Reminiscences of boarding school life and the culture of terror in the guise of punishment and discipline
A few weeks ago, a clip of Bovi, the comedian, speaking at Daystar Christian Centre’s “Excellence in Leadership” conference, caught my eye on Instagram. He spoke about abuse and bullying in secondary school. In his opinion, empowering students to discipline other students was insane, crazy, and abnormal because secondary school children are too young to know anything about disciplining younger students and are more likely to abuse that power.
According to Bovi, seniors should guide younger ones and teachers should not support students disciplining other students. He further said that he believes the foundation for abuse as adults can be linked to seniors punishing/ bullying juniors because giving students authority over other students makes them bullies and bullies become future abusers of power.
My first thought on watching that clip was to disagree with him, not entirely though because I believe he didn’t state his point clearly but despite that, I understood what he was trying to say. Either that or he was expressing what he really felt, in which case I would probably maintain my initial position.
I got into secondary school a few months after I turned ten. I was quite young and small compared with some of my classmates who were already eleven and twelve. Going to a boarding school had been my dream for many years as I had heard many tales from my older cousins. Throw in all of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers and Saint Clare’s books, even though they were about girls-only boarding houses, and my curiosity was stoked. People seemed to have so much freedom as boarders. Boarding school had a good rep then, I think it also felt a bit more prestigious back in the day when one was a boarding student versus being a day student.
For many people who went to boarding school, especially in the 80s and 90s, the experience was either a pleasurable one, a traumatic one, or just one of those steps along the path of life, somewhere in between pleasant and horrible. I attended Command Secondary School in Ipaja and whilst it wasn’t as tough as the Nigerian Military School in Zaria, it was an experience in self-reflection, discipline, pain, and endurance.
When I got into secondary school, the Commandant (military term for “Principal”) had announced on our first day in assembly, that the seniors were not to maltreat us because we were his “babies”. I remember that sounding odd to me, why would anyone want to maltreat someone else? What could inspire that thought? Little did I know that I knew nothing. Whilst the first year seemed like a breeze, most likely because the seniors were being careful based on the Commandant’s instruction, his exit in my second year only helped to reveal the true nature of some of the most wicked and devilish humans many of us had ever encountered.
I recall a chat we once had in my secondary school set’s WhatsApp group where people shared their most horrible experiences and the names of the students responsible for this. Recalling some of the punishments we went through, the beatings, and the targeted harassment, I just could not imagine how we survived. I kid you not but some of those punishments were Grade A torture tactics. I will not even repeat those punishments publicly lest I give some aspiring evil child some ideas.
We rationalised some of these punishments as military drilling, which it was termed, but we were not preparing for war nor were we even training to become soldiers. The punishments and harassment were so bad that some people made it a habit of waking up before the morning bell at 5am to have their bath and run to the classroom area. They would then come back to bed around midnight only to repeat the same thing in the morning. A cycle of escape. Some didn’t even bother sleeping in the dormitories, they lived in classroom areas or hid with their guardians, teachers who looked after them. I recall these things now and I am shocked that we probably considered this normal at the time.
If you’re wondering if the teachers knew what was going on, they most certainly did but they also probably rationalised it as an experience in discipline. I mean, discipline and the military were synonymous, how that discipline was exercised though was a completely different kettle of fish.
In speaking with a few people about their boarding house experiences, and not just my classmates or schoolmates, I realised that these types of experiences were common during that era but to varying degrees. We probably had it worse due to our military exposure but visiting pain and terror on junior students seemed to be the standard at that time. Many years later, there are still a few people hurting from the pain of so many years ago. Some have not forgiven their tormentors and even if they have, cannot relate to them normally, many years after. Many of these former terrors are completely different personalities now and it would be hard to reconcile them with who they were. I always advocate for forgiveness though, those were the days of ignorance and people should know better as adults. People who are still hurting also need to find help so they can resolve the pain and move on.
You would assume that people who have gone through so much pain would end the cycle and treat others better, alas I noticed that some of these people just went right back to visiting the same or even worse pain on junior students when they became seniors. It just became a vicious cycle.
Thankfully, things appear to have changed drastically. Every time I return to my alma mater, I see how absent fear is from the students. I hear that many public and private schools have banned all forms of physical punishment, which hopefully has made things better. But I do know that there are still some maladjusted children out there who are evil personified. They must not be encouraged along their path of terror.
I am sure you’re now wondering why I disagree with Bovi even though I seem to have made his point for him. Well, in my opinion, school is one of the best places to learn about order and discipline. How that lesson is taught should be the focus rather than completely advocating seniors should not be allowed to punish juniors. In the real world, there are consequences for every action or inaction, and removing that preparatory step from schools would just be ill-preparing children for life as adults. I see nothing wrong with seniors punishing juniors.
We should rather focus on how discipline and punishment are executed and not completely stand against disciplining younger students. Older students who have abused their power as seniors have done so because they were either not prepared to handle power, came from backgrounds that exposed them to the abuse of power so they only replicate what they know, and/ or were not held accountable when they misused power.
What needs to be done is to fix the mentality of the older students and prepare them for seniority and leadership, and we will see a lot of improvement. This isn’t a job for schools as much as it is a job for parents because home training should be the basic foundation for normal, well-adjusted human beings. Secondary school is a preparatory step to adulthood, let’s focus on preparing tomorrow’s leaders in a more wholesome manner so we don’t breed menaces to society. This is the way I see things today.