Submitted Article 12 : A fetid scar on my otherwise healthy development
I’ve just come across your site. What a disappointment to see that that useless institution is still producing wave after wave of bitter, disaffected people.
My personal memories of that place are at best bad and at worst, a fetid scar on my otherwise healthy development. I try not to hold it against my parents that they didn’t send me to a mixed school, but chose instead to send me somewhere that appeared to have good educational standards, albeit filled with idiots - staff and pupils alike.
Being fat and regularly taunted back then, I wasn’t in the best of places as the majority of the staff were overwhelmingly disinterested in the wellbeing of their pupils. Additionally, having a disabled mother was a bit problematic for the staff too, as being taunted for being the `son of a cripple’ by the other pupils left me in a rather bad mood during my time there, to say the least.
I’m not specifically blaming QE Boys here. Schools around the world have a duty to mould and educate young minds and generally speaking, a lot of those young minds are going to be immature, with a hell of a lot to learn about themselves and the world around them. In QE’s case however, children arrived as mentally and emotionally stunted reprobates and left in much the same state a few years later.
There was one event that sticks in my memory - a time when my parents had to be called in thanks to one waste of space of a teacher, an evil vindictive little b*****d in the PE department who didn’t like me from day one, presumably because I was fat and wasn’t best suited to his brand of motivation through insults - only on days when he bothered to acknowledge me, mind you. They had expressed concerns to the head of year, Oulton, I believe, as I was now getting bullied by teachers as well as pupils. I can still remember my folks arriving back from the meeting. I wanted to know every single detail of what happened, but the outcome was that I was a nuisance who was put on report and had to sign out every day like a criminal.
Right now, at 27, I try my utmost to stay in shape with regular visits to the gym and healthy eating, and it upsets me to think that every single thing I’ve learnt about my health has been of my own doing. All the QE Boy's PE department taught me was to hate myself and stay at the back during cross country runs to walk and talk. That, and the staff were failed Physical Instructors who took out their bitterness and rage on small children. Very commendable.
Eamonn Harris, the head during my time there, summed up QE Boy's School on my very last day. We all had to gather in the main hall when he burst in and spoke to the assembled throng. I can’t specifically remember what this mighty figure said, but it was along the lines of `go forth, young men, do well.’ Marvellous. As someone who only ever taught sixth-formers, we’d only ever see him very occasionally storming down corridors. Half of us didn’t even know he could speak. Now he stood there grinning - smirking would be more appropriate - to give us some bullshit standard two-minute speech that basically said `grab the bull by the horns’ in a sarcastic manner, or `if you do really well, you will remember us, won’t you?’ With that, he buggered off and I’m pleased to say I’ve never seen him since. A short while later and a few of us said our goodbye’s. I remember commenting that a yearbook would’ve been a nice idea. Then we all seemed to drift off and I caught the bus home for the last time. Even Oulton my year head had made sure started off well on the road to success. His statement to my next college read as simply as possible, `I see no reason why (censored) should not do this course.’
I hope to be a father soon. When I do, I will do my utmost to ensure that my children never have to endure a single soul-destroying minute in a dump like QE where the emphasis is on getting the best grades to make the papers, then spitting out the students.
Submitted by anonymous
`87 to `90, I think. I’ve blotted most of it out.
