Author: Devman
• Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

From C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair that is.

After Jill and Eustace have rescued Prince Rilian and managed to escape into Narnia from the Underland:

She had a vague impression of Dwarfs crowding around the fire with frying-pans rather bigger than themselves and the delicious smell of sausages, and more, and more, and more sausages.  And not wretched sausages half full of bread and soya bean either, but real meaty, spicy ones, fat and piping hot and burst and just the tiniest bit burnt.

Jill and Eustace attended a new, liberal-minded school called “Experiment House” which tossed out traditional ways of teaching and learning for novel methods based on the most cutting-edge research:

It was “Co-educational,” a school for both boys and girls, what used to be called a “mixed” school; some said it was not nearly so mixed as the minds of the people who ran it.  These people had the idea that boys and girls should be allowed to do what they liked.  And unfortunately what ten or fifteen of the biggest boys and girls liked best was bullying the others.

All sorts of things, horrid things, went on which at an ordinary school would have been found out and stopped in half a term; but at this school they weren’t.  Or even if they were, the people who did them were not expelled or punished.  The Head said they were interesting psychological cases and sent for them and talked to them for hours.  And if you knew the right sorts of things to say to the Head, the main result was that you became rather a favorite than otherwise.

Lewis went on to note that “Bibles were not encouraged at Experiment House.”

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One Response

  1. 1
    Katie 

    Devin and I laughed at the mention of “soya” beans. Apparently, they’ve not always been seen as the miracle food that they are proclaimed to be today.

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