it was just like at school , there were some kids at the top , answering all the questions , and there were some kids at the bottom , forever getting into trouble ; the teachers knew the names of all these , the good ones and the bad ones , but there was a whole bunch of others , the rest , those whose reputations were neither shining nor tarnished , and they might just as well have been cardboard cutouts filling the bulk of the seats , they were nonentities and their presence was hardly even noticed .