Ethos Education Winter 2013/4 | Page 9

In the Great War alone, seven hundred and seven pupils lost their lives, a number exceeded only by those killed in two other British schools, Eton and Marlborough. The house system provided the heart of the pupil experience. Each belonged to a house with some fifty other boys, and they were run substantially by the older students. Discipline was harsh, with ‘fagging’ (doing chores for older pupils) and regular beating by prefects. The house system taught boys obedience, loyalty and resilience. Games were ubiquitous in school life. All played, whether they were sporty or not. Physical contact sports, notably rugby, predominated. They taught boys the importance of team over self and that a greater fear of injury would be the contempt of their fellow players. All students belonged to the Combined Cadet Force or CCF which constituted the final strand. Parade, drill, ‘operations’ and camp constituted the core activities. Boys learnt how to give and receive punishment and to accept discipline without complaining. Physical strength was at a premium. The Wellington regime was harsh, and has been captured by the novelist Sebastian Faulks in his 2008 book ‘Engleby’. It describes a brutal school which is unmistakably Wellington which Faulks had attended during the 1960s. The Wellington College he describes in its first 100 years undoubtedly developed a certain kind of character strength, as did other public schools. The downside was it legitimised aggression and bullying. ‘Kindness’ was deemed soft and milky. Feminine, indeed. Woe betide any boy who was effeminate, still more gay. The school had changed much by the time I became headmaster in 2006. I promptly made the school fully co-educational, and promoted a more rounded and kind vision of character. Our new character approach has five strands. In 2006, we began to teach wellbeing (popularly called ‘happiness’), based on the University of Pennsylvania’s resilience programme, founded by the ‘father’ of positive psychology, Professor Martin Seligman. ethos magazine Until the most recent years, every student attended chapel daily, and twice on Sunday. The first headmasters were all ordained, as was common in many public schools. ‘Muscular Christianity’ imbued every pore of sch