Saturday, April 14, 2012

Business School

Boredom, bullies, balls and buggery. That's the lot of the English schoolboy, if he is fortunate. By fortunate I mean attending a decent public school rather than a state comp. where 'double Greek' refers not to ninety minutes of classics, but rather being rubbed up against, in quite an alarming way, by two big boys in the sports locker.

A private education prepares a chap for deprivation, random cruelty, ritual cruelty, imprisonment and facing crushing defeat at sporting occasions with fortitude. All useful life lessons, especially if one follows the English cricket team.

With the economy in the state it's in (pretty soon the only AAA rating one will see will refer to a type of battery), it's not wholly unreasonable to see private education flourishing, rather than contracting.

Recently it was the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens and the country chose to celebrate by arranging for society to closely reflect the plots and characters of his novels, with an increasing divide between the very rich and the very poor, and lots of grotesque characters established in positions of power. With the Government looking to re-introduce cholera as part of their NHS reforms and welfare reform policies consisting of 'reopen the workhouses' and 'replace the family tax credit with gruel', Dickens would have felt very much at home in twenty first century Britain.

In these desperate economic times, fortune rewards those who can think creatively about how they can earn a living. Certainly, there's currently a vogue for stepping aside as the 4:40 from Preston thunders past and then making off with 200 yards of copper signalling cable, but other career options are available. This is especially true with the Government wanting ordinary members of the public to provide the services that government and councils have hitherto. And while one cannot, it would appear, drive one's own nuclear submarine around the coast, nor just pitch up at your local hospital and announce that even if you are not a qualified brain surgeon, you are a volunteer and that and your keenness and really sharp carpet knife must count for something, it would appear that just about anyone is trusted to run a school.*

If you follow a few simple pointers, you can't go wrong. The first thing to settle on is the location. Ideally this should be in an isolated part of the country. Type 'desolate' into Google maps and you should get some locations. Such an approach will mean that you are likely to be able to pick up an appropriate property (gently decaying stately home being sold by gently decaying fag end of the aristocratic family that have lived there for generations, or a former army camp) at a decent price, that boys will be discouraged from running away from if they have to cross miles of unforgiving, booby-trapped, heathland before reaching civilisation in the form of the local hamlet where they can be immediately apprehended, and of course that any outbreak of child-friendly maladies like mumps, acne or typhoid can be easily contained.

The next thing you have to do is establish a sense of history.

By which I mean fake a sense of history.

Thanks to Wikipedia we now live in an age where rewriting history is no longer the exclusive preserve of victors or those writers who imagine a world where the Parliamentarians won the English Civil War (fact checked on Wikipedia) and one can, from scratch, come up with a glorious or convincingly inglorious past for your place.

You will need some famous old boys. Choose people who are dead or, although famous, are also safely anonymous, like the bloke who invented blu-tak, or did something ghastly to Rommel. Aristocrats from now extinguished lines are also a good bet, but don't use too many as this will give the impression that the local water makes you impotent.

This sense of history extends to the uniform. Do not, whatever you do, incorporate anything that a parent might pick up at any store other than the one you have done a deal with for kickbacks. No to trousers, yes to knickerbockers. No to black blazers, yes to capes. No to caps, yes to modified coal miners' helmets. And a big yes to some sort of ceremonial baton, twelve inches long and made of oak should do. Dressed like that your boys are going to need to be able to protect themselves against perverts and toughs.

You will now need to recruit teachers and this is where the global economic meltdown really comes into play. Foreign academics have seen their salaries and research budgets cut to the point where they are humiliatingly reduced to posting 'make maths fun' videos on YouTube in the hope of selling advertising, writing essays for private school yahoos, or simply running their own crystal meth labs are ripe for recruitment. Recruit broadly, this will ensure you have an attractive mix of foreign accents and also drive your bursar to distraction as he tries to seat the staff at high table in a manner that ensures that no two staff members from countries recently in conflict sit next to one another.

Always make sure your Latin master is a German as they are surpassed in their talent for sadism only by the Welsh.

Make your PE teacher a Welshman.

You are going to need term names, and the more exotic the better. Avoid terms such as 'Witsun', 'Spring' or 'New'. Instead you want a terms like 'Long Minge', 'Conkers' and, in an emergency, anything named after a fishing ground. Ideally, you're aim is to have a child baffle their parents by asking if they are coming to pick him up at the end of 'Dogger'.

Remember as you set the cirriculum that you are preparing people for life. How to dine should be taught, as should proper comportment abroad, on public transport, or upon finding out that one's mistress is pregnant.

And in these troubled times, how better to prepare lads for life than the establishment of a cadet force, not only will this instil a sense of discipline and encourage self and team confidence, but if they show talent, then the is no reason why the senior boys cannot make the school some money during their annual exercises during 'Umbridge Vac' by providing private security in Iraq, or overthrowing a small dictatorship somewhere in Africa.

Despite a secluded location, it's still important that your school develop close links with the community as one wants to develop a sense that your boys are trusted and dependable. Those signs forbidding more than one boy in the shop at a time can be seen as a failure, especially if that shop is a Tesco superstore.

Finally, you need the School Game. Certain schools are famous for inventing games or variations of games. As England are so monumentally crap at so many sports these days you are not expected to set the bar very high, indeed setting the bar a bit high might be the game. As long as it is something dangerous. Essentially, you are looking at something that will cause at least one exploded splidney - a sporting injury so unique that they have to invent a new organ for it - every term, which requires something dangerously violent, ideally with a squash ball and a length of rope stiffened with tar.

* except registered peodos. If you are unregistered, you're fine.

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