A long long time ago in the early 90s discipline was all the rage at boarding school. Rage being the operative word. Teachers were called Masters to help reinforce the fact that they were in no way a parent substitute and were addressed as Sir. Female teachers were called Mrs because the sexism within the male dominated faculty was staggering and of course they were never given roles any more advanced than teaching one of those new-fangled and silly languages like German.
Above all the masters (and therefore by definition the women) was THE master. Essentially a headmaster but so masterful that he’d dropped the head and was just referred to as THE master and addressed as Master. No one knew why but why was not a word that was encouraged in the boys at boarding school. The institution prided itself on batshit and pointless traditions justified only by decades of repetition. The reason certain hats were worn on certain days was to avoid punishment. The reason the whole school had to give up a Saturday to walk one by one past the Master and salute him (Kim Jun-on enjoys something similar) was because we had done so the year before and for over a century before that. There might have been a point to this ridiculous parade in the late 1800s but it had been lost over the decades.
One afternoon my friend and I were outside the school grounds which was forbidden. We were caught and sent to our respective housemasters. His was a really lovely bloke. Mine, less so. The gap in severity of our punishments was enormous. He had to forgo sugar in his tea the next morning and I was given 3 years hard labour in solitary confinement in Siberia. If I’m honest I can’t remember what they actually were suffice to say mine was significantly more harsh for exactly the same crime.
Why?
Quite – let’s go and find out I though. My housemaster had started a relatively progressive initiative of allowing boys to book time with him if there was anything we wanted to discuss. I did so. I very politely and carefully asked for more information on the punitive disparity and even kindly offered him the way out that he might not have known what punishment the other boy had received. Obviously it would have been on him to speak to his colleague to ensure consistency but he saw it differently and instead had a right go at me for questioning his punishment. In an unfortunate moment for all concerned an educated and clever man tried to assert that my punishment was more harsh because I had questioned it. He seemed to overlook the obvious chronological challenges this farcical position was precariously balanced on. I helpfully highlighted these flaws but that didn’t have the calming affect I’d hoped for. My housemaster now had a problem because he’d reached the boundaries of normal punishments on the school’s menu. Short of having me deported or keelhauled he was going to need back up or to back down. He chose the former.
I was told I would be seeing……….the Master on Saturday. No one asked if I was busy at that time. I was just given a time and place. I showed up outside the Master’s office. My housemaster arrived wearing not just a suit but full flowing teacher cape that they wore in chapel and speech day. He neither greeted or looked at me – his eyes focused purely on the closed door between us and the Master. It was apparent that he was absolutely terrified and had the air of an Imperial General waiting to tell Darth Vader he’d lost the keys to his Star Destroyer. After well over twenty minutes (which is an extraordinarily long time to ignore a 14 year old boy of whom you have pastoral care of, stood next to you) a voice bade us to enter. If I was twenty minutes late for a meeting in my own office I would have got up, opened the door and apologised profusely but clearly opinion was divided on the subject. To be fair he may have intended to apologise but was not given time due to an explosion of sycophantic toadery from my housemaster thanking him for his time and apologising for bothering him. Seriously if he’d have flung himself to the floor it wouldn’t have been out of place with the rest of his behaviour.
The first order of business was surprisingly – how I was dressed.
“What are you wearing?” asked the masterful one.
“Normal uniform” I answered, puzzled.
“Why are you not wearing your suit?”
There you go! Why! Well done, you! Why is so important. Here we go (in no particular order):
1) It’s Saturday.
2) I’m 14.
3) There’s absolutely no reason to.
4) No one told me I was expected to.
5) No normal person would expect me to know that I should.
6) Batman here had time to put his cape on and a further 20 minutes while we waited for you (kudos on the power-play by the way) to point this out to me but didn’t.
I wisely chose number 4. A monologue followed about the importance of authority and tradition that did nothing to explain the comparative severity of my punishment and was only loosely relevant to my not wearing a suit.
Batman appeared to be getting worried that this wasn’t quite the shit kicking he was hoping for so he interjected with some less than relevant vagaries about my character and attitude and how much they worried him. The Master and I both looked at him with our best “what do you actually mean?” expressions leaving him with nowhere to go but inform us that he’d spoken to other teachers who agreed with him. This was some very weak hearsay and shredded any scant respect I still held. However I took the bait and said that if I had been given any background to what this meeting was about beyond a (as it turned out, a very vague) time and place I would have worn a suit and provided ample examples of boys who shared my opinion of him.
This didn’t go at all well.
It was then I decided I should probably leave the school, a conclusion I was doubtlessly the third in the room to arrive at. I think we all knew why.