Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

It is all very jolly, and unless to-day one subscribes unfalteringly to this belief in a new world, one is called a reactionary and a materialist. The millennium, we are told, is round the corner. The finest intellects of thirty centuries may have failed to find it, but the farm labourer has only to spend a few half-hours with an English grammar to discover it at his feet. It must be very nice to believe all that, to be able to comfort oneself in dark moments with the assurance that for one's children's children life will be a happy hunting ground. It must be a drug more potent than laudanum, more sweet than hashish. But it is of small avail in the dust and traffic of humanity. In the case of the Public Schools we shall do well to examine what is at hand and prescribe what cures we may, without the indulgence of distant speculation.

The four main objects of criticism, then, are the moral question, the evil of athleticism, the false scale of values that is inculcated at a Public School, and the subsequent conspiracy of silence. On the moral question the advanced idealists have talked more and to less purpose than on any other phase of school life. They have written of the discovery of the soul, of the unfolding of the flower. They have maintained that through art and literature the boy's emotional nature will be directed to a higher, a nobler conception of life. The psycho-analyst speaks of 'sublimation,' and they have fastened on to this cliché. Was not this what they had been saying so long, in other words—the sublimation of the sexual impulse?

Now, in the case of a celibate priest or a maiden lady it is, no doubt, highly desirable and perhaps possible to sublimate an impulse which has been and in all probability will be, denied natural satisfaction. But it is a pretty hopeless job to sublimate an impulse that has every hope and prospect of complete, direct, and natural realisation; and that is the task that the advocates of flowers and poetry and the dawn have set themselves. If we are to change the moral tone of a Public School we shall have to find either an alternative system, or we shall have to modify in some way the existing system.

Two alternatives are offered: co-education and the day school. In neither case should immorality be general or serious, and the number of romantic friendships correspondingly slight. It seems hardly possible that a normal healthy boy would be attracted by a smaller boy when, at a school like Bedales, he would be constantly in the company of young and charming scholars. And though the day boarder lives for the greater part of his day in a monastic society, he spends the majority of his spare time outside it. And during the week-ends he has full opportunity to continue any romance on which he may have embarked during the previous holidays. Although it is only possible for me to speak here from second-hand information, it can be assumed, I think, that at the co-educational and day school the moral question must sink to comparative unimportance. It has to be considered, however, whether this relegation compensates for the consequent disadvantages.

Co-education is, of course, a new game, and it is difficult to write of it with confidence. At a lecture that I gave about three years ago, a young woman rose from the back of the hall and asked 'what Mr. Waugh thought about co-education?' I had, as a matter of fact, thought about it very little, but I felt that I could hardly confess as much. I said, therefore, something about 'co-education being excellent for delicate and sensitive boys who would find Public Schools too rough for them.' The young woman then indignantly demanded what the girls had done to deserve the companionship of only delicate and sensitive boys. It was an unanswerable protest, but having since then thought the matter over more carefully, I believe that, if the same question were put to me to-day I should make the same reply. It may be that such a reply would be based only on prejudice and a preconceived idea. But, after all, the evil that one knows is better than the evil that one does not know. And who would wish away his school days.

If you were to ask a small boy of thirteen whether he would prefer to go to Uppingham or Bedales, he would promptly reply 'Uppingham.' If, two years later, you were to say to him: 'Would you rather have gone to Bedales than Uppingham?' he would reply: 'Lord, no.' If at the end of his last term, when it was all over, you were to ask him whether he regretted his choice, he would say: 'Good God, no!' And, twenty years afterwards, when the time had come for him to decide where he should send his son, were you to ask him yet again: 'Bedales or Uppingham?' he would reply without hesitation, 'Uppingham.'

Why, after all, should he depart from an old allegiance. He knows nothing of Bedales, nothing of the troubles and adversities that his son will have to face there. He will be unable to help him, he will be denied that greatest privilege of fatherhood, the unquestioning trust of the son who knows that his father has trod every inch of the way before him. Father and son rarely come so close to one another as they do during those five years at a Public School. They are living practically the same life; the father finds his lost youth in the son. Is it likely that he will abandon such a certainty for a supposed and uncertain good. The public school system was formed round certain distinct traits in the British character. It is the expression of the national temperament. Nearly every one is happy at a Public School. It is the manner of life that we enjoy, that is in sympathy with our tastes and customs. The reformers may say what they will. You cannot turn a dog from the food it loves. This attitude to co-education may be illogical, it may be prejudiced, it may be reactionary—I do not know. One can only restate the fact that we are content to be old-fashioned people.

The case of the day school cannot be so summarily dismissed. At a first sight indeed it appears to possess all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of a Public School. A boy acquires esprit de corps, but is saved from wild partisanship. He strengthens the qualities of courage and independence as fully as he would at a Public School, and the home influence is maintained. His moral lapses, if any, are likely to be occasioned by the attractions of the other sex. My friend, Mr. Oscar Browning, has indeed often assured me that the day school is the only possible solution of the difficulty, and in a symposium on the English Public Schools he wrote that 'House rivalries and the overwhelming importance of house matches cannot exist in day schools where boys live with their families, nor is school life likely to be so communal.' Many other educational authorities, whose testimony one must respect, have expressed their faith in day schools. Certainly the claim of the day school must be carefully examined. And it is with diffidence that I approach the task.

At most boarding schools the day boy is looked down upon. For some obscure reason the day boy always seems to be inferior to the boarder. He is rarely prominent in games or work. One ceases, indeed, to regard him as a member of the school. He comes into form, he writes his prose, he attends corp parade, he plays his games. But, at six o'clock, when the bell rings for tea and the intimate life of the day begins, he collects his books and hurries across the courts and passes into another life.

The period between lock-up and lights out is in retrospect the most charming part of the day. The troubles of the day are over. Lessons have to be prepared in prep., but they will not be heard till the next morning. Time enough to worry about that after breakfast. It is after tea that one packs twelve people into a study measuring eight feet by four and discusses the prospects of the house in the Two Cock, the 'latest case,' and Evans's chance of getting into the Fifteen. Prep. is but a pause in the discussions of these momentous trivialities. After prayers there is an hour in which to brew coffee and renew the endlessly attractive conversation. These are the times of friendship and good feeling, and they are lost to the day boarder. Like the new boy, he is outside the life of the school. He moves in a different environment; he has different interests, he cannot enter into the eager loyalties and aversions of house politics. In a school such as Clifton, where there are a large number of day boys, the position is, of course, different. The day boy there occupies a definite social status. Instead of being attached to a house for games, he is grouped into that sector of the town in which he happens to live. His friends are leading much the same life as he is. But it can scarcely be denied that the day boarder loses a great deal of the charm of a communal life.