In the case of sensitive boys, there is a certain risk in leaving them to the exclusive society of other boys. Boys of about twelve are, for the most part, at a rather barbarous and insensitive stage. Quite recently, at a leading English school, there was a case of a boy suffering grave bodily injury for being sympathetic to the Labour Party. Boys who differ from the average in their opinions and tastes are likely to suffer seriously. Even at the most modern and progressive boarding schools in existence, pro-Boers had a bad time during the Boer war. Any boy who is fond of reading, or does not dislike his work, is pretty sure to be ill-treated. In France, the cleverest boys go to the _Ecole Normale Supérieure_ and do not mix any longer with the average. This plan certainly has advantages. It prevents the intellectuals from having their nerve broken and becoming sycophants of the average Philistine, as happens to many of them in this country. It avoids the strain and misery which an unpopular boy must suffer. It makes it possible to give to clever boys the kind of teaching which suits them, which goes at a much more rapid pace than is possible for the less intelligent. On the other hand, it isolates the intellectuals from the rest of the community in later life, and makes them, perhaps, less able to understand the average man. In spite of this possible disadvantage, I think it on the whole better than the British upper-class practice of torturing all boys who have exceptional brains or exceptional moral qualities, unless they happen also to be good at games.[23] However, the savagery of boys is not incurable, and is in fact much less than it was. “Tom Brown’s School Days” gives a black picture, which would be exaggerated if applied to the public schools of our own day. It would be still less applicable to boys who had had the kind of early training which we considered in previous chapters. I think also that co-education--which is possible at a boarding school, as Bedales shows--is likely to have a civilizing effect upon boys. I am chary of admitting native differences between the sexes, but I think that girls are less prone than boys to punish oddity by serious physical cruelty. At present, however, there are very few boarding schools to which I should venture to send a boy if he were above the average in intelligence, morals, or sensitiveness, or if he were not conservative in politics and orthodox in theology. For such boys, I am convinced that the existing school system for the sons of rich parents is bad. And among such boys are included almost all who have any exceptional merit.