Cold Shovier HAFIN opened the door of the disused , " u neeon
to reveal the cross-beams on which prisoners used to perch above a flooded floor. ,idenloung Adam Arnold-Brown by his side de- 'm at that moment that he wanted to come `pro-'ordonstoun. Unfolding Character traces his an!,ress from school Ca lank weed physically Brown'), a turnip intellectually') to the army Miller °wit). the Outward Bound movement and Hyderabad Public School. At Gordonstoun he found a Working Plan pinned inside his locker.' In one column were tasks like teeth brushed, rope climbed, skipping, press-ups, cold shower. In the next column each boy had to mark a plus or minus sign. As the governor of the Borstal in The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner remarked: 'We want to trust you while you are in this establishment.'
Arnold-Brown remembers:
Our major punishment was the penalty walk. According to the nature of the offence, vary- ing distances had to be completed on foot. alone, before breakfast. No master or senior boy supervised the penalty walk and for this very reason I felt in honour bound to go right up to, and never short of, the turning point.
Sillitoe's hero wrote: 'Cunning is what counts in this life, and even that you've got to use in the slyest way you can; I'm telling you straight: they're cunning, and I'm cunning.' ' Over every sentence in the book hovers the spirit of Kurt Hahn, but Hahn's own character is only partially unfolded, most clearly in a sternly critical letter he wrote to the editors of Gordonstoun News. It ended: 'I advise you to edit Gordonstoun News with some expert advice which is available here, uncontrolled by any censorship, but by your own tact and taste which will guide you in the observation of the Un- written Laws.' And the character reports on leaving are revealing, with their spaces left for comments on Esprit de Corps, Sense of Justice, ability to follow out what he believes to be the right course in the face of discomforts, dangers, boredom, hardships, mockery, scepticism and impulses of the moment, Physical Exercises, Fighting Spirit, Endurance and Reaction Time.
The author's discussion of education is as strangely lopsided as Gordonstoun itself. Wide games are painted in great detail, the problems of teaching the arts and sciences are generally ignored, except in the passage where he very properly demands that we must pay more money to get more teachers and smaller classes. He never argues the basic public school, co-educa- tional and comprehensive questions.
On morals he is a cold-shower man :
Give me a pack of cards, some gin, a few
dirty postcards, subdued lighting and guaran- teed freedom from interruption on a rainy evening in winter, preferably on a Sunday evening, and I do not doubt that I could corrode all but the finest among a group of youngsters.
I do doubt it. Compare these two quotations: Certainly I heard no dirty talk nor met with indecent behaviour while at Gordonstoun: the tone of the school was manly and clean. And My fastidiousness was a family joke; but even my family did not know that from the age of eleven I had avoided contact with lavatory seats.
Apparently this lasted until the author's marriage at the age of thirty. Something went wrong. While we're analysing character, which of these two quotations, each written by a boy after a course at an Outward Bound school, was written by the stronger character?
I am fitter mentally and physically for tackling the problems of life after school. . . . I think the real reason for my being sent on this course was tot meet and form friendships with work ing boys and I must say it has succeeded.
My a pinirn of This curse is I finck that the croscuiree run was tow much for the smet for the corse. I think thext the cold shower in the morning is a back flog fo a boy I flock that a hot shower would be better. I bieb not lick the map rcding.
ADRIAN MITCHELL
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