Academia - all important?

In terms of the boys and the boys' view on life, academia was not all important. Probably, rugby was all important. However, non-conventional areas, such as design and computing were generally seen as for "squares"... but more on that later.

To the masters, teachers and superiors academic success was high priority - perhaps "all important". There was often heard the phrase - "He is a BRIGHT boy... this one is not a BRIGHT boy".

The result of this, certainly in my case, was that I never saw non academic subjects as proper subjects. To me Art, Design, Music, Computing, Theatre studies... etc were not 'real' subjects, not serious. They were hobbies. Latin, Maths, English, History, Physics, Chemistry, French etc. - these were 'real' subjects. There were two ways to get past this code (1) One's own indomitable enthusiasm, (2) A teacher / tutor's enthusiasm for the pupil. For me I tried terribly hard on the (1) basis to get into the theatre, and I was lured into Music studies becasue of (2). More on this later.

The importance of academic success meant that tehre was a lot of pressure at this level. Academic work was much greater in volume and harder in its matter than at my previous school.

It also meant that the boys were put into "streams" - A,B,C,D,E. A was for the 'brightest'. E was for the least 'bright'. I was in the A stream. Most of my contemporaries in my house were in B,C,D,E. Those in the E Stream were immediately called "thickies", "thick as pig shit" etc. by their contemporaries.

Being academically 'bright' (we had fortnightly grades to show how we were doing - in terms of ABCDE - in each subject) was very important to the staff. We were supposed to perform against our 'stream'. If a pupil underperformed he was given a report card... More on this later.