Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else, but that's still CH related.

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sejintenej
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by sejintenej »

Foureyes wrote: Fri Apr 26, 2019 2:48 pm The Bren - a very superior piece of kit,
Yes, they had a Bren fixed on the side of the MOBAT to confirm direction and range before sending the missile. More use out of the single toy though I don't think the Bren could be unmounted.
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sejintenej
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by sejintenej »

scrub wrote: Fri Apr 26, 2019 6:11 pm Hated it?
Like a few others, I left with a few bad habits and personality quirks, but those have been mostly fixed up by now. Or, fixed enough for me not to worry about them in any case.
I would suggest that by the time you went there CH had climbed out of the Noah's Ark and then Ypres formats and beliefs. Fixing was not necessarily as easy (if even vaguely possible) for those with more forcibly engrained quirks.
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by rockfreak »

time please wrote: Tue Apr 16, 2019 9:05 am Rockfreak,

I think you summed it up quite well. I have often thought about what the school was trying to form us into. A couple of centuries ago it was quite easy to understand: you were the person in the rear rank who shouted " attack " and the "front rank died". Nowadays perhaps a person who can decide to move a factory from one country to another without a thought for the personal suffering this could cause.

What I would like to know is what type of person I would have been had I not been at the school. I believe that I lost some of the best years of my life at Horsham, that I became a person with some rather hard edges. It frightens me that my partner/wife of 45 years says that she does not really know who I am. To be honest I am surprised that I survived, but looking back at my life I can see that CH was not good at least for me.

However I did survive. Maybe I should be proud of that!

time please: Why should you have to "survive" your education? In other more civilised countries than ours you go to school to learn things and your parents do the raising bit. You say that your wife doesn't really know you. Join the club. And my parents said that CH had changed me although they didn't elaborate but I suspected that they meant for the worse. Cultures that have sent their children out of the home to be raised include the ancient Spartans, the Order of Jesuits, and our own colonists who tore indigenous children away from their families in order to teach them "muscular Christianity". Why should we have to balance a "good education" (if indeed that's what it is) against the need to survive? Yes I know that in the modern age there's more privacy, carpets, radiators, i-phones, so-called pastoral care (unless it's delivered by Chaplain Dobbie), but these people are still not your parents. What do we hope to achieve with the ultimate product? David Cameron? Boris Johnson? Jacob Rees-Mogg? Steve Hilton? And I note that in the end, for all that this might have turned into an interesting thread with some acute psychological insights, we've ended up talking about the mechanics of the flaming Bren gun. How typically public school.
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by rockfreak »

sejintenej wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 6:37 pm
rockfreak wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2019 9:10 pm
It would have been then certainly. But we don't have an empire now and nor is there an appetite for one.

True
Not that I'm knocking anyone who goes into the military. In some ways I have the greatest respect for them. Only that I don't think any other western European country has this obsession with Empire, conquest, marching and uniforms.
Perhaps it is because other WE countries do not have the same ethos of looking to help the under-dog so long as they can say "I'm OK Jack".
Don't forget that British teams supported by their employers are in there whenever there is earthquake damage , hurricanes and other catastrophes (and CH actually taught some of us HOW to do all those jobs and be ready if needed to run such an operation)
I too enjoyed sports at CH. Although the ones that I took up in later life and were best at were horse riding, and then rock climbing and snow and ice mountaineering, neither of which were offered at CH. Indeed, thinking about it, all the things that I loved or was good at seemed to have nothing to do with my education. Including latterly political activism.
Rock climbing up to Severe - perhaps 6b - was available - I used to do it a couple of days a month with Kit's knowledge. That was sandstone which was a pig sometimes. Then there was the so-called "arduous training" in the Peak and Lake Districts which was pure mountain walking and camping. Then there were the occasionals - Cader Idris, Snowdonand Tryfan and The Devil's Kitchen in the snow, the Cuillin circuit, miscellaneous Lake District climbs...... and being on a hillock in Langdale campsite when all the tents around us were submerged!


Caught you out on rock climbing Sejintenej. The grades of Severe and 6b are nowhere near compatible. Severe, the general grade which measures the seriousness of the climb and its opportunities for protection, is in the easier levels these days and does not even have a technical grade. 6b is a technical grade which crops up in climbs which are in the Extreme grades for seriousness.
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by Avon »

rockfreak wrote: Sun Apr 14, 2019 12:21 pm Sorry to come onto this thread years after the event and I hope the original poster is still on this mortal coil (well you never know when you're my age). No, the misgivings you expressed are perfectly normal and are explored in detail by the psychotherapist and ex-boarder Nick Duffell (one of whose professional colleagues was an Old Blue). Books to read are 'The Making of Them' and 'Wounded Leaders'. I've been banging on about these books so much elsewhere on the site that someone has sarcastically accused me of having a vested interest. I don't, and sarcasm is one of the stocks in trade people often pick up at boarding school. For many it's a substitute for intelligence.
Also worth reading is a recent publication called 'Gilded Youth' by James Brooke-Smith which mentions the "intensity" of feeling that you pick up about your schooldays. You may feel good or bad about them but, as we can read from posters all over the site, the experience is never less than intense. Unlike at a day school. So many people on this site try to say that CH is somehow different with its majority of assisted places but I don't believe it is. The tradition, history, uniform, spacious surroundings and facilities, the marching into lunch to the splendid military-style band - all these give a sense of superiority, so that when you take off at the end of it all with the solemn leavers' charge ringing in your ears it's easy to believe that you're someone special.
But put the leavers' charge into plain English and it's essentially an example of outdated Victorian patronage. We can only spread our stardust over a limited number of people. Has CH changed anything after 450 years? No. Look at the state of the country: we're the most unequal country in developed Europe. What has CH had to do with anything? Nothing whatsoever. So what are the emotions of the doubters? Intensity, a guilty feeling of ingratitude, for some a "bruised" feeling that they've been somehow psychologically damaged by the whole experience, a feeling that they were the ones who couldn't "take it" - all these are feelings that are given a good psychological and emotional unpacking in the books I've mentioned. They are perfectly normal and indeed they may illustrate someone who, by feeling uncomfortable about their experience, is in better psychic health than those who unquestioningly defend the school and the system.
For me, the social benefits of going to CH weren’t necessarily what I gained, but what I left behind. My brother didn’t go to CH and has some terrible associations, there they are on Facebook, all HKLP and watching ITV. CH obviously failed me though: I didn’t leave ardent with a desire to go and die in any trenches, nor do I believe that it was inculcated in us to encourage others to do so. What subliminal messages did I miss?

Even at Dartmouth where I was hoping that the first weeks would be devoted to the doctrine of gunboat diplomacy and how to shell small African countries before the cocktail hour, I was let down, instead we learned seamanship (calm down JR) and how to be a professional deep-water Navy.

Isn’t the social cachet of CH being rather overestimated? The papers persist in having to list distinguished alumni as Barnes Wallis and, er, that’s it. I still have absolutely no idea who Dennis Silk actually is. My feeling is that CH has quietly turned out doers and creatives (with a very modest overlap) and it’s unlikely that there has been a pernicious alumni network that exists above and beyond the natural human inclination to work with who and what you know – which I’m not supporting, but I think it’s pretty anthropologically hard-coded. In that regard I’d suggest that children at schools are still at too youthful a point to detect merit that means they are dead certainties for productive employment. Should I ever need to leverage my network, I can think of very few people from CH I’d use, nor (sorry) would I instinctively favour CH as the creator of an outstanding product. I’d be more likely to use my Navy network that was much closer to being my formative years in terms of how I meet and treat people.

My main point is, that it’s a rather foul thing to claim that CH leavers have an extrinsically bestowed ‘stardust’ that means that they will do well in this world. CH was (in my time) a construct of the good and bad that had the effect of producing people who were necessarily robust (making good policemen apparently), or sadly collateral damage of the process of robustness. On the whole – and due to the damage – I think that’s A Bad Thing. Those who emerged unscathed seem to have done well because of their intrinsic merit, not because of ‘stardust’.

So either I missed out on the stardust, or you persist in using CH as an entirely inappropriate platform to claim that it produces people who are ‘superior’ or ‘special’. Why?
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

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Life at CH could be nasty and brutish (though not short), and of course I missed home comforts (though CH did have running hot water). But would I have preferred a daily 2-hour commute through dreary suburbs rather than a pleasant walk to school? I dunno. And would I have preferred having my parents around during the difficult phases of adolescence? Almost certainly not.

The experience was unusual, certainly. At Cambridge I found we did not have the easy manner of the public-school boys, nor (frankly) the dullness of many of the grammar-school kids. I may well have hated their experience, who can tell?
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by sejintenej »

michael scuffil wrote: Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:35 am Life at CH could be nasty and brutish (though not short), and of course I missed home comforts (though CH did have running hot water). But would I have preferred a daily 2-hour commute through dreary suburbs rather than a pleasant walk to school? I dunno. And would I have preferred having my parents around during the difficult phases of adolescence? Almost certainly not.
Michael. At least you had the benefit of parents with (presumably) the time to talk, to answer questions - even if you had to boil water on the stove for the tin bath on the kitchen floor. It is no great secret that I wss adopted (? twice) and after a call to CH once again I was an orphan. From the time I was perhaps five the person in charge of me was working 6am to 10pm, 6 and a half days a week so no time for parental advice (though she had no background to give any). Be thankful that you actually had a family. Be thankful that when you walked out of CH someone somewhere could advise you. Someone could tell you about universities of further education. You had someone who could answer questions.
Oh, and they kept from me that I had a sister and brother (both dead before I discovered them when I was in my seventies) ) and a neice
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

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I'm interested in Avon's attitude because, after all this time, he and I seem to me to be coming from exactly the same place! When I mentioned our "stardust" I was using it in a sardonic way. We don't sprinkle our supposed stardust over the rest of the unlettered plebs and expect great national results precisely because in many cases we don't have stardust to sprinkle. People of ability and talent and character come into national life from all over the place these days, whatever the situation may have been in 1960 when I left the school.
The Leavers Charge was written, I think, by Hamilton Fyfe (Correct me if I'm wrong here) in an age before the economist John Maynard Keynes gave us the blueprint for government taking a steadying hand in the wilder excesses of the free market and starting to equalise up the economies of the western world. So HF would still have been a creature of his time: someone who thought that economic booms and busts and wealth gaps were an unfortunate fact of life and that Victorian (or Edwardian) patronage in the school system was the best that we could manage. Well for three decades after the war these ideas were challenged and the result was a massive narrowing of the wealth gap. There were problems with the bedding in of the comprehensive system (huge classes, perhaps ill-advised "trendy" teaching methods) but what new system doesn't lack problems.
But then Mrs Thatcher came in with her dislike of the working class and ever since we've seen the wealth gap go out like the tide at Southend so that the rich (often tax exiles) have got tax favours while those at the bottom have struggled. And the state schooling system has struggled. Only last week the Daily Mirror headlined (belatedly) with the scandalous tax breaks the private schooling sector gets for being "charitable institutions" while in the state schools parents and teachers are doing the cleaning, decorating and minor repairs.
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by J.R. »

rockfreak wrote: Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:09 pm I'm interested in Avon's attitude because, after all this time, he and I seem to me to be coming from exactly the same place! When I mentioned our "stardust" I was using it in a sardonic way. We don't sprinkle our supposed stardust over the rest of the unlettered plebs and expect great national results precisely because in many cases we don't have stardust to sprinkle. People of ability and talent and character come into national life from all over the place these days, whatever the situation may have been in 1960 when I left the school.
The Leavers Charge was written, I think, by Hamilton Fyfe (Correct me if I'm wrong here) in an age before the economist John Maynard Keynes gave us the blueprint for government taking a steadying hand in the wilder excesses of the free market and starting to equalise up the economies of the western world. So HF would still have been a creature of his time: someone who thought that economic booms and busts and wealth gaps were an unfortunate fact of life and that Victorian (or Edwardian) patronage in the school system was the best that we could manage. Well for three decades after the war these ideas were challenged and the result was a massive narrowing of the wealth gap. There were problems with the bedding in of the comprehensive system (huge classes, perhaps ill-advised "trendy" teaching methods) but what new system doesn't lack problems.
But then Mrs Thatcher came in with her dislike of the working class and ever since we've seen the wealth gap go out like the tide at Southend so that the rich (often tax exiles) have got tax favours while those at the bottom have struggled. And the state schooling system has struggled. Only last week the Daily Mirror headlined (belatedly) with the scandalous tax breaks the private schooling sector gets for being "charitable institutions" while in the state schools parents and teachers are doing the cleaning, decorating and minor repairs.

I can't believe I'm going to type this Freaky, but as far as this post is concerned, I'm afraid I agree with you !
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

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rockfreak wrote: Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:09 pm The Leavers Charge was written, I think, by Hamilton Fyfe (Correct me if I'm wrong here) in an age before the economist John Maynard Keynes gave us the blueprint for government taking a steadying hand in the wilder excesses of the free market and starting to equalise up the economies of the western world. So HF would still have been a creature of his time: someone who thought that economic booms and busts and wealth gaps were an unfortunate fact of life and that Victorian (or Edwardian) patronage in the school system was the best that we could manage.
I wonder whether the girls had the Charge as early as the boys? I suppose there were a few intrepid women who went out to the Empire, but I always felt that the girls, probably up to the WW2, were more seen as being trained to be wives, teachers or nurses, definitely not a job with influence in the world.
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

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sejintenej wrote: Sun Apr 28, 2019 7:00 pm
michael scuffil wrote: Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:35 am Life at CH could be nasty and brutish (though not short), and of course I missed home comforts (though CH did have running hot water). But would I have preferred a daily 2-hour commute through dreary suburbs rather than a pleasant walk to school? I dunno. And would I have preferred having my parents around during the difficult phases of adolescence? Almost certainly not.
Michael. At least you had the benefit of parents with (presumably) the time to talk, to answer questions - even if you had to boil water on the stove for the tin bath on the kitchen floor. It is no great secret that I wss adopted (? twice) and after a call to CH once again I was an orphan. From the time I was perhaps five the person in charge of me was working 6am to 10pm, 6 and a half days a week so no time for parental advice (though she had no background to give any). Be thankful that you actually had a family. Be thankful that when you walked out of CH someone somewhere could advise you. Someone could tell you about universities of further education. You had someone who could answer questions.
Oh, and they kept from me that I had a sister and brother (both dead before I discovered them when I was in my seventies) ) and a neice
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly very glad I had parents. But I'm also glad I didn't share a house with them as disciplinary agents between the ages of (about) 13 and 18. They could however give me no advice on how the middle-class functioned. And while CH could, it didn't bother: it got me into Cambridge, duty done.
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by peter2095 »

I have very fond memories of being in my Junior House, where i found it supportive and had a great House master and assistant house mistress, everyone got on really well and it was all around a nice environment. Was very lucky with the people that were in my year group in house.

Senior House was awful, mainly few of the other boys but mostly the house master and lack of support. A lot of favouritism! i know i probably wasn't the easiest to handle / manage, it did feel like they didn't really care.

I have to say, I was very lucky with the tutor I had who did everything they could do to help me.
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by sejintenej »

peter2095 wrote: Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:19 pm I have very fond memories of being in my Junior House, where i found it supportive and had a great House master and assistant house mistress, everyone got on really well and it was all around a nice environment. Was very lucky with the people that were in my year group in house.

Senior House was awful, mainly few of the other boys but mostly the house master and lack of support. A lot of favouritism! i know i probably wasn't the easiest to handle / manage, it did feel like they didn't really care.
I have to say, I was very lucky with the tutor I had who did everything they could do to help me.
Peter; IMHO just about everything in life (and not just your junior house and tutor) carries a big luck factor. The tutor you get, the wife/partner you link up with, the avoidance (or otherwise) of serious injury or illness , the DNA you inherited, the way your mind copes with problems, the life changing opportunity you grabbed or passed over .........

In older age you can look back and then you can recognise those events - in my case it was a lady who saw me on a wartime hospital visit when I was one or two days old which indirectly (and according to the CH Office a fraud!) led to my going to CH. A decision I made in about 1972 to make a damn nuisance of myself (so what's new?) which led to a management decision which eventually led to an unexpectedly and infinitely better job and pension.
There is an alternative.. never be afraid of risk - assess the chances. I told my kids "you will get one, perhaps even a couple of opportunities in life; grab them and run with them". By contrast a lady I know is a trustee in respect of some funds - she gets the basic bank interest whereas a parallel existing fund grabbed the oportunities and is growing 8 to 9% per annum - the lady follows the Labour Party line and considers investment a criminal act.

The Chinese have a concept of seven good years followed by seven lean years - we have worked on that basis, storing up in the good years and for us it has worked.

JT: you have created the thumbs up symbol - I think that Peter and a few others want a thumbs DOWN symbol :oops: :oops: :oops:
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

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rockfreak wrote: Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:09 pm Only last week the Daily Mirror headlined (belatedly) with the scandalous tax breaks the private schooling sector gets for being "charitable institutions" while in the state schools parents and teachers are doing the cleaning, decorating and minor repairs.
Why are these tax breaks scandalous? According to the Nuffield foundation's 2018 Annual Report on Education Spending in England, spending per pupil in the maintained sector was on average about £6200 for secondary pupils and around £4800 for primary pupils. Assuming that the average private day school charges around £20,000 per annum to educate a child at secondary level, the VAT saved per child is £4000. Prep schools generally charge less so the saving is less. By educating my daughter privately, even though I benefit from the schools' VAT-free status I am still saving the state over £2000 per year.

This brings me on to another related subject. Who is actually contributing to the state's coffers to pay for all this education anyway? Most people work hard but, on the whole, many are not actually contributing financially to the British economy. Depending on what figures you use, the average (in this case median) income for a family of 2 adults was £23,556 in 2103/2014. [The 2013/14 HBAI report]. However you allocate this, and allowing for a bit of an increase since then to £26,000 (say), that family will only be paying an absolute maximum of £2830 tax and £2110 national insurance, probably a lot less if the individual tax-free allowance is shared. Assuming a couple of kids of school age this family will be costing the country a great deal more in education (as well as health and other services) than they will be paying in tax and NI. Before anyone says - what about VAT, essential goods are VAT-free so this family will be paying no more than about £2000 in VAT assuming half their net income is spent on discretionary items.

My wife and I pay a great deal more than this in tax and I'm happy to do so for the greater good even though I do not currently rely on the state to educate my daughter. The VAT-free status of my daughter's school is a benefit but I am saving the state far more by not requiring it to educate my child!
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Re: Anyone else who hated being at CH ?

Post by peter2095 »

sejintenej - Oh I'm all the better for going and am a firm believer that you have to take opportunities, some of them pay off and some of them don't. Either way it will be an experience. I'm very fortunate that in my career i've been offered opportunities and although hard work, have got me to a place, that my 16, 18, 20 or even 30 year old self would have thought unobtainable. I always say to people it's about opportunities. Although luck does play a part, hard work and perseverance also plays a big part. My drive has been to prove people who thought that I wouldn't achieve anything, wrong.

I don't regret going at all, however just didn't like my Senior house.
If it takes 87 muscles to frown, if i frown throughout the day, can that count towards my daily work out?
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