The kids were messing around and ended up being late for school this morning. As they dithered and procrastinated knowing that there will be no sanction at all for being late for anything I tried to recount the punishment at Warwick School when I was a boy. Not the sadistic abuse but the official punishments: am I misremembering?
An offence like being late for a lesson, for the start of day, forgetting your homework books or, my problem, looking scruffy would get you a “minor” which the teacher would duly record in a book. Three minors in a term or a really bad offence and it was a detention. That was really a punishment for your parents as it disrupted what were often shared school runs.
For you it meant staying behind in a class room after school for an hour. A really egregious offence might see the detention taking place on Saturday.
Some masters would allow you to do homework in a “ditto” and so that was not so bad. But I seem to remember from my detentions, which were largely down to languages teacher Eric Kennett spotting me looking scruffy, that at least one master would chalk an X on the blackboard. He’d then sit at the front marking homework, occasionally looking up. If he saw you not looking at the X then he would award you another detention.
If that all sounds pointless and just a bit cruel it was. But am I misremembering or did Warwick really punish us in that way?
For you it meant staying behind in a class room after school for an hour. A really egregious offence might see the detention taking place on Saturday.
Some masters would allow you to do homework in a “ditto” and so that was not so bad. But I seem to remember from my detentions, which were largely down to languages teacher Eric Kennett spotting me looking scruffy, that at least one master would chalk an X on the blackboard. He’d then sit at the front marking homework, occasionally looking up. If he saw you not looking at the X then he would award you another detention.
If that all sounds pointless and just a bit cruel it was. But am I misremembering or did Warwick really punish us in that way?