Lost Property & Unfair Punishment

This is part of a writing project on my school days most of which is based on the school reports my mother had kept for me for the years I was at the Edinburgh Academy 1969-81.

Fifth year saw us in Mr C’s class. He was not someone who suffered fools gladly as we were to find out one Monday afternoon. The final lesson every Monday was a study period which was used as choir practice, something I had been involved with in my first two or three years. But by fifth year the orchestra was my only extra-curricular activity. Mr C was in charge of the Lost Property office and from 2:30pm on a Monday he and a couple of us from his class helped sort through things that had been handed in. The rest of the class was left on their own and told not to make any noise.

Unfortunately on the fateful day when I was helping in the Lost Property office my classmates decided to mess around and word got back to Mr C who decided to punish the whole lot of us, getting us to run around the outside of the main school building a few times. Me being one of the less sporty ones didn’t finish until after the end of the lunchbreak which was all a bit embarrassing and to be honest, pretty crap. I had reminded Mr C that me and another boy hadn’t been in the classroom at the time of the disturbance, but he had no sympathy and we were punished along with the rest of them. Any respect I had for him went right out the window there and then.

It is something I heard on a podcast recently that children, especially youngsters, have a strong sense of what is right and wrong which is why you often hear kids say that something is not fair. This is often because adults do not behave in a fair way as was illustrated by Mr C’s decision to punish the two of us who had not been involved in the rowdy behaviour that Monday afternoon.

This was in 1979 and by then most teachers had abandoned the old-fashioned way of punishing pupils, i.e. by corporal punishment. There were still one or two who gave Six of the Best to unruly boys, but this was on rare occasions. Punishments were more likely to be in the form of detentions or making you write out lines 100 times. Another was writing out a piece of schoolwork on what was called Red Lined paper. I don’t know if this was used in any other schools, but it was indeed A4 sheets of paper with the lines coloured red and you had to have the work signed by a parent before handing it in to the teacher.

As I type this there are daily postings on social media regarding allegations of sexual and other violence which boys at my school suffered back in the 1970s and 80s. It will have brought back painful memories to many of my contemporaries. Even for those of us who didn’t suffer, it still reminds us that we were there and makes us reflect on the culture at the Edinburgh Academy where accusations were more likely to be ignored or swept under the carpet than addressed in a proper manner.

But on the plus side this whole sorry business will hopefully bring some sort of closure to the victims and it reminds us that social media can be used for positive purposes bringing people together to share memories and hopefully at some point in the future we will see justice being done.

Colin Bertram
31/07/2022