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A hangover from this, mid-late 90’s boarding school in the U.K., one of the fags (household duties for first and second years - one-on-one fagging no longer off
by madaxe_again 2y ago
A hangover from this, mid-late 90’s boarding school in the U.K., one of the fags (household duties for first and second years - one-on-one fagging no longer officially existed, but did) was knocking up. Just comprised walking the corridors and banging on everyone’s doors at 7:00-7:15 (seniors later, head of house last), as the bells weren’t audible in much of the house.
It was a doss fag - by mutual agreement we came to the arrangement that whoever was on milk would also do the knocking up, as everyone got mandatory milk at the same time anyway, so ironically, whoever was on knocking up used to get to lie in for the week.
- oersted 2y agoGotta love british boarding school jargon. In the 90s no less! Sounds like 18th century.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoMy school still exists: founded in 15xx. Fags still fagging in '24.
- madaxe_again 2y agoBloody red-bricks. My school had its 1400th anniversary while I was there.
- ahoka 2y agoI find it fascinating that I don’t understand a sentence of this.
- lsaferite 2y agoIn this case 'fag' seems to follow the definition: an English public-school boy who acts as servant to an older schoolmate https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fag https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fag
- hallway_monitor 2y agoIt’s listed on that page as a synonym for toil or drudgery. So basically a chore is a fag. It seems like the definition you mention is likely the origin of today’s gay pejorative.
- pessimizer 2y agoIt's the same definition. A servant is a person who toils. This is a discussion about English public schools.
- xanderlewis 2y agoSee also: ‘can’t be fagged’.
- zinckiwi 2y agoRecommend Roald Dahl's "Boy" for a fascinating glimpse.
- duskwuff 2y agoAs well as a reminder that, at the time (~1930), it was really just a form of extended and unusually cruel hazing.
- isoprophlex 2y agoSomething happened around 7:00-7:15, of that we can be sure.
- KineticLensman 2y ago'mandatory milk' Many primary schools in the UK in the 1960s/1970s would have had 'milk monitors' - pupils whose job was to help distribute small servings of milk to their classmates. The milk distribution was an attempt to offset child malnutrition. The role continues to evoke strong feelings today. The Brit ex prime minister Rishi Sunak was described as a 'jumped up milk monitor' and when (in the 1970s) Margaret Thatcher as education secretary (minister) cancelled the school milk programme, she was reviled as 'Thatcher Thatcher Milk Snatcher'.
- Symbiote 2y agoI was "computer monitor" (no pun!) for a year in the 1990s, when I was about 10. I can't really remember the timing, but perhaps in the first half hour before lessons had started I would go to the classrooms of the 5-8 year olds, and if the teacher wanted I'd switch on the classroom computer and load the required program. (Maybe a different child did the 9-11 year olds' classrooms?)
- TRiG_Ireland 2y agoI found it fairly transparent, maybe because I've read more than one novel in that setting.
- nick3443 2y agoAh pledging/hazing, a double edged sword. A possibility for camaraderie and mentorship which is often misused for abusive and degrading activities. I went through pledging/hazing in a college fraternity in the US and it was mostly harmless if immature and crass, but for activities or challenges involving alcohol I could see it easy to go overboard especially at fraternities with a more macho/party reputation or with the wrong people involved.
- morkalork 2y agoComing from a north american public school, I can't imagine one's family paying large sums of money to send you to a boarding school... just to be some older boy's servant. Get your own ass up, or don't, not my problem. I am by no means a rabid libertarian but that kind of environment would drive me to it.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoChances are your public school doesn't have boarders. If your parents/ siblings ever woke you up...they were fagging (if not voluntary). Admittedly, some fag systems were just pure bullying, but generally not. If course, the smokers - after being woke up - would go outside and suck on a fag, but that's another story.
- 082349872349872 2y agoThe writer known as Orwell doesn't seem to have been fond of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887786 [He went to boarding school on scholarship, so that may have been another reason to have been treated poorly by the full-fare students?]
- d0gsg0w00f 2y agoI would pay large sums of money to have my kids learn the lesson that there is a hierarchy and one must always start on the bottom to understand every layer.
- madaxe_again 2y agoThat isn’t what one learns. One learns to cheat, lie, and steal, and to exploit systems and manipulate people. You don’t survive if you play by the rules. Public schools produce sociopaths, in general. Still, a valuable skillset, I must say.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago> ironically, whoever was on knocking up used to get to lie in for the week. I need to know more about "mandatory milk at the same time" to understand this
- dTal 2y agoTranslation: It appears that milk was delivered to the dormitories first thing in the morning, after the same fashion as "the milkman". Distributing said milk was a separate duty from waking up the students, but occurred around the same time; both duties being on a weekly rotation. Therefore it was mutually agreed that the student on milk duty would also bang on the doors as he went, thus relieving the student on Official Door Banging Duty that week from having to get up early to do it. It's unclear why this is described as as a "lie-in", as one would still presumably get woken up along with everyone else...
- madaxe_again 2y agoYou underestimate the perversity of boarding school. The important thing is that you are woken - nobody actually checks that you got up, however, until your absence for assembly is noted. If you were good at wriggling into full penguin in 30 seconds while running down the stairs, you could sleep in until 8:38.
- dTal 2y agoBut surely this is true of everyone, not just the "doss fag" Official Door Banger In Chief? Or was work allocated such that every single student had something to do first thing in the morning, so that the Door Banger was the only one not actually required to be up?
- madaxe_again 2y agoIn the house in general, yeah, but the first years (“shells”) had a rota of tasks, most of which involved delivering something (milk, juice, bread, papers) or taking something away (trash, crockery). Knocking up was the only one where there wasn’t something to carry. Weekend papers was the worst. Fifty fat newspapers to deliver throughout the house, up winding servants’ stairs.