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Schools could be profoundly violent and tyrannical, as revealed in Morris Cargill's memoirs of Munro College.
Cargill-conservative descendent of the white planter class (and Manley family foe)- recalled that the college was supposed to be run like an English public (private) school, but 'the trouble was that the English public school system it copied was that of a century earlier, as it was imagined by a Colonial overseer who had never been to one."
Munro's headmaster, 'Wagger' Harrison, was a 'drunken bully who believed in flogging as an essential aid to teaching.' He taught Scripture 'cane in hand, stalk{ing} threateningly between the ranks of his terrified Christian soldiers.' Slight mistakes in answering questions might result in a thrashing, so Wagger's students achieved prodigious feats of memorization, but often without understanding.
Cargill depicts Munro College, a school for the privileged, as a house of horrors. Boys were inducted by initiation ceremonies such as 'candle greasing': dripping candle wax all over a boy's head; and 'crowning': a chamber pot full of urine was placed over a boy's head like a cap and he was forced to get up and declare, 'Rex poniarum sum!,' ( I am the king of the pony pot).
'Serious' offences such as smoking could be punished by a public flogging before the school's 120 boys and 12 staff. The 'sinner' would be pinned across a table by four fifth -and sixth- from boys. Before the flogging, Harrison would deliver a short speech, a 'mixture of audience flattery and intimidation.'
By the time he was finished, he had practically everyone on the school on his side, screaming for blood. The friends of the boy to be beaten would betray their friendship by agreeing that he deserved it. Wagger made public beatings the most popular entertainment at Munro College. ALl the herd instincts-the cruelty, the need for hero-worship, the admiration for physical strength-which boys and savages have in common, were turned by Wagger into a cult. Even the unlucky victims of his cane would more often than not go back to worshipping when their wounds healed, in return for a crumb or two of kindliness carelessly thrown in their direction."
Sadists such as "wagger' Harrison represented an extreme, to be sure. Nonetheless, the violence and brutality Cargill described persisted at a slightly reduced level for decades throughout elite secondary schools.
mi a go post Jamaica College drama likkle lata...dat one was good too...it haffi do wid Joshua, Coore an DK an dem , all JC ole bwoys....Joshua did get put pon coventry afta him driva did find out seh di bwoys were beating him up an threaten dem pon di sly...Joshua neva know seh him driva did do dat but di bwoys put him eena Coventry and wat happened explained his lifelong commitment to David Coore....
Cargill-conservative descendent of the white planter class (and Manley family foe)- recalled that the college was supposed to be run like an English public (private) school, but 'the trouble was that the English public school system it copied was that of a century earlier, as it was imagined by a Colonial overseer who had never been to one."
Munro's headmaster, 'Wagger' Harrison, was a 'drunken bully who believed in flogging as an essential aid to teaching.' He taught Scripture 'cane in hand, stalk{ing} threateningly between the ranks of his terrified Christian soldiers.' Slight mistakes in answering questions might result in a thrashing, so Wagger's students achieved prodigious feats of memorization, but often without understanding.
Cargill depicts Munro College, a school for the privileged, as a house of horrors. Boys were inducted by initiation ceremonies such as 'candle greasing': dripping candle wax all over a boy's head; and 'crowning': a chamber pot full of urine was placed over a boy's head like a cap and he was forced to get up and declare, 'Rex poniarum sum!,' ( I am the king of the pony pot).
'Serious' offences such as smoking could be punished by a public flogging before the school's 120 boys and 12 staff. The 'sinner' would be pinned across a table by four fifth -and sixth- from boys. Before the flogging, Harrison would deliver a short speech, a 'mixture of audience flattery and intimidation.'
By the time he was finished, he had practically everyone on the school on his side, screaming for blood. The friends of the boy to be beaten would betray their friendship by agreeing that he deserved it. Wagger made public beatings the most popular entertainment at Munro College. ALl the herd instincts-the cruelty, the need for hero-worship, the admiration for physical strength-which boys and savages have in common, were turned by Wagger into a cult. Even the unlucky victims of his cane would more often than not go back to worshipping when their wounds healed, in return for a crumb or two of kindliness carelessly thrown in their direction."
Sadists such as "wagger' Harrison represented an extreme, to be sure. Nonetheless, the violence and brutality Cargill described persisted at a slightly reduced level for decades throughout elite secondary schools.
mi a go post Jamaica College drama likkle lata...dat one was good too...it haffi do wid Joshua, Coore an DK an dem , all JC ole bwoys....Joshua did get put pon coventry afta him driva did find out seh di bwoys were beating him up an threaten dem pon di sly...Joshua neva know seh him driva did do dat but di bwoys put him eena Coventry and wat happened explained his lifelong commitment to David Coore....
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