The Doon School



The Doon School is an independent boys' boarding school in Dehradun, India, and was founded in 1935. The Old boys of Doon are commonly known as "Doscos", and include some of India's prominent politicians, government officials, business leaders and a Prime Minister.

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 * The self-confidence Doon instils is the courage to walk your own road, if necessary, alone...
 * Rajiv Gandhi (1985), former Prime Minister of India, in the book Doon: The Story of a School


 * If I had anything to do with this place, I'd close it down.
 * Morarji Desai, former Prime Minister of India, reacting to prevalence of Doon-educated bureaucrats in the government


 * The boys should leave Doon as members of an aristocracy, but it must be an aristocracy of service inspired by ideas of unselfishness, not one of privilege, wealth or position.
 * Arthur Foot (1935)


 * By 14 he should have learnt all the ordinary principles of social behavior. He should know how to stand up and speak to a variety of different types of people -- to his own mother, to someone else's mother, to his father, to his schoolmasters, to servants, to Mahatma Gandhi or to the Viceroy, and to do this without any self-consciousness... At fourteen a boy should have constructed a framework of competence in language, in mathematical ability, and in social behavior. After that age he is, as it were, filling in a design to the framework. In short he learning to exercise taste... At 16, he acquired taste, a sense of the beautiful and the ugly, of the strong and the weak, of good and evil... At 17 must come another quality, less instinctive and requiring a maturer mind: he must acquire a capacity for judgement.
 * Arthur Foot, speaking about the values that should be inculcated in a Doon School pupil.
 * Quoted in an essay in The Doon School Sixty Years On, published by the Doon School Old Boys' Society, October 1996.


 * For years after I left, I thought of Doon as a kind of jungle, and looked back on it with a shudder. I was teased and bullied by my classmates and my seniors because of my interest in studies and reading, because of my lack of interest in games, because of my unwillingness to join gangs and groups, because of my height -- and, most importantly of all -- because I would get so furious when I was bullied. No doubt, if in my teens I had been more relaxed about things, or if I had had more of a sense of humor, things wouldn't have been so bad. But I wasn't, and I didn't, and they were. My parents made enormous sacrifices to send me here. They never had a lot of money. Sending me to Doon was perhaps the best investment they ever made.
 * Vikram Seth (1993),


 * Doon is a unisexual Victorian relic. Make it co-educational!
 * Mani Shankar Aiyar, Make Doon school co-educational: Aiyar - Times Of India


 * Girls should not be deprived of studying at Doon
 * Pratibha Patil, former President of India, President rekindles Doon co-ed debate


 * It would not be untrue to say that the foundations of Indian Mountaineering were laid by masters and boys of The Doon School.
 * B G Verghese in the book For Hills to Climb while mentioning the mountaineering achievements of Doon School masters such as R.L. Holdsworth, Gurdial Singh, Jack Gibson and J.A.K. Maryn


 * There is something unique about Doon. I have met a lot of people who are graduates of Doon, they are of a different calibre. I must visit the place one day.
 * Lee Kuan Yew, Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India - Sunanda K. Datta-Ray - Google Books