Two beneficiaries of these scholarships were Eric Blair, later George Orwell, and the Trinidadian historian and cricket writer C. L. R. James. But the state-funded admission of working-class boys to elitist public schools did not please everyone, and for years there was considerable criticism and debate.
Two examples appeared in The Guardian in March 1911, one from a writer claiming to be a public school headmaster, the other a public school student:
“The real difficulty is not the social or pecuniary inferiority of the elementary boy but his enormous moral inferiority. Most of the other boys that come to us [at public schools] have a very definite idea that certain actions and thoughts are “caddish” or “bad form” or “blackguardly”… I have been dealing with a certain proportion of elementary boys for some years and I have failed to find any parallel idea of the word.”
‘Head Master’
“I wonder whether you have ever considered the matter from the side of a gentleman forced to come into daily contact with the innate vulgarity of the lower orders. Is it not more probable that the sons of gentlemen will be levelled down, rather than the sons of Pork Butchers levelled up, by continual daily contact? The lessons of the gutter are more easily learnt than the traditions of caste.
“The fact that by keeping particular secondary and Public Schools a reserve for a particular class keeps the higher walks of life, in the professions and public services, a preserve for the same class, is surely a great argument in its favour. The lower classes never were a governing class, and why should the master sit side by side with the servant?”
‘Public School Boy’
Source: The Guardian, March 29th 1911. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.