Truronian said:
How did you find boarding? I've found most of the boarders I know have very polarised views on it. Some love it, some despise it.
I loved it! However, remember, I was one of those rugby hero, jack the lads that Winston mentions. This means I was never really on the receiving end of bullying, quite the opposite in fact (I was suspended aka
"rusticated" 
for it, in fact). I will lay out some major post about bullying later and maybe this below will go some way to illustrating why I do not regret being punished for bullying (I was playing the game the system forced us to, to survive).
It's a huge issue that goes well beyond just kids stuff. Indeed, I believe that the deeply entrenched,
ritualistic and institutionalised bullying at public schools has a lot to do with social conditioning for future life in society - we were conditioned to be 'top dogs', if you like. More significantly, let us not forget the close and easy relationship between public school and
EMPIRE. This was conditioning towards superiority, to be dished out on a global scale!
More later on: cold baths, fagging, slavery, running the gauntlet, nose races, wedgies, soft toys as weapons, army training and use of boot heels, warming the toilet seat, early morning runs, public humiliation and so much more. These are all the building blocks that were used to construct the edifice in the child's mind that they were to be -
rulers of other people -
administrators of empire - harshly if need be.
Truronian said:
Narrow-mindedness I've encountered, but racism is new to me. I think I got lucky at my school when it came to this.
I arrived into England, an Indian kid, coming from Zambia - into the stuffy, elitist, prejudiced world that is so deeply embued with the culture I mention above. I received racist abuse from day one - from teachers - as well as kids.
Narrow-mindedness is also a big area. If we consider that the notion of superiority is to be maintained at all costs, you can clearly see why they put shackles on kids' minds. So, aside from things like racism, there was also intellectual stuffiness in the way we were taught.
Unlike Winston, I got the opportunity to make a comparison between state and private education in Britain. After GCSEs (age 15 I did them), I went to Sixth Form College (SFC) in Cambridge, a state run enterprise. One could easily compare the quality of education. In fact, Oundle did pretty well in league tables, but Hills Road SFC topped the leagues for A levels for 3 years running while I was there (it was later pipped by a private sixth form college). In OT terminology, it was a veritable dichotomy between "conservatism" and "liberalism".
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