Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

Mary Wakefield finds that the pupils of Wycombe Abbey and Eton are not learning their anti-war lessons The sight of London teeming with pacifist children last week sent right-wing parents into a spin. The school-run

phone-lines hissed with rumours of nice, young, public-school teenagers being brainwashed by embittered, left-wing teachers, The headmistress is stockpiling drinking water at my daughter's school,' said one mother, and when the children ask why, she blames America.' The Mail on Sunday provoked further panic with a story about the Etonian son of an SAS officer, who led 50 schoolfriends in the march last Wednesday. Throughout the Home Counties, fathers muttered about Tony Little, the headmaster who had given permission for the boys to protest.

Sitting on the grass, just inside the gates of my old school, Wycombe Abbey, I wondered how best to investigate these rumours, Across the green sweep of the lacrosse pitches I could see the tiny figures of the headmistress and her chaplain, scanning the grounds for intruders. Still too craven to confront teachers, I eventually found four fifth-form girls and sneaked out with them into High Wycombe.

Lucy was bursting with complaints about the chaplain. 'In his sermon last Sunday Father Tim ranted against George Bush,' she said over a Diet Coke. 'He criticised Bush for portraying this as a holy war and then he said that all war is blasphemous.'

'He upset a lot of people,' added her friend Laura, flushing, 'One senior mistress walked out and many of the girls who have fathers involved in the fighting found it very difficult to deal with. Some were crying.'

'It's OK to pray for peace,' said Lucy. tut not OK to suggest that all those in favour of war are bad people. Father Tim doesn't seem to acknowledge that thinking the war might help people in the long run is a valid point of view.' Other teachers are anti-war but less evangelically so. 'My politics teacher just thinks you should let other countries alone,' said Laura, 'but we can answer back and have good debates about it.'

If my spirits slightly sank at this confirmation of the mummys' fears, they were raised by the realisation that no amount of rabble-rousing was going to affect Lucy and her chums. Around our table there was a division of opinion. Lucy was in favour of war with Iraq, Laura hadn't made her mind up, and the other two were vaguely against it. Lucy would consider changing her position if the war turned out to be very horrible and bloody', and three of them agreed that France is 'ridiculous' — hair flick — 'because they want to appease, whatever happens'. What united them was a hostility towards being told what to think. 'I used to be anti-war and against American intervention,' said Lucy, 'but I've been put off by people like Father Tim being so close-minded and, like, ineffectual.'

I asked my I8-year-old friend Matt to help with inquiries at Eton. Somewhere in the drifts of aloof-looking boys with Lady Di hair, he found a small, friendly 18-yearold scholar called Tom. 'Dr Cullen's probably the most outspoken beak [teacher],' said Tom, and described a speech to School Hall in which Dr Cullen had forcefully condemned the hypocrisy of US foreign policy. 'It was very vehement and aggressive. So much so that many of the boys were angryabout it,' he said. One scholar was even moved to write a letter of complaint to the Eton Chronicle.

'Yeah, and, like, another boy was put on the bill for sticking an anti-war flyer on to Dr Cullen's door,' said Matt, helpfully. 'It was a pro-war sticker,' corrected Tom. 'Dr Cullen is anti-war.'

'Whatever,' said Matt.

But just as at Wycombe, teachers' invective seems to slide harmlessly off publicschool minds, 'We all already know what we think, whether we're proor anti-war or don't care,' said Tom. 'So what the beaks say has little effect.'

Tom's own position is that something has to be done about Saddam, and that the US is the only country that can do it. 'People say, "Why Iraq, when there are other countries just as bad?", but you have to start somewhere. I agree that the US probably has selfish motives, but then, so does every other country. And if America can produce three times as much oil as the Iraqis do now, and use much of that money to benefit the country, then that's a good thing.'

Johnny, a boy from D block (upper fifth), described an anti-war lecture given by Lieutenant-Colonel Cooper, a former priest in the SAS and now one of the school's chaplains. 'He took us for assembly at the beginning of the war and he gave us an anti-American rant about the need for more proof,' said Johnny. 'I think he thinks it his duty to form our opinions.' LtCol. Cooper is, incidentally, famous for barking at pupils, 'I am first a soldier and second a teacher' I thought you were a priest, sir,' shouted one boy, which Cooper studiously ignored.

So do these sorts of talks have any effect on you? I asked Johnny. He gave me a kind but pitying look. 'We have assembly at 8.30 a.m. Everybody is too busy trying to stay awake to actually listen.'

As someone who in 1991 would have recognised the name but could easily have been persuaded that Saddam Hussein was a member of the shadow Cabinet, I spent Sunday in a state of shock about how much these children know. 'The feeling among most public-school kids my age is that, although we would vote Conservative and are not squeamish about war, we're sceptical about whether this one is justified,' said one Wycombe girl. 'We sort of suspect that the Americans just have a psychological need to win a war, going right back to Vietnam.'

Personally, I feel more comfortable with Matt's brand of pacifism: 'Some people, like, talk about the war the whole time. You walk into the common room when it's time for Bufft and they've got the news on or something.' he said, looking disgusted. Then continued hurriedly, 'I mean, don't get me wrong, it's OK to watch the news, but like, sometimes they're even watching, that place . . . urn, you know, the one with all the green seats in.'

All the pupil's names have been changed Mary Wakefield is assistant editor of The Spectator.