'Not afraid to challenge or ask questions': Dissident Students at University High School 1957-71

Abstract

‘Discipline’, wrote the principal of University High School in December 1957, ‘is an unpopular word today – we prefer to speak of our “democratic freedoms”, but let us remember that any real freedom is possible only through the exercise of self-discipline – without it, our “freedom” interferes with the freedom of others’. Unfortunately, in the shadow of the Cold War, the definition of ‘self-discipline’ had narrowed towards something more like unquestioning conformity, and all forms of dissent became suspect. The intelligent, studious, usually well-behaved and articulate students at UHS did indeed take their ‘democratic freedoms’ seriously and became increasingly challenging and restive thro..