I can only speak for the period from 1958 to 1964 of course.

The ONLY politics at WHS that I remember (I never got involved in The Debating Society) is that there was a society formed in 1962 called the "CEWC" (Council for Education in World Citizenship"). Significantly, its President was Jim Atkinson, who later went on to become a diplomat and British Ambassador. I didn't know him well at school but I met up with him and Peter Brown in 2003 to go sailing on the Orwell, and during that weekend we planned an Orwell barge cruise for the following year, an event that went on more or less annually for a decade.
Cruelly, Jim contracted MND soon after our first meeting (just after he had retired aged 60) and only made it to the second cruise. He was a lovely guy and his death hit us hard. He wrote an article about WHS which you can read here:

http://www.whs-archives.net/comp/gen/2.htm

To sum up:

• I think I was fairly typical in not being interested or engaged in any kind of politics at school.
• There were no lessons about politics, or even "civics", which I take to be mostly about how politics worked in a democracy.
• I never remember any master ever talking about politics and I had no idea how any of them voted. My impression then and now was that they thought that any personal expression of a political opinion on their part would be inappropriate.

Having said that, there is one anecdote I recall. In the fourth form when some of us decided to form a "Fourth Form Union". I cannot remember why; I think the principal aim was to get a toaster and make toast while we discussed something - what, I cannot now imagine. I believe we met once and actually DID make some toast in Brian Middlebrook's Nissen hut. He was the master whom we had approached about forming our "union", and I remember him being very sniffy about the word "union". None of us could understand why, but he asked us to change the name to "society". The role of unions in British life was a complete unknown to us at that time.Later I realized he was afraid we would issue a set of demands and threaten to go on strike if they weren't met! In truth, that was a bit paranoid and unrealistic! If only he had realized how ignorant we were!

(I had Brian for latin for five years. he was a really lovely guy and in all that time I never had a crossed word with or from him.)

However, despite the lack of teaching about politics per se, WHS it seems to me nevertheless turned out tough, independent-minded, informed and educated boys, and we did I am sure all make up our own minds about politics without any "guidance" from masters. I am not sure the same can be said today. This is really hard to quantify, but I do not know of any OBs who turned out to be hysterical, ranting, wokey snowflakes without a clue who went around smashing up statues; even the undergrads of Oxford University have succumbed to the general hysteria.

I am fully aware of the danger of looking at this through rose-tinted, holier-than-thou glasses; "It was better in my day." sort of thing, but the thing is, it just MIGHT have been better. I recently taught a few hours English a week to French business students. In the ten years that have passed since I last did this I was staggered at the decline in level of maturity, awareness and application of this latest class. I told them at the start I would not treat them as "students" but as "young professionals", but, boy was that wishful thinking.

Teachers should of course NEVER try to influence their pupils politically; only teach them the FACTS and give them the ability to make their own sound judgements - which is why I feel the teaching of logic and linguistic interpretation are essential in any curriculum - but largely missing as far as I know.

I look, read and listen to what is going on and wonder what is being taught in schools; in many cases it surely is not reason and judgement - or respect for democracy, which is an INCREDIBLY lucky thing to have. Those who take it for granted would be horrified at what life is like without it under many regimes, but sadly, we often take for granted what seems "free" - the air we breathe is just one more example.

And IN this democracy, IF it is right to remove statues then there should be a public debate about it and even VOTE on it - not a hysterical mob toppling them without regard to anyone else's opinion. This is not the aftermath of the Chinese Maoist revolution - just the lunatic reaction to the murder of a habitual criminal and drug addict in another country - whose killer has rightly been charged with murder.