Elite Private School Mantra Of Deny Deny Deny 'Till You Die Not Really Working Anymore

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

A once-concrete way of dealing with difficult problems is under threat this week after a popular mantra adopted by the nation's elite private schools looks increasingly irrelevant.

To acknowledge there is a problem is to acknowledge that one exists. If you reject that anything has indeed gone wrong, or even happened, has anything happened? Deny, deny, deny 'till you die. Never, ever say anything. Say nothing. What you must do is sit, in the storm shelter, and wait. Deny until it goes away. Because with enough time, it always has. There's also an important distinction to make at this point. There are private schools, and there are elite private schools. The difference is important.

A former pupil of our town's exclusive Whooton School for Boys detailed the mantra for this masthead and described, in his own experience, how it works.

"There must be a wall of denial, it must be consistent and infallible. Congruent. From the perpetrators to the principal. You must never acknowledge the issue, you deny the issue. Issues borne by others are their own, personal issues," they said.

"If someone has an issue with you or the school, it's their issue. It's not yours, it's not the school, it's theirs. Only through this culture of denial and exclusion comes the protection that the broader community has come to rightly despise."

"When you deny, you protect. When you say nothing, nothing happens. It goes back to what that scary army guy said all those years ago when the military was dealing with similar problems. He said, 'The standard you walk past is the standard you accept,' and for the most part, that applies to anywhere where power and privilege intersect with those who don't have it."

The former Whooton boy tried to explain that things were different, when he was at Whooton. That a societal debt was accrued by virtue of him just going to a school like that. His life must be a net positive for society. He must give back. He needed to do something useful, to everyone, like be a rural oncologist. An investigative journalist. Public defender. Psychiatrist. Conservationist. Farmer.

He then stopped himself, and realised he was full of shit himself. That nothing had changed, really. Were they saying Deny Deny Deny in 1895? Probably. Does it still work in 2026?

Our reporter asked the boy, who was now a man, what he'd do to fix the problem.

"What problem?" he said.

More to come.