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Girls: The Prefects
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Author:  Róisín [ Thu May 15, 2008 1:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Girls: The Prefects

Let's take the Prefects as a body. What are your views on the Prefects – did the staff generally make good choices? Was the level of responsibility and duties required of the prefects reasonable and did they do a good job?

Please raise any points you would like to discuss and join in below :D

Author:  Alison H [ Thu May 15, 2008 2:40 pm ]
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The choices usually seemed reasonable: there are some choices - more over head girls than prefects generally - that could be questioned, but not many. Do we ever get to see the staff actually discussing who was going to be appointed? I'm not sure that we do ... I'd like to've known exactly who was involved and how the decisions were made!

The prefects seem to've been much more important at the CS than they were at most other schools. Unless you were the sort of person who wanted to do as little as possible, I can imagine that you'd have ended up feeling like quite a failure if you weren't chosen, and that there must have been a divide in the Sixth Form between prefects and non-prefects (although most people seem to end up as prefects one way or another!).

It must have been hard work - especially having to supervise prep when you had your own work to do - and sometimes I can imagine younger girls being annoyed that other pupils had so much power over them. There are also times - the Mary-Lou/Maynards business in Theodora being the obvious one - when it does seem that it might have been more appropriate for a mistress to have become involved. It's always nice to see the prefects working together, though, especially when they're groups of friends whom we've "known" for a long time.

Author:  JayB [ Thu May 15, 2008 2:59 pm ]
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I can see that prefects were necessary - the mistresses would never have had any free time if they'd had to monitor dormitories, supervise prep, run hobbies and other extra curricular activities, arrange the Sale, the Magazine etc etc. And prefectship did teach the girls leadership and resonsibility.

I think the amount of derference sometimes shown the prefects is exaggerated, but that seems to come from the girls themselves, rather than being required by the staff, so it's part of the culture of the school, if you like.

I think the choice of prefects is usually obvious and right, but that's because we've seen the girls growing up though the school, and it's usually obvious who is destined to be HG in each year. EBD probably knew when she introduced Mary Lou that she was going to be Head Girl one day, there was never any doubt that Len would be HG in her year, and so on.

The Prefects having real difficulties, more than the standard cheeky Middle, is one storyline EBD never explored - unlike DFB, for example, who used it a few times. The nearest she came I think was the Diana Skelton storyline - but even then, it's not shown to be due to any failings of the prefects.

Author:  KatS [ Thu May 15, 2008 4:44 pm ]
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I find the prefects have an incredible amount of work! We had "prefects" at my high school, and they put on an assembly each week and a couple of charity events per year, but had nothing like the kind of responsibility piled onto the CS prefects. They certainly had nothing to do with discipline. You have ten (?) girls, some of whom are only about fifteen or sixteen, and they're supposed to be in charge of running all the school activities, supervising and giving help with homework for hundreds of girls every night, organising entertainments, continally nagging at the girls for slang/cheekiness/untidiness, dealing with serious discipline and personal issues... I can see that it would be more necessary in a boarding school, but I can't imagine when they had any time to do prep, let alone for themselves.

I guess it's the total lack of pastoral staff at the CS, who I would think would handle most of this kind of thing.

Author:  evelyn38 [ Thu May 15, 2008 6:14 pm ]
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KatS wrote
Quote:
I find the prefects have an incredible amount of work

I agree and I also thought it was hard on them to have to split into twos and threes on walks and expeditions, to accompany the younger forms. They did n't often get to go on walks as a large group, which seems a shame. Similarly, the amount of help they had to give during winter sports and swimming to younger pupils was quite demanding. It sometimes seems to me that the downside to being a prefect was greater than the upside !

Author:  jilianb [ Thu May 15, 2008 7:12 pm ]
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It seems that the Prefects have more involvement with the girls than the staff do on occassion, paritcularly after the end of the lesson part of the day. The prefects were responsible for supervising prep, hobbies, meals & kaffee und Kunchen to name but a few.

Very rarely were the prefects allowed to have walks as a group, mainly they were split up amongst the forms and expected to help the mistresses in charge.

Again the prefects are normally split up amongst the forms for the Half-Term break and expected to help the mistresses. However, you hear of the mistresses haveing a day off over the weekend but never the prefect.

Seems rather like hard work, especially for girls who may be planning to go to university after school adn who would appreciate the time for their own lives.

Author:  LauraMcC [ Thu May 15, 2008 8:44 pm ]
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I have to say that I am impressed with the amount of work that the Prefects put in, considering that they were still at school themselves, and I can understand why many of the middles were more scared of them than of the mistresses. However, the system does seem to be a little idealised - the Prefects rarely have any discipline problems with the middles or juniors, and when they do, it's usually only the most hardened 'criminal' who defies their authority. However, that was probably just a true reflection of EBD's time, as it is certainly not the case at many schools nowadays.

Author:  JayB [ Thu May 15, 2008 10:00 pm ]
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They don't seem to have many privileges to compensate for the work they do, do they? They have the Prefects' Room; the HG sometimes has her own bedroom; I think they have a later bedtime, but that only makes up a little for the free time and study time they lose while 'on duty'. Presumably the honour of being a prefect at the CS was considered enough!

Author:  Caroline [ Fri May 16, 2008 7:50 am ]
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I find that, for me, the prefects are the focal point of the books. For some reason, I just really like reading about their trials and tribulations, their meetings, their strife with various people, etc. Maybe that's the reason both my CS books focus on a Head Girl and her Difficulties...

I think EBD and the CS staff expect them to do far too much, though. I can see that they should do things like prep supervision / organise the sale / run the hobbies club / run the magazine (those three latter things are inventions of the girls so should be run by them IMO), but other things they get landed with do make it seem as if they are being used as unpaid extra staff - running games lessons, for instance, as Margot does in Challenge. Maybe the CS should have more staff...

The level of respect they command from the Juniors and Middles is fairly impressive (and possibly not that realistic), although from the very first Madge Bettany stated that the prefects were her representatives amongst the girls, so I guess respect was built in from day one.

I think the right choices were made, on the whole. There are only a couple of ocassions when I think the staff could have done better - Jo Scott instead of Maeve Bettany, for instance - and a few where the obvious choice didn't make it for some unknown reason of EBD's - Margia never making HG, for instance.

Did I mention that I love the prefects? :D

Author:  Sunglass [ Fri May 16, 2008 6:12 pm ]
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I'd have been Marilyn Evans, the disastrous headgirl, who was more interested in her own work than the Good of the School, and I'd have been completely unapologetic about it. Even given that the CS world is less academically rigorous in some ways, or at least less exam-focused, I tend to find it shocking that the staff appear to regard the prefects as sort of auxiliary staff, rather than senior students, who should be focusing on their academic work. It irks me more in the later part of the series, when it was no longer reasonable to assume that the majority of the seniors wouldn't have careers, or to think that prefecting would prepare them for upper-class do-gooder committee work.

Author:  Alison H [ Fri May 16, 2008 8:55 pm ]
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Having to supervise prep must certainly have disrupted their own studies.

It's interesting that Len, whom we are repeatedly being told is very responsible because she's "the eldest of a long family" and who is generally presented as a model CS girl, says in (I think) Future that she doesn't want to be a prefect yet because she doesn't want all the responsibility.

As someone else mentioned, in the Dimsie books we see the prefects struggling to cope, and also in some of the Enid Blyton school stories we see prefects/Head Girls being demoted: it'd be interesting to've seen either an individual (given that we never actually "see" Marilyn Evans) or the prefects as a group struggling to cope with a situation. There are some slight problems early on when Juliet and Grizel play Gisela and Bette up, but nothing much else, other than the Peggy/Eilunedd business.

Author:  LizzieC [ Fri May 16, 2008 9:24 pm ]
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Alison H wrote:
It's interesting that Len, whom we are repeatedly being told is very responsible because she's "the eldest of a long family" and who is generally presented as a model CS girl, says in (I think) Future that she doesn't want to be a prefect yet because she doesn't want all the responsibility.


Yes, I found that interesting too. It may have been an EBDism or something, but I felt so very sorry for Len when nothing more was said of it or done about it and she was made a prefect in the next book.

Author:  JayB [ Fri May 16, 2008 9:37 pm ]
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I thought it was very unfair to make Len a prefect then, even if she hadn't said anything to Joey. She was two months away from being sixteen at the start of the next term; very young for all the duties and responsibilities the prefects had. She might well have had to boss around fifth formers who were older than she was.

Author:  jennifer [ Sat May 17, 2008 9:22 am ]
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I agree that the prefects seemed to have a huge amount to do, being almost unpaid staff without any of the privileges. They supervise prep, dormitories, meals and walks, run the hobbies club, magazine, select and organize the sports teams, organize the sale, discipline the younger girls, keep the form rooms tidy - pretty much everything except actually teach.

Does anyone have experience with actual prefect duties at a boarding school?

I can think of a few prefects who were mismatched. Margot Maynard should never have been games prefect - she's good at sports, but she's short tempered, tends to nag, and is not good at understanding other people. What we see of her in the role indicates that the other girls are more likely to be turned away from sports than encouraged with her in charge. Ruth Wilson seemed an odd choice too, given a well known tendency to hold grudges and bully her juniors.

Author:  patmac [ Sat May 17, 2008 4:04 pm ]
Post subject: 

jennifer wrote:
Does anyone have experience with actual prefect duties at a boarding school?


*Raises hand* It's a long while ago now, in the fifties, so does equate with the last Chalet books. The school was a Convent so may not have been typical.

The Head Girl was certainly about three down from God in the hierarchy and held in awe by the middles. Thinking back a long way, I remember each one as rather remote. Oddly enough, they were usually the really bright girls who were hoping to go on to University so certainly had the same problems with priorities.

Among their duties, and there were sub-prefects as well so it wasn't so onerous as it sounds, each table in the refectory was headed by a prefect to keep order and ensure we had good table manners. Like the CS, our school put 'every farthing of tuppence' on manners.

They supervised prep, though only from Upper IV upwards. They kept order in the corridors and in the Hall prior to Assembly. They certainly ran, with staff help, a lot of the out of school activities, like Hobbies of various kinds, country dancing, sports teams of various kinds and outings to museums, theatres and concerts - though anything off school premises always had at least one member of staff present.

Prefects came from Upper VI and subs were partly Upper and some from Lower VI. There wasn't the weird mix of ages in each year that the CS seemed to manage. There was the occasional girl moved up or held back but mostly anyone ridiculously ahead or behind got individual coaching and stayed with her social peer group.

There was a small group of what was known as 'Higher VI' who were doing a third year in the sixth form to retake A levels or take extra ones for university requirements and they were excluded from the main prefect body, though they did help out, often with their own particular interests or hobbies.

I think we should remember, when we are talking of girls being held back in studying for careers, that the glass ceiling was a lot lower then and only 25% of university students were women - and most of them channelled into teaching.

For more on this see here for more info. I think the CS (and my own school) were aware that girls would have a harder time climbing a career ladder than their male counterparts and may well have decided that the more responsibility they were given at school, the better prepared they would be.

Author:  Emma A [ Mon May 19, 2008 11:48 am ]
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Dorothy L. Sayers, in Gaudy Night, suggests via one of her characters (Phoebe, I think) that today's schoolgirls (i.e. around 1935) have had responsibility lumped on them, and are only too pleased to relax and not bother organising things when they come to university. She contrasts this to herself and Harriet, who would have graduated in 1925, who "were sat on for the good of our souls" and so came up to university panting to sit on committees and organise things. The people at the up-to-date progressive schools were, even then, shy about taking on responsibility.

I do think it a shame that the Prefects ended up not getting their work done if the other pupils decided to play up in prep, particularly when the school wasn't so big and all the prefects must have been supervising prep every evening.

Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Wed May 21, 2008 6:38 pm ]
Post subject: 

jennifer wrote:
Does anyone have experience with actual prefect duties at a boarding school?


At the school I was at, it was the House prefects, rather than the School ones, on whom the main burden of the work fell - and certainly when we were younger we were expected to show them practically as much respect as you'd show the Queen!

I am not sure what the Head Girl did apart from carrying the Headmistress' books into Prayers, but she was usually in the 1st XII, and had to give up lacrosse after her first term, much to the regret of the games staff! The Games Captains had similar duties to those portrayed in the Chalet School books; the house Games Captains were responsible for House teams and practices, too. And one that the CS doesn't mention - they had to take the list of people who were "off swimming" in the summer term. The form was that they would ask who were on swimming excuse, and then they would say "Any NOT for the usual reason?" and you were expected to say if you were off due to a bad cold or something!

School prefects had to take tables at lunch; House ones had the same responsibility at breakfast and supper, and all weekend meals - they also supervised our informal teas (until those were eaten in the main school during the week), and took turns supervising prep for the younger girls. And we NEVER played up - they could get on with their own work, or reading or drawing if they'd finished.

Plus they had to do things like making lists of people having exeats, volunteering you to clean the Cathedral or take the collection when it was your House's turn to do so, and generally telling the juniors where they got off.... minor chores, like organising the table-places rota or the bath rota, fell to other senior girls. Oh, and the prefects also had to inspect your shoes each weekend to make sure they were correctly polished.

Author:  Anjali [ Thu May 22, 2008 1:05 am ]
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Quote:
Oh, and the prefects also had to inspect your shoes each weekend to make sure they were correctly polished.


:) At my day school in the 90s we not only had to inspect shoes, but uniforms, hair ribbons, badges, hymn books, etc...all after morning assembly....which meant we invariably ended up missing half of the first hour's class. Also, we had to make sure the gates were shut at half-past eight so that latecomers didn't get in! :roll: Needless to say we were not very popular!

Author:  Theresa [ Thu May 22, 2008 12:15 pm ]
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We were largely a day school (about 80 boarders in probably 700~ girls total) so I won't go into what our regular prefects (known to us as SRCs: members of the Student Representative Council,) got up to, but our Boarding Captain, other than organising day girl sleepovers and midnight feasts, was actually largely responsible for racial harmony.

CS prefects don't seem to have to worry about it much, but our Boarding Captain had a big job of making sure our boarders didn't split into three distinct, racially defined groups and slag off on the other ones (group one was white girls who came from farms, group two indigenous Australians and girls from Papua New Guinea, and group three all the girls who came over from Japan or Korea) and to make sure that boarders and day girls didn't hate each other. I imagine it was quite hard for her. There were girls both coming from Asia and from entirely indigenous communities who didn't speak enough English to understand each other, and I know at least one girl was entirely bewildered when, coming over from Korea, she had never seen a black person in her life and suddenly had to share a room with one. Some of them had also never seen lizards before, and the farm girls thought it dreadfully funny to catch the big ones that ran around the grounds and put them in their beds. We did it in the day school too - there were always lizards leaping out of bags or lockers or teacher's desks.

Anyway, although our Boarding Captain didn't have all this inspection business and didn't really do much discipline (except if someone brought an M-rated movie to one of the sleepovers), she had a really big burden on her. The whole tone of the boarding house changed with the Captain and how good she was at celebrating everyone's culture without marginalising or stereotyping anyone through the events she put on, and how well she herself could get on with people of different nationalities. I'm sure that the school didn't mean to put such a responsibility on her, but that was how it ended up. x_x

Author:  Rachelj [ Thu May 22, 2008 8:50 pm ]
Post subject: 

Quote:
And one that the CS doesn't mention - they had to take the list of people who were "off swimming" in the summer term. The form was that they would ask who were on swimming excuse, and then they would say "Any NOT for the usual reason?" and you were expected to say if you were off due to a bad cold or something!


Ah that takes me back! At my school we had an outdoor swimming pool and by fifth form the novelty had worn off. There was one week when our swimming lesson arrived and the whole class of 28 or so lined up with one excuse or another - the games mistress was distinctly unimpressed and instead of lounging by the side of the pool we had to do gym. :lol:

All I remember prefects doing was standing on the stairs making sure people were quiet (we had that CS 'silence in the corridors' thing.). At 'O' level time the fith form prefects stood down and fourth form took over - my friend came a cropper for telling off some fifth formers for talking! :shock:

Rachel

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