

Now I do not want to suggest that boys should devote their whole spare time to the reading of poetry; literature is only a part of life; but I do maintain that every public school boy should take some part in the intellectual life of the world, that he should be able to discover as much interest in his mind as in his body. At present he does not. He has very little inner life. He depends far too much on outside interests, on games during the term, and theatres during the holidays. If he has to rely on his own devices, he is woefully deficient.

This fact was brought home to me vividly by my experience as a prisoner of war in Germany. The average officer had no resources of his own; he could draw no sustenance from the contemplative side of life. He mooned round the square, wondering how soon he could decently set about his next meal, longing sadly for the lights of Piccadilly. In the evenings, when he had to return to his room, he spent the three or four hours before lights were extinguished engraving rather aimless pictures on the lids of cigar boxes. It was a pathetic sight to see a man of twenty-eight, in the prime of life, sitting down night after night to fiddle about with a knife, a piece of wood, and a box of paints. He derived no pleasure from it. It was a narcotic. As long as his hands were employed his brain could go to sleep, and he needed to contemplate no longer the tedious procession of days that lay before him. Every man should have sufficient part in the intellectual interests of life to be able to keep his intelligence active for eight months in surroundings that provide no physical outlets.

The public school boy has derived little satisfaction from his work. He has laboured spasmodically with expediency as the goal. Promotion has promised certain attendant privileges, and the historical Sixth lies, calm and pleasant, like a lake in the desert.