A prefect is - in the
UK at least - a
student monitor, chosen by teachers to keep an eye on the younger
pupils. This practice has been abolished in most schools, except
private schools.
Prefects were chosen by the teachers as being the people with the best personalities and work record. They watched over the corridors during lesson times, and made sure that
the masses stayed in line during
lunch and played nice at
break time. Prefects were allowed to hand out minor
punishments in the form of
lines and
essays. They were distinguished from other students by some form of badge or other identifying symbol (in my old school, they wore yellow bands around the wrists on the blazer, instead of blue, and had
dark blue ties with light blue and yellow stripes, as opposed to the simple blue that the rest of us wore).
FACTUAL WRITEUP OVER
RANTING FOLLOWS
What a bunch of
pricks! I can't believe that anyone in a position of power over the education of a few
thousand impressionable young minds would think that this system was a good idea.
In theory, having older
students looking out for the younger ones would be useful, but the problem was that there was nobody to keep them in order ("
Who watches the watchmen?" and all that...) and the more
sadistic among them would start handing out 3000 word
essays on
topics such as "The Inside Of A
Ping-Pong Ball".
To be fair though, I did know quite a few
decent prefects in my time at the school, which was always handy seeing as the powers that be seemed to believe that the
word of a prefect was
truth, and as such, without any contravening
evidence, they could basically so whatever they liked to make the lives of the others
miserable.
I left the school before I became old enough to become a prefect, had they had a momentary
lapse in
sanity and actually selected me. A lot of my friends went on to become them though, and I hope they remembered the things that prefects used to put through and treated people
fairly.
Who the fuck am I kidding?