Now the most unreal part of the reconstructions of school life is
the insistence on the boyish code of honour. Neither as a boy nor
as a schoolmaster did I ever have much evidence of this. There were
certain hard and fast rules of conduct, like the rule which
prevented any boy from giving information to a master against
another boy. But this was not a conscientious thing. It was part of
the tradition, and the social ostracism which was the penalty of
its infraction was too severe to risk incurring. But the boys who
cut a schoolfellow for telling tales, did not do it from any high-
minded sense of violated honour. It was simply a piece of self-
defence, and the basis of the convention was merely this, that, if
the rule were broken, it would produce an impossible sense of
insecurity and peril. However much boys might on the whole approve
of, respect, and even like their masters, still they could not make
common cause with them. The school was a perfectly definite
community, inside of which it was often convenient and pleasant to
do things which would be penalised if discovered; and thus the
whole stability of that society depended upon a certain secrecy.
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