Prefects, Headboys and Headgirls in Real Life

[Ali]

Morgan D. wrote of Shaun's prefect experience:-

>>> And your description of the job gave me both the insight of why 
some students would want so badly to be a Prefect and consider it a 
huge honour, and also while others, like the twins, would dismiss 
the whole thing with scorn<<<

This is dangerously near on-topic, but in my experience the twins 
were unusual for dismissing the whole prefect set-up. I think that 
their rebellion against it had alot to do with their mother's 
idolation of the "award" and Percy's attitude.

The prefect system is something that many Brits (and obviously some 
Aussies) are brought up with, it's part of our culture. I rebelled 
against a lot of things at school. Authorities don't really like it 
if you rebel, so really I could not have expected to be made a 
prefect, *but* I was still disappointed when I wasn't.

Truthfully, prefects are unpaid dogsbodies. They do the pastorial 
duties that the teachers don't want to do. In my school this 
including things like stopping kids pushing in the queue at dinner 
time, stopping them from running in the "Quad", making them put out 
chairs for assemblies and picking up litter. I remember getting 
prefect detentions when I was forced to pick up orange peel just so 
the prefect could ask out my friend. Hmm... 

In return for being a dogsbody, a prefect at my school got the 
honour of wearing a badge that they had to give back at the end of 
the year (we had had prefects from only the last year of school). Oh 
yes, and they got the privilege of a room that only they were 
allowed to use - I was once kicked out of it by the Head Girl as I 
wasn't a prefect. But, that wasn't much of a privilege as my friends 
who were prefects then spent the majority of their time with me and 
the rest of our friends and so used the room only to dump their 
stuff in. 

The only real benefit I think that prefects got was they could 
proudly put on their CVs and University application forms that they 
had been a prefect. Like that really makes a lot of difference! Some 
did really love their sense of power though, and *would* bully 
younger kids. 

I blame Elkins, but I can nolonger read or hear about any of our 
bizarre little school systems without an intense desire to snigger. 
Like Hogwarts, my school had 4 houses, but we were split according 
to geographic location which made better sense for us than trying to 
work out our personalities. Practically everything that could be was 
turned into an "Inter-House" competition, although we didn't have 
House points or an overall house cup (My primary school did 
though!). Our school teachers wandered round in their academic gowns 
covered in chalk dust - and I think that several of them looked like 
malevolent bats as they floated by.

I found the whole authority/respect thing rather difficult to come 
to terms with. I could respect people who were good, but not because 
of what they were. My attempts to organise homework strikes and  
even refuse a prize did not go down very well - I upset my parents 
over the prize thing though and had to ask for it back which was 
embarassing. I also spent much of my school career being moved in my 
lessons just because I was deemed to be a "chatterbox". I firmly 
blame my teachers for the fact that I'm quite quiet now - they 
managed to squash out my talkativeness!

All in all, I think these hierarchical structures are probably a bad 
thing but (IMO) highly amusing!

Ali