Prefects, Headboys and Headgirls in Real Life

[Shaun Hately]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Ali" <Ali at z...> wrote:
> 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.

Yes, I'd have to agree with this - the twins are a little unusual on
this issue. Most people tend to go along with it, even if they think
it's a little odd at times.

Of course at my school, the twins would have found themselves with a
good chance of *being* prefects in the hope that it would teach them
some responsibility (-8. But my school did operate a little
differently from Hogwarts in that regard - the fact that Hogwarts
seems to choose only two prefects per house per year means that it
can't really afford to appoint prefects who don't seem nearly certain
to work out effectively. My school appointed enough that they could
take a few risks a year (hey, I was probably one of those risks).

> 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.

Australian education in general has adopted a fair few British
traditions, but my school was still fairly unusual as in many ways, it
was virtually a transplanted British school with British traditions -
it was one of a number of schools (six in my state - probably around
20-30 across the country) set up in the nineteenth century as close to
carbon copies of what people thought the 'best' British schools were
like - largely in an effort to stop rich and powerful people in the
Australian colonies (as they then were) feeling the necessity to send
their sons all the way to England for schooling - which because of the
lengths of the sea voyages involved could mean sending a child away
for years at a stretch. Set up to copy the British schools, they did
it quite effectively, and even today, while they have evolved and are
part of Australian culture, they still maintain a lot of the older
traditions - the uniforms (check me out at
http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/8017/uniform.jpg to see me at age
15 in school togs), the buildings... really, I'm quite serious when I
say Hogwarts similarity to where I went to school is one of the
reasons the HP books appealed to me.
 
> 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... 

Ooh, abuse of powers!

Depends on the schools - abuse like that would seriously *not* have
been tolerated at my school - before anything else happened, the other
prefects would have taken matters into their own hands.
 
> 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. 

I think my school handled it better. Our privileges were different -
prefects wore a special tie and had special colours woven into their
blazer pockets (although they were also only prefects for their final
year). And many did use their little rooms - if at no other time, than
when they had free periods so they could avoid having to find a desk
in the study hall (which could be very cold in winter).
 
> 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. 

A problem I have heard about - but not one I had to deal with
fortunately. It just wasn't done.
 
> 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.

We did have a house system (eight of them at my school) and, yeah,
virtually everything was a house activity. My house was generally
pretty hopeless at most of them (-8
 
> 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!

At my school, most people really seemed to want to be there - even the
rebels seemed to fundamentally respect the basic principles of the
school. Not sure if that was always a good thing - but it did mean
that the whole system generally worked well because it did work with
the tacit support of all involved.

And me - well, I did take the traditions seriously - more seriously
than most probably. For me that was because I did *not* come from the
traditional background of most of the boys at the school - my father
was a nightwatchman at the time I started there, and I had had a year
of hellish experience in another far more common type of school. So I
*really* and *truly* valued my school, and its ways and its
traditions, and truly did feel privileged to be a part of them.

I grew up reading school stories about the British schools of the
early to mid 20th century, while attending normal Australian suburban
schools, which I largely hated. Suddenly finding myself against all
expectations at one of the country's 'top' schools, of the type I had
escaped to as a reader, was pretty close to heaven and a miracle. 

Even after I found out that just like in the books, corporal
punishment was part of the deal!
 
> All in all, I think these hierarchical structures are probably a bad 
> thing but (IMO) highly amusing!

I, personally, think they can be a good thing - if done properly. At
my school, it really was a two way street - yes, prefects had
privileges, but they really had real responsibilities as well. They
could discipline their younger schoolmates - but they also had to look
out for them.

And while we did, virtually automatically, respect the position, if
anyone ever abused it they would have lost that pretty quickly.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia