The right thing

I decided to pull a copy of 'John Brown's School Days' from a dusty back shelf of my collection
It’s a 19th century best seller exposing the exceptional brutality of private school training for boys in elite British institutes like Rugby
In the first part we get the details of Tom Brown’s ordeal as a freshman subject to the bullying of the older students and in the second part his miraculous rescue from the bullies by a new Headmaster,a zealous man of faith,the celebrated Thomas Arnold
The ever earnest Reverend Doctor Arnold believed that the introduction of a new educational system based on a higher morality would soften the bullying behavior of the elite students in schools like Eton,Winchester and Rugby who were expected to take positions of social responsibility The elite must be taught to do ‘the Right Thing’ but how does one do ‘the Right Thing’ when the whole of it is wrong.

Tom Brown and his classmates were born into a privileged class whose power and prestige was based on the brutal exploitation of working class people and the violent oppression of colonialized persons of color.In 1857,the same year ‘Tom Brown’s School Days‘ was published,British officers during the “Indian Mutiny’ tied Hindu rebels to the mouths of cannons and blew them to pieces
The same officers no doubt read the best selling ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’and went to church every Sunday to sing hymns praising the God of Love and Peace and maybe even made it a point to say a prayer for their victims.

Brecht on morality:

Since every man is good and bad at the same time,the question is rather to know in what and for whom he is good or bad.Only in their social consequences can one judge acts.'