I’ve been looking back fifty years at my education at Sedbergh School. I’m trying to understand the framework I was part of. I am not merely considering if it was good or bad — that would be too simple. Instead, I am reflecting on what education it actually was; my prep-school Mowden Hall was much the same
Revisiting my diaries from this period, it becomes clearer that the school operated on a very particular assumption. If you placed boys inside a well-disciplined structure, learning would take care of itself.
And in some ways, it did.
But it did so rather impersonally.
The System Ran Like Clockwork
Life at Sedbergh followed a precise rhythm. Lessons, assembly, break, lunch, games, supper, evening prep. Every hour of the day had its place.
The expectation was straightforward: turn up, do the work, and keep up.
There was very little sense that the system adapted to the individual boy. The timetable was rigid; you had to fit. If you understood the lesson, good. If you didn’t, the next lesson was already arriving.
In practice, this meant a good deal of the responsibility for learning sat with the boy himself.
Textbooks and Repetition
Much of the teaching relied on set texts and repetition. In French we translated our way steadily through Le Petit Nicolas. In English we studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Latin involved endless verbs and noun tables.
The pattern was familiar:
Read the text.
Do the exercise.
Write the prep.
Hand it in.
The system valued accuracy and completion. Curiosity was not necessarily part of the method. That may sound harsh, but it simply reflects how many schools operated at the time.
If You Fell Behind
One aspect stands out in hindsight: the school rarely slowed down. Lessons moved forward regardless of whether everyone had grasped the previous one. If you struggled, the assumption was that you would catch up during prep.
There were no learning support departments in those days. No structured intervention. The system assumed boys were resilient and would manage.
Some did. Others quietly fell behind.
A Certain Kind of Boredom
Reading my teenage diary entries, a particular mood appears again and again: boredom.
Not rebellion. Not despair. Just a sense that many lessons were mechanically delivered.
The irony is that the subjects themselves were interesting. Geography, English, Maths, Physics, Biology, even French — these were things I genuinely liked.
But the excitement often happened outside the classroom.
At the time, I was reading books like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Suedehead. Those felt far more alive than the exercises we were completing at our desks.
In retrospect, much of my real education was taking place in parallel to the official one.
When Exams Came
When it came time to producing results, I managed to do so. Therefore, the system worked, at least in its own terms. If you applied yourself to the syllabus, you could succeed.
But doing well in exams is not quite the same as being intellectually engaged.
What Schools Would Do Today
If I had been at Sedbergh today, the experience would probably be quite different.
Modern schools monitor individual progress carefully. If a pupil begins to fall behind, teachers intervene early. There are learning support departments, academic mentoring, and structured help sessions.
Teaching itself has changed too. Lessons are more likely to involve discussion, projects, and problem-solving rather than simply working through a textbook.
Teachers are trained to recognise that students learn in different ways.
Boredom itself would be treated as something worth investigating. In the 1970s it was simply part of school life.
Some Schools Were Already Doing It Differently
Even in the 1970s there were schools experimenting with alternative approaches.
Places like Bedales School and Dartington Hall School encouraged discussion, project work, and creative exploration. At Summerhill School, founded by A. S. Neill, lessons were famously optional.
Even some traditional public schools such as Winchester College and Westminster School were already emphasising tutorial discussion and independent reading.
Sedbergh, by contrast, remained firmly rooted in an older Victorian model of education. The system valued discipline, endurance, and independence.
It assumed that if a boy had curiosity, he would pursue it himself. Just as well I left for the RGS in the Sixth Form. I lived at home and outside the school day organised my day as I wanted it to be.
What the School Actually Gave Me
Looking back, that assumption may not have been entirely wrong. Sedbergh gave me structure and independence. It expected boys to manage their own work and get on with things.
It didn’t necessarily ignite curiosity.
But it left enough space for curiosity to develop elsewhere. That is why I kept a diary. I read widely. I spent much of my time observing the strange little world around me.
In the end, the school provided the scaffolding.
Much of the education happened in the gaps.
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