THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL
We hear much of the embarrassed misery of a boy's first week at school.
And, certainly, it is pretty wretched. Mr Vachell compared it to the
first plunge into an ice-cold swimming bath: the sudden shock, and,
afterwards, the glory of a swim. But it is the inaction, the loneliness
of the first week that is so difficult. It is more like standing on the
edge of the swimming bath on a cold day waiting for the signal that will
start the race. And yet the change must have been a great deal more
difficult for our parents than it was for us. The preparatory school
system is of more or less recent growth, and, when one considers how
much one learnt at a Preparatory School, in _esprit de corps_, in
patience, in sportsmanship, in the give and take of a communal life, one
wonders how an earlier generation managed to survive the first term.
School life by all accounts was a fairly barbarous business in the
eighties, and by what strange roads our parents came to those rough
waters. Some came straight from home, some from private tutors: the
majority from the old-fashioned dame school. It is not surprising that
the Preparatory Schools should have so increased in number and improved
in quality.
For the Preparatory School fulfils a most important function, and it
fulfils it extremely efficiently. It is what it sets out to be, a school
that will take a small boy almost from the nursery, and train him in the
course of four or five years to take his place in a large Public School.
The task that the head master of a Preparatory School has to tackle is
not, however, anything like so hard as that which confronts the head
master of a Public School. For a Public School has to equip a boy for
life; and life is vast, indeterminate, a swiftly moving river that is
never the same from one moment to another. The Preparatory School, on
the other hand, has only to equip a boy for a Public School, and the
Public School is a fixed quantity. As regards curriculum, the task is
simple. The required standard of education is known. A certain
percentage in the common entrance examination has to be obtained. The
school has not to discover the career for which its individual members
are best suited. It has merely to decide which of them are good enough
to be trained specially for scholarships. The main object of the
Preparatory School, however, is to produce presentable specimens of
society, boys who will do the right thing in the right circumstances.
And this the Preparatory School does admirably well.
It is at a Preparatory School that boys learn manners, courtesy, the
proper behaviour in the presence of ladies. But these things, you may
say, a boy will learn at home. No doubt he ought to, but any preparatory
schoolmaster will disabuse you on that point. How many small boys of
seven who have not been to a school will, when they are handed a plate
of cakes, take the one nearest to them rather than the one of which they
fancy the appearance. How many small boys will think of opening a door
for a lady, of offering her his chair when she enters the room, of
apologising to his hostess if he arrives late for breakfast. These are
the little things that a boy learns at a Preparatory School and that he
will learn nowhere else; at all good schools a great value is placed on
these points of etiquette; if anything, 'good manners' are rather
overdone, and the precipitate charge of twelve or thirteen urchins
towards a door handle is likely to prove embarrassing to the lady
visitor who has risen from her chair.
At my own school, for instance, music lessons always took place
immediately after lunch; so that, if lunch was a little late, the first
boys were allowed to leave the table before grace. It was a rule,
however, that no boy should ever leave the dining-room till he had asked
the permission of the ladies. And many visitors were much perplexed by
the repeated inaudible apologies of nervous small boys who came
stumbling towards them between two close-packed tables. The good manners
of a preparatory school boy are indeed slightly pedagogic. Their elbows
are pressed into their sides when they eat, their wrists are raised
above the table, and, in a precise voice, they request permission to
trouble their next door neighbour for the salt. They are like the
critics who insist that a sonnet is not a sonnet if the last lines of
the sestet form a couplet. But it is a fault on the right side. For
manners, as well as morals, relax in the greater freedom of a Public
School, and at the age of fifteen one has managed to substitute ease for
stiffness.
It is, indeed, impossible to say how much one learns at a Preparatory
School. At the age of ten one has not the necessary detachment to view
oneself as an objective reality. It is impossible, for instance, to
remember where, or when, was learnt the spirit of comradeship and
sportsmanship that is, perhaps, the most lovable quality of the old
public school boy. It is hardly inherited. For the average small boy is
greedy, selfish, and acquisitive; and, when one is given leg before to a
left-hand round the wicket bowler who is turning the ball from the off,
the temptation to protest against the umpire's decision is natural. The
primitive man, indeed, would have uprooted a stump and walked to the
other end of the pitch. Where does one learn to turn straight round and
walk towards the pavilion? I think it is at the Preparatory School. A
small boy knows that he has got to play cricket like a sportsman; he
knows that a sportsman does not question the umpire's decision; and he
is terribly afraid of doing the wrong thing in the presence of his
schoolfellows. The first time he is given out caught at the wicket off
his pad, a blind anger seizes him. His mouth opens to make a protest.
The same thing happened last year when he was playing cricket in the
garden with his brother and sister, and, when they insisted that he was
out, he sat down in the middle of the field and howled till they told
him he could continue his innings. The temptation to repeat the
experiment is considerable. But he dare not make any exhibition of
himself. He would be mercilessly ragged; and so he returns to his seat
under the trees and contents himself with the announcement that Jones is
a mean sneak who was trying to get a revenge for the kicking he got that
morning. And of course the incident will be repeated. Umpires make
mistakes in first-class cricket: small boys make them with a melancholy
frequency on lower grounds, and few batsmen are satisfied with an l.b.w.
decision. The young cricketer has many opportunities of displaying the
Christian qualities of patience and restraint, and every time the
temptation to sit down in the middle of the pitch and howl grows weaker.
'The monster custom is angel yet in this,' and, by the time he goes to
his Public School, his features have learnt to assume a good-natured
smile, and he says something about it being all in the game and that
last week he had a decision in his favour.
I am inclined to think that in that example can be found the essence of
preparatory school life; the habits of courtesy and sportsmanship are
acquired till they become a second nature. We are told that man is a
logical creature, that when he has been properly educated it will be
possible for forty million people to live in one country without
competition; that in an enlightened society there will be no need for
policemen, for every man will instinctively appreciate what is right. It
may be so. No one knows what the world will be like two thousand years
hence. But, in the meantime, I think we do wisely to train small boys as
we train an animal. We thrash our dog if he plays havoc in our
neighbour's chicken run, and we rag the small boy who disputes the
umpire's decision. The dog does not chase chickens again, nor does the
small boy argue in the middle of the pitch.
It is a strange business, though, this acquiring of social habits, and,
though preparatory school life has been only dealt with in a small way
by educationalists and novelists, the process is certainly interesting.
Everything, to allow for the subsequent relaxation at the Public School,
is slightly overdone, and the small boy tends to become a prig. It is
only natural that he should. By nature he is at that time a somewhat
poisonous little beast. He is the victim of numberless petty faults and
jealousies; and when he becomes reformed he is self-righteous. He would
never think of sneaking, of course, but he would not hesitate to whisper
just as a master is coming into the class-room, 'Oh, shut up, Jones.' He
always enjoys putting some one else in the wrong, and Arnold Lunn has,
in _The Harrovians_, an incident that provides an admirable example of
this attitude. A member of the school has just died. He was not a
popular boy; he was not distinguished in games or work. No one really
minded, but the school felt bound to present a countenance of
appropriate melancholy. A certain Clayford, however, had a set of stamps
he wished to sell, and he accosted cheerfully a couple of boys who were
discussing the last hours of their lost comrade. 'I say, you chaps, like
to buy a complete set of Borneos surcharged Labuan?'
'Not to-day, thank you,' said Peter stiffly.
'We're not much interested in stamps _to-day_,' added Morgan.
It is a perfect picture.
And as there is no stricter moralist than the potential rake, there is
no one with a more rigid code of honour than the preparatory school boy.
'Owning up' becomes a fetish. Popular opinion drives the wretched urchin
into the head master's study. I remember once that on the eve of a
school match a member of the eleven went sick with a headache. There was
immediate consternation. Ferguson might not be a good bowler, his
batting was indifferent and he missed his catches more often than not,
but he was a distinct improvement on Evans, the twelfth man. The chances
of a victory were prejudiced: and then some one recollected that that
morning Smith had smacked Ferguson's head in the changing room. It also
happened that, for the moment, Smith was extremely unpopular. Morison's
people had just paid their half-term visit to the school, and when the
Head had brought Morison's mother into the room, Smith had not stood up.
It had been a direct insult to Morison's mater. Every one had said so,
and none of us would listen to Smith's excuse that he had had his back
to the door, and was filling his fountain pen, a combination of
circumstances that rendered a sudden leap to the feet impossible.
'Don't argue, Smith; you're a cad.' That's what every one had said; and
when it was remembered that Smith had punched Ferguson's head that
morning, the fury of popular opinion knew no limit.
'You've lost the match, I hope you know; you'll have to own up, of
course,' we said.
Smith was resentful. He did not see why he should.
'Because, Smith, that is what a gentleman does under such
circumstances.'
Smith was still obstinate. He did not see why Ferguson should have got a
headache just because of this. People had had their heads punched before
without getting headaches. There was a murmur of contumely.
'But that wasn't an ordinary punch, Smith; you hit him with all your
force.'
The suggestion that it was not an ordinary punch flattered Smith's
pride. He, too, was inclined to think that there had been about that
punch a certain something. He grudgingly admitted that it had been a
pretty hard smack.
'Even so, though, I don't see how things are going to be made any better
by my owning up.'
Such an attitude was opposed to every idea of preparatory school honour.
There was a shudder of supreme contempt.
'Perhaps _you_ don't, Smith.' And there the argument stopped. But for
the rest of the day Smith's life was made miserable. Every time any one
passed him they said: 'Owned up yet?' No one would talk to him at
tea-time; when he joined a group afterwards the group dispersed and he
was left alone. Finally, of two evils, confession appeared to him the
less, and, after prayers, he pushed open the door of the head master's
study and blurted out to the accompaniment of big quivering sobs that he
had punched Ferguson's head in the changing-room and given him a
headache, and, perhaps, lost the match.
A couple of years ago I went down to my old school, and, just before
lunch, when the whole school was collected in the hall, the head master
announced that he wanted the name of the boy who had left the tap
running in the bathroom. There was a slight commotion in a far corner;
one boy was being nudged and pressed forward. There was a whisper of 'Go
on, Hunter.' All eyes were turned in his direction. There was no course
for Hunter but to come forward into the open and confess.
And yet, as likely as not, some one else was the offender. It was the
sort of offence that any one might commit. It is not easy to remember
what one has forgotten. No doubt he thought he had turned off the tap,
otherwise he would hardly have left the bathroom; yet he might very
likely have done it. His companions told him that he had, and his faith
in their loving kindness was not sufficient for him to have wondered
why they had not repaired his mistake. If Hunter had not owned up he
would have had to say definitely that he had not left the tap running,
and that he could not truthfully have done. So he owned up.
The fear of being thought a coward very often makes the preparatory
school boy confess to sins that he has never committed, and it is
usually the ones who are most often in trouble who find themselves in
this position. After all, if you are always getting into scrapes, are
always engaged in some misadventure, it is very hard to tell whether, on
a particular occasion, you are innocent or not. The head master comes
into a class-room in the afternoon.
'Now look here, you fellows,' he says, 'you know I've told you that I
won't have you running down that steep path to the football field. You
are bound to fall down; you must walk. I've told you that a hundred
times. Now the matron tells me that she saw one of you running down
there this morning. I want to know that boy's name.'
What is Jones mi. to do? He has run down that path so often. Whether or
not he did so that morning he cannot remember. He has had so much to
think about since then. Yet, suppose he did run down the hill, and
suppose that some one saw him. If he does not own up, he will be called
a coward all over the school. Far better 'own up,' and receive some
small punishment. Indeed, it may be said that the Jones mi.'s of the
world form a rule for themselves, that they own up to every offence of
which they are not dead certain that they are innocent. Head masters,
like batsmen, have to have the benefit of the doubt.
It is equally difficult to acknowledge innocence in the midst of crime.
At my old school there was an excellent rule that for half an hour after
lunch we should sit in our class-rooms and read quietly. One afternoon
this peaceful siesta was disturbed by a loud and fierce and general
discussion of the superiority of Yorkshire cricket over that of
Lancashire. The particular class-room unfortunately happened to be
situated beneath the nursery of the head master's children, and the
angry voices of the disputants roused from her slumbers a recent
addition to the family. The complaints of a very indignant nurse forced
a very busy master to disturb the repose of that restful half-hour after
lunch. On this occasion the usual formula was reversed. He did not ask
the names of the boys who had been talking, he asked for the names of
the boys who had not been talking. Now, as it happened, I had taken no
part in the argument. I am a Middlesex supporter, I had just received as
a birthday present a bound volume of _Chums_, I was also, at the time,
in popular disfavour. So I had seated myself in a far corner of the room
and read steadily, with my fingers pressed into my ears. But I did not
dare to say so. I should never have been forgiven. It would have been
the action of a conscientious objector. No one would have believed me.
I realised how hopelessly out of things I should feel while the rest of
the school were receiving their punishment. Suppose a half-holiday was
stopped--what on earth should I do with a half-holiday all to myself? I
should be much happier working out theorems in a class-room. And it was
also possible that I might have said something that some one had
overheard--at any rate, I was not going to risk it. I sat silent at my
desk and accepted meekly the common lot.
From the outside a Preparatory School looks very much like a miniature
Public School. It presents the same features, the same routine, the same
curriculum; there is even some attempt at a prefectorial system.
Superficially they have much in common. But there the resemblance ends.
The scale of values is altogether different. Indeed the Preparatory
School is very like the Public School of traditional conception. Talbot
Baines Reed is only read by boys of under thirteen; and boys of under
thirteen have moulded themselves after his image. There are, of course,
none of the high-lights, the heroism, the sacrifice. There are no
nocturnal visits to ostlers; but otherwise it is not unlike _The Fifth
Form at St Dominic's_. The smallest boys do resemble the 'Tadpoles' of
that popular romance. In spite of frequent visits to the bathroom their
hands and collars are continually smeared with ink; when they go for
walks at least one of them falls into the ditch and cuts his trousers;
they are all dog-eared except at meal times and at the start of the
morning's work. And they have the same attitude to life. They are
continually forming rival gangs; they are on the brink of feuds and
jealousies. They side against one another. Each boy in turn becomes the
object of general dislike. There is a certain amount of bullying, a
great deal more than there is at most public schools. New boys, for
instance, are subjected to an inquisition. They are asked what their
father is, and whether they would rather be a bigger ass than they look,
or look a bigger ass than they are. At a Public School only one boy in
every twenty gets really ragged, and usually for obvious reasons. But at
a Preparatory School every one has to put up with a certain amount of
persecution. There is a good deal of sycophancy, and the independent
learn many lessons.
But when all is said and done, the really big difference between the
Preparatory and the Public School is the absence of the cult of
athleticism. The scholar is entitled to and receives as much respect as
the cricketer and for obvious reasons. The Preparatory School has to
contend with a far more competitive system than the Public School.
Schools have their ups and downs. Numbers rise and fall, but a Public
School that has a name can be always certain of the support of its old
boys. It has a firmly established tradition. Only a few Preparatory
Schools, on the other hand, possess this questionable advantage. The
name of only a few are familiar. None of them would justify the
journalist in the employment of his cliché 'a household word.' The
Preparatory School depends largely on the energy and personality of one
man, and the scholars are, after all, his exhibition blooms. He may
produce cricketer after cricketer, but the Public School will take all
the credit. We speak of Hedges and Chapman and Stevens as products of
Tonbridge, Uppingham, and U.C.S. respectively. We do not know where they
learnt the groundwork of the game. The scholar, however, comes into
prominence while he is still at his Preparatory School. The name of the
school is put after the name of the successful candidate. It is the
scholar, not the cricketer, who advertises a school. If the head master
of a Preparatory School told you that seven of his old boys were at that
time playing in their Public School Eleven, you would not feel that he
was entitled to any extravagant credit. If, however, he told you that in
one year seven of his boys had won scholarships you would be
considerably impressed. The boys themselves naturally, of course, are
more interested in cricket than in Greek, but they appreciate that
scholastic triumph has a marketable value, and the school officially is
prouder of its Winchester scholar than of its slow left-hand bowler. The
small boy who goes home for the holidays knows that he can impress his
uncle by the announcement that Hughes got the second Eton scholarship,
but that the statement that they beat Southdown by 100 runs and that
Evans took seven wickets for twenty-three will elicit only a polite
'really.' It is exactly the opposite at a Public School. The new boy
will proudly announce that the captain of his house had played for
Notts. There is a standard by which one can judge public school cricket
and football; there is no more a standard for the performances of
preparatory school athletes than there is for the startling figures of
the village fast bowler. Naturally there is more excitement when a new
boy shows an uncanny apprehension of the theorems of geometry than over
a new boy who brings the ball back naturally from the off. As a result
the preparatory master is inclined to push the clever boys on too fast.
It is the one real mistake that the Preparatory School makes, and it
should be noticed. For it is serious.
A boy of eighteen can stand the strain of systematic coaching; a boy of
twelve cannot. The preparatory scholar is more often than not a
hot-house product. He has drawn on his reserves too early; his mind has
been forced into a groove at the start. He is trained like a pet
Pomeranian, and he is kept in blinkers; he is not allowed to explore
bye-paths that are of interest to him. That would be prejudicial to his
chances. He has to keep on the straight road of scholarship. He may get
his scholarship; he probably will, for such Preparatory Schools are
specialists at the game, but, in the long run, it does not pay. The boy
has been forced too soon and he is stale by the time he gets to his
Public School.
It is very interesting to note how often, in the course of a year or
two, boys who did not get scholarships are higher up in the school than
their successful rivals: a man who starts the half-mile at a hundred
yards pace leads at the end of the first lap, but he does not win the
race. And the preparatory school master is inclined to forget that,
while a Winchester scholarship is the whole race for him, it is only the
first lap for the boy. He naturally wants the credit of the scholarship
for his school, but on the other hand he has to be unselfish. He has to
ask himself whether, in the long run, it is not better for the boy to
carry on with the general routine and take the scholarship examination
in his stride. If he succeeds well and good; if not, there is plenty of
time. And the wise parent will insist on this.
The boy himself, however, realises that his world is that of the green
leaf and the bud. It is a time of sowing. And the fruits will show
elsewhere. He knows that his career will only start when he reaches his
Public School. The fact is always being forced upon his attention. 'This
sort of thing is all very well here,' his masters will tell him, 'but it
won't work at your Public School.' In the same way the commandant at
Sandhurst used to adjure us in his speeches, 'to keep always before you
the thought of the day when you will join your regiment.'
There is the fear and the attraction of the unknown future. And, for the
sake of it, a boy will work far harder than he would otherwise have
done. He looks beyond the rewards and position that his own school
offers. It is not enough to be in the highest form, not enough to be in
the first eleven. He must improve himself so as to be able to take a
high place in the next stage of his career. A public school boy, on the
other hand, regards the honours that his school has to offer as an end
sufficient in themselves. In occasional addresses he is adjured to think
of the day when he will have to step out of that cloistered peace into
the rush and traffic of life; but that day is distant. He has little
ambition beyond 'a ribboned coat' and a seat at the high table. His
horizon is contracted, and his behaviour is that of those who do not
believe in a survival after death. He places an undue value upon the
immediate and the present. The preparatory school boy always looks ahead
to a future stage of life. And so it is that, when the last day at
school comes, he is not the victim of the surprised sentimentality that
overcomes the public school boy. He has begun to feel that he has
outgrown his surroundings. He has chafed at the restraint of childhood.
He has felt that success or failure is of little importance: so soon he
will be making a fresh start. He has lived in the future. He has spent
long summer evenings reading the history of his new school. He has
studied photographs of its buildings; he has pored over old numbers of
the school magazines, and has formed a romantic conception of the giants
of whose prowess he has read. The future opens before him with
limitless opportunities, and he can face it with an eager confidence
after his five long years of discipline. How long they have taken in the
passing, and yet in retrospect how flat they appear, how colourless, how
tiresome. Nothing has happened; day has followed day. Ah, well, that is
over now. Life is to begin. The new boy sets out hungry for experience.
On the last day at his Preparatory School he is addressed, in company
with the other boys who are leaving, by the head master. His egotism is
flattered by the assurance that the honour of his old school lies in his
hands. He is told that he will need a firm upper lip and a stout heart.
He listens to a recommendation of honesty, truthfulness, and
courage--all this he has heard before. He has read so many school
stories. And then, suddenly, he is startled by a warning against
temptations, the nature of which he imperfectly understands. His
curiosity is roused. He learns that if he yields to these temptations
his career will be spoilt, his health and brain will be ruined. How this
fate is going to be brought about he is not certain, but he agrees with
his head master that it is a fatality at all costs to be avoided. He
asks a friend for enlightenment and receives a superior answer of: 'Oh,
don't you know!' which makes him think that his friend knows even less
about it than he does. At any rate this particular temptation has not
yet presented itself, and the acknowledgment of its existence fades from
his contemplation of a golden future.