School Houses
Additional to division into classes and years, the pupils of the school have been for most of the school's history allocated to one of eight school houses. Although, in recent years the system has been unused, it was reinstated in January 2010 with the houses:
- Argonauts
- Carthaginians (originally Crusaders)
- Kelts
- Parthians
- Romans
- Spartans
- Trojans
- Vikings
Unusually, Rutlish pupils did not, as a matter of course, wear the school badge on their uniforms, instead house membership was identified by a multi-coloured "house braid" which was affixed to the top edges of blazer pockets. In the transitus or sixth form it was common for pupils to be awarded "house colours" as an indication of achievement (often sporting). "School colours" were additionally awarded to those who had shown outstanding achievement. Recipients of house or school colours were entitled to wear the house or school badge on their blazers. School colours took precedence over house colours and the two were not worn together. Some houses, but not all, also had house ties which could be worn as an alternative to the school tie and, for a while, a school scarf was also available.
Throughout the school year, various inter-house competitions are held, often of a sporting nature, at which pupils compete individually or in teams as representatives of their houses. Towards the end of the school year, the winning house would be pronounced as Cock House.
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Famous quotes containing the words school and/or houses:
“After school days are over, the girls ... find no natural connection between their school life and the new one on which they enter, and are apt to be aimless, if not listless, needing external stimulus, and finding it only prepared for them, it may be, in some form of social excitement. ...girls after leaving school need intellectual interests, well regulated and not encroaching on home duties.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men.... I talked with one of them, telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see where the white pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With a smile, he answered that he could hardly tell me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)