Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

138 that the tiny privileged group – then just 4% of boys and much less of girls - entered their boarding schools. Clearly the population had formed a detailed mental set of what secondary education was. Isabel Quigley, in her seminal study of this phenomenon, had no hesitation in writing of what she called ‘the brain washing ‘ of generations; ‘their expectations of schools and their conventions were familiar’ to everyone, including the youngsters growing up to be ordinary teachers in state schools. The educational historian P.W.Musgrave summed up the whole business in declaring ‘it was a wonderful myth which influenced school life..schoolboy literature had immense implications for the new state schools..no other kind of school has ever had the benefit of such propaganda.’ It seemed to be the only show in town. Although there were critics – Matthew Arnold had been one of them – who sought a less traditional construct for the nation at large, the concept of having a distilled version of what the rich children had, and one which, if Frank Richards was to be believed, was a pleasing experience, could not be forsworn. Writing in another field of interest, that of British comedy, I found myself solving the mystery of Will Hay, ‘the Schoolmaster Comedian’. His creation of the shifty, defensive caricature of beleaguered authority, the embattled schoolmaster, was the root of his gigantic stage, radio and film success. But thereby lurked a curio. His St Michael’s is obviously a boarding school, with all the patois and conventions of such snooty establishments but his audiences would have been personally unfamiliar with such schools. And yet Will Hay was perfectly comprehended. From where did his vast myriads of fans glean the background knowledge to make intelligible Will Hay’s brilliant guying of posh schooling? The explanation must lie in the surfeit of schoolboy literature of the period and the induction of generations of children into the rudiments of boarding school life. They were thereby enabled to pick up every last smidgen of Will Hay’s detailed portrait. The Educational Effect