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The Old Boys: The Decline and Rise of the Public School
- leftwingjoke 12y agoYou have to view this article in the context of the election result today - an unpredicted win, nay, landslide victory for the tories. The guardians usual readership - a rag tag bag of lefties, socialists and other gas bags, are all crying into their cornflakes, looking inwards for answers as to why their preferred parties did not win.
- pschnapps 12y agoThis article looks like an attempt by the currently dominant elite network to smash the last remnants of the one it displaced.
- cafard 12y agoAnthony Burgess, writing of 1947 in Little Wilson and Big God: At the time of educational reform, grammar schools, which had been founded to teach Latin grammar, had fallen into disrepute. Secondary modern schools and technical schools were to be considered as, if not more, important. The elitism of the public school was to be allowed to continue for a time, if only because so many socialists sent their sons to Eton, but the grammar school was to confer no social advantage on its pupils. Theoretically at least the path to a university could brand out of a secondary modern school. The egalitarian philosophy ofthe postwar era may have been accepted, cynically, I believe, by members of the Labour Party, but parents and teachers alike knew the truth: that the road to the smaller distinctions -- the greater ones being reserved to Harrow and Rugby -- began in the grammar school.