Alexander McCall Smith Quote

He was sent off to boarding school. Gresham’s School is in a small town called Holt, in Norfolk, a remote part of rural England. Unlike many boarding schools of the day, the regime in this school was reasonably liberal and did not involve the cruelties in which the English educational system of the time excelled. These could be profoundly distorting: how many lives were ruined by a harsh regime of relentless conformity, enforced by physical punishment; how many young men were sent out into the world emotionally crippled by a system designed to produce a stiff upper lip and an acceptance of hierarchy. The English were unwittingly cruel to their children, which is something the Italians, to think of one example, have never been.