what do you hope to achieve?

Discussion of the children's schools in the UK.
StJ79-93

Postby StJ79-93 » Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:50 am

the St James Pupil posting on this thread is evidently very angry and exceptionally naive to be making such vague assumptions and believing that he is representing the current St James in a good light.

He is evidently not an adult (as has been speculated) because his irrational rantings are undoubtedly childlike. I would guess he is at GCSE level of education.

Please do not belittle the traumatic experiences of those who were abused under the god-forsaken regime of the 1970's and 80's. By your vehement denial (for want of a better word) of any impropriety connected with "your" St James you are insulting the victims. The fact remains that "your" school and some of your teachers were involved in serious physical and mental abuses perpetrated with the justification of the SES's preposterous cocktail of philosophical influences.

Your headmaster and the unofficial head-governor (the head of SES),amongst others, use St James as a recruiting ground for SES.

Alban
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Re: further replies revised

Postby Alban » Wed Dec 08, 2004 1:27 pm

st james pupil wrote:
st james pupil wrote:

...not to cause pain to others, bullying is dealt with most severely in the school


Oh, the irony


You really do seem to be letting St James distance itself from the past? How would it be ironical if the St James now is in no way linked from the St James of 20 years ago?


The irony is that "bullying is dealt with most severly" is in complete contrast with the bullying of the children by the teachers.

st james pupil wrote:
Similarly, there has been no request that the Schools stop promoting themselves, so it is totally unfair to expect us to stop sharing our experiences with whomever will listen.


No?. that?s different, schools promoting themselves have no ill effects on anyone else, what your doing however is having ill effects on others.


So you are in favour of only allowing positive promotion of an organisation, and censoring the negative stuff? That's the very closed-minded attitude that is being complained of. Everything has it's ying and it's yang - to only look at one side is foolish.

Besides which, what "ill effects" are being experienced by others. The only people this concerns are those that were in charge of the schools at the time, and those that abused the children. If the schools are completely different as you claim, then it should not be affecting anyone. However, as we know, this is not the case.

st james pupil wrote:
The one point on which I disagree with the current pupil is that it is important not to "ruin any good feelings pupils have for the school." This is not the reason why the current St James should be observed in a different light to the past St James. It is because the current St James offers a completely different environment to that of the St James in previous years.


Firstly thank you for your support. Your very right to say that the current St James no matter what outcome of this investigation has nothing to do with the old St James/St Verdast. They are two entirely different environments. However many of the posters here do not seem to recognize that, they are going not going to make it clear to the pupils and members of the public the fact that these schools are two different entities.


They are not different entities at all. Regardless of what changes to the environments that the law has enforced, there are still a number of people involved with the schools now, who were equally responsible then. As I have said countless times, that in itself is not too much of a problem to me personally, as long as they recognise their mistakes and appologise for them. The thing that angers most of us, is that the majority of those people have shown no remorse at all, and as such are continuing to defend their actions.

As for not ruining "any good feelings pupils have for the school."....why the hell not? I am happy living and working in Britain, but I am painfully aware of some of the attrocities that the British empire has committed in the past. It is important that everyone recognises mistakes made in the past so that they can improve the future.

st james pupil wrote:I've said before I can only say what i have seen personally, and from my four years or so at St James I do not believe Mr Lacey is a so called 'threat'.
I cannot argue what he was like when some of the students of the earlier St James had him as a teacher. But since I've known him and till this present moment, the idea of Mr Lacy being a threat to any child has never even crossed my mind.

Also that was when? I don?t suppose from what you?ve said that you believe in giving people a second chance, nor do you think that people are capable of changing


You seem to have neglected to read all the positive comments that were made as responses to David Hipshon, Barrington Barber and Will Rassmussen's posts. There is definately a spirit of giving another chance, as for quite a few of us, those types of appologies are all that are required. However, this is a two-way street, the person concerned has got to recognise their actions were mis-guided and caused great physical and mental pain. This represents the change from the bad old days. If that person is not repentant of their behaviour, then they have not changed and thus do not deserve another chance.

st james pupil wrote:
I'm affraid you can't just turn off people's emotions


with all due respect, I never asked you turn off your emotions, all i said was to stop living in the past. Emotions should always be present in a human being but to letting it control your life is another matter.


What you neglect to take into account is that for some on this board, the effects of the school's education are with them every moment of every day in the form of medically diagnosed conditions that do, by their nature, "control your life". You cannot dismiss this as "living in the past".

For those of us lucky enough to have just got away with a poor, misguided education and not to have suffered any mental side-effects, I hardly see this as "controlling our lives". It is just a desire to put a certain unwelcome chapter of our lives to bed. This is actually a positive move, and far from the negative "attack" that you and a few others seem to perceive it as. Unfortunately from your posts (which may not be typical of all St James pupils), it would appear that the schools are still neglecting to preach tolerance of peoples weaknesses and understanding of their differences.

Guest

Postby Guest » Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:22 pm

except the "rat's arse" quote was in the context of current student's having no empathy for past students - something yours posts CONTINUE to prove.


ok...if you say soo....u clearly have no ability to discern something which clearly supports my argument and something which doesnt...
could you please explain how my posts prove that all the current students at St James have no empathy?

Personally i just think you cannot accept the fact that you should move on in life, you are clinging to the past like an ant stuck in a honey jar.

st james pupil

'MY IRRATIONAL RANTINGS ARE UNDOUBTEDLY CHILDLIKE' really?

Postby st james pupil » Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:15 pm

In response to StJ79-93, who posted a most interesting reply to 'what do you hope to achieve?'

the St James Pupil posting on this thread is evidently very angry and exceptionally naive to be making such vague assumptions and believing that he is representing the current St James in a good light.

He is evidently not an adult (as has been speculated) because his irrational rantings are undoubtedly childlike. I would guess he is at GCSE level of education.

Please do not belittle the traumatic experiences of those who were abused under the god-forsaken regime of the 1970's and 80's. By your vehement denial (for want of a better word) of any impropriety connected with "your" St James


Im angry and exceptionaly naive?...right.... evidence for that? I mean you can judge what a person is like just from a few postings on a webpage? my you are good....ever considered going into politics?

I make vague assumptions....care to expand on that?
i made one or two assumptions and i stated clearly they were assumptions...they were however not vague by any means.

my irrational rantings are undoubtedly childlike and you would guess I am at GCSE level of education? personally i think you're the irrational one and rantings? Again i find myself asking you for evidence...

I must say i expected some decent insights from people, not posts at the level of this one.... one repeatedly makes no decent input but instead claims that all St James pupils have no empathy soley based on the fact i said that people should try and move on IN MY OPINION. And lastly we have the poster who accused me of being MR BODDY in DISGUISE!!

It seems no one bothers to read my posts carefully, people keep on making points which i had clearly explained in my post, sometimes they COMPLETELY miss the POINT, for example


st james pupil wrote:

...not to cause pain to others, bullying is dealt with most severely in the school

Quote:
Oh, the irony

You really do seem to be letting St James distance itself from the past? How would it be ironical if the St James now is in no way linked from the St James of 20 years ago?


alban wrote in reply:

The irony is that "bullying is dealt with most severly" is in complete contrast with the bullying of the children by the teachers.


In fact the poster i was answering to had written about how St James hadnt distanced itself from the past and then followed on to comment about how ironical it was that bullying was dealt most severely in the current St James.
i was merely raising the point how could St James distance itself from the past if people didnt let it?

If he WAS allowing St James to distance itself from the past then he wouldnt have made the point about how ironical it was that the current St James deals with bullying severely and the previous bullying of St James pupils by teachers.

Anyway i think its quite sad that the majority of the people here are so firmly against St James. Anything pro-St James posted here is attempted to be torn apart. I dont think there is any point in answering anymore of the replies here, and i think IT IS WELL AND TRULY SAD people are willing to be swayed by some of the anti St James opinions on this website. I.E. the parent who has decided to withdraw his/her child from St James.

StJ79-93

Postby StJ79-93 » Thu Dec 09, 2004 10:52 am

Dear Pupil,

Your anger is evident in every paragraph and your naivety in your belief that SES (St James) would ever instigate an enquiry that is anything but biased in their favour.

You mention the "ethos" of the school as essentially "good" and I couldn't agree more (serving others, acceptance, do not harm others etc...) I lived within this ethos for 14 years of life at St James yet saw bullying, racism, emotional blackmail and physical abuse almost everday - what kind of example was that to set to children?

The ethos of the school should aspire to these selfless principles and therefore must not be ignored by teachers or pupils alike. If and when they are flagrently ignored the perpetrators should be reprimanded - I am sure you will agree on that.

Mr Hipshon, Mr Barber and Mr Rasmussen have looked into their hearts and have summoned the courage to admit their mistakes and have apologised. There are a few more teachers who need to do the same.

The current school will find it difficult to move on positively until this is brought to a resolution. Personally I DO NOT wish for the school to be dissolved for that would mean harming the lives of hundreds of children and teachers who are entirely innocent.

To really move forward, St James must dissociate itself from the SES entirely. The SES controls the school's ethos, development and leadership and this - in my opinion - will prevent any St James pupil from gaining a well balanced education.

The headmaster is a former political spin-doctor and senior SES figure with little or no teaching experience or qualifications and his appointment should be questioned. The SES relies on St James to provide a steady stream of new recruits and every year (in my day) the head of the SES visits the 6th form specifically to recruit new members. Does this still happen?

St James cannot distance itself from the past because the SES and certain stubborn teachers are not letting it - NOT because of those making complaints about it. The proposed inquiry is only likely to happen IF the SES control the terms but I very much doubt if any sane person involved will agree to that.

There is nothing that special about St James so please do not be fooled by thier insistence that you are being bred to be leaders of a new rennaissance - that was what we were told anyway. There are hundreds of schools all over the world that can offer a far better education (in all aspects) than St James can, therefore I implore you not to swallow all of what you are fed. Use your evidently capable mind to question certain things.

Through my life after St James and SES I have dealt with my deep anger and I am able to get on with my life, for the most part, untouched by the memories of my time at St James. Memories, for example, of 4 year old children being humiliated by a teacher in front of their peers to such an extent that they would wet themselves involuntarily. I am sure that this doesn't happen any more at St James but it sure-as-hell happened to me.

The TRUTH is coming out just as St James and SES "ethos" dictates. It won't be coming out in any enquiry set up by SES or St James, though, but it will come out.

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adrasteia
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Postby adrasteia » Thu Dec 09, 2004 12:04 pm

StJ79-93 wrote:The SES relies on St James to provide a steady stream of new recruits and every year (in my day) the head of the SES visits the 6th form specifically to recruit new members. Does this still happen?


Yes it does, I wrote (several?!) posts on that somewhere in the 'Experiences at St. James/St. Vedast' thread I think.

StJ79-93 wrote:There is nothing that special about St James so please do not be fooled by thier insistence that you are being bred to be leaders of a new rennaissance - that was what we were told anyway.


The approach is now- creating a fine set of young men and women who will make a difference in the world, who are strong etc. etc.

st james pupil
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ive realised

Postby st james pupil » Tue Dec 14, 2004 10:49 pm

there was a point where i said i thought St James pupils did have empathy...i take that back now,

st james pupil
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Postby st james pupil » Tue Dec 14, 2004 11:00 pm

I don't claim that the bullying, racism, abuse didnt happen in the old st james, i am not a fan of corporal punishment, nor do i believe in hurting others for your own gain.
i sincerely do hope the people who had such acts commited against them will get a fair hearing, and that if this independant investigation does not resolve anything, i hope you will have justice no matter what in the end.
It is not a good attitude however to believe this investigation is not going to a be a fair one before its even started. Give them the benefit of a doubt?


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