Schools Abroad: Assault on Privilege

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No one denies that the public schools provide topflight academic instruction. At Eton, for example, there is one teacher for every ten boys; classes range in size from five to 29, and tutors seek out each boy almost daily. Most of the 1,200 students live in 25 houses scattered through the school-dominated town of Eton (pop. 4,505, including students), and each house has a stern but solicitous master, who advises each boy on his problems, personal and academic.

The curriculum at most public schools is heavily classical, although most no longer require Greek. Etonians, who can stay for six years (aged 13 through 19), must take Latin, the history and teachings of the Christian religion, and French in their first two years, as well as English, math and science. They have a broad choice in their upper-class years, can specialize in any of four departments: classics, math, science or modern arts (which includes modern language, economics, geography and history). This collection of courses has been criticized as irrelevant in an age of shifting values and onrushing science, but its goal, argues Master Peter Pilkington, is to "train people to be perceptive, sensitive, aware, conscious of personality and individual values."

From Every Class? Although some critics are calling for the public schools to be merged with the system of state-supported schools, the possibility is remote at best. It amounts to nationalization and would require an unlikely act of Parliament. But the public schools are already bowing to public pressure. Next fall, for example, Eton and Winchester will drop their requirement that an entering student must know some Latin. Seemingly a trifle, this change will knock out the need for most boys to attend expensive private primary schools to get their Latin, and will vastly expand the number of eligible boys.

When the Public Schools Commission reports in December, it will probably demand that the public schools admit students of every social class, perhaps on the basis of a common entrance examination. This will require government scholarships to carry the cost (at Eton, more than $1,600 a year, including board). Even more shattering is the possibility that the commission may carry egalitarianism to the point of insisting that girls deserve admission too. Eton's Chenevix-Trench does not mind the idea of having girls mix socially with boys, but he fears that they would outperform and thus discourage the boys in the classroorn. Says he: "I am all for girls coming into the boarding-school life of the boys but not into the boarding schools."