My third shock after entering school in September 1987 was not that discipline was strict.
It was that even discipline had a vocabulary.
At Mfantsipim School, the philosophy of order was distilled into a single, devastatingly efficient sentence:
“A breach of common sense is a breach of school rules.”
There were no technical defences. No semantic gymnastics. If you violated common sense, you had already crossed the line.
But what fascinated me most was how the enforcement structure itself had been absorbed into student folklore.
The Disciplinary Committee was not merely a committee. It was the Sanhedrin.
Boys did not “go for a hearing.” They appeared before the Sanhedrin. The name carried weight; biblical, judicial, final. A summons sounded less like school administration and more like ancient adjudication. It elevated discipline into theatre, and in doing so, made it unforgettable.
And then there were the punishments, each renamed with the same linguistic creativity that had earlier baptised teachers and meals.
Russian Tanker: a knock on the head with the fist. Blunt. Direct. Mechanical. The name evoked force and inevitability.
Boho: kneeling down.
A posture of enforced humility. Public enough to recalibrate pride.
Bówumu adze: a slap delivered to the back while bent over.
Swift correction. No ambiguity in either choreography or message.
Barb: being accosted by a senior while in the act of wrongdoing.
Immediate interception. Discipline was decentralised; seniors were extensions of the system. Surveillance was cultural, not merely administrative.
Motor Riding: holding a rider’s stance with knees bent in suspended discomfort. Muscles quivered. Time slowed. The body absorbed what the mind had momentarily neglected.
To the uninitiated, these labels might sound severe. Within the ecosystem, they were structured signals, graduated responses to infractions, predictable and consistent. There was rarely confusion about consequences.
The naming did something important. It transformed fear into narrative.
A boy who survived Motor Riding could retell it. A Russian Tanker became anecdote by lights-out. Humour did not erase accountability; it metabolised it.
Looking back, what stands out is not harshness, but clarity. The rules were intelligible. The consequences proportionate. The objective unmistakable: formation.
The school did not discipline merely to control behaviour. It disciplined to shape judgment, to produce men for whom common sense would become instinct.
Somewhere between a summons to the Sanhedrin and a trembling Motor Riding stance, we began to internalise restraint. Not because we enjoyed the system. But because we understood it.
And that understanding was part of becoming responsible and accountable professionals.
- Read also:
- Mfantsipim School @ 150 and Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries: My First Shock
- Mfantsipim School @ 150 and Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries: My second shock
- Mfantsipim School @ 150 and Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries: Shock Number Three
- Creech’s Mfantsipim Diaries. My final shock
The writer is Philip Creech-Jones of MOBA 1992 (Mfantsipim Old Boys Association).
