Weekends were heaven as I could escape back home for two whole days, and its loss was a disaster of monumental proportions to me. A far worse punishment than the cane could ever be… During that lost weekend I arrived late for afternoon tea and “Mousey” gated me again for the following weekend. If […]

  The prefect’s father also complained, highlighting the inappropriate nature of the punishment, especially for a prefect, and criticized the entire prefect system. Wilson, however, made the prefect apologise, and indicated to the Council his disapproval of their intervention in a matter of school discipline that undermined his authority.” Mr Bill “Mousey” McKean, Boardinghouse master: […]

‘When school was reached Church, Dr Wilson [ordered three prefects to go to his study and] asked him why he did not kneel [and he] said he did not know; and immediately Dr Wilson said he would cane him, if he did not find out. Not receiving an immediate reply, Dr Wilson losing all control […]

Reverend Andrew Wilson, Headmaster: “In spite of the apparent prosperity of the school in the late 1880s, the Council was not wholly satisfied with Wilson’s performance. It questioned his authority on disciplinary matters, as it had done with Bromby. There was no doubt that Wilson was a strong disciplinarian. He reported entire groups of boys […]

  . Bromby’s response was firm but perhaps open to compromise: ‘Lockups are made sufficiently dark to prevent reading, but light is not wholly excluded. Any modification can be made in these which the Council might think proper. Corporal punishment cannot be administered without my sanction. I will see that this regulation is rightly enforced.’ […]

“Challenging traditions : a history of Melbourne Grammar” by Weston Bate and Helen Penrose. Dr John Edward Bromby, Headmaster: “While Bromby did not express the same views as Morris about the problem with teaching and disciplining Australian boys, he meted out swift and severe punishments – so severe, in fact, as to draw complaints from […]

“‘In 1935 [in] Leighwood House, discipline here was enforced by the masters per medium of an extremely cruel horsewhip… bruising was seen by the school doctor and the whip barred. What was not known was that two little boys in the middle of the night entered the master’s study and hid the whip and so […]

  In a different, parallel sequence of changes, leadership by example has been a constant but it has moved from being bolstered by the power to punish through to largely relying on persuasion, whilst the power to punish has shrunk as caning ceased.” “‘Here was a centuries-old state of mind, starting with prayers and then […]

“The prefects’ response to bullying was mild. In 1966 a bully’s punishment was only a one-hour detention, whilst smoking and uniform infractions brought the cane.” “Other things neither rise nor oscillate, but become a sequence of items that are connected but separate, like a symphony’s movements. For example, Scotch has had successive perceptions of leadership, […]

“So the prefects in 1966 caned a boy for ‘wearing school uniform improperly in a public place, and thereby lowering the name of the school.’” “Alan Hartman (1970) tried to organise an anti-Vietnam War protest group at the school in 1968, and ‘was caned for some other minor disciplinary infraction at the same time… the […]