Drunken pupils openly smoking, sneaking out to the pub, fighting in the playground with knuckledusters, bullying incidents leading to death, sexual harassment, a pregnant teenager, classes out of control, verbally abusing prefects, vandalism, guns in the school building, yet more bullying… welcome to Rugby School in the 19th century. What would the Daily Mail have made of that? It’s no wonder the latest adaptation of Tom Brown’s Schooldays was on past the watershed: cosy family drama this was not! This is another classic tale that I’ve never read, nor have I seen any other adaptation, so the story was all new to me, and I don’t know how much of it remained true to the original tale. But it certainly showed how barbaric boys can be without the civilising influences thrashed into them.
The story shows what Rugby School was like before the arrival of Dr Arnold as
headmaster, and the changes he tried to implement. I don’t know where the lines
between fact, fiction and dramatic adaptation blur, so I’ll ignore that which I’m
ignorant about. Rugby School was a place where masters taught the boys, then left
them to their own devices in their boarding houses, so that these young English
gentlemen became feral and it all resembled Lord of the Flies but with gothic
architecture instead of a deserted island. Bullying was a way of life, from
humiliating the new boys to torturing others to death, by fire and water and good
old beatings. When Dr Arnold (Stephen Fry looking shockingly old) arrives with his
family, he finds that the masters are not in control of the school, that boys
distil their own alcohol and keep firearms in their rooms, gambling and womanising
is rife, and that even his own reforms (including sound thrashings to miscreants)
turn golden haired innocents like Tom Brown into hard-nosed bullies.
As an aside, I wonder when the term “masters” became “teachers”? The term “master” is more akin to a master and apprentice relationship, when youngsters would learn their trade from experienced and knowledgeable men, which is what Victorian schoolboys were doing I suppose: learning Latin and Greek and how to run the Empire. We still refer to “headmasters”, unless it’s “headmistress”, although “headteacher” covers it all. Anyway, I digress...
At Rugby School, Dr Arnold was by no means the super-head sent into a
failing school. He made mistakes, some of them costly, and throwing things at others
was still second nature to the boys. I did feel like applauding his decision to let
two boys get on with their fight without any teacher intervention, but even that
ended badly. The rest of the staff weren’t all supportive of his reforms. Some of
them believed that the ethos of bullying was just what the boys needed to prepare
them for ruling the Empire, and I suppose with historical retrospect they were right
really.
The biggest bully of them all was the dastardly Flashman, a boy looking much older than being in the fifth year, but then again I suppose they did grow up so fast in those days. Flashman’s father was a great benefactor to the school, and for me his character epitomised what it would be like to work in a private school: he got away with murder (or at least death by misadventure and rape) by slurring the phrases, “Do you know who my father is?” and “Father says the gymnasium equipment is on the way”.
The drama ended with a funeral, and left me with the feeling that I wanted to see more. But what exactly did I want to see? Dr Arnold finally turning round the school, ridding it of bullying and violence, so the final scene was a class of boys enjoying their Latin dictation? It would hardly have been fitting for “Victorian Public Schoolboys from Hell”. Besides, it wouldn’t be a fair reflection of reality, although thanks to programmes like this, today’s teenage tearaways look like complete amateurs in the fields of bullying, fighting and vandalism. Nothing like a good public school education to teach you how to do things properly, what ho?
added 2/1/05
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