Prefectorial punishments
Posted by Abel on 27 Aug 2007 at 07:30 am | Tagged as: Perverting Reality
Having been a prefect at a British public school in the mid-80s, I was intrigued to spot so many the similarities with the Prefects’ Charter at my new favourite educational establishment, the Victoria Institute in Malaysia, some thirty years before. Their “privileges” were described as follows. Some may think that the choice of the word “privilege” to describe point (b) is rather interesting:
a. Prefects shall have direct access to the Headmaster on any subject at any time.
b. Prefects shall have the power to punish students. Any student refusing to obey a reasonable order given by a Prefect or, breaking a school rule, shall brought before the School Captain, or, if the School Captain thinks it necessary, before the whole Board, when the offender shall be punished accordingly, either by having to write lines or by being sent to the Detention Class. The names of all students so punished shall be entered in a book together with name of the Prefect inflicting the punishment and the reason for its infliction. If the offence is very serious, the offender shall be brought before the Headmaster.
Interestingly, “Prefects shall not be sent to Detention Class without the authorization of the Headmaster” and “will normally continue in office as long as they are in the School but the Headmaster will remove a Prefect from the Board where this seems desirable or necessary”. I can imagine that such removal would have been a rather painful procedure.
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“Having been a prefect at a British public school in the mid-80s”
wow… in the mid-80s I was… 4. O:-)
I’d left school by the mid eighties
I had been our school equivalent of prefect before that, a peer voted “class representative” which in practice just meant I was the one who got the telling off when the whole class was in trouble and had to then pass it on to them… it wasn’t much fun really, was supposed to be an honour though… certainly didn’t feel an honour when some boys in my form broke a valuable religious statue playing football in the classroom, my argument that a valuable religious statue should perhaps not have been kept in a classroom in the first place but somewhere safer didn’t go down too well
I never had any of the perks like sending naughty girls and boys to detention or the Headmaster
Perhaps my son was not your typical prefect type. One boy sent him into the headmaster as a character reference after he’d been caught writing on a teacher’s shirt. He’d actually being doing it all year as they passed by in the crowded hallways and in fact had stolen a set of clothes of a teacher he hated whilst he was out jogging, and had a ceremonial burning of them. My son assured the Headmaster that it was an aberration, that X had been upset since his dog died. He swallowed it hook line and sinker. I am happy to report X is doing well in his Psychology degree.
“Having been a prefect at a British public school in the mid-80s…”
Omg, never mind the rest of the post, by this point I was lost in fantasies about the youthful Abel in a position of power and authority over his peers
Yum! He has progressed to Housemaster these days of course, sometimes even Headmaster, but the foundations were clearly laid some time ago!
We’re finally catching up with comments after a weekend away. Excuse our tardiness - trying to keep the blog going from my Blackberry wasn’t easy!
A comment like that from Megs in my prefectorial days would certainly have resulted in her name being entered into the Punishment Book for insolence
(Sadly we weren’t allowed to cane. Probably a good thing, on reflection, mind!)
Sarah’s religious statue comment to the staff would also have been grounds for much-merited discipline. Clothes burning is just too bizarre for words. And Martha is fortunate that my beard makes realistic prefectorial scenes somewhat difficult these days!
I was a prefect at just such a school in the mid 60’s. If we saw a boy break a school rule we gave him lines to write. If he didn’t do them we brought him before the Head Boy (School Captain) and once the boy’s offense was confirmed he was asked to bend over and the prefect whacked the boy’s bottom with a plimsoll (gym shoe).
This regime was actually much tamer than it was a few years before when I was a new boy at the school. In those days if a prefect saw a boy breaking any rule (however minor) he usually slippered him straight away without any alternative punishment such as lines or any reference to the Head Boy. Or if the boy had done something really evil (in my case spitting) the prefect would refer the boy to the Headmaster who would cane his bottom.