Ethos
While the masters naturally emphasise scholastic matters, for the pupils (and readership) it is physical activities that are at the heart of the school's ethos. Prowess at sports is the best route to popularity and respect, while over-attainment at study is something of lesser, if not negative, importance. Disputes are often settled by fights, with the invariable, if unrealistic, outcome that virtue triumphs over vice. Corporal punishment is widely used by the masters and by the Sixth Form prefects. The ultimate punishment, short of expulsion, is a birching administered by the saintly headmaster, Dr Locke. Lesser punishments are lines (copying out a hundred lines from a Latin text by the classical author Virgil), or for really serious infractions among the older forms a 'book' (copying out a complete Latin text by Virgil, which might be up to 952 lines. There is also a Punishment Room ("Punny") which, in rare and particularly serious cases, may be used to keep an offender in solitary confinement for a number of days.
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Famous quotes containing the word ethos:
“Reading more than life teaches us to recognize ethos and pathos.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Take the serious side of Disney, the Confucian side of Disney. It’s in having taken an ethos ... where you have the values of courage and tenderness asserted in a way that everybody can understand. You have got an absolute genius there. You have got a greater correlation of nature than you have had since the time of Alexander the Great.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)