Where Has the Respect Gone?

Very little of my first day of junior school remains with me. I recall a bright classroom, neon-coloured drawers with our names printed onto them, and the lingering smell of disinfectant. My memory has retained none of my first meetings with friends. The awkward ‘hello’s, the sharing of life stories, and the swapping of Moshi Monster usernames. Only one figure remains burnt into my mind, swimming into view whenever I think back to that nerve-racking first playtime: an eleven-year-old boy — endlessly taller, smarter, and wiser than I — with a knowledge of the school that I could only dream of possessing. The passing of fourteen years saw both myself and my school change irrecoverably, yet my memory of this mysterious year six remains untainted. My awe for the battle-hardened ‘older student’ has followed me from this very first day to the end of schooling and even into university. Yet my own experience as a senior has led me to believe reverence for the older student has faded into a thing of the past. Increasingly outspoken and self-assured, it seems the younger generations see no need to value the veteran student simply because they have been around for longer.

From what I can remember, staff and students alike respected the hierarchy that saw older students reign supreme over younger year groups. I recall being encouraged to idolise the ‘big’ boys and girls who knew enough French to hold a conversation, enough maths to shun calculators, and who (best of all) could write in gloriously looping joined-up without even having to think about it. My friends and I listened in awe to tales of these godlike seniors, hardly believing that their hallowed bottoms had once warmed the carpet where we now sat. During the occasional interactions with eleven-year-olds, when we found ourselves standing next to one of them in the lunch queue or kicking them back a football at lunchtime, we were bashful and demure, never daring to speak unless spoken to, to smile unless smiled at. I imagine, should the opportunity have arisen, to request the autograph of a famed year six, more than one of us would have jumped at the chance.

This hierarchy between older and younger students only grew as we left junior school behind and entered the warzone that was senior school. While schools in the US, mirrored by some in the UK, ease the transition into big school by splitting the years into middle and high, our school did no such thing. Eleven-year-olds, once big fish in a small pond, became pitiful sardines in a heaving ocean, interacting with eighteen-year-olds on a daily basis. I recall the moment I first saw a suit-wearing sixth former in the wild, carrying their notepads and laptops underarms like university students. I could have sworn they looked closer to middle-aged, old enough to have full-time jobs and mortgages rather than spending their days in classrooms as we did. In senior school, respecting the older students suddenly became a necessity, not a privilege. Checking a ‘big boy’ or ‘big girl’ could see you stuffed into a locker, tied to the radiator by your shoelaces, or chased around the rugby pitch for most of the lunchtime. Yet, by the time my friends and I had elbowed our way to the top of the ladder, attitudes had changed completely. I recall, in my final years at school, being harassed by eleven-year-olds in the corridors, pushed in front of in the lunchtime queue, and having books grabbed out of my hands by rowdy tweens with none of the reverence I once possessed.

So why this dramatic change in attitude? Perhaps it is partly the result of a rising focus on student wellbeing in schools across the UK. Only 40 years ago, bullying between older and younger students was essentially part of the curriculum, overlooked by teachers who believed it was the job of seniors to discipline those beneath them. Fagging, a practice in British boarding schools in which juniors acted as personal servants to older boys, was performed as late as the 1990s. Unsurprisingly, a tradition which saw younger students degraded in their completion of the most barbaric of tasks often bred a culture of violence within schools. Older students often physically, and, at times, even sexually, abused the junior entrusted to their care. Though this behaviour was in no way practised at my school, the hierarchy that existed between juniors and seniors was doubtless a relic of these crueller times. If eleven-year-olds could be stuffed into lockers for cheeking a senior, as some of my contemporaries were, then arguably the dissolving of the age-determined pecking order should be celebrated as a positive thing.

Student well-being and attempts to reduce bullying rates have become the priority of most educational institutions in recent years. Though far more difficult to police, universities have gone to great efforts to discourage hazing or initiations that once dominated interactions between freshers and older students. The faculty at St Andrews, for example — through encouraging participation in Raisin Weekend and its subsequent trials — stress that relationships between academic parents and children must be respectful, nurturing, and, above all, safe. In emails sent out before the Weekend, they remind children that they have the right to say no to tasks that border on the humiliating. In this way, the tradition of academic families integral to life here in St Andrews can be continued into the 21st century, allowing for the formation of meaningful relationships between older and younger students that otherwise would not have been possible.

Yet I believe a balance must be struck between protecting younger students and doing away with the hierarchy altogether. As in school, my four years here have seen a gradual breakdown in relations between the honours and sub-honours students. Academic kids are less willing to take advice from parents, some of them perhaps abusing third and fourth-year generosity when they could instead learn from it. What’s more, younger students show a frustrating lack of respect for older ones trying to deal with the stresses of final-year grades and dissertations. By all means, enjoy the freedom of sub-honours modules, but do not do so loudly on the fourth floor of the Main Library on the day before a deadline. I am in no way asking for the return of the barbaric fagging, nor do I require freshers to adopt the bashful and demure subservience I once did when interacting with the mythical older student, but I do ask for a degree of understanding that life as a third or fourth-year is different to that of a fresher, as is the experience of a sixth former compared to that of an eleven-year-old. Instead of harassing us in the streets and corridors and mocking the advice we offer them, younger students should take the attention of wizened older students in their stride. To those who show respect to me, I may offer my autograph (proudly written in gloriously looping joined-up) free of charge.

Illustration by Hannah Beggerow