Yet in Britain the professions-from politics to the military, law, journalism, and banking-all remain dominated by private school graduates. Eton was established in 1440 as a feeder school to my own alma mater, King’s College, Cambridge-which prided itself, when I was there, on taking more state-school pupils than any other college, but still held places for choral scholars, often from Eton and other public schools (since not many comprehensives train their students in world-class choirs.)įee-paying schools educate 7 percent of British schoolchildren, but in 2016, 34 percent of Cambridge acceptances and 25 percent of Oxford places went to privately educated applicants-actually much lower numbers than in previous years, as both universities have tried to tackle their elitist image. Those strictly-controlled networks can sustain a graduate throughout his or her life, but in the short term, a parent’s investment pays off in improved chances of entrance to Oxford and Cambridge, or another top-tier university. Old Etonians are famed for identifying each other with the question, “Did you go to school?” as though there is only one school worthy of the name. Would even the most damning revelations puncture the lingering mythology of the public schools? For generations, these schools have guaranteed exclusivity and loyalty through elaborate codes and rituals (which saturate English literature from Tom Brown’s Schooldays to Enid Blyton novels and Harry Potter,). In a pattern that mirrors similar cover-ups in religious communities, Verkaik writes, “children were either disbelieved or silenced” and “the teacher quietly moved on.” The stories of victims are currently engulfing many of the country’s most elite schools in scandal, with a pair of comprehensive independent inquiries underway that will make their findings known in 2020. But given their cultures of loyalty and secrecy, it’s hardly surprising that sexual abuse has been rampant in the public schools for centuries. Historically, masters encouraged games and military drills, as a way of exhausting the body and beating out any dangerous tendencies like gentleness, kindness, and affection. Public schools continue to place a strong emphasis on violent sports-at many schools rugby, which was invented and much mythologized at the northern English school of the same name, is preferred, while Eton lays claim to the notorious “wall” game, a violent mass scramble that killed a boy in 1825. A disproportionate number of these aristocratic boys, including the prime minister’s son, died in the fighting for the nihilistic, vaguely classical ethos that death in battle would be the most noble end to their lives. The British army, led by a Harrow graduate, simply reproduced civilian class hierarchies, installing public schoolboys as officers with command over hundreds of working-class men whose life experiences were as foreign to them as those of the African villagers their forefathers subjugated. The British won battles across the Empire in the 19th century because they had vastly superior weapons, not better tactics or leaders-and the legend that the Battle of Waterloo was won “on the playing fields of Eton” is “fatally undermined” by the detail that school had no playing fields at the time.Ĭritics of the public schools have argued instead that their obsession with militarism-absorbed bone-deep by generations of prime ministers and generals-has in fact more often than not goaded the country into war and prolonged the bloodshed, most ruinously during World War I. Verkaik points out, however, that the military ideology bred in the public schools is mostly vainglorious myth. This includes creams, deodorants and hand sanitisers – keep it in hand’s reach so you won’t be digging through your backpack for it.A taste for violence and an obsession with hierarchy also work quite well to prepare boys for the military, and to this day the vast majority of teenagers enrolled as cadets in Britain attend private schools. * LAGs are liquids, aerosols and gels heavily restricted to 100mL/grams or less per item which must be placed in one clear, re-sealable plastic bag.
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