THE PUBLIC BOARDING SCHOOL - A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS Thesis prepared for submission for a Ph. D. at the School of Social Sciences, Brunel University, June 1968. John WtLkef ord BEST COPY AVAILABLE Variable print quality COTTEPTS Summary Page 1 Chapter 1 The Public Boarding Schools and their Social 3 Context 2 The Schools as Organisations 35 3 Approach and Method 47 4 Admission and the Concommitants of Organizational Membership 72 5 Relative Deprivation 100 6 Social Control 124 7 Adaptation to the School 160 Conformity 167 Retreat 168 Colonization 173 Intransigence 188 Rebellion 192 8 Staff 196 9 Conclusions 210 Y i+ A Si ý"ý Appendices 1 List of Public Boarding Schools in England and Wales 230 2 Extracts from Prospectuses and Rules of some Canadian Private Boarding Schools 231 3 The Careers of Past Pupils of the Research School 236 4 Extracts from Material Published by two Boys indicating the restricting nature of the School 252 5 The Dress Regulations at the Research School 255 Bibliography 257 The English Public Boarding School is considered from a sociological perspective, and more particularly in the context of research in the field of complex organizations, as a residential organization. Concepts are used which have been developed in studies of other residential organizations such as military units, hospitals and prisons. The account is of an exploratory, descriptive case study of 'the research school', using a variant on the method of participant observation as the principal technique of data collection supplemented with data collected during visits to certain other public schools and an examination of published and unpublished documents by staff and past pupils. The size of these schools and their residential nature, which involves them in the custody of their pupils, give rise to certain specific organizational problems to which similar solutions have been devised by most of the schools. Certain aspects of the social process in the education provided by the schools are indicated in the examination of their admission procedures, processes of socialization on entry and the concomitants of organizational membership, of the agents and means of social control, together with a discussion both of the boys' perception of relative gratifications and deprivations with respect to various reference groups both within and without the school system and of the boys' different modes of adaptation to life in the socio-cultural context of the school. These schools belong to that category of complex organization which in addition to working through and with people work on them. The role of the school in socializing the boy and regulating his behaviour while a member of the school is emphasized)as education in the public boarding school is as much the attempt to socialize its pupils as to enable them to pass formal examinations or otherwise achieve academic ends, and it is with this former aspect of the I schools that this account is primarily concerned. The schools' combined custodial and educational commitments make the maintenance of social order within them of fundamental significance. By anticipatory socialization in the home and at 'preparatory' school, and by their recruitment selection and admission procedures, by a formal system of control exercised partly through the prefect system, by the privilege system and certain ritualistic activities and. ritualistic symbolization, the staff combine a high degree of organizational control with high scope and pervasiveness. During term a boy is engaged almost exclusively in activities involving other members of his. school and organizational status embraces his life to an extent which is approached by few other types of organization in English society. Aspects of life at these schools are described which involve the pupils experiencing, rather than a sense of relative gratification, one of relative deprivation. The extent to which a particular boy experiences this is discussed in terms of disparities between his presenting culture on entry and the way of life associated with organizational membership, and in terms of his expectations and of the mode of adaptation and constellations of reference groups he has adopted at the time. The boys' responses to life in the socio-cultural context of the public boarding school are presented within the framework of a revised form of 1,1erton's Typology of Individual Adaptation, and discussed in relation to the availability of the various modes of adaptation and to some of the determinants of their adoption by particular boys at certain stages of their school careers. L CHAPTER PUBLIC BOARDIPJG SCi OOIS AND TNE]R SOCIAL CONrEXr There has never emerged a precise and universally acceptable definition of the public school. ' Since the middle of the nineteenth century a number of schools in England and 'dales, and to a lesser extent Scotland, have been popularly distinguished from the rest of the educational institutions in the country. This distinction was formally recognized on the appointment of the Clarendon and Taunton Commissions, in 1858 and 1864 respectively, when they differentiated 'certain colleges and schools' from the rest. The term 'Public School' is now most generally used in connection with a small number of schools situated in England and Wales whose headmasters are responsible to a Board of Governors, have been accepted to membership of the Headmasters' Conference and receive no direct financial aid from z either local authorities or from the State. In 1963, at the time of the research, there were 110 such schools in England and Wales. Principally they are secondary schools, and most of their entrants are accepted at about thirteen 1. See Dancy, J. C. The Public Schools and the Future, (2nd Edition) London: Faber, 1966, pp-37 ff; Weinberg, 1., The En fish Public Schools, New York : Atherton, 1967, pp. ix. ff; Carr Saunders, A. M. et al, A Survey of Social Conditions in England andifales, Oxford University Press 1958, P. 117. 2. The schools in Scotland, are excluded from this discussion, together with those of Northern Ireland, the Isle of Nan and the Channel Isles, since they differ significantly from the main body of Public Schools. Cf. Kalton, C. The Public Schools :A Factual Survey, London : Longmans, 1966, p. 4 if, who omits them for similar reasons. 3 years of age. A number, however, maintain junior departments, or associated junior schools, to which children may be admitted at 8 or 11, and the transfer to the main school is then, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on performance at an entrance ex"ination. The regulations of the Headmasters' Conference have ensured that the schools have been reserved for boys. The headmasters of the small nuipber of co-educational schools run on similar lines have been ineligible for membership of the Conference, and the large number of all-girl schools have formed their own similar association. 1 The academic standards of individual schools differ, and also as might be expected vary over the years, but, characteristically, they are expected to maintain generally high academic standards. At least a proportion of the pupils at all of them gain a number of '0' level passes and continue with their education at university. Although the emphasis varies, some schools such as Harrow being mainly concerned with Oxbridge Awards and others concentrating on GCE A level passes, their explicit goal is in part, and at present increasingly, directed towards academic achievement despite a small minority of schools whose standards are well below those of the majority. 2 I. For some details of these girls schools, see Truman and Knightley Schools 1967, London Y 1967, Whitaker's Almanack, The Girls Public School Yearbook, London : A. and C. Black, 1967 and Ollerenshaw, K. The Girls' Schools, London : Faber & Faber 1967, see also Bullock, R. 'The co-educational boarding school' Where NO-33, Sept. 1967. 2. Wakeford, J. 'Which Public Schools get the best 'A' Levels ?' Where, supplement 1 February, 1964. If The regulations of the Headmaster's Conference specify that: 'Eligibility ... depends on the academic standards obtaining in the school, as reflected by the proportion of boys in the Sixth Form pursuing a course of study beyond the ordinary level of the General Certificate of Education, and the number of Old boys at the University. ' According to Kalton, nearly two-thirds of the total of leavers from these schools obtain at least one pass at 'A' level and over half of these subsequently go on to University. 2 1 Characteristically also, as they are relatively independant of direct control by statutory bodies, the schools have a high degree of autonomy. A few decisions, such as major items of capital expenditure or the expulsion of a group of boys, may have to be referred to the Board of Governors, but otherwise the headmaster is allowed considerable latitude to run the school as he wishes, although this is subject to a satisfactory report at the periodic inspections by H. M. Inspectors, and to his ability to attract parents who will pay the school's fees. The schools are non-profit making, are registered as charities, and nearly all 1. See the Public and Preparatory Schools Yearbook, London : A. and C. Black, 1963 p. 3. 2. Kalton, G. op. cit. pp. 90 and 94. It should be noted both that it is the practice in many of these schools for a high proportion of boys to make two or three attempts at these examinations, which are set and marked by a Board which does not set and mark the papers of the majority of State Schools, and that several schools have a number of reserved places at Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. The figures of 'A' levels and of University places, and comparisons by Kalton for instance between the Public and State Schools based on them should therefore be treated with caution. See Dale R. R. 'The Public Schools and GCE. A review of the Evidence', Where NO-35 January 1968. C derive over 95 per cent of their income from fees, of which about 90 per cent is paid by the pupils' parents who, however, very seldom take a direct part in the government of school affairs. 1 This degree of autonomy has enabled the schools to become socially and economically, rather than geographically, selective, with most of their pupils drawn from a narrow sector of the whole population of the country. 2 Sociologically, an important structural feature of the majority of these schools is that they are residential organizations for, although most admit some day pupils, they are predominantly boarding schools. Of the 110 independent schools whose headmaster was a member of the HMC in 1963,22 were largely day schools but only eight had no boarders at all. At 54 of the other 88, there were more than 50 per cent boarders, and at 34 the relative number of day boys was very small indeed. Of these 88, nearly all were large establishments. Six had, at the time of the research, less than 200 boarders, and, since schools with a small number of boarders appear to develop different organizational structures, these were omitted from the list drawn up for this research. I. While a small number of well-endowed schools such as dinchester and 'ton, have andovanents which yield as much as 20 per cent of their income, the majority of the Public Schools receive little finance from this source. Many have close links with a religious organization or one of the London City Companies for instance, who may donate or lend capital for new buildings. About 10 per cent of the Public Schools' income comes directly or indirectly from the State. 2. For a discussion of this see Dancy, J. C. OP-cit., pp. 103, ff. and Glennerster, H. and Pryke, It. The Public Schools, London The Fabian Society, 1964. The girls' public boarding schools are even more socially and economically selective than the boys'. 6 The full list of 82 schools, in the category to which I shall refer in this account as 'Public Boarding Schools', is given in Appendix 1.1 The school, like the family, is a major agency of socialization and of culture transmission in a society. There are accounts of the socialization of adolescents in primitive societies which describe the practice in which some or all of the boys, and some- times the girls, are removed for a period from their parents' household to live in the company of their peers and to participate in a specified kind of social life supervised by senior citizens, or by older bachelors. Certain societies confined this arrangement to a few privileged strata; Lowrie notes, for instance, that the 'Sacred Colleges' of the Maoris, were open only to the sons of nobility, who in batches of twenty to thirty were initiated in special skills and acquired specialized knowledge appropriate to their status - in particular a knowledge of sacred history, and of 1. See Kalton, G. op. cit., Ir original list of schools was confined to those with at least one-third boarders. One further school, hill Hill, has been excluded on the grounds that its 25 per cent intake of boys directly sponsored by Middlesex County Council significantly affects its character. See also Bamford, T. W. The Rise of the Public Schools London : Nelson 1967, who (using slightly different criteria) gives a very similar list of schools which he defines as the Public School system of 1962 (pp. 268 ff. ). 7 magical art and spells - and were tested at the end of the course in their acquires proficiency by the more uttering of a spell to kill birds or, the greatest distinction, a man. 1 Similarly, in traditional societies, the segregation of adolescents art certain strata in the society from their peers in the rest of the society was sometimes arranged on a formal basis - especially where it was conceived to be important to give them specialised training in certain elite skills. During the two centuries of Togugawa Japan for example, a number of boarding schools were established especiaA6ly for the eldest sons of the upper ranks of the samurai. The function of these was to give a distinctive education to the small groups of pupils expected to become the educated elite of the fief. Although a minority of the pupils were admitted from the lower samurai, and provision even made in some cases for commoners to board free, the schools mainly served to educate those who already had an established hereditary place in the fief hierarchy. 2 1. See Lowrie, R. M. Social Organisation, London : Routledge, 1950, p. 44, ff.. Weinberg cites Carschºs description of Aztec boarding schools for the education of the nobility, Weinberg, I, op. cit. p. 117. Carech, M. B. "The Family, Child caring and Social Control among the Aztecs", International Anthropological and Linguistic Review, Vol. 3, Nos. 1-2,1957-1958. 2. For some account of the life in these schools see Dore R. P. Education in Togugawa Japan, London : Routledge, 1965. In some schools boys were accom. ndated in the schools for short periods each year to learn among other things 'to eat plain food, taste hardship, and become acquainted with the conditions of the lower classes. ' 9 In industrial societies systems of secondary education are generally administered by the State, but)in many such societies there are a significant number of schools which display, to differing extents, elements of independence and of the boarding principle. Many were founded to enable children to be given an education appropriate to a particular religious denomination. In the 1950's three- quarters of the Dutch secondary schools were independent, In Belgium the figure was about 60 per cent. During the same period in France half the children of secondary school age were attending independent schools, and in Italy a third. Few of these schools are boarding schools, but in Germany, where about one in eight of the secondary school population are at independent schools, there are a number of cadet schools and tHerman-Lietz-Schulent where boarding education is organised in 'family groups $. In Denmark there are about 100 Efterakoler ('After- schools') catering for about one in eight of the secondary school population. These schools are privately run but subsidised by the State. 1 Following a decision taken by the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, Russia has created a large state-sponsored boarding system. But the Russian Shkola Internat is not restricted to a particular sector of society; children are admitted largely on social grounds, those for instance who come from areas where there is an acute housing shortage : The first to be admitted are children of single mothers, war and labour invalids, orphans and children in whose families the conditions necessary for education are lacking. ' 2 1. See Dancy, J. C. op. cit. pp. 187-8 and Hylla-Wrinkel, Die Schulen in West Europe, Christian Verlog, 1953. 2. Deineko, M., Public Education in the U. S. S. R., Moscow : Progress Publishers, no date, p. 118. See also report by Grant, W. Where, September 1965. ý It was planned that by 1970 about three million children would be attending boarding schools in Russia, but the scheme was abandoned with less than one million pupils enrolled as boarders, (2 per cent of the total enrolment in schools in Russia). All the boarding schools are co-educational and children are expected to return home each weekend. ' The United States has a well-developed system of private education. There are over 4,000 'non-public' (private) secondary schools at which over one million pupils are enrolled, 8.5 per cent of the nation's total secondary enrolment. The majority of these schools were founded this century and over 80 per cent are affiliated to a church, two-thirds of these being Roman Catholic. About one in eight of these schools are expensive boarding schools, many situated in New England (where 40 per cent of the private schools are co-educational). Although most of these schools are relatively small, 15 per cent of them enrol 500 or more pupils. Iviost, especially those with no religious affiliation, enjoy a lower pupil-teacher ratio than most State schools in the United States. A number of these schools emphasize not only academic preparation for higher education (the $. 5 per cent produced 12.4 per cent of the graduates in 1959-60), but also a para-military ideology, in a residential setting; these schools refer to themselves as 'military', occasionally 'naval' and, in one or two cases, 'air' academies, and rationalize their control mechanisms in para-military terms. The language is military, (nautical or air-force) as are the main 1. See Dancy, J. C. op. cit., pp. 189-192 and Grant, 111. Soviet Education London : University of London Press, 1965. The scheme has been replaced by one in which four million pupils spend an extended 12-hours day at school. 10 organizational regulations and roles. 1 That such academies perceive themselves as commercial enterprises is evident from the substantial eye-catching brochures in rich they advertise their aims and achievements; some, such as Riverside Military Academy have different campuses for summer and winter seasons. Their aims are ambitious. The Junior rilitary Academy, Bloomington, motto, 'Making men of small Boys', claims: The '&ur "modified military train' has been tried and then tempered to meet the real needs of the modern boy. Habits of self discipline, neatness, promptness, obedience, self- reliance and dependability are instilled into each Junior Military Academy Cadet. Our boys are trained physically, mentally and morally; and they are taught how to live happily with other people. ' 2 Florida Air Academy, describes itself as . .... a college preparatory school geared to the Aerospace Age. Its curriculum is designed to produce the leaders of tomorrow ... Certain qualities of mind and character are prized in any era: manliness, self-discipline, the ability to think and reason with logic and precision, the ability to express oneself in speech and writing, unfailing courtesy and consideration for all, the ability to co-operate and work well with others, and finally, the ability to lead and inspire others. It is these abilities and precepts of character that are developed at Florida Academy ... The combined program ... is a unique blending of the newest and most advanced techniques and sciences with the best of time- tested virtues and academic disciplines ... it is a truly ideal training for boys who will grow to maturity and live their adult lives in the exciting and challenging world of the Aerospace Age., 3 1. For statistics on private education in the U. S. A. see Gertler, D. B. Statistics of Non-Public Secondary Schools, 1960-61. School Enrolment and Staff (OE-20050) washinRton U. S. Government Printing Office. 1963. 2. Private communication from the Headmaster, 1965. 3. Florida Air Acadentr Prospectus, 1965-66, p. 1. 11 Several Commonwealth and ex-Commonwealth countries, including India and South Africa, have private boarding school systems, in general to some extent modelled on the English Public School system. In Canada, for instance, although only two per cent of the nation's children attend private schools, in some of the urbanised states, notably Ontario (three per cent) and Quebec (eight per cent), the proportion is higher than the average and has increased each year. In Canada, as a whole, the enrolment at private schools has been increasing by about five per cent per year and has increased by over 50 per cent in Ontario in two years, (1961-2 - 1963-4), while the enrolment in the Ontario State Schools increased by less than 10 per cent, and the expenditure on private education alone in Canada in 1964 was about 66 million dollars. ' While the proportion for the whole of Canada of private pupils in the second to seventh grades is 1: 40, in the sixth form (the eleventh and twelfth grades), it is 1: 6 for the whole country, and for Quebec 1: 4 and Ontario 1: 7, and it follows that the part played by these schools in the educational system of the country is particularly significant at the secondary level, especially in the highest grades. The character of these schools differs from one province to another. In Quebec the hierarchy of secondary education for French Canadians is dominated by a number of highly distinguished church- sponsored 'Classical Colleges'. In Ontario, there are a large number of thriving independent boarding schools, and some day schools are associated with local universities. host of the major 1. See Preliminary- Statistics of Education, Dominion Bureau of Statistics Canada 1963/4 and subsequent years. tZ boarding schools outside Quebec are basically modelled on the English Public Schools, individual schools catering for Canadian boys not only by recruiting a number of their staff from the English Schools but also)as an examination of their rules and prospectuses clearly shows, by reproducing many of the features of their English counterparts. Many such schools are affiliated to the Canadian Headmasters Association. In Porter's analysis of the 'Canadian Economic Elite' in the early 1980s he found that over a third of those members of the elite born in Canada had attended private schools - including almost all the French-Canadian members of the elite. The majority of the English-speaking members of the elite who attended private schools had attended schools belonging to the Canadian Headmaster's Association particularly salient being Upper Canada College (29 members of the elite) and a few other schools in Eastern Canada figured prominently. Although there is, according to Porter, no way of determining whether or not private education is, in the instrumental sense, superior, the elite percieve it as superior I Better supervision, better training, to get along with people, better rounded programmes, character development, leadership training, better discipline are some of the advantages attributed to the private school .... Those of the economic elite who did not themselves go to a private school would almost certainly send their children to one., 1 1. See Porter, J. The Vertical Mosaic Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1965 pp. 190 ff. and 284 ff. Private summer camps for adolescents add a further factor to the homogeneity of elite education in Canada. r3 There is a flourishing private boarding school system in India composed mainly of mission schools and a small number of comparatively large and exclusive 'public' schools, which caters for parents with high incomes, and whose headmasters formed the Indian Public Schools' Conference in the 1940s on the lines of the Headmasters Conference in Britain. A number of the major schools were founded in the second half of the last century; the first, Lawrence School, Sanawar, having been founded in 1847. Puny of them were intended to train members of the princely families to lead useful lives. From their inception they were modelled on their English counterparts, creating house and prefect systems, and employing staff from English public schools, but, in the early years, one of the differences was that they allowed pupils with distinguished parents to bring their own servants with them, rather than employ their young contemporaries as fags. Since 1946, these schools have., generally, been open to all boys whose parents who can afford the fees, and to the sons of army officers and civil servants who may have their fees subsidized by the Government. By 1960 many of the major schools were functioning as successful enterprises with a large number of pupils spending their whole school life within the same school. 1 In Britain, Ralph Turner has suggested social mobility is characteristically sponsored, and educational selection is both systematic and overt in a child's career. He has contrasted this strategy of educational selection with that of the United States where, with the aid of a tacit and delayed selection through dropout 1. See Dayal, D. English Public Schools Government of India, rlinistry of Education, 1960 India's Public Schools' Times Educational Supplement, 28.12.62. Af- from school after the leaving age, an organizing norm of contest mobility is maintained. ' In England the State has allocated children between the age of 101 and 12 years to socialization predominantly in different types of schools, Grammar, Technical, and 1odern and, more recently, Comprehensive, which reflect the realities of occupational and social stratification in the society, and the occupational positions typically filled by the children leaving the different schools exhibit significant differences. Parents can, however, as Turner points out, opt to sponsor their children themselves. rile this in itself does not necessarily confer social benefits or involve social mobility, the fact that they can pay for them to attend schools in a separate sector, containing many schools which have a considerable historical reputation for academic superiority means that their children are provided with in many instances socialization for elite role behaviour and with training for potential elite status in a residential setting. 2 1. Turner, R. H. 'Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System' American Sociological Review, Vol. 25 No. 1,1960, pp"855-867. Burton Clarke's article 'The Cooling-Out Function in Higher Education', American Journal of Sociolozy, Vol. 65, No. 6, 1960, pp. 569-576 is also relevant to the American Strategy. See also Hopper's suggestion of an elaboration of Turner's typology, Hopper, E. I. 'A Typology for the Classification of Educational Systems', Sociology Vo1.2, No. 1 1968. 2. Mark Abrams provocatively estimates the number of the active British elite in his 'British Elite Attitude and the European Common Market' (Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 29 No. 2,1963 pp. 236-246) concluding that of the active members of the elite, 14 per cent attended Eton, Harrow, Winchester or Rugby, 43 per cent some other private secondary school, and only 29 per cent state schools. ff The existence of this separate sector it is frequently maintained has been of fundamental significance to the 'English class structure. ' Bamford referred to it as a 'schism' in the educational system. Brogan, in 1943, claimed: .... the clue to the English attitude to class and social distinction is to be found in the school system. In no other country does the character of the formal education received have the permanent importance that it had in England ... ghat is extraordinary is the sudden rise in the nineteenth century of the idea that only a "Public school" could give an education fitting for a boy for command in business, in politics, in the army, the civil service, even the arts. Only in England, and there in modern times - did the idea grow up that the effects of education between the ages of thirteen or fourteen and seventeen or eighteen were decisive ... It became an accepted dogma of English life that the male population were divided into two classes, public school and others. The products of the public schools were assumed to have certain valuable moral and social qualities which, if not quite unattainable by the products of other schools, were at any rate rarely attained by them. ' 2 The origins of the public boarding schools can be traced back to the church controlled secondary schools of the Middle Ages, when noblemen started to send their younger sons to certain favoured schools, many of them linked with Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, 1. The schools situated in Wales are highly anglicised, share most of the traditions of the English Schools, take a high proportion of English born pupils and employ mostly English staff. Only one school, Llandovery, teaches Welsh. 2. See Bamford, T. W. op. cit. pp. 28-9. For Brogan's full discussion of the 'rift' in the educational system see the whole of his chapter 2, pp. 27-58. . He also stresses the recency of the emergence of public schools. Brogan, D. W. The En, lish People London : Hamish Hamilton 1943. !` where they were given an education appropriate to careers in the Church or public service. 1 It was not until the nineteenth century, however, that the public school stem was established. About half the schools in the present system were founded as charitable organisations during the second half of that century, and many others only then emerged from being small institutions providing free or subsidised schooling for local boys. During the same period many girls' public schools were also founded. A number of social and economic factors - including threats to the homogeneity of the national elite produced by industrialisation and modernisation, and the consequent insecurity in the Church of England, where gentlemanly status was no longer confined to ancestry - led to the need for a new means of defining the elite. A common education at an established school of high national, rather than merely local, repute provided such a means, and the schools encouraged parents who had the means to do so send their sons some distance by the newly developed railways system to lodge in the town and to attend their establishments. 2 1. For discussions of the origins of the public school system see Rodgers, J. The Old Public Schools of England, London Bateford 1938, newsome, ). Godliness and good Learning, London John Murray, 1961; Brogan, D. W. The English People, London Hanish Hamilton, 1943, pp. 27 ff. Weinburg, I. op. cit. Chapter 2, tsamford T. N. L. op. cit. 2. For an outline of the emergence of the girls' schools see Ollerenehaw, K. op. ci pp. 15 ff. 17 The boarding principle in the boys' schools developed more from the concern of individual masters with the standard of lodging accoxjödation than as a deliberate act of educational policy - although, since the turn of the century, the schools and their headmasters have found it necessary, or opportune, to justify it on grounds of the latter. During the schools' Victorian hey-day the masters of the most successful schools turned in their spare time to running their own lodging houses, which have gradually over the years been incorporated as a major part of the official school structure as 'boarding houses'. Thus a new ideology of boarding developed; according to Bamford : ... CaJ way of life, which resembled nothing so much as a human anthill heaving for a common purpose, was elevated by its supporters into a major principle of education. $ 1 It was during this mid-Victorian period that the Headmasters' Conference was formed, a move of considerable importance, effectively defining the concept of an exclusive elite group of schools. In 1857 the Clarendon Commission's investigation into 'some public schools' including the three royal foundations (Eton, Winchester, and Westminster), three revived grammar schools (Harrow, Rugby, and Shrewsbury) and the charitable foundations of Charterhouse, St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors', by definition, set apart a very small category of schools, the 'Clarendon Schools'. However, the Taunton ('Endowed Schools') Commission's report twelve years later dealt with about 800 schools, covering a wide range from the most successful to the dilapidated and the pratically defunct. Thring, the headmaster of Uppingham, observed then that, if the prestige and independence of the most successful schools were to be retained and further improved, some kind of organisation was 1. Bamford, T. W. op. cit. p. 83. See also for the ideology in a modern form. Leeson, S. The Public School Question, London : Longman, 1948, Dancy, J. C. op. ci t. ; see also below. I gf necessary. After a preliminary meeting of about twenty-five headmasters in London, organised with Michinson, Headmaster of King's School, Canterbury, the first full meeting of the new Association was called for the Christmas of 1870 at Sherborne and the Headmasters of sixty-six schools invited to attend 'to watch over, discuss and study school questions'. 1 Since then this organization of headmastere has continued to expand and organize meetings on matters of mutual interest, has established its position as the principal corporate body representing the interests of the public schools and now provides with its divisional, branch and associated organizations, a forum in which the body of principles and practices basic to the system is worked out. Traditionally, onoea headmaster has been elected a member of the Headmasters' Conference, he remains a 1. See Bamford, T. W. on. cit. p. 183 ff. and 'Origins of the Headmasters' Conference', Times Educational Supplement, October 7,1966, p. 775. The schools invited were : Bedford, Berkhampstead, Birmingham, Blackheath Proprietary College, Bradfield, Brentwood, Brighton College, Bristol, Bromsgrove, Bury St. Edmunds, Canterbury, Charterhouse, Cheltenham College, Christ's Hospital, City of London, Clifton College, Dulwich, Durham, Epsom College, Eton, Felsted, Gloucester Cathedral School, Guernsey Queen Elizabeth College, Guildford, Haileybury College, Harrow, Highgate, Ipswich, Isle of Man King William's College, Jersey Victoria College, King's College (London), Lancaster, Lancing College, Leeds, Liverpool College, Liverpool Royal Institute, Magdalen College School, Malvern College, Mancester, Marlborough College, Merchant Taylor's Norwich, Oakham, Oswestry, Radley, Repton, Richmond (York), Rochester Cathedral, Rossall, Rugby, St. Paul's (London), Sherborne, Shrewsbury, Tiverton, Tonbridge, University College School, Uppingham, Wellington College, Westminster, Wimborne Minster, Winchester, Worcester Cathedral School, St. Peter's School (York), (England). Beaumaris, Cowbridge, Ruthin. (Wales), See also the Public and Preparatory Schools Year Book, op. cit. (p. 3) for the conference's corporate view of its role. Bamford quotes from the first edition of the Public Schools' Year book (1889), '" In order that the book may be published at a low price it has been thought best to fix the number of schools to be included at thirty. Without this limit, the principle of selection has been to admit such schools as the Editors - representatives respectively of Eton, Harrow and Winchester - regard as belonging to the same genus as their own "', Bamford, T. W. opo cit. p. 188. ý member no matter to which school he may subsequently move. A new headmaster is thus dependent on the reputation of the school to which he has been appointed for his case for election to the Conference. Traditionally also, the Conference usually 'loses' members only by retirement. A school may therefore, under a new headmaster, have to improve its standards before it can become represented again at the Conference. Elements of a common educational policy crystallized in the second half of the century, during the schools' attempt to cater for boys in Victorian England. In the subsequent period of high growth and prosperity the schools produced similar solutions to similar organizational problems. The geographical situation of most of the schools, linked with their policy of boarding, generally required that they provide an education in an environment segregated from family and from the life of the new urban centres, and besides their classical educational curriculum, these schools characteristically developed a chapel-centred moral life reinforced by compulsory participation in team games, with discipline delegated to certain senior boys. 1 By the First Idorld War, the major schools were well established and 'successful'. They continued to expand after 1918, new schools being founded and the older ones increasing in size. 1. For a description of the life at public boarding schools during this period, see Bamford, T. W. o cit. CL. 4. The public at large avidly read the schoolboy books which glamorised and popularised the schools with varying degrees of accuracy. l The grammar schools tended to emulate then in an attempt to share their success. Criticism by a small number of 'intellectuals' including Alec Waugh, Robert Graves, H. G. Wells, Bertrand itussell and Lytton Strachey and the severity of the depression which forced two schools to amalgamate (Haileybury and the Lmperial Service College) and one to close down, failed to disturb their confidence and general prosperity in the years preceoding the Second World War. 2 For some time after the Second World War, the public schools were relatively neglected in the literature of educationalists and the social scientists. During the past twenty-five years educationalists have been principally concerned with the creation of a new system of universal secondary education provided by the State following the 1944 Act, rather than with the small number of schools catering for less than 5 per cent of the secondary school age group. The public boarding schools have, however, not faded away despite repeated predictions to the contrary, with the advent nationally frI ee off compulsory secondary education, but have 1. Tom Hughes, for instance, glamorised Rugby in Tom Brown's Schooldays which appeared in 1857. See Hicks, W. R. The School in English and Uerman Fiction, London : Soncino Press 1933 and Child H. 'The Public Schools in Fiction' in The Public Schools from Within A collection of Essays mostly by Schoolmasters, Sampson Low, Marston, London 1906, pp. 293 - 300. 2 Russell wrote in 1932 : ' Those who have been taught from an early age to fear the displeasure of their group as the worst of misfortunes will the on the battle-field, in a war of which they understand nothing, rather than suffer the contempt of fools. The English public schools have carried this system to perfection and have largely sterilised intelligence by making it cringe before the herd. This is what is called making a man manly'. Russell, B. Education and the Social Order, London : Allen & Unwin, 1932. For a discussion of the schools at this time see the 'Fleming Report'. The Public Schools and the General Educational System. London : HMSO, 1944. and Ogilvie, V. The English Public School. London : Batsford, 195'/. 14 continued to flourish and even expand alongside and in competition with the schools in the state system, whilst remaining to a large extent separate and organizationally insulated from it. Headmasters of public boarding schools still attend their own regional and national conferences; their staffs contain only a minority who are members of a national union (and most of tnese are members of the smaller Association of assistants Masters in Secondary Schools rather than of the National Union of Teachers. ) They arrange for their pupils to sit for G. C. E. examinations rather than c. S. E., and use the Oxford and Cambridge Examining Board rather than the other boards used by the great majority of their state counterparts. The headmasters circulate their own news-sheets and subscribe to their own professional journals - although one of those ceased publication in 1967 (School and College) - and in 1964 founded and published their own journal, Conference, to : ..... provide an arena in which the activities of our schools will be displayed for our mutual benefit and for the benefit of a wider audience - C' and 3 enable us to express our views on the future and to answer inaccurate, ill-informed and prejudiced attack which are made upon us. ' 1 In 1967, the Headmasters' Conference engaged an advertising agency to further publicise their views. The three public schools in Wales have, in addition, joined with seven Welsh preparatory schools in the publication of a common brochure and the organisation of press conferences and press releases. 1. Conference, Editorial Vol. 1 Ro. 1 1964, p. 4. The editor (p. 3) identifies Sampson's Anatomy of Britain as one of the offending works. 21 It is clear that while not expanding their numbers at a rate quite equal to that of the state schools, over recent years the 82 public boarding schools, if not the private sector generally, have enjoyed considerable demand and prosperity, in spite of speculation about their future created by polit]. cal announcements and the creation of a Royal Commission to investigate them. Over the past few years the 82 schools have themselves expanded by an average of between 1 and 2 per cent a year, the Woodard Corporation has increased the number of its schools from 16 to 24, and many new schools have been founded which attempt to emulate what are conceived to be 'public school' methods. While the Conference has until recently restricted its membership to 200 members, a few of these new or expanded schools have been admitted to the Headmasters' Conference and others to its auxiliary association, the Society of Headmasters of Independent Schools. 1 Past pupils of these 82 scnools are particularly evident in distinguished circles, yet until very recently there has been little systematic research on the nature of the process of education provided in the scnools. Educational researchers have tended to treat these schools as either principally of historical interest or as a residual category in statistical tables. In the early 1960s, the National Foundation fopEducational Research reported no research projects in progress in them, the Ministry statistics subsumed them, 1. Recent new members of the Conference include Abbotsholme, Queens College, (Taunton), St. Georges College (Weybridge), and Tettenhall College. The S. H. I. S. was founded in 1961 to cater for the headmasters of certain selected schools and acts as a junior department of the B. M. C. In 1967 it had a membership of 23. 2-; and still does, in the category of 'Independent Schools, Recognized and Efficient', in 1962 devoting only one paragraph to them in its annual reports (Education in 1961, et seq. ) and the Crowther Report, 15 to 18 treated them merely as members of the Ministry's administrative category, omitting their contribution to ttze education of adolescents both from its discussion and from its statistical tables. ' With the publication of the results of Lambert's research for the Public Schools' Commission, it is to be expected that this situation may change over the next few years. In 1965, there were 7,000 teaching staff and nearly 100,000 boys in independent, efficient, secondary (or secondary-and-primary) schools in England and gales - 2.5 per cent of the total school population of just under four million boys. The $2 schools cater for just under half of these, including about 35,000 boarders. 2 Taking a single age group - 14 years old - in 1965,16,000 of the 341,000 boys attending school were at independent-efficient schools, about 4.7 per cent of their age group. About two-thirds of these, some 3 per cent of their age group, attended the 82 schools. 1. N. F. E. R. Research in Progress annual reports, hinistry of Education, Department of Education and Science) Statistics of Education (annual), 15 to 18 London : H. h. S. O., Vol. 1 1959, Vol. 2 1960. 2. Most of these have previously attended preparatory schools. Iany have already been boarders. In 1966 there were over 30,000 boarders in preparatory schools in the membership of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools. 2-I1- Most of the schools cater for 200 to 800 boys, with an average sixth fora of 150 to 200, making up about a third of the school. ' The corresponding 77 boarding schools for girls, defined by Membership of the Governing Bodies of Girls' Schools Association, contains about half this number of pupils, about 18,500 in 1967. However, according to Ollerenshaw, while the proportion of 13 year olds at these schools approaches that in the boys' schools, the proportion of pupils who leave before the sixth form is considerably greater, resulting in smaller sixth forms in already smaller schools. In the 149 schools of the Association under 10 per cent of the 13 year olds stay until their eighteenth birthday, and although some of the boarding schools have persued a policy of recruiting at the sixth form level, there is still only one girl aged 17 for two aged 13 in these schools. 2 Vaizey estimated in 1958 that about X30 million was then being spent each year on private education, although he emphasized the dubious foundation for this estimate. Including fees, extras, and income from other sources, the income of the 82 schools at the time was of the order of X15 million, equal to half of Vaizey's estimated expenditure on private education and about double their income in 1934.3 During the 1960'9 fees have generally tended to 1. Statistics of Education, 1965, part 1,1966 and Kalton 0. op. cit. pp. 16 ff. (A century before in 1861, the Newcastle Commission estimated that there were 860,000 pupils in 'private venture' schools. Newson report. Vol. 1,1966. p. 381. ) 2. See Ollerenahaw, K. op. cit. pp. 129-132 and 134. 3. Based on an estimate in the Year Book of Education, 1934. See also Vaizey, J. The Economics of Education, London : Faber 1962, and Vaizey, J. The Costsof Education, London : Allen & Unwin, 1958. In 1967, Vaizey and Sheehan calculated that the money cost of private education in 1965 was about E60 million. See Vaizey, J. and Sheenan, J. Resources for Education, London : Allen & Unwin 1967. 2-ý- increase by 4 to 5 per cent per annum, to a figure which now in some cases exceeds £650 p. a. The total annual income of these schools in 1967 approaches X20 million and is expanding at a rate comparable with the increasing expenditure on their counterparts in the state sector. ' While in the 1950s the public schools had been inhibited from a high rate of capital expenditure on buildings, since then they have made considerable efforts to bring their buildings up to date and build new ones. Research carried out for the Commission has shown that during the years 1950-65 over £25 million was spent on such work (compared with about ¬750 million in state secondary schools) most of it in the last five years. This rate of increase is greater than that for all other types of schools and has enabled the public schools to make considerable improvements in their boarding facilities, classroom acconodation and science laboratories. Their capacity to increase their own income is considerable. At present the schools benefit substantially from their jrrl 9enero, 5'fy status as 'charities' for tax purposes and from the loyaltyjof their Wmk, prosperous past pupils, supplemented by tax refunds) IS increasingly used to finance their building programmes. The boys' public boarding schools raised about E15 million from appeals between 1950 and 1966; Eton alone had a target of £1 million for its most recent appeal. 1. A small number of the schools (not more than six or eight) have substantial investments which add significantly to their income. Z6 Mainly because of the reluctance of the Headmasters' Conference to admit more than a few new members or to expel present ones, and to the rule limiting the total membership to 200, the share of the 82 schools in the expenditure on private education has fallen as new schools are founded but not admitted, to the Conference. This has however, at least until recently, resulted in an increase rather than a decrease in the demand for places at the Member's schools. As the private sector has expanded (absolutelyýif not always in proportion to the expansion in the state schools sector) many of the new schools have merely been second choices for parents. The prestige and selectivity that the major established schools have maintained has thus been further enhanced -a trend encouraged by the minor schools' attempts to emulate their image and techniques. In England, over the last twenty yearn, parents with high incomes have almost invariably sent their children, and in particular sons, to private and, if possible, public schools, and a for most parents, unless resident in the vicinity of suchschool, this required that their child boarded. Although a survey in 1954 indicated that only two-thirds of those earning over £1,000 a year had themselves been educated privately, 95 per cent of their own children were attending public schools. 1 The aspiration to such 1. Klein i.. R. at. al. 'Savings and Finance of Upper Income Classes' , Oxford University Institute of statistics Bulletin, November, 1956, quoted by Vaizey, J. op. cit. 1958, p. 150. ?7 education appears, however, limited to a minority of parents; in a survey in 1967 of parents with children at school only seven per cent stated that they would accept a place for their child at a fee-paying public school. ' Many of the 82 schools are respected for the impressive academic record of their pupils, a record which is closely related to their ability to retain their older boys for three, and occasio- nally four, years in sixth forms which account for over 40 per cent of their pupils, a significantly higher proportion than that found in the day public schools, and almost double the proportion in any other type of achool in this country. 2 Despite the recent expansion of the sixth forms in state schools, the sixth forms of the 82 public: boarding schools still contain over 10 per cant of the total sixth form boys in the country. Some however, like many state schools and girls' public schools have smaller numbers in their sixth forms than are officially considered viable, some of the 82 boys' public boarding schools have sixth form standards below those prevailing at many grammar schools. 3 1. Donnison, D. V. 'Education and Opinion', New Society Vol. 10 No. 265,1967. 2. All figures in this section are taken from Kalton, G. o cit. or Statistics of Education, 1965, unless otherwise specified. 3. Out of 100 grammar schools in North East England, 78 have fewer than 124 pupils in the VIth form, and 11 have fewer than 50, while the minimum figure for a viable VIth form is considered to be 140. Trends in Education, London : Department of Education and Science. BMSD, July, 1967. v The National Service Survey of the Crowther Report showed that 50 per cent of the recruits from independent efficient schools had remained at school until after their eighteenth birthday and 83 per cent until after their seventeenth, compared with 24 per cent and 40 per cent respectively for maintained grammar schools. According to Kalton's survey the comparative figures for all independent HIIC boarding schools were 58 per cent and 88 per cent. In the 1960s about one fifth of the boys still at school in Sngland and dales after their seventeenth birthday were attending 'independent- efficient' schools, and in spite of the tendency for more boys at grammar schools to stay on at school about one in every eight of the nations sixth formers are at one of the 82 schools. These schools have succeeded in maintaining favourable teacher- pupil ratios, usually in the region of 1: 10 to 1: 12. host of their leavers have gained some success at 10' and 'A' level examinations; over 60 per cent have obtained, while at the school, at least one pass at 'A' level, and 30 per cent have obtained three or more. But, as has already been noted, these figures, although they may appear to compare favourably with those for maintained but not necessarily for direct grant schools, should be interpreted with care. Independent efficient schools provide one fifth of the candidates for the '0' level examinations, and a quarter of the candidates at 'A' level. At advanced level pupils at these schools show a distinct tendency to take classics, (17 per cent of the 'A' levels taken, compared with a figure of four per cent for maintained schools), and not to take mathematics (22 per cent compared with 35 per cent). ý Over one third of the past pupils of the public boarding schools attend university. In 1961/2 22 per cent of the male undergraduate students at university) 25 per cent of those with Ministry Awards, had attended an independent H. M. C. school - as had 17 per cent or the post graduate students. 1 But there are consiaerable differences between different courses and different universities. In Kelsall's study of admissions to British universities in 1955-56 which included 2,079 boys from H. M. C. independent boarding schools, the proportion of these boys was highest in medicine where they formed 22 per cent of all male admissions, agriculture (21 per cent) and the arts (18 per cent); by comparison they comprised only seven per cent of all male admissions in science. The studies of both Kelsall and Robbins clearly indicate the flow of boys from the public schools to Oxford and Cambridge with the result that in 1961/2 53 per cent of the men undergraduates at Oxford and 60 per cent at Cambridge had attended independent schools, and the admissions for subsequent years have shown only a slight decrease from this level. 2 44 per cent of the applicants for places at these two universities from these schools, compared with 17 per cent of those from maintained schools, had applied to no other college or university. However, the proportion of 1. Higher Education, (The Robbins Report) London : H. M. S. O. 1963 Appendix IIB, pp. 5 and 59. 2. See Statistics of Education 1966, Vol. 2. London : H. M. S. O. 1968. 30 applicants who were accepted in 1964 differed little between different types of school. 1 Boys from these schools also gain each year a high proportion of the Oxford and Cambridge awards. The most recent analysis of the awards of scholarships made by Oxbridge mene' colleges in 1966/7 shows that 36 of the 82 public boarding schools appeated among the 119 schools gaining four or more awards. Boys from these 36 schools gained 327 (23 per cent) of the awards, including 293 (22 per cent) of the open awards. HMC independent schools as a whole obtained 544 open awards in the year, an increase of 13 on the previous year, though only eight extra awards were recorded. 2 While the number of awards obtained is impressive, the proportion of entrants from such schools gaining awards is significantly lower than that of entrants from other types of schools; in 1966/67, while about two-fifths of all entrants to Oxford and Cambridge from other schools gained an award, only just over one fifth of the entrants from these 82 schools gained such an award. 1. Higher Education, Appendix IIB, pp. 430,437 and 438. Kelsall's study shows that of the 2,079 boys from HMC independent boarding schools admitted to university, the largest number 825 (40 per cent) went to Cambridge providing 43 per cent of its entry in October 1955, followed by Oxford 502 (24 per cent), 32 per cent of its entry. The numbers were particularly large in medicine, technology and agriculture at Cambridge and in medicine at Oxford. The emphasis on medicine was also clear in London University to which University 321 of the boys were admitted. Other universities admitted a further 292 and 100 were admitted to Scottish universities. See Kelsall, R. K. Applications for Admission to Universities, London : Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth. No date. 2. Times Educational Supplement, 14.7.67., p. 73. 3t There is no indication that widening the entry to the boys' public schools, or anything but the most radical alteration of their structure would lessen demand. An'investment' in their son of £2,500 to £3,000 on public school fees at £500 to £600 a year (in addition to £1,500 on maintaining him for five years at a boarding preparatory school, less the expense of keeping the boy at home over the ten year period), is regarded by many parents as a good one, considering the apparent benefits and financial return his education there is popularly assumed to bring during his adult life, although there is little concrete evidence to support this assumption; the sons of distinguished fathers may well tend in any case to have distinguished careers. Parents witness, however, the social rewards of notable past pupils. An analysis for example of the Times 1966 Election Results Supplement showed that of the 363 Labour and 252 Conservative members of the new Parliament 25 per cent of the former and 86 per cent of the latter had received public or private school education. In surveys carried out for the Public Schools Commission it has been shown that over three quarters of the judiciary and bishops in the Church of England have attended a public school, as have over half of the following the directors of some prominent firms, the entrants to the diplomatic service, physicians and surgeons at London Teaching Hospitals and on the General Medical Council, Admirals, Generals and air chief Marshals and the Vice-Chancellors, deans and professors at Oxford and Cambridge. 1 1. Also see Hans, N. 'Independent Schools and the Liberal Professions' Yearbook of Education, 1950; Glennerster, A. and Pryke R. o cit. and Appendix 3. 32 At the public school, as at the secondary modern school, there is both the 'climate of expectations and possibilities transmitted by the school through its curriculum and traditions and the pupil's perception of its place in the educational and social structure. ' Most of their pupils are drawn from the families of the economically and socially advantaged and the 'obituaries' written by pupils during the course of the research clearly indicated that they expected to attain a status similar or higher than that of their parents in their later careers. Bishop and Wilkinson have observed, in describing the strong links between a number of these schools and elite groups in British Society, that: 'It is a commonplace that the top jobs and top social status in Britain have long been dominated by a gentleman elite, a small circle of individuals who spent their boyhood at 'public' schools. ' 2 However, many of the 82 schools have links which are considerably more tenuous than those of the most famous schools. Some of this group combine a lack of academic distinction with a record of achievement of past pupils which is much less notable than that of the leading schools overshadowed in many cases by the record of certain state grammar schools and the majority of the direct grant schools in large cities, - though their achievements with some less able pupils are difficult to assess. 3 1. Taylor, W. The Secondary Nbdern School, London : Faber, 1963 p. 69. For a discussion of the significance of pupils perception in different schools, see Himmelweit, H. T. et al 'The Views of Adolescents on some aspects of the Social Class Structure' British Journal of Sociolozv Vol. 3 No. 2,1952. 2. Bishop, T. J. H. and Wilkinson, R. Winchester and the Public School Elite: A Statistical Anal-vsis London : Faber and Faber 1967 p. 15. See also in particular Chapter 2 'The Patterns of Power: Careers and Career Success' and p. 216 in the same book and for instance Lupton, T. and Wilson, S. 'The Social Background and Connections of Top Decision Makers' Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies Vol. 28 No. 1 1959, Kelsall, R. K. Higher Civil Servants in Britain London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1955 and Sampson, A. op. cit. 3. See Wakeford, J. op. cit. 1 39 Two points should be noted here in conclusion. The term elite is merely a concept used for analytic purposes and refers here to those individuals who are leaders in their occupations, the final decision-makers in their spheres, who occupy positions at the top of what has been termed the 'functional class hierarchy'; to 'discover' certain elites in British Society is to run the risk of reification. 1 Secondly, as Bishop and Wilkinson have remarked, 'Even if we could consider public school education as an outright cause of career success, there would still be obstacles to our understanding its precise function. It is not easy to distinguish between the different ways in which a public school background may promote a man's career'. 2 At this stage all that can be said is that the public school system in general provides an education, in organizations compatible with the mode of life and values of a group which has held many significant positions in British Society, an education which, for one reason or another, is selcted by a high proportion of the nation's distinguished and richest parents for their sons. It is the purpose of this account to describe and analyse from a sociological perspective some aspects of these residential organizations and the responses of their pupils to life within them, not to suggest the precise influence they exercise on the careers of their pupils. 1. For discussion of the word 'elite' as used in Bishop, T. J. H. and Wilkinson, R. o cit. see note 30 of chapter 2 p. $1. 2. Bishop, T. J. H. and Wilkinson, R. o . cit. p. 16. 3it- CHAPTER 2 THE SCHOOLS AS ORCLNIZATIONS The predominant conception of a particular school in the wider environment, the kind of personnel recruited as staff, the way of life of the pupils prior to entry, the economic resources available to the school, and the physical facilities all affect and are themselves affected by, the nature of the school organization and the feasibility of certain goals. Members performing different roles within one such organization may perceive the principal goal)or goals) differently and, since typically, large-scale organizations develop a multitude of auxiliary goals, some members may emphasize some of the auxiliary goals more than others. It is thus important to bear in mind whose goal-perception is being considered and in terms of what desired consequences of the activities of the organization in a particular instance. Goals in the public boarding schools can be and are variously perceived by parents, governors, senior masters, housemasters, chaplains, music and art masters, the bursar, the matrons and by different groups of boys, and this perception will, be related to the roles they perform in relation to the school system at different times - and they all have to a greater or lesser extent ambiguous and ambivalent ideas about their own personal objectives. Issues always arise in an organization where the primacy of one goal over the other has to be established. The time allocated to chapel singing practice in the public school is sometimes considered by the music staff 'inadequate' for major occasions and some nominal school periods may be cancelled, for instance. School teams may request release from morning lessons to travel to a distant match. 4 3S Individual boys revising for examinations may request 'leave off' the practices for a forthcoming inter-house competition. The conflict over priorities sometimes reaches the stage when the head- master deems it necessary to resolve the situation by issuing an edict giving an official line or solution. While policy may not always emerge clearly or specifically from what the school organization says it aims to do, the accumulation of these edicts de facto constitute the current official school policy, in which the operating goals of the school's headmaster, in particular, may be perceived. The official ideology of the public boarding schools can to some extent be perceived in the writings of their headmasters, and in the public image that they attempt to show to the wider society - particularly important since, more than almost any other category of educational organization, they are dependent on public relations to attract the custom of their potential clients. Their entry in the Public and Preparatory Schools Year Book, their school magazines and publications for past pupils, various public performances, speech days and exhibitions and the school prospectus and brochures, all to some extent present an official ideology. ' With some exceptions, such as Leighton Park, the school prospectuses published by many of the 82 schools give comparatively little detail of the academic Programms, emphasizing instead the facilities available for music practice, for sport, drama, religious activities and art. The Leys School devotes less than one page to the academic curriculum, and over eight pages to non-academic pursuits, including the titles of 20 plays and operas recently performed in the school and extracts 1. John Wilson, then Second Master at King's School, Canterbury, has written an account of the school's concern to protect their Public appearance - through a careful selection of material for release in the press, magazines and prospectuses. Wilson, J., op. cit. p. 17, ff. 3L from the school rules. Taunton School gives precedence, as do many of the schools, to religious and sporting activities over the academic curriculum. In its record for the year 1962-3, Bryanston devotes half a page each to the staff, to the academic performance of the boys, and ten pages to activities such as natural history, woodwork, art, pottery, music and drama. Harrow's policy is to provide parents of applicants with only one folded sheet of paper giving brief details of the school, of which two short paragraphs of about 130 words concern the academic structure. Following from this it appears relevant to note that in a number of schools, such as the research school, few promotions or demotions in the school or house orders or even expulsions are on grounds of past academic performance in class or examinations, although extremely poor performance might on occasions be the object of derision by both boys and staff, but the slowest streams in the research school's sixth form were referred to as the 'jungle remove' and 'jungle sixth', and as the 'business sixth' at bull hill. School magazines (and other less formal publications by members of the school) also present aspects of the official ideology. riost of the subject matter is submitted by boys, but staff members censor vigilantly and, of the material eventually printed, much is concerned with recording the names of the participants and their performance in official school activities; at many public boarding schools much of the content is often concerned with athletic contests. The Valedictions, and the promotions of staff are recorded, together with the obituaries expressing for the whole school, apparently in a length somewhat proportionate to the status of the subject, or to the exceptional nature of his departure, its official sympathetic concern. The careers and contributions to the school of those considered by the staff to be 27 most commendable may be described in the school magazine: I J. F. SCHOFIELD J. F. W. Schofield was an Old Boy whose love for the school surpassed every other emotion. He never married and from the time he left the Bank by whom he was employed in lest Africa on a very modest pension, he lived alone in very simple circumstances. He spent all he could save in helping present boys financially and providing amenities and extensions to the school. The enlargement of the Chapel and the Pavilion in the Water Tower field are instances. He avoided all publicity to the utmost of his ability, though in proportion to his means he must have given more to the school than anyone has ever done before. He bore his long, painful and trying illness with his usual fortitude. The school has lost one of the best friends it has had in its long history. C. H. E. S. I (St. Ed. niund's School, Canterbury, Chronicle, February, 1963, PP. 284-5. ) Editorials, essays, short stories and poetry are also frequently included, as in the research school, but although written by boys generally only pass into print if they express opinions compatible with the official image of the school as projected by the orcranizaflon A recent publicity statement published by the Headmasters' Conference listed boarding as one of 'The positive things the public schools have to offer ...... whole-time education with the whole time of the teaching, staff devoted to it ... ' Within this system staff can maintain 'Firm but sensible discipline, character-building and training in a sense of responsibility ... ' 1 11The boarding principle has been developed into a fundamental part of the ideology of the public schools. In his book The Public Schools and the Future, the Plaster of Marlborough, Dancy, claims that boarding is not merely one element of the public school 1. From Public Schools a G. B. A. and H. M. C. Point of View Public Schools Information Office, 12.10.67. See also for justifications of the system as applied to girls, Ollerenshaw, K., o . cit., pp. 178 ff. 39 system but, together with their independence of the State, is their main justification: 'What do the public schools ultimately stand for? The first Lanswe7 is, boarding education ... The public schools stand for quality with a difference. The difference is the philosophy of boarding education. I emphasize philosophy because the great independent and Direct Grant day schools in fact accept the same philosophy, even though they have not the same opportunities of implementing it. Their headmasters and their staffs set before themselves as an ideal that concept of total education which was first formulated and is still most consciously applied in boarding schools. ' 1 Dancy maintains that in the public boarding school the boy has the opportunity of being educated by 'experts' who are 'emotionally at one remove from the boy'. The housemaster, specializing in the social education of adolescent boys, he says, is a potential substitute for a 'harsh and tyrannical' father or a 'protective and over-indulgent' mother. The boarding school he suggests replaces the continual company of variously aged siblings with the fellowship of his own age-group, 'whose company, at this age, he naturally seeks'. The public boarding school is, Dancy writes, ' .... a purpose-built community - and the purpose is the education of the adolescent. The home is a community, but it is multi-purpose. The day school shares much of the purpose of the boarding school, but it is not, in anything like the same sense a community. ' 2 That the boy benefits from being separated from his family and the society outside the school system for considerable periods of time is perhaps the most frequently cited rationalization for the boarding principle. McConnell claims: 'In very few cases do parents have the temperament, the knowledge and experience or the time to be ideal mothers and fathers. It is better for a boy to spend the school term in a house dedicated to meeting his needs than in a home where emotion may warp judgments, inexperience of the young may lead to mistakes, while pressure of business and social commitments may lead to neglect'. 3 1. Dancy, J. C. o . cit. (2nd edition) 1966, p. 180-3, italics in original. 2. See Dancy, J. C. op. cit., pp. 73, ff.; Also Wilson, J., o cit. PP-56, ff. 3. McConnell, J. D. R. op. cit. p. 170. ý The headmaster of Gresham's School maintains that: 'The future of the Public Schools lies in answering the need for boarding, in widening their entry for those who want it and can profit by it, but especially in showing the way to educate outside the classroom'. 1 Day schools are based on the giving and receiving of instruction in a sequence of classroom tasks and situations, while in the 82 public boarding schools the proportion of effort and, indirectly, expenditure being directed towards the inculcation of academic facts and skills is relatively lower (in some cases probably as little as a third), and the proportion directed towards the broader socialization and control of the boys correspondingly higher. Some public schools are increasingly emphasizing academic achievement, but, in contrast to the majority of schools in the state sector, the public boarding school also makes considerable use of the proportion of the boy's day spent on non-academic activities, sponsoring for instance, chapel services, military parades, organized athletic activities, and voluntary societies. In terms of time, whereas in the day school the staff are concerned with perhaps forty hours of their pupils' week, in the boarding school the staff are concerned with the whole of their pupils' waking hours, which is 100 or more hours each week. Wolf ended, then headmaster of Shrewsbury, has emphasized the uniquely Planned nature of the public boarding school community arising from the school's obligation to provide for most of its pupils' needs. 2 1. Lockhart, L. d. 'Tom Brown's Ghost Walks', The Limes, 6.7.67. 2. Wolfenden, J. 'The English Public School', Year Book of Education, 1965. For a more sophisticated discussion of the 'planned' community in the schools, Wilson, J. 02-cit. pp. 55, ff. 4o According to boys at Tonbridge: 'The fact is that a Tonbridgian's life is organized in such a way as to make the school a total existence. he can swim along on a tide of activities in which days and weeks can be lost without trace. From waking to sleeping, he does not need to diverge from the enclosed routine which takes him from house - to school - to house - to field - to house - to school ... This completeness of life is obviously one of the prime characteristics of a public school. There is so much to do, there are so many activities to pursue. Sven the purchase of toothpaste or a packet of biscuits can be achieved through the house chemist's order or a visit to the school food shop (the Grubber) ... ' 1 Erving Goffman, on the basis of his research experience of life in mental hospitals, has made some preliminary suggestions which while insufficiently systematic to provide a rigorous model do suggest certain characteristics which may be associated with residential organizations in general. 2 'Every institution', Goffman observes 'has encompassing tendencies' but ' ... some .. are encompassing to a degree discontinuously greater than the ones next in line. Their encompassing or total character is symbolized by the barrier to social intercourse with the outside and to departure that is often built right into the physical plant, such as locked doors, high walls, barbed wire, cliffs, water, forests or moors. Theseestablishments I am calling total institutions, and it is their general characteristics I want to explore. ' 3 Goffman uses five characteristics to define what he terms 'total institutions': (1) they are a place of both residence and work; (2) they contain a large number of individuals sharing 1. From Tonbridge by the Boys London: Kenneth hason 1964, p. 27- 2. The interest of the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Institute of 1iiental Health in the study of hospitals and mental hospitals as organizations in the United States in the late 1940's and early 1950's produced a number of sociological and anthropological studies of these organizations, carried out in most cases by Participant observation. Some of the most stimulating analyses resulting from this work were produced by Erving Goffman. See also, Greenblatt, M. et al (eds. ) The Patient and the mental Hospital, Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957; Schwartz, P°i. S. and Schockley The Nurse and the Mental Patient, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1956; Stanton, A. H. and Schwartz, The Rental Hospital, New York: Basic Books, 1954. 3. Goffman, E. Asylums New York: Anchor 1961, p. 4. See also the footnote he has appended to this passage. 4t equivalent status ('like situated'); (3) these individuals are to a great extent cut off from the wider society and normal civilian life; (4) they stay there for a considerable period of time; and (5) they 'together lead an enclosed, formally-administered round of life'. ' He observes however that: 'This classification of total institutions is not neat, exhaustive, nor of immediate analytical use, but it does provide a purely denotative definition of the category as a concrete starting point. '2 The organization that Goffman characterizes lies at one extreme of a continuum. Certain organizations, set up to care for those incapable of looking after themselves, or to protect the members of the wider society, and others, designed as retreats from the world, are included in Goffman's definition. But he further specifically suggests that the boarding school can be considered as a 'total institution' of the type, he suggests, that is justified on instrumental grounds, 'established the better to pursue some worklike task'. 3 Glazer has also suggested that the concept be applied to schools. 4 As Waller has pointed out, though every school is to some extent 'marked off' from the wider society, the private boarding school exemplifies these features in particular: 1. Goffman, E. op. cit. (1961) p. xiii. 2. Goffman, E. o . cit. (1961) pp. xiii ff. 3. Goffman, E. op. cit. (1961) p. 5. 4. Glazer, N. 'Three Possible Contributions of Sociology to Education', Journal of Educational Sociology, 701.33, No. 3,1959. ! f-1L 'They have a stable and homogeneous population; the original homogeneity produced by economic and social selection, has been enhanced by intimate association and common experiences. They have a clear and explicit political organization, sometimes expressed in a book of rules and a long line of precedents. The persons of the school live very close to each other, and are bound each to each by an intricate maze of crisscrossing social relationships. Intimacy of association, stability of the group, the setting apart of the group by a distinctive dress and its isolation from other cultural influences, combine to make possible a strong feeling of unity in such a school; it has often been remarked that a private school has something of the solidarity of the family. The isolation of the school from the rest of the community, and the richness of the life which its members lead in their close-packed association, make the culture developed in such a school pronounced and distinctive. ' 1 Goffman's work and his concept of the 'total institution' were sometimes illuminating in the context of the public boarding school, but although he asserts that. 'none of the elements I will describe seems peculiar to total institutions, and none seems to be shared by every one of them; what is distinctive about total institutions is that each exhibits to an intense degree many items in this family of attributes. ' 2 there were many signißcant differences, which are referred to at various points later in this account, between the 'total institution' and the schools in the research. Occasionally the differences appeared to be in terms of the magnitude or extent of the characteristic as described by Coffman. In the 'total institution', for instance the inmates are required to perform regulated activities in unison with blocks of other inmates: 1. taller, W. The Sociology of Teaching (1932) Reprinted New York: ddiley, 1965 p. 7. 2. Goffman, E. OP-cit. (1961) P"5. 43 'First, all aspects of life are conducted in the same place under the same single authority. Secondly, each phase of the member's daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing together. Third, all phases of the day's activities are tightly scheduled, with one activity leading at a prearranged time to the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials. Finally, the various enforced activities are brought together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to fulfil the official aims of the institution. ' 1 In the public boarding school the day's routine activities are performed in unison with various groups of fellows only in so far as each dormitory is allocated a regulation time for getting up, washing, bathing, retiring to bed and having lights turned off, and there are regulation times for each meal. Junior boys in particular at the research school must get up at a certain time in the morning, write home and bath for example at specified times and on certain days; their day especially can be considered to be punctuated by bells signalling the end of the period for one activity and the beginning of the time for another. New members of the 'total institutions' described by Goffman are characteristically required either to perform tasks or to behave in ways which they consider have symbolic connotations alien to their status in the wider society; instances were cited where new inmates were required to perform very menial tasks. The practice of fagging in the public school although it appeared to exhibit similarities to this aspect of the 'total institution' was not generally perceived by the boys to have such connotations. 1. Goffhmn, E. op. cit. (1961), p. 6. 4+ The boarding school, unlike Goffman's 'total institution' has to cope with regular readmission each term. Although the boys' stay in the school lasts longer than the majority of inmates in prison or patients in hospital, and is often preceded by as much as five or more years in a boarding preparatory school, or the junior department of the main school, they return to civilian life in the holidays. ' Some boys' public schools allow pupils to return home for weekends, a practice accepted at Westminster and Sevenoaks and a practice increasingly encouraged in a minority of the girls' schools. Inmates in the 'total institution' are 'like situated', sharing equivalent status, whereas boys are ordered in a definite status hierarchy within the public boarding school and their status in the wider society indicated in diverse ways, particularly by the display made by parents on visiting days, and in most school lists there appears some exceptions, such as'The Hon' to the unadorned surname of a pupil. 2 The schools belong to that category of complex organization which, in addition to working through and with people, work on them. They are in a fundamental sense 'socializing', 'treatment' or 'people-changing' organizations. Wile other organizations in servicing, distributing or producing non-human objects or symbols may incidentally change the statuses, role-orientations and personalities of their members, in this type of organization the change constitutes the primary (though not the only) end: 1.92 per cent of the inmates of Pentonvill. e had been sentenced to less than 5 years imprisonment. Morris, T. and P., Pentonville, London : Routledge, 1963, p. 4.9. 2. See Goffman's second characteristic. Goffman, L. o p. cit. (1961) p. xiii. ýs 'People constitute the raison d'etre of these organizations, and ... the desired product is a new or altered person. ' 1 ': 4hile these schools vary in their official goals as regards the extent, direction and difficulty of the change attempted, and in the rate of success they achieve (in some cases the change may only be symbolic), in general they seem to share several important characteristics, some arising particularly from their residential 'boarding' nature and some from the socio-cultural nature of the material on which they work. The major issue in this type of organization is the control of the members being socialized. Because the school is conceived in terms of an independent 'community', it is immediately faced with devising its own mechanisms of social control, and because the nature of its material - self-energizing, reactive and relatively unstandardized - special measures have to be devised to ensure controls are effective. This has to be done in a field where the technology of socialization is unstandardized, undeveloped, disputed, even treated as 'natural' or instictive. The public boarding school relies on belief systems that overcome the problems created by a deficient technology, and the specific organizational character in each school is determined by these systems, linked closely with their particular interpretation of their goals. 1. Street, D., Vinter, H. D. and Perrow, C. Organization for Treatment Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press 1966, p. 3. 44 (: l iAP'1. 'r; i3 ý APPh: ÜaCH ANt) i, iLMOD There is still a widely held view that one just applies 'established' criteria and principles of scientific procedure, but, as Herbert Blumer has emphasized, there is no package of 'true and tested' universal principles to apply: 'A little reflection should make clear that there is really no consensus as to what constitutes "scientific method". There is disagreement as to the logical steps in scientific procedure; there is difference as to the extent and form in which scientific procedure is said to be quantitative or experimental in a strict controlled sense; there is disagree- ment as to whether scientific method can be reduced to special procedures such as "operationalism"; there is conspicuous variation in the type of "world" presupposed by the nature of scientific study - whether it is mechanical or probablistic, or whether it is configurational or an aggregation of disparate units ... , such differences are-7 obscured by the tendency at one or another period of time for a particular conception to acquire prestige and relative dominance as in the case of the current identification of scientific procedure with "research design" cast in the form of a relationship between independent and dependent variables under conditions of a control group. ' 1 At the outset of this research there were few sources of data and no clear precedents to follow. At the time there was no published or unpublished systematic sociological study of the public school, nor did relevant middle-range propositions in sociology appear readily applicable. There were a considerable number of descriptive accounts of these schools by past or present headmasters, housemasters and pupils but, although often insightful, they were too speculative to provide a foundation for the formulation of specific hypothesis to guide research. Eventually it was decided, for reasons elaborated below, to conduct an exploratory descriptive case study of the research 1. Herbert Blumer's foreword to Bruyn, S. T., The human Perspective in Sociolorv: The Nethodoloj of Participant Observation. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966, p. v. school, using a variant on the method of participant observation as the principle technique of data collection and to supplement this with data collected during visits to other public schools and the examination of published and unpublished documents by staff and past pupils. 1 I made the study of an exploratory nature because I wanted initial flexibility. I wanted new sociological insights into the research school which might later provide the basis for a set of more precise hypotheses, and therefore did not want to be restricted by the questionnaire as an instrument for data collection. This approach has limitations, but they perhaps receive too frequent mention by methodologists. There are a number of studies which indicate that the analysis of one organization, social system or society under certain conditions can yield results of considerable significance for the development of the discipline. Classic examples are the Lynds' Aiiddletown, i%alinowski's Crime and Custom in Savage Society and 'yte's Street Corner Society, but several more recent contributions to the development of sociological analysis have been based on the analysis, within a theoretical framework, of one social institution or system, such as Gouldner's Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, Festinger and Kelley's Changing Attitudes through Social Contact and Lipset's Union Democracy. 2 The limitations of the descriptive case study stem, in general, from its reliance on a non-standardized research procedure. Any 1. Visits were made to six public boardin schools other than the research school for periods of two or three days. 2.3ouldner, A., Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1954; Festinger, L. and Kelley: Changinn Attitudes through Social Contact, Ann Arbbr; University of Iichigan, 1951; Lipset, S. ii. at al., Union Democracy. Glencoe, Ill.: Plie Free Press, 1956. ýg inconsistencies or errors in the course of observing, recording and interpreting the data can usually neither be adequately inspected nor assessed by other workers in the field. It is difficult to determine the reliability and validity of the results - especially in terms of the probability of further studies, using comparable methods and carried out independently by other researchers, reaching similar conclusions. The research procedures in fact may not be explicable in sufficient detail to allow others to frame comparable studies. Whyte, recognizing this, writes: 'To some extent my approach must be unique in itself, to the particular situation, and to the state of knowledge existing when I began research, ' 1 At no stage did 4hyte, ialinowski or the L{ynds attempt to collect all 'the facts'. teach was guided positively or negatively by established generalizations and recognized concepts, and their methods allowed them to provide a wide range of detail, perceive latent patterns of behaviour and grasp the processes and patterns of that behaviour in a more complete fashion than undoubtedly would have been possible if other available approaches had been adopted. The researcher who devotes the majority of his attention to the holistic analysis of a single case inevitably limits the generality of his findings, for he cannot extend the analysis of his single case directly to other relevant unstudied or partially studied cases, and it is possible that he may have selected an atypical case within which purely idiosyncratic properties have been 1. dhyte, : I. F. street Corner Society, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2nd edn., 1955. See especially his Appendix on the genesis of the research. 41 described. In this instance, the principal limitations of the case study approach is that no strictly systematic evidence is produced concerning the typicality, within the category of school organizations to which it belongs, of the school at which most of the fieldwork took place. The degree of similarity can be raised as an empirical question at a later stage in the form of comparative studies. Participant observation as a methodological approach Participant observation, the principal method of data collection in this research, is an approach which can be traced back through numerous anthropological field studies over the last century to the studies of Frederic Le Play as he lodged with European workers. ' The Polish anthropologist, domiciled in England, Bronislaw Malinowski did much to pioneer the approach, but few could now achieve the standards he laid down in a series of monographs after he had lived in a tent amongst the Trobriand Islanders for four years. Participant observation as a technique for the collection of sociological data has come to be associated with the Chicago school of sociolo; ists under Robert Park in the 1920s and 1930s; it was they who developed and pioneered it as one of the wide range of research techniques. During the same period Elton 1ayo was using observational techniques at the Hawthorne Jorks of the -destern Electric Company, and the Iynds published their studies of Muncie, Indiana - ii: iddletown. 1. Le Play, F. Les Ouvriers Europeans Paris: Alfred Name et Fils 1879. ý In 1934 Znaniecki published The Method of Sociolozv in which he attempted to distinguish two modes of enquiry: the 'natural', which provided the basis of later quantitative research, and the '... other way of obtaining an inductive knowledge of human activity ... to use consistently the humanistic coefficient in dealing with it and take it as it appears to the agent himself and to those who co-operate with him or counteract him. ' 7 Lindemann, too, had suggested that observation from the inside' should be considered complementary to objective observation 'from the outside', and his discussion provided the background to this method. 2 There followed a major development of participant observation in sociology of the period, Whyte's move into the settlement house in Norton Street in the heart of Cornervifle, his meeting there with Doc, and his subsequent acceptance by a gang of cornerboys which enabled him to collect the data for Street Corner Societv. 3 Participant observation is one of three basic types of observational techniques used in 5ociology4 and is well described by Schwartz as 'a process in which the observer's presence in a social situation is maintained for the purpose of scientific investigation. ' 5 The researcher participates in a face-to-face relationship with the observed subjects in their natural life setting. 1. Znaniecki, F., The Method of Sociology, New York: Hold, Rinehart, 1934, p. 37. 2. See, discussion in Madge, J., The Origins of Scientific Sociolozr. London: Tavistock, 1963, P-119- 3. Whyte, W. F., op. cit., p. 280. 4. The other two are systematic field observation and laboratory observation. 5. Schwartz, M. S., and Schwartz, 'Problems in Participant Observation', Amer. Jour. of Sociol,., Vol. 60, No. 4.1955. S, The manner by which the researcher gains knowledge is the most distinctive feature of the method; as Blumer puts it: 'To catch the process, the student must take the role of the acting unit whose behaviour he is studying. Since the inter- pretation is being made by the acting unit in terms of objects designated and appraised, meanings acquired, and decisions made, the process has to be seen from the standpoint of the acting unit ... To try to catch the interpretive process by remaining aloof as a so-called "objective" observer and refusing to take the role of the acting unit is to risk the worst kind of subjectivism - the objective observer is likely to fill in the process of interpretation with his own surmises in place of catching the process as it occurs in the experience of the acting unit which uses it. ' There are two basic principles of participant observation which follow from this. First, the participant observer should share in the activities and sentiments of his subjects in face-to-face relationships. I ... Conscious and systematic sharing, insofar as circumstances permit, in the life activities, and on occasion, in the interests and effects of a group of persons. ' 2 In contrast to the traditional role of the scientist who as an observer attempts to remain detached from the phenomena he studies, the participant observer strives to share the cognitive and emotive patterns of the people in the social situation he studies. 1. Blumer, H., 'Society as Symbolic Interaction', in Rose, A. Led? Human Behaviour and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962, p. 188. 2. Kluckhohn, F., 'The Participant-Observer Technique in Small Communities', Amer. Jour. of Sociol., Vol. 46, No. 3,1940. SZ Not only does he then influence the situation in which he participates to some degree but also he is himself affected. Thus the role involves both the attempt to be detached and also the attempt to be personally involved: 'The issue is not whether Lthe participant observe will become emotionally involved, but rather, the nature of the involvement ... In this type of involvement the observer is both detached and effectively participating; he feels no need to moralize or judge the interaction; his attitude is one of interested curiosity and matter-of-fact inquiry directed towards understanding the observed. ' 1 The second principle is that the participant observer should be as far as possible perceived to be a normal part of the culture and life of his subjects. The role taken up by the researcher depends on the research design, the culture under investigation and his ability to assume tasks which can be accepted as a natural part of the culture. The roles may be as L 11 complete participant, where the observer's activities are totally concealed from his subjects, Z -2_j7 participant-as-observer, where his observer activities are subordinated to activities as participant, L 3Jobserver-as-participant, where his activities as observer are known to his subjects, or Z-41 complete observer, where his role in the group is totally that of observer and participation is 1. Schwartz, M. S., and Schwartz, op. cit. ý limited to activities ascribed by the subjects to that role. ' However, in all these roles the researcher is to some degree both observer and participant in situations because of the complementary nature of human activity, and his scientific role of observer is interdependent with his social role as participant. His social role is an unavoidable and indispensable part of his method. 2 Ideally the observer is not merely an outsider seeking to take part in a culture unlike his own, but is taking part in a process which Mead advocated for sociologists in general, learning to take the roles of others in order to understand and communicate the fundamental cultural meanings. 3 1. This typology is based on one produced by Junker, B. H., in Field Bork: An introduction to the Social Sciences, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960, PP-35, If. See also article by Gold quoted below. 2. This is not of course limited to participant observation. The interviewer Land even the researcher who mails question- naire has a social role and creates special conditions in the world of his subjects which has a profound effect on his results. This has appeared clearly where two investigators using different methods have studied the same institution. For example, a participant observer reports: 'Shortly before my visit a more formal investigation had been carried out by - as part of - Lanother investigatiorg. He stayed in the Home for a week but carried out all his investigations as a researcher. He spent a considerable time observing the residents who objected to this and consequently did not act naturally. LHe7 also interviewed each resident and asked if they had any oooments or complaints. Almost all gave the required rather than the true answers - and told me this. As one resident put it: "I told him that I would like a single room Lwhich he probably knew already, but I couldn't tell him about the other things. " These other things were all too apparent in general conversation. Not only had Lhedisturbed the natural situation but he also had no access to the more guarded _ information - including gossi of both staff and residents]. ' LFrom an unpublished report L196W by Grace Steers, who worked in the capa city of student in the Home, emphasis in original, 3. See the dis cission of this point in Bruyn, S. T. op. cit. ý4- Two polar orientations are discernible in modern sociological research. The most widely favoured one, which can be referred to as the traditional empirical orientation, relies on broadly experimental procedures which depend on the quantification of sense data. The other orientation is the qualitative research studies of participant observation. It is the former which is most frequently used in social research and is described in detail in the majority of texts on methodology, in contrast to the relatively small space allocated to participant observation. ' A number of factors suggest that participant observation should have an important place in sociological research - particularly in the study of organizations. The participant observer is well placed to work with an 'inner' perspective on the culture and life of his subjects; he can investigate with confidence the covert activities of his subjects which may or may not be apparent to the traditional empiricist. He can explain the inner world in terms of itself, interpreting his experiences at a symbolic level of meaning that cannot simply be inferred from observing external behaviour. 2 The traditional empiricist has to perform the essential process of operationalising his concepts, but unless the researcher can understand the meaning such behaviour has for his subjects, he will be unable to understand their culture or anticipate what they will do. Unless he understands the words they use, for instance, and can communicate with them in their own language, his interpretations will inevitably be restricted and unless he understands the motivations and values of its members he will be unable adequately to understand the culture of 1. See for instance, Madge, J., The Tools of Social Science, London: Longmans, 1953, and Moser, C. A. Survey Methods in Social Investigation, London: Heineman, 1958. See also Gibson, Q. The Logic of Social Enquiry, London: Routledge, 1960. 2. The methodological basis for establishing rules of evidence, of knowledge and of direct proof is however provided by the investigator. For a detailed discussion of this impasse see Cicourel, op. cit., pp. 51, ff, and the methodological appendix in Dalton, H., Men Who Manage, New York: Wiley, 1959. .ý the organization itself. The limitations of a preoccupation with the formal aspect of organizations has long been recognised in the field of industrial sociology and it is important for the development of the sociology of educational organizations that these limitations be acknowledged. ' The mode of description used by the participant observer is clearly different from that used by the traditional empiricist. The former is constantly attempting to discover an element of unity or uniformity in his data, and to relate them to a coherent whole. This involves intuition and a grasp of the essence of the meanings inherent in the cultural context under investigation. This contrasts with the analytic character of the approach of the traditional empiricist, who attempts to abstract from his data and to examine the parts separately and in this way may not be aware of the wider significance of his data. The mode of explanation used by the participant observer also differs from that normally used by the traditional empiricist. The former does not only treat purposes as data; he also must act within the purposes he holds as data. He is concerned in this way with the purposes, means and ends of his subjects, while the empiricist is primarily concerned with the causes and effects operating within the subject's life. The focus for the empiricist also tends to be limited to a predominantly deterministic perspective, while the subjects themselves have a 'voluntaristic' perspective -a contrast noted by the Lynds: 1. See Floud, J. in Welford, A. T., Society: Problems and Methods of St , London: Routledge, 1962. Brian Wilson writes in the same volume '. 10J: 'The purely formal or constitutional arrangements are obviously important for an understanding of a given system, but it is the informal relationships, the latent motivations, the areas of tension and strain which sociologists regard as crucial'. ý 'Middletown tends to regard human nature as "rational", "free", and "responsible", and there is large precedent for so doing ... But, again, the student of comparative culture takes the view that any institutional form in a given setting is simply a product of a given set of conditions ... ' I The researcher using the technique of participant observation cannot be limited by the casual perspective of the traditional empiricist. 2 This applies in particular to an organization such as a school, where attempts to apply the traditional empirical approach have in general produced disappointing results for, while presenting a number of facts, there seems little understanding of how the school operates as an ongoing system, or how the members of the school perceive and experience its functioning. 3 The adequacy of a particular research study using participant observation rests on the extent to which the observer has experienced the culture of his subjects. For maximum adequacy the study would need to fulfil the following conditions: J Time: the maximum length of time should be spent with the group of subjects. ,2 Proximity: the minimum social distance should be maintained between the researcher and his subjects. 17 Statuses: the number and variety of the circumstances of interaction and of statuses from which the researcher can relate to his subjects should be maximised. 1g Symbols: the maximum degree of familiarity with the symbolic communication, verbal and non-verbal, of his subjects should be established by the researcher. 1. I4ynd, H. S. and Lynd: Middletown in Transition, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937pp. i'v. ff. 2. For a full discussion of the differences between these two orientations, see Bruyn, S. T. 'The Methodology of Participant Observation', Human Organization, Vol. 22, No. 3,1963. 3. See, for instance, Fichter, J. H., Parochial School, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1964; Gordon, C. vj., The Soyial System of the High School, Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957. ý Consensus: the researcher should attempt to obtain the maximum amount of confirmation of the expressive meanings of the group. Therefore for maximum adequacy the participant observer would have to live a considerable portion of his life in proximity with his subjects, be accustomed to communicate using their symbols, interact with them in each possible role within the system, culture or organization, and be in a position to check each of his observations with the widest range of his subjects. At the same time the research should attempt as far as possible to minimize the shortcomings of participant observation. At every stage it must be recognized that this method is open to the influence of the researcher's values, as are other methods - in selective perception, interpretation and reporting of incidents Lan example is Margaret Mead's preoccupation with warfare and masculine and feminine trait, the choice of meanings to analyse LGoffman's perspective was nearer that of the mental hospital inmates rather than that of the administrative officers for instance, the means of analysis and the form of the conclusions. The researcher also makes assumptions about the nature of man and society. The work in the field of the sociology of knowledge suggests that there is some kind of ca u&al dependence between the social perspective of an inquirer and the content and form of his statements. 1 Kyrdal's suggestion for coping with such areas of potential bias was for the researcher wherever possible to explicitly state his position in these areas. 2 The participant observer's position however is further complicated in that he is attempting to 1. See for a good summary of this, Rose, A. M., 'Sociology and the Study of Values', Brit. J. Soc., Vol. 7, No. 1,1956, and Merton, R. K., 'The Sociology of Knowledge', in Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press. 2. 'Biases in social science cannot be erased simply by "keeping to the facts" and b refined methods of statistical treatment of the data'. See P(yrdal, G., An American Dilemma, New York: harper, 1944. esp. pp. 1041-43. A, identify with the perspectives of his subjects, temporarily to become immersed in their culture, without, if possible, losing his primary identifi cation with the sociological perspective. As in other methods which use, for example, the questionnaire or the interview for collecting data, there may in participant observation be unintentional communication of the responses that the researcher would like to receive. Subjects may become so identified with the researcher's purpose that they may attempt to produce data which might not otherwise have existed; and the researcher may find it difficult to evaluate the typicality of the responses and events that occur during the research. Reciprocity between investigator and subject may on the other hand affect the investigator himself, and he may for instance be increasingly attracted to unrepresentative respondents. He may also become so close to the subjects and to the details of his research matter that his classification and analytic procedures may be unduly limited, even though the commitment of most participant observers has been concealed in their subsequent re-interpretation of their experiences. Many of these difficulties would apply particularly in a study such as that of a public boarding school, where the participant observer might find that, constantly aware of the most exotic personalities and the most articulate pupils, he encountered an atypical experience of the school. This can only be partially counteracted by establishing a fairly close rapport with a number of subjects of varied backgrounds and patterns of life in the organization. The Analysis of Experience The ideal participant observer from some points of view would be the sociologist who was willing to conduct a study in depth of an organization, culture or society of which he himself was, or had ý recently been, a fully accepted, though not permanently and totally affectively committed, member. Vidich sums up the position: 'The sociologist who limits his work to his own society is constantly exploiting his personal background of experience as a basis of knowledge. In making up structured interviews, he draws on his knowledge of meanings gained from participation in the social order he is studying. He can be assured of a modicum of successful communication only because he is dealing in the same language and symbolic system as his respondents, ' 1 The possible roles for the participant observer range from that of the complete participant to that of the complete observer, with between them Lnearer the formes] participant-as-observer and Lnearer the latteil observer-as-participant. 2 Of these roles only the complete observer does not have to contend with an element of 'role pretence', 3 but the researcher who returns to an organization of which he is or has been a member, can often minimize this. Most of the attempts at playing the role of complete participant have involved the sociologist in a degree of 1. Vidich, A. J., 'Participant Observation and the Collection and Interpretation of Data', Amer. J. Soc., Vol. 60, No. 4,1955. 2. For a complete discussion of the variety of methods, see Cicourel, A. V., Method and Measurement in Sociology, Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1964, PP-40, ff. 3. See Gold, R. L., 'Roles in Sociological Field Observations', Social Forces, Vol. 36, March, 1958. Whyte provides illustrations of this aspect of participant observation in his description of incidents revealing the difference in social background between researcher and his subjects, leading to situations which were only resolved by assistance from his key informant. Whyte, op. cit. Zo artificiality in joining the organization for the purpose of the research. 1 It has not been noted that one of the early studies from Chicago used a technique which was significantly different from the majority of studies using participant observation. Nels Anderson's work on the hobo is normally quoted as a pioneering work of participant observation. It is time that he 'experienced hobohemia from within' but not 'to obtain material for his book'. He was not a 'deliberate participant observer' but a full hobo. 2 Not only had Anderson not heard of the concept at the time of his research, but he disassociates himself from the implications it contains: 'I did not descend into the pit, assume a role there, and later ascend to brush off the dust. I was in the process of moving out of the hobo world. To use a hobo expression, preparing the book was a way of "getting by", earning a living while the exit was under way. The role was familiar before the research began. In the realm of sociology and university life I was moving into a new role'. 3 Anderson had been a hobo and worked as a hobo for a number of years; he was the son of a hobo; his youthful idols had been 1. See for instance, Reimer's work as a prisoner in studying prison socialisation and the researcher's role as an Air Force recruit in a study of a military programme. Reimer, H., 'Socialisation in the Prison Community', Amer. Prison Assocn. Proceedings, 1937, pp. 151, ff.; and Sullivan, M. A. et al, 'Participant Observation in a Military Program', Amer. Soc. Rev. Vol-23, No. 6., 195g. 2. Quotations from Madge, J. ou. cit. L1967, pp. 217,530,119. He is however only one of a number of writers to have erred in this fashion. See also Pauline Young, who was a graduate colleague of Anderson at Chicago: Scientific Social Surveys and Research, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1951. 3. Anderson, N., The Hobo, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, New Edn., 1961, xiii. hobo idols and his friends were hobos: 'Like the student rntho learns the "theory" of his occupation in school, I learned how the hobo behaved, or should not behave, in town, how he went about from place to place on freight trains, how he evaded train Trews and railroad police, and how he found his work. ' It was only the chance employment by a Mormon on a ranch alongside the railway in Utah that led him to try high school. His final effort at riding freight trains took him to the University of Chicago where the unexpected demand for a term' paper led him to work on the field he knew best. He continued his life as a hobo and maintained many of his friends in the hobo world. This method of conducting research is a distinct variant of the participant observer technique, and I have termed it, not altogether satisfactorily, 'The Analysis of Experience'. 2 The analysis of experience differs from participant observation in that the task of the researcher is to continue, or to re-establish association with an organization of which he is, or recently has been, a member. There are of course limits; studies of concentration camps for example may rely on the reinterpretation of experiences not arranged for research purposes, the researcher would not, and presumably could not, return for a continued analysis. Any reasoning to suggest that participant observation should have a conspicuous place in sociological research applies with even I. Anderson, N., op. cit. p. ix. 2. Johan Galtung's work on the prison was conceived and partly carried out during a six-month sentence in connection with conscientious objection. Although this was distinctively different from Anderson's method, it too involved an element of 'getting by'. See Galt J. 'Prison: the Organization of Dilemma' in Cressey, D. P. ece% The Prison New York: Holt, Rinehart 1961, pp. 107 If. sZ more effect to the analysis of experience. In this approach the two principles of participant observation are more fully observed than is possible in participant observation itself. The 'inner' perspective, the sentiments and activities, which the participant observer will attempt to share with his subjects are already to an extent inherent in the researcher's own perspective. Certainly, his ability to interpret the meaning of responses and events using the symbols and the rhetoric of his subjects is facilitated by his previous association either with the subjects themselves, or with their predecessors. The criteria for enhancing the adequacy of the participant observer's data also indicate the potential efficacy of this approach. As the researcher has been, or still is, a member of the organization, group or culture, he does not need to spend such a length of time 'playing himself in' with his subjects. His participation is acceptable to his subjects on grounds which are independent of the research scheme; to use Anderson's phrase, the research is regarded by his subjects as 'a way of getting by'. He may be able to establish a degree of intimacy nozmally beyond the reach of the participant observer, and therefore is in a favourable position to ascertain the degree of consensus with regard to the expressive meanings of his subjects. As a former 'native', the researcher is in a particularly good position to assess the typicality. of events which occur during the research, and to discern the new and the strange in a situation. One problem which faces the participant observer is to establish a plausible role in relation to his subjects. Doc told Whyte for instance: 'I can take you to the joints - gambling joints -I can take you around to the street corners. Just remember that you're my friend. That's all they need to know. I know these places, and if I tell them you're my friend, nobody will bother you., 1 1. Whyte, W. H., op. cit., p. 291. 4 The investigator using the analysis of experience technique is, on the other hand, part of the experiential world of his subjects. He can thus escape much of the anxiety inherent in the participant observer's role. 1 He can develop a socially marginal position if he chooses, which obviates the need for special tactics, such as 'neutrality', used by the participant observer. His position in relation to his subjects, and the rapport which he is able to build up, greatly facilitate the posing of questions, perhaps of a potentially disturbing nature, which the participant observer might not feel he could put, and, while to exploit his status as stranger the participant observer must maintain an attitude of n i. vete , the analysis of experience enables the researcher to adjust his degree of sophistication to suit the occasion. The very nature of the analysis of experience enables the researcher to gain access to material, documents, and perhaps to the organization itself, which in other circumstances where there is not a pre-existing relationship between the researcher and the organization, might not be feasible. The problem of access is perhaps not sufficiently emphasized in relation to social enquiry - although in survey research the issue is considered in the context of 'non-response' and refusals, and a certain amount of work has been undertaken with the object of minimizing both. 2 In many field studies, and in the analysis of complex organizations, however, the problem of access is in terms of actually gaining entry to a non-public field of interaction. One means of overcoming this is to use entry. in some role which is perceived as beneficial to the organization by its members, as an opportunity for research. Members of the Tavistock 1. See Schwartz, M. S., and Schwartz, op. cit. 2. Moser, C. A., Survey Methods in Social Investigation. See pp. 130 If, 180 If and 213. °ý- Institute of Human Relations have conducted their research in the role of consultants for example, in 'collaboration with' or 'cooperatively with' certain members of the organizations employing them: '... the prospect of help is exchanged for the research opportunity ... This gave me access to situations from which I would otherwise have been barred, and enabled me to stay in the field long enough to get a grasp of the very complex problems involved'. 1 In the analysis of experience approach though, unlike the consultancy, the organization is not likely to be as affected by the researcher's presence as by that of the consultant. 2 Nor are the research requirements of this approach likely, as is often the case with the consultancy, to be subordinated to the interests of the organization. The investigator must be thoroughly familiar with the organization and its operation to understand the relation between its ideology, its policy-statements and its practice. He should know which actions are consistent with its past history for instance, to recognize rationalisations, and to discern the consequences of pressures from particular sources, and the likely defence mechanisms when the organization is exposed to sociological investigation. On such issues the researcher using the analysis of experience technique is probably in a better position to assess critically events and documents, and to interpret the inconsistencies, compromises and defence mechanisms than other researchers would be using other approaches in their study of the organization. One important part of fieldwork concerns the problem of identifying, obtaining and sustaining the contacts the researcher must make. Some will be more perceptive in social situations within the organization, the 'outsider', those who occupy 'discrepant roles', or a member who has 1. Sofer, C. The Organization from Within London: Tavistock 1961 p. 113. 2. Sofer, C. and Hutton, G., New Wavs in Management Training ining London: Tavistock 1958 pp. 107 ff; Rice, A. K., The Enterprise and Its Environment London: Tavistock 1963 pp. 4 ff; Brown, R. K., 'Research and Consultancy in Industrial Enterprises' Sociology Vol. I No. 1,1967 pp. 41 ff. 4- recently changed his status in the organization for instance; others may be more willing to provide information, such as the naive, the frustrated, or the old-hand. 1 A researcher using the analysis of experience technique is, compared to the participant observer for example, in a favourable position to select such good contacts in an organization. He is also, in most cases, in a better position to attempt to resolve the problem of the social distance maintained between different status groups within the organization; each status in the hierarchy of the public boarding school for example, junior boys, senior boys, masters, administrative staff, maintenance staff, and domestic staff, characteristically has established its own norms of contact with members of each other status, its own prescribed areas within the school grounds during appropriate hours, and its own perspective of the school and the members of the other statuses. Where the researcher has previously had experience of a number of organisational statuses before re-entering the organization with research commitments, his awareness of several vantage points should help him in his attempt to avoid becoming partisan. 2 This approach, by laying the maximum emphasis on a systematic analysis of the researcher's own experience, is merely emphasizing 1. Dean presents an important dismission of the different kinds of informants in participant observation. Dean, J. P. 'Participant Observation and Interviewing' in Doby, J. T. LedJ, Introduction to Social rtesearch, Harrisburg, Pen.: The Stackpole Co., 1954, pp. 225-252. Cf. Goffman's discussion of people who learn of 'team secrets' which they can use to discredit or disrupt the performances that a group wishes to foster. In a sense the best informants are those who occupy 'discrepant roles' such as the go-between or mediator in everyday life. Goffman, E., The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1959, pp. 145, ff. 2. See discussion of this problem in the small group by Polsky, H. W., Cottage Six. the social system of delinquent boys in residential treatment, Wiley: New York, 1965, pp. 115, ff; 'Delinquent Seduction'. `6 that the investigator and his data are not wholly discrete: 'Too many of our books are written, as it were, with metallic tongs; they hold the problem and the people studied at a seemingly safe distance, and they often fail to recognize and signal the manner in which the author himself is inevitably and deeply implicated in them. ' 1 Many social researchers are deeply involved in their research subject. 2 It is not claimed that this account is dispassionate or unbiased. It will be clear from this, as from other investigations of social behaviour that my values have influenced my interpretations of the subject matter. All research is selective, documenting some features and not others. Claims to completeness and absolute objectivity often imply that the enquiry is either inadequately focused or that the author has deluded himself. Rose has pointed out: 'The points at which scientists must make choices are so important that they lead us to a recognition that science can never be value-free but must contain a strong strain of cultural and individual choices. ' 3 But the account and analysis is written entirely without any conscious attempt to commend or discredit, and I have no vested interest in either the demise or the prosperity of the public boarding school system. In this research I had spent five years in the 1950s as a pupil at the school I was investigating, and had continued to maintain contacts with it as a past pupil. Two years after I had left, my brother became a member of the school for five years. As a member of the old boys' association I had been kept informed of school affairs. On returning there during 1962 and 1963 1 was readily 1. Gouldner, A. V., 'Review Symposium'. Amer. Soc. Review, Vo1.32, No. 1,1967. 2. For instance, Kirk, D., Shared Fate: A theory of adoption and mental health, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1965; and Townsend, P., The Last Refuge, London: Routledge, 1962. Lipset, S. M. Union Democracy, Political an, etc., are perhaps some of the more obvious examples in modern sociology. 3. Rose, A., op. cit. 17 accepted as a temporary assistant master for three periods of four to eight weeks each, and only a small number of the staff were perturbed at the fact that I seemed unusually interested even for a past pupil, in my old school. I was able to collect a number of personal documents, set various classes, essays or reports to write, collect notices and regulations, read confidential reports and carry out a number of informal interviews and discussions, some of them later in the year with some sixth formers after they had left the school. 1 My main role in the school however was that of a participant in the staff role. In such a role I was acceptable to the majority of the staff, who seemed to perceive me as a rather odd and enthusiastic young 'don' who could be given a class when essay marking was pressing or supervise house prayers in the housemaster's absence. Essential to this relationship was the fact that I had been there myself and was therefore 'reliable' and 'knew the ropes'. Some of the situations I met in this period involved the testa process which other researchers using participant observation have experienced. 2 Investigators of prisons for instance, are normally tested by prisoners attempting to incorporate them into the underlife. The testing I experienced, took place in class to see if I was a 'real' master and could exercise control, but was of a weak and half-hearted kind, partly because it was recognised that my position in the power structure of the school was insignificant, and partly because of my limited identification with the 1. Several hundred pieces of written work were collected during the research period amongst them essays - either in the form of an 'obituary' or of 'advice to a brother about to enter the school', which are quoted at various points. These provide information on how the boys perceived themselves being and acting in the past, at the time of the research and in the future. The obituaries in particular. were idealised - incorporating both standards of conduct and achievement unlikely to be, orjhave been consistently attained, 4ur even approached in some cases, and a number of embellishments and exaggerations, - while, however, providing an expression of the boys' ideology. 2. See Polsky, H. W., op. cit., p. 112; and Giallombardo, R., Society of Women, a study of a women's prison, New York: Wiley, 1966, pp. 189, ff. 153 staff role. There was little difficulty in developing empathy with staff or boys. Nor was it difficult to allow my perspective to be influenced by the subjects of the research -a necessary element in the participant observer's role - described by Kurt 'Jolff as 'surrender'. Jr veweekends spent in other public boarding schools followed soon after the final fieldwork phase at the research school, and the similarities evident in other schools were a major factor in the crystallisation of my ideas. These visits enabled me to appreciate that there were common systemic features, and emphasized for me that these features might be not the result of deliberate design, but rather the effect of their characteristics as public boarding schools. But a great deal more will have to be known about all the schools of this type before the representativeness of the 'research school' can je assessed. The 'research school' recruits its pupils in almost equal proportions from the London area, the Tvi. dlands and the rest of Britain. The majority of the parents occupy professional or managerial posts in British industry and commerce. About a third of past pupils go on to a university, about one in ten of them on a scholarship or exhibition, and a small proportion of them later distinguish themselves in a wide variety of fields. 1 1. Joe Appendix 3. Z9 The school recruits a very small number of scholarship boys from two or three local authorities. About a third of its pupils are the sons of past pupils of the school, and a half of their fathers attended a university, most of whom went to Oxford, Cambridge or London. The boys themselves are cosmopolitan, about four-fifths of them having been abroad Lwhile few are members of a youth club at home. The school is one of the larger public schools, with a residential population of over 1,000 composed as indicated in Table 1: Table 1: Members of the research school in 1963 Male Female Total 'FuDils 750 0 750 Staff - academic (including 9 part-tim g 75 0 75 Administrative 53g domestic and maintenance 43 160 203 Total, (excluding staff familiei 873 163 1,036 The formal structure of the school is of a kind traditional among public s dzools with the headmaster at the top of the hierarchy and the formal flow of power downward through the staff common room and housemasters via prefects to boys. The school owns about two dozen principal buildings including, besides the thirteen houses, a chapel, assembly hall, three main teaching blocks, a music school, gymnasium, tuckshop, sanatorium, laundry, swimming bath, museum, cricket pavilion and over fifty acres of playing fields. The school property is valued at £3 million, and has an annual income of over one-third of a million pounds, excluding special appeals. Over a third of the pupils are working at a sixth form level, and the majority of pupils stay for five school years, a period which has shown a slight tendency to increase 70 over the last generation. Table 2: Lerwth of stay at research school. selected years. 1 based on an analysis of entries in the school registej Length of stay Year of entry 1226 1946 1956 no: ý no: ýb no: % Less than 3 years 112 97543 3 but less than 4 46 36 28 21 36 24 4 but less than 5 49 38 83 61 71 41 5 years or more 21 17 17 13 39 26 Number L. 100,7 127 135 150 not left or not known 50 3 Mean length of stay 4 yrs. 3 mths. 4 yrs. 6 mths. 4 yrs. 6 mths. Modal length of stay 3 yrs. 10 mths. 4 yrs. 10 mths. 4 yrs. 10 mths. The name of the research school is withheld, and associated names are either omitted or fictitious, for although characteristics relevant to this account are accurate, it is not intended that the school should be readily identifiable. 1. This table, based on an analysis of entries in the school register shows the tendency for boys to stay longer at the school than in the previous generation. 7( CHAPT".., H 4 ADMISSION All) T1t3 CONCOI". rrANrS OF OAGi1NIZATIONEIL 1, OiB3N. SHIP There is always some degree of disparity between what Goffman refers to as the 'presenting culture', the way of life of a recruit before entry to the public boarding school organization, and the way of life associated with organizational membership. ' By the age of 13, when the majority of boys enter the public boarding school, they are already equipped with a distinctive 'presenting culture'. The manner in which each boy apprehends himself, his processes of consciousness, and his relations with others on entry to the school have already been shaped by social influences associated with his particular position in the social structure during his first 13 years. Although socialization is an ongoing process, it is with the cognitive and emotive patterns of his particular 'presenting culture' that each boy will respond to his early experiences in the school. dhere there is also an entry of recruits at the sixth form level however, as there is, or has been to a small extent at a few boys' public boarding schools (including Leighton Park, harlborough and Sevenoaks and a number of girls' schools), the degree of disparity between a recruit's 'presenting culture' and the way of life expected of a member of the school is likely to be marked. It is in such instances that the degree and the nature of the disparity which the present school organization, with its particular control mechanisms, is prepared to tolerate may become an important issue. However, although recruited from a wide catchment area, rather than from the locality, most boys come to the majority of these schools from homes of a relatively homogeneous social and economic status, and usually they also share the experience of preparatory school prior to entry. On the basis of his survey data Kalton found, although the figure differed with the proportion of boarders 1. Goffman, E., op. cit. (1961) p. 12. 72 in the school, that between $0 and 90 per cent of the fathers of public school boys were in the professional and managerial classes, compared with 19 per cent in these classes for the male population as a whole and that three-quarters of all parents of public school boys paid the full fees of from £450 to £500 per annum for each boy, or made family arrangements for payment. 1 The schools' selection procedures generally foster homogeneity of socio-economic background among their recruits; in most major schools the parents are interviewed before their son is placed on the waiting list, and at Harrow, for instance, the school demands that each applicant name a referee who is an old Harrovian, or is connected with the school in some other way. A housemaster at Eton, McConnell, has written that among his own criteria for admission to his house 'Naturally it helps if the parents are the kind of people that I feel I am going to get along with amicably'. The housemaster, by choosing the children of friends and army colleagues thereby can, it is maintained, ensure a happy and homogeneous house. 2 Kalton found that approximately 80 per cent of the boys at public schools had experience only of schools in the independent sector. 3 For most of them therefore, the experience of preparatory school is included in their 'presenting culture', and, in so far as there are broad sociological similarities between preparatory schools, boys who have prior to entry experience of a preparatory school rather than of a state school share, to some extent, aspects of their 'presenting cultures'. 1. See Kalton, G., The Public Schools London: Long}nans 1966 PP-36-7- 2. See McConnell, J. D. R., op. cit. pp. 181 ff. See also Chapter 6, below, for a discussion of selection as a means of social control. 3. Kalton, G., op. cit. p. 2$. See also Piasters, P. L. Preparatory Schools 'Today. London: A. and C. Black, 1956.60 per cent of the boarders at preparatory schools start there aged 7 or 8. 73 The headmaster of a preparatory school perceives the life of a boarder at his school in the following terms: 'Perhaps then, this is the time to remind parents what they are getting for their money. This is, indeed, so much, and so often forgotten. Take, for example, Albert. For thirty-six weeks of the year, and twenty-four hours in the day, Albert, in health, in sickness, in strength, in sorrow, in trouble, (dear Albert) and in joy, is our responsibility, our challenge, our hope, and of course - in the eyes of Albert's parents - the one and only boy in the school. He must be understood, must Albert, down to the last silly thing he is likely to do, - and there is a big long list. He must be treated with infinite sympathy and kindness. Albert is someone else's child whom one must learn to know as if he were one's own. Does Albert know how to tie up a shoelace? Probably not. We teach him. Does he know a clean kandkerchief from a dirty one? Unlikely. We teach him. What does Albert do in his bath? Nothing. We teach Albert to look upon his bath as a happy, active and energetic occupation and regarding soap as his best friend. Is Albert ever in bed? Rarely. But when he is we look after him as well as his mum who is sitting at home with her feet up taking things nice and easy. If Albert has a cough mum doesn't hear it, but you can bet your dear life that we do. If Albert has a snarl we change it into a sweetly-tuned purr. If Albert is slow we teach him to be quick; if he is always late we teach him how to tell the time. If Albert is dull in the head he gets the best possible individual attention in a class of seven or eight boys. If he is clever you can't see him for dust. If Albert loves games he gets all the games he wants, and skilful coaching into the bargain. The half-acre at home is replaced by almost unlimited space in which to be happy and naughty. If Albert is too fat we do our best to reduce him; if he is on the thin side we try to expand him. If Albert turns his thumbs down to fish for lunch we persuade him that there is no fish like our fish, and that it comes out of a very special sea. Eggs are laid to suit Albert's taste. If Albert's manners are like unto those of an under-tipped British Railway porter, by the end of the term he is saying "Yes Please" and "No thank you", and remembering that other people have a name as well as Albert. Albert's hair is washed once a fortnight, and Albert's clothes are beautifully cared for. If he comes back with a hole in his jersey and his shoes a size too small, we just smile - and darn. If Albert does not know a prayer he is taught a little private one and we see he says it. Bed-going, in the rough-and-tumble of the dormitory, is a happy business. If Albert wants a good-night kiss he gets one (but not from me). If Albert wants a swim or to sail his boat or do a bit of gardening or play a game of cricket, tennis or football, or have a swing, or mess about in sand, or play golf, all he has to do is go outside. If Albert wants to read a book he goes to a well-stocked library. If he wants to climb a rope (and fall off it) or use the horizontal bar (and fall off that) or make a heck of a noise in the "corridor", or play billiards or table tennis or 7ý- the piano, all he has to do is to go inside. If he wants to cut his finger he may go into the carpenter's shop, and when he is old enough, he learns to hit the target (or something which isn't the target) with an air rifle. If Albert is sick at the favoured hour of three o'clock in the morning it is his privilege; it is also our bounden duty to change every one of Albert's sheets. If Albert swallows a marble, swills down half a pint of ink, or playfully tries to strangle himself with a dressing-gown cord it is our responsibility - and ours alone - if Albert passes on. (But Albert doesn't pass on: prompt service is one of our mottoes). ' A boy's experience of preparatory school, particularly if this experience has been of four or more years duration, significantly shapes his cognitive and emotive patterns, and, in so far as there are broad sociological similarities between the preparatory school system and the public boarding school system, such patterns are likely to be relatively appropriate, in some respects at least, to life in a public boarding school. It is to be expected that the transition of a boy from preparatory school to public boarding school will be relatively smoother than for a local authority scholar. It is relevant to this research therefore that, with the exception of a minority of about ten scholarship boys sponsored by twd or three local authorities, most boys prior to entry to the research school had attended a preparatory school for four or more years. Preparatory school experience also provides each newcomer with the basis for a certain prestige, and a boy from the state system is further disadvantaged here; one of the local authority scholars at the research school explained in an interview that his previous school 'was not exactly a preparatory school'. It was evident that many boys from the state system had greater problems of adjustment to their new school than boys from preparatory schools. 1. Quoted by 'Quantain'. School and College, Vo1.30, No. 12, Dec. 1966. pp. 3-9. 7, r 4-- One such boy recollected his first term at his public school as follows: 'I spent my first term in a private hell of homesickness and fear that the boys would find out that I was not "one of them" although I was not persecuted at all: I was as anonymous a fag as anyone else. I quickly acquired the rig t slang and my parents were delighted with my new accent... ' Boys from the state system appeared to exhibit characteristic modes of adaptation to the school culture. In the research school their friendships, for instance, were centred within their class and 'set' rather than their house) as was typically the case amongst the boarders. When asked about his choice of friend one local authority scholar explained: 'There's only one Lboy% in nay form in - Lmy Hous7'. The idea of boarding at a school some distance from their homes is generally accepted amongst the majority of boys entering the public boarding school. About half of public-school boys have themselves already boarded at their preparatory school, and a significant attaunt of evidence has accumulated to suggest that at least two-thirds of the boys come from families in which either one or both of the parents have boarded. 2 A boy's entry to a particular public school is anticipated from the date when his name is entered on the school's waiting list - which may be soon after his birth in some of the major public schools. 1. Jarman, C., 'The Guinea Pig' The Guardian 31.10.67. These problems were clearly most evident among boys where the culture of neither home nor school prepared them adequately for entrance to these schools. 2. Philip Masters cites the 1963/1964 figures for boys at preparatory schools as 29,105 boarders and 23,707 day boys. See Masters, P. L., Preparatory Schools Today: Some Facts and Inferences, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966. Kalton's returns show that approximately one-third of the boys are attending their father's old school, one third attending a public school other than their father's and one-third are first generation public school. Kalton, op. cit., p. 34. See also Dancy, J. C.: The Public Schools and the Future, London: Faber 1963, p. 87, and 0llerenshaw, K. o p. cit. 76 There is little evidence to support Maurice Punch's suggestion that: '... recruits... may ever have chosen the particular school themselves... ' For the research school the following report was not atypical: 'L]'y father had been sent there by his father because he was the eldest= I was sent to House... the other three Lbrotheril went to House... So I followed his career exactly. He was at my prep school and then there... You can't discuss things with parents. I never questioned the fact that I would go there and that this would be a good thing because everyone else I knew went to these places. And everybody else thought it would be a good thing'. (Recorded interview, sixth former. ). Not only does the public boarding school establish from the first day of term more or less clear definitions of its territory, but also, since all the activities of its boy members pursued during certain periods - 'term' - are potentially its concern, such activities are claimed as within the school's control. School rules apply to a boy in the research school both during parental visits and during the few days of individual 'projects' when boys may be anywhere in the country, or possibly abroad. Beyond this, the school prescribes its own institutional status for its boys, which in some schools may emphasise in particular the change of status from that which the boy has occupied prior to entry. Sedbergh, Abbotsholme and Bryanston, among other schools, make short trousers compulsory school uniform for all boys, for example, and at Winchester boys are referred to as 'men' from their first term in the school. The public boarding school may also attempt to instil 'inmate pride', 2 Collective protest inhibited in the mental hospital by 1. Punch, M. E.: A Comparative Analysis of Three Boarding Schools as Complex Organizations, unpublished M. A. Thesis, University of Essex 1966, p. 15. 2. See Wulbert, R.: 'Inmate Pride in Total Institutions', Amer. J. Soc., Vol-71, No. 1, July 1965. Wulbert observes that mental hospital patients may accept a dishonourable definition of their status in the hospital and have comparatively low 'inmate pride' as a consequence. 77 the inmates' disinclination to be thus identified with inmate status, inspublic boarding school serves to identify the boys with their school, and certainly associates them with membership of it. Reforms of the wider society are advocated in collective protests by groups of boys drawn entirely from within the school. Refugee programmes and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament groups were organized, and Socialist news sheets were produced within the research school and within other schools visited during the research. Where collective protest takes the form of advocating reform of the school system itself, it tends to concentrate on converting members of the school to the protestor's modifications of its structure. The level of inmate pride is however relatively lower in the girls' schools, where collective protest is unusual and disaffected girls are more likely to be allowed, even encouraged, by their parents to leave the school. ' One significant feature of the research school, which it shared with other public boarding schools in the research, was the readily discernable distinction made between pupils who are fully A t1' meaýS 'inside' the system and those who sleep and possibly eat/outside it - the day pupils. Whatever the manifest policy of the boarding school, there was the general tendency to treat the day pupils as inferior. In the research school day boys were accorded lower status than boarders in most school activities, and their 'house' run in many ways as a separate 'school'. The day boys were listed separately at the end of the school lists, were given inferior 1. Ollerenshaw, K., op. cit. 7g chances in form allocation, and were taught in their early years in the school by masters who were neither given sixth form teaching nor offered free school living accommodation. The day boys had their own speech day, were seated at the back of the chapel, were considered to be under the authority of their 'own' day-boy prefects appointed by their own housemaster, whose salary and status were both usually lower than that of other housemasters, and, directly or indirectly, their aspirations tended to be channelled in a separate direction from those of the boarders. ' Besides being allocated to an inferior structural position in the school, day boys were also to some extent stigmatized by both the staff and the boarders. 2 Although in some spheres, particularly the academic, they might attain the same rank as boarding pupils and enter the same sixth form, they did not share the same status within the school. A number of rationalisations were made - the day boys were really members of a separate 'school'; that they could not stay late to take part in practices and rehearsals (although many lived as near as the boys in the boarding houses); that they could not afford the same material for school uniform and for this reason were allowed to use a cheaper cloth, and that they might arrive late 'due to public transport'. It is an instance of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the 1. See Kalton, G., op. cit. P. 75. The average extra payments per annum are reported as £182 for boarding housemasters or assistant housemasters, and £127 for their day boy equivalent. Each school has quite different arrangements for day boys. The research school and its day boy house or section share a common board of governors and headmaster but only share certain facilities. See Appendix 3 for a note on the difference between the day boys' and boarders' later careers. 2. Dornbusch has also noted that in the military academy in the USA, the enlisted men, the 'regulars' stigmatize the reserves. When a 'regular' performs badly, for instance, he is said to behave 'like a reserve'. See Dornbusch, S. P1.: 'The kilitary Academy as an Assimilating Institution', Social Forces, Vol-33,1955. 7q day boy learns to fulfil the expectations of other members of the school. ' Day boys made little effort in the drill competition, wore the inferior cloth, on occasions arrived late, and continued to play day boy sports (such as hockey or association football instead of rugger) and, by performing at the level expected of them, retained their distinct, and lower, status in the school in relation to the boarding pupils. The day boy is restricted by the structural significance of full school membership. He is, potentially, a threat to the boarding principle and to its concomitant high level of 'inmate pride'. No boarder must prefer 'outside' status, and thus the low status of the day boy is fostered in the basic ideology of the public boarding school. The school endeavours to abbreviate certain aspects of a new boy's 'presenting culture', aspects which will be particularly evident if the boy has not boarded before. 2 The staff employ a range of procedures, which begin well in advance of actual entry to the school, which, to an extent, 'standardize' the newcomer. Each new boy is sent an official clothing list on his acceptance (and in some cases, lists of rules) so that certain belongings associated with extra-school statuses are left behind at home, and he presents himself on entry with only those items of clothing and possessions which are prescribed by the school. The formal and informal procedures continue for each new boy on arrival at the research 1. See Ivjerton, R. K.: Social Theory and Social Structure (revised edition), Glencoe: The Free Press 1957, pp. 42 ff. 2. Cf. Goffman's description of the characteristic 'stripping' of the new entrant to the 'total institution' of the support provided by his social life prior to entry and the implementation of a new series of 'degradations, humiliations and profanations' of the individual, organized so that his self is systematically 'mortified'. See Goffman, E.: o cit. (1961) pp. 14 ff. plo school with the allocation of a seat in the preproom, a locker for his personal belongings, a peg for his mackintosh, a locker in the changing rooms for his games clothes, a drawer for his handkerchiefs and a bed in the most junior dormitory. The new boy may be individually interviewed, or receive a joint lecture, from his headmaster, housemaster, form-master and chaplain. 1 New boys soon tend to try to be treated alike; they learn that any claim to individual treatment, such as minor dietary arrangements detailed in a note from his mother may require that he constantly has to remind the staff concerned, and may lead to derision from the other boys. The admission procedures continue for some days with medical inspections, voice and intelligence testing and admission to a number of the school's organized groups. After an initial period of being allocated to new boys' seats in school prayers, for instance, boys are allocated places and equipment so that their place in the school system is established. The boarding school, unlike Goffman's 'total institution', has to cope with regular readmission each term. In the research school less extended admission procedures containing many of the elements of the initial procedure are repeated termly for each boy. For instance, whereas the new boy to the research school has an extensive medical examination, which may suggest to the school doctor a period of treatment in the school sanatorium, the rest of the school queue to enter a dormitory where the doctor, and sometimes the housemaster, stands to inspect their genitals to ensure that they have returned with no infection; those who require it receive treatment incurring occasional brief visits to the sanatorium. 1. See Marlborough by the Boys, London: Kenneth Mason 1963, pp. 10 ff. 8( Although in the public boarding school a new boy's separation from his personal belongings is certainly neither as systematic nor as extreme as in a penal institution or religious order, the new boy comes to school without merry of his possessions by virtue of his parents' adherence to the clothing list, and to the regulations sent to them before the date of entry. ' Some effort is made to provide a standard issue of many of the things that the boy might have preferred to provide himself, or to prescribe the type of item the boy might otherwise have chosen. For instance, the clothing list in Malvern rules states: 'School dress must conform to the official clothes list, and such regulations as are made from time to time. All eccentricities in dress are forbidden. ' (Malvern School Rules) 2 The school may stipulate the style of shirt (often with 'detachable collar'), demand that a boy bring 'white cotton' sheets and may only allow the boy to bring a mackintosh and travelling rug 'of a sombre hue'. It would be considered inappropriate for him to bring his own pillow or soap. Informal norms operate here too, and personal possessions imbued with a high degree of significance are made fun of or perhaps wrecked. 'Don't bring anything to school which is precious to you, otherwise you will find that you will either lose it, or it will get broken, by you or someone else. ' ('Advice to a brother', 14 years old, research school). 1. siallombardo describes how after admission to a women's prison the recruit has to submit to the listing of all her personal clothing and effects which, with the exception of girdles, simple shoes, cheap watches and wedding rings, are packaged and mailed to family members in civil society wIlUst she is provided with 'standard outfit original issue' - an act which represents 'a kind of symbolic death of the individual', Giallombardo, R., o cit., p. 96. 2. A notice summarizing some of the dress regulations posted at the research school during the research period is reproduced in Appendix 5. 8L The physical appearance that the boy presents is limited by the toiletry and clothing supplies available to him, and by the services of specialists, such as a barber at his disposal. Conformity in the style of clothing and haircut is often ensured by a school specifying the style or manufacturer, by providing the service itself, or by appointing regulation tailors and barbers. Schools may prohibit their boys from purchasing certain items from other suppliers, or having their hair cut anywhere else but the school barber's shop during the term. The demands, especially from the junior public school boy, for such supplies and facilities may not be numerous, but the fact that there is organizational control over them is particularly relevant in some instances. The school organization decides the frequency and nature of certain changes in boys' appearance - the style of haircut, for instance, or of shoes, socks and shirt, and the necessity for a clean, or new, issue. At the research school it was customary that shirts were changed twice a week, socks three times, and suits pressed twice a term. Haircuts were allocated by the housemaster or senior prefect, generally on a compulsory three-weekly basis, and at an extra charge of three shillings if considered necessary on the first day of term. The boys' role autonomy on entering the school is, in effect, scaled down by the school organization which may, at least potentially, disadvantage them with respect to their peers outside the school system. A boy's economic role was considerably curtailed for instance on entry to the research school. he had to relinquish any money in his possession for 'banking' by his housemaster. He was limited also by rules restricting as far as possible social interaction with 'outsiders' to the school system, such as local adolescents, and all but occasional family visitors, and by other rules proscribing many forms of travel. the prescribed social 83 interaction, especially whilst he remains a junior, was with the other new boys in his house and others in his forma The degree of role dispossession described by Goffman as manifest in the 'total institution' was certainly not evident at the schools in the research. 2 There is often a pattern of practices, somewhat ritualistic in character, which, directly or indirectly, serve to impress on the new boy his status in the school system, the behaviour appropriate to it, and in particular his deference obligations. 3 A common practice in public boarding schools is for the new boy to have to learn the names and statuses of many or all the members of the school or house, a practice referred to as the 'Bumph Test' at Tonbridge, and the 'Colour Test' at Eton. He may have to learn the names of all staff and all members of his house and be able to repeat them backwards or forwards in order of seniority and giving their initials. In addition he may have to learn the school rules, 'colours', song, and some of the school argot and traditions. He is then tested either by a senior boy, or by a boy who is immediately 1. In some schools (such as St. Peter's, York, a public school with a small number of boarders) the boy's interaction in his early years customarily is restricted as far as possible to others who arrived during the same year. 2. Coffman maintains that, in some instances, in the 'total institution' the losses incurred by role dispossession are irrevocable. Steers cites an instance of extreme role dispossession in a long-stay terminal hospital: 'One fine day I went on to the balcony which was extremely stuffy as no windows were open. I stood by it for a few minutes, then asked the patients if they minded if I opened a window. They said "Do, please open it" and thanked me afterwards. They did not dare ask me first. I had to initiate the movement'. (Steers, G. op. cit., my italics). 3. Cf. what Goffman terms the 'obedience test' which characteristi- cally arises spontaneously during the inmate's first few weeks in the 'total institution'. .4 senior to the new boys. 'After the first fortnight you will have a pre's exam.; that is the prefects ask you questions of various things such as nick names of the masters and their initials, two verses of the carmen, the col. pres and their jobs, the colours of each house, the head of each house and their housemasters and other things. You will have someone to teach you all these things. ' ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, iý; alvern) . 'In the first three weeks you have to learn the house list forwards and backwards and recite it both ways in under sixty seconds. ' ('Advice to a brother', 15 year old, research school). In some essays the writers gave advice on performing these tasks: ' ... This is a bit of a problem and I advise you to make a list of the names, put any oddities by the name. e. g. large nose, funny ears, funny walk, etc.. ' ('Advice to a brother, 14 year old, research school). One of the most comprehensive published lists is Notions, a 2$ page booklet of rules, terminology and traditions to be learnt by every new boy at Winchester and on which he is tested, and if necessary retested, after his first week in the school. During his first few weeks other boys will refer to the new boy by some special name reserved for the new intake - such as 'new hop', 'novi', 'tic', or 'yearling'. he is a 'junior' and must take part in formal and informal ritualistic activities which, whatever their manifest intention, serve to emphasize this junior status in both his house and in the school, whatever his record prior to entry. ' 1. Compare the account of similar practices at a university hall of residence. Punch, M. L., 'The Student Ritual' New Society Vol. 10, No. 271,7 Dec. 1967, p. 811. 4S 'Enjoy your last days of freedom ... You will probably get debagged or have to do a forfeit of some kind in your first term because you are a new boy. You will have to stand up to a lot of teasing. ' ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, research school). New boys are customarily treated in a rather undignified manner by older boys; some instances in the research school were cited in the boys' essays: 'ilhen you first go to the swimming pool you will doubtless get ducked by the senior boys of the house. Try not to resent this, as it is a sort of ceremony'. ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, research school). 'First and most important is obedience to the top six (or five). The top six are the most senior boys in the common room... These boys have the power to make you sit and face your desk or make you "put your books up". This means that you have to stand with outstretched arms with a pile of books on each hand for a certain period'. ('Advice to a brother', 13 year old, research school). In several houses in the research school each new boy in turn had to stand on the junior study table or mantelpiece and sing: ' ... until the head of the study throws his book at you, then you can jump down, but the rest of the study's books follow pretty soon after his. ' ('Advice to a brother', 13 year old, research school). The tests may be of physical ability - such as the swimming proficiency tests at the research school in which the boy submits to being thrown into the river, fully clothed, by two senior boys to swim a hundred yards or so down stream. 1 Sometimes boys are sent on errands of an impossible nature - to fetch objects that they discover are non-existent - or told to wear ridiculous clothing. Such a practice, called a Tempel at Winchester in the 1890s, has existed for many years in these schools. 1. See also the similar practices at Charterhouse, Charterhouse by the Boys, London: Kenneth I,, ason, 1964, pp. 29 ff. 9t A new boy, perceiving no means of checking the right of the boy to issue these orders, obeys until the mirth of the other boys makes him realize that this is in fact not one of the formal prescriptions of the school. Usually familiarity by the new boy to his ittunediate elders, termed 'jank' at the research school and 'nip' at Marlborough, is sanctioned behaviour. 'uIhen you arrive your character is decided on immediately. So don't speak until you are spoken to for about the first three weeks or so, otherwise if you say something that isn't liked by someone a year or more senior to you, your life during the next four years will not be worth living'. ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, research school). ': then you are new, several boys will be very bossy and come up to you and say "Stop blah-zing" (Literal pronunciation) - means slouching about as if you were a senior). This means that you either have your hands in your pockets or have only one button done up on your jacket. If it is the latter do nothing about it and walk away, but if it is the former immediately take your hands out of your pockets because it is a bad thing and it gets you unpopular and also into bad habits. If Dir. , the gym master, catches you he will make you do a certain amount of press-ups which as you know are not very pleasant ... Another don't: don't be too greedy at table, have good table manners. This is recognized as law both by the boys and by - and - he housemaster and house matror7. Greediness comes in the second term and then it doesn't matter. I'm greedy and nobody ever says anything'. ('Advice to a brother', 13 year old, research school. Italics and parenthesis in original). The last quotation in particular illustrates the dynamic nature of the normative system. There is a state of flux, new behavioural requirements being created or revived as old one lapse. Here, as elsewhere, the formal and informal requirements are interrelated to the extent that, to new boys, they may appear indistinguishable: 'All this efficiency and tidiness is just to help you get established and accepted in the house and so after a term you can start slackening off'. ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, research school). 97 'Mithin the public boarding school systems in the research there is a range of formally and informally sanctioned practices, even stances, which, outside the school system, the boys might consider inappropriate, but which, within the school system, serve to emphasize the distinction between the status of a boy and a staff member, or to enhance the standing of older boys. Some such behavioural requirements applied to all the boy members of the research school - the saluting of masters for instance. Other requirements were directed in particular at new boys. In the research school the new boys were expected to get up earlier than the other boys, to keep their hands out of their trouser pockets, to keep their jackets buttoned up, to carry their school books in a particular fashion ('with a straight arm'), requirements which were paralleled in all the schools visited. 'There is a strange custom here that must be centuries old. Don't put your hands in your pockets! 'When you have been here a year, you can put one in, and after another year you can put the other in... If you like slacking about with your hands in your pockets, you'll have to stop for a couple of years! ' ('Advice to a brother', 13 year old, Malvern) .1 In Winchester junior boys can be distinguished in public as they alone are expected to carry their umbrellas unfurled. In certain houses in the research school boys in their first year were forbidden to use rubber foam cushions on their wooden chairs, to sing or whistle, to sit on the preproom table, to use certain doors or mirrors, the fire for cooking, or to take several short cuts available within and outside the school buildings - thus being obliged to set out earlier, or to run to be in time for meals or Chapel services. There were similar customs at Malvern: 1. There seem to be more regulations about trouser pockets and their use than any other item. The most extreme ruling seemed to be in one school, Bromsgrove, where the house matrons were instructed to sew up boys' trouser pockets on arrival. PA 'When you first come, you will probably see a statue in front of the main building with steps leading up to it. Don't go up them. They're strictly reserved for the top forms! You can go in by one of the smaller doors, not the one at the top of the steps! ' ('Advice to a brother', 15 year old, Malvern). In the first few weeks staying out of trouble seems to require continual viilance and conscious effort, and typically a new boy will wander from activity to activity with a small group of others, on the assumption that at least one of the group will remember the regulations and provide support: 'To begin with you feel completely lost both in the house and in the school itself. During your first term you will find that you have to be very careful what you do ... ' ('Advice to a brother', 15 year old, research school). '... You must try and fit in with all the activities, and not go around by yourself. It is best to make friends as quickly as you can'. ('Advice to a brother', 13 year old, Malvern). 'When you get here with the other new boys ... be pleasant to them, for their friendships may help you a lot in life here. Be reserved, never outspoken, and above all do what others do. ' ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, research school). 'I advise you just to follow the 'herd', and go where everyone else does. There are numerous bells. the best thing to do is to stop and go to the preproom when any bell is rung; this way you won't miss anything. ' ('Advice to a brother', 13 year old, research school). In writing to the headmaster of one grammar school proposing to send a boy on to the research school, the headmaster refused the application on the grounds that 'this is a very competitive school'. The staff at the research school conduct a programme of evaluation and re-evaluation of all boys which is particularly intense at the lower end of the school. The boy's marks in each academic subject Isl are used each fortnight (or if necessary three weeks) to produce an 'order', the boys being ranked on the basis of their fortnight's performance in each subject. The marks are totalled for all subjects to enable each boy to be ranked in a 'Fortnightly Order'. ' The total marks gained in each subject during a term are used on the basic data for a 'Term Order' which with the 'yxam nation Order' produces a 'Final Order'. On average a boy might be ranked and given eighty or more positions each term. These positions are then 'reported to his parents and housemaster and form the basis for their assessment of his performance. As in many other schools special symbolic recognition is given to the boys who achieve high positions at various stages. : it the research school the names of the first three boys in each form are read out at 'list reading' at the end of term, and the boy who comes first in the 'Fortnightly Order' delivers the list to the headmaster at a fortnightly ceremony before the assembled school. The boy's capacity, in terms of his own inner resources, to cope is being constantly tested. i3oth the staff and the other boys assess whether he has the 'nerve', 'stamina' and 'character' to stand up for himself and 'take it'. The boy's record of conduct in one context is extended to other contexts; to remove the stigma of deviant behaviour in one context (crying, for instance) he will have to prove himself worthy of reassessment. Excellence in one sphere, however, particularly in games, proved in his first year can provide a boy with a status secure enough to excuse his inadequacies in other spheres. Further than this, his height, weight, build, personal appearance, and especially any peculiarities of physique, will provide 1. See also for system at Eton, NcConnell, J. D. R., o . cit. pp. 87 ff. 1 a basis for ranking by other boys. A practice which is widespread in boys' public boarding schools, including the research school, especially in its traditional form, is personal fagging. ' In the research school, the new boy was given a few weeks' grace before being allocated by the prefects in his house to a term's or a year's service, depending on the custom of the particular house, to one of the senior boys, usually a prefect. In a representative house this allocation generally took place at a prefects' meeting at which the ten or twelve most junior boys were discussed. teach prefect in order of seniority chose a junior boy apparently on the basis of the latter's efficiency or charm. Senior boys who were not prefects, but were entitled to fags, were allocated the remaining boys. The new fags were then assigned menial, but usually not arduous, tasks to perform for the prefect or senior boy during the next term. The juniors reported: 'The fagging is probably one of the worst things which you have to do. You have to make the prefect's bed every morning and also brush his coat. You have to cook him toast in front of a gas fire and many other small jobs'. ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, research school). 'After two weeks you will have to fag for the prefects. This entails the following. Getting up in the morning at 7.15. You either sweep the Lprefectsf study or wash up the coffee mugs. You will decide that with the other fag. Clean your prefect's shoes to a lovely shining black. In the afternoon you have to fetch bread, butter, tea, sugar, milk and biscuits from the refectory for the prefects' tea. You don't have to cook, toast or anything else now like I used to. Before supper the study has to be swept again and the half pint bottles of milk have to be put in the study for the coffee, which they make themselves... When I was a fag I used to have to cook asparagus tips for the head of the house... ' ('Advice to a brother', 15 year old, research school). 1. Of the 88 headmasters of independent boarding or mainly boarding schools giving information on this question, 54 reported that there is fagging in their schools. Kalton, G. o . cit. p. 124. Fagging does not appear in an officially sanctioned form in girls' schools, chores being, shared by all residents. See Ollerenshaw, K., op. cit. P. 140. 9I At some schools, such as Downside, a senior prefect may be allocated more than one fag. At Sedbergh in 1963 the head of a house in some cases had three. At Tonbridge a fag makes his prefect's bed, deals with his laundry, cleans his shoes and C. C. F. uniform. The fagging rules at Blundell's were as follows: '1. Every boy shall fag after his first ten days in the School for a period normally not exceeding three terms. 9z 2. A fag may be called upon to do the following duties: (i) To sweep and tidy his fag-master's study, and to do washing up for him when necessary. (ii) To clean his fag-master's C. C. F. equipment, to press his uniform and to clean his C. C. F. boots. (iii) To clean any games equipment, games clothes, or games footwear. (iv) To make errands for him. Errands not of a personal nature but connected with School administration may be made at any time and not only within the time limits prescribed for fagging. 3. A fag may not be asked to perform any of the following duties: (i) Daily shoe cleaning of brown or black walking shoes. (ii) The making of his fag-master's bed. (iii) Personal fagging for his fag-master in the School dining hall, where any duties must be done by boys allocated to general duties according to House arrangements. 4. Fags must be prepared to answer fag calls on School business at any time but no personal fagging may be done at the following times: (i) Sunday afternoons between School lunch and School tea. (ii) The period between the end of breakfast and 9 o'clock Chapel on weekday mornings. (iii) The period after 9 p. m. on any evenings. 5. All routine orderly duties other than those covered by Para. 2 must be excluded from fagging and organized by rota according to House arrangements. ' (Blundell's School, School Rules, print? d 1953, obtained from the School, 1963). 1 The distinction is made in some schools between two classes of fag - the personal and the general (or comninal) fag. Of the two, the personal fag has, normally)a higher status. 1. See also eanples of duties given by Weinberg. Weinberg, I., o . cit. pp. 99. ff. 93 'You fag here for six terms. After two or three terms' fagging you become a spragger, which means special fag, and you do not have to run to a fag call, you only have to fag for a specific prefect... ' ('Advice to a brother, 13 year old, Malvern). The summons to duty is a significant part of the practice; the prefect may shout in the direction of the junior common room or changing room, 'fag! ' or 'boy! ' to command the prompt attendance and service of his, or any substitute fag. In some schools (such as Tonbridge and Eton) the command refers to all fags within earshot, the last to arrive being responsible for the required service. McConnell, an Eton housemaster, describes the procedure: 'A boy call is the most alarming sound in the lower boy's life... A male voice of variable maturity, using the full capacity of the human lungs, utters a long drawn-out cry on a descending note with an upward lilt at the end. In fact the cry is "Boy up". Long before the sound has ceased to echo through the passages and stair-well, feet are scampering. Within a very short space of time a line of fags is drawn up in front of the caller. The last to arrive will be told, quite politely, to do the job or run the message. ' 1 Boys in several houses in the research school have installed a system of electric bells on which the identity of the fag preferred can be indicated by the pattern of the rings. The system in one house in particular in the research school has been modified to provide a means of control of junior boys: ''We... have the punishment system. That is, if you do something wrong your name is entered in a book. Then, when a house prefect wants someone to do something for him he comes and looks at the book... ' ('Advice to a brother', 14 year old, research school). This practice is, in some schools replacing the personal fagging system. 1. McConnell, J. D. R., Eton - How It Works London: Faber 1967 pp. 38-39. 9- In other schools fagging is retained only as a common service to the junior study, or to the house as a whole, and the new boys are given quite extensive weekly rotas of fire-lighting, cleaning, locking doors, ringing bells, collecting papers, copying down notices, cleaning the 'boot-hole', polishing the silver house cups, or shouting to the senior dormitories the number of minutes until breakfast. Although fagging as such does not exist in one third of all public schools, the practice of requiring new boys to perform such tasks is frequent. Significantly the performance of these tasks has become integral to the functioning of the formal system of the school - the prefect's punctuality and performance become dependent on the new entrant's adequacy in carrying out these tasks and thus on his identification with the role. McConnell observes, ' in rU sense ýfagj are an essential part of the administrative machine. Without them it would be very hard indeed for the boys who organize school activities to make their arrangements. ' 1 The idea is accepted by many of the boys: 'You can't really imagine the head of the school himself walking to a house every time he has a message'. (Fag, Charterhouse). 2 The report, Charterhouse By the Boys suggests that special fags, who are described as a kind of 'personal butler', 'on the whole welcome their servitude' because it allows them limited use of their monitor's study and possessions, and a share in his charisma: 'A fag also gains considerable prestige among his fellow fags and fags in other houses if he is the fag either of the head of the school or of the captain of cricket or football, the three who really count'. 3 1. McConnell, J. D. H., op. cit. p. 63. 2. Quoted in Charterhouse By the Boys, op. cit., p. 82. 3. Charterhouse by the Boys, op. cit., pp. 83 ff. v The degree of privacy that the public school boy could maintain if he wished varied between the schools in the research, and usually varied also with the boy's age. ' Maurice Punch has provided data from a private boarding school, (name withheld) where, he reports, caning, for smoking, was in public, and mail frequently opened by housemasters. The boys reported, Punch states, termly communal medical examinations in the nude, and, in one house, a weekly inspection of underpants. 2 Minimal privacy was often inherent in the physical arrangement of the communal living conditions, although this varied considerably between the schools. St. Edmund's School possessed the largest dormitories encountered during the research, sleeping nearly 70 boys in one open room. Some schools, such as Harrow and Tonbridge, have partitioned cubicles for the boys' beds, affording some privacy, and others plan to build more. Eton has separate rooms. less than 10 per cent however of the boys in public boarding schools sleep in single rooms; most sleep in rooms with six or more companions. host of the junior dormitories in the research school were unpartitioned and large, with the beds close together, and washing facilities communal, so that each boy usually washes, baths and sleeps in close proximity to a number of other boys. 1. By contrast compare the extreme violation of privacy found in a concentration camp: '... The prisoner was never alone, not even when occupied in his normal vegetative functions; there was nowhere for him to settle down for a single moment; he had not a shred of private existence left. To live continuously in the company of others became agony. As Dostoyevsky, who spent ten years ... in a penal camp ... has put it: "Besides the loss of liberty, besides the forced labour, one more torture in the convict's life ... which is almost harder to bear than any other: this is the forced community of life. " ' Cohen, E. A., Human Behaviour in the Concentration--camp, New York; Grosset and Dunlap, 1953, p. 130. 2. Punch, M., op. cit., p. 34. 96 Routine inspections by the housemaster or by senior boys acting on his behalf were a feature of the boy's first two years at the research school. All the boy's property was open to checks and inspections on the pretext either that they must be carried out for reasons of hygiene, or to ensure that only permitted items were in the boy's possession. The boy's preproom locker was liable to be opened by a prefect in the presence of other members of the preproom, and the contents of his clothes locker, dormitory drawers, and even his pockets, might have to be turned out in front of the prefect or member of staff, and certain belongings, letters, supplementary food or medical supplies thus be revealed to others from whom the boy might want them to be concealed. The boy must accept that the staff will collect and exchange a certain amount of what he may consider to be private information about his abilities and past behaviour. Myths may exist about the extreme lengths to which staff members may go to fill their dossier - I was told by boys in different schools, for instance, that the head- master used a hidden tape recorder to record the details of 'confidential' conversations -a fact that none of the headmasters confirmed. However it is certainly true that some members of the staff of certain schools go to considerable lengths to penetrate the underlife by extracting confessions from individual boys - especially after public incidents requiring their immediate attention. The development of an argot as an expression of common experiences among the lower participants of certain organizations has been well documented. ' The distinctive argot that the boys in a public boarding school develop reveals aspects of their perception 1. See, for instance, Sykes, G. M. op. cit. p. 84, ff. )7 and experience of life in the school. It compresses their experience into an efficient framework - each word of expression carrying a distinctive value connotation, so that the user is supplied with not only a description, but also an interpretation and evaluation of the activity person or characteristic referred to. Each term in the language is inevitably associated with a 'penumbra of admiration and disapproval, of attitude and belief, which channels and controls the behaviour of the individual who uses them or to whom they are applied. ' Much of the research school argot related to school food and the sexual underlife. Among the junior boys the terminology for school food predominated - 'salvation' (prunes), 'resurrection' (re-cooked meat, 'kittens' coffins' (pasties) and 'peoples' pudding' (bread and butter pudding) for example. Information on the school argot was collected both informally in conversation with the boys during the research period and also from junior classes in the research school in Malvern, Oundle, Bryanston, and St. Edmunds, who were asked to list the school 'slang' - the words that they considered their brother would need to have translated for him on entry to the school. In general it appeared that the larger the public boarding school, and the more it differentiated itself from the wider society, the more probable it was that it had developed its own distinctive and extensive argot: in some smaller public boarding schools and in day schools an argot did not seem to have been developed to any extent. Whereas there was 1. Sykes, G. N., op. cit. p. $6. i'ýialinowski has suggested that social action is to some extent a matter of distinguishing and naming. Nialinowski, B. Magic. Science and Religion, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1955, p. 34. See also Chapter 6 for a discussion of argot and social control. Lerman discusses adolescent argot as symbolic deviance and its relationship to behavioural deviance in Lerman, P. 'Argot, Symbolic Deviance and Subcultural Delinquency' Amer. Sociol, Rev. Vol. 32 no. 2, April 1967. N evidence at Ampleforth, Oundle, Malvern, Charterhouse and Winchester for instance of a most extensive school argot, St. 3dmund's Canterbury, a small public boarding school, had during the research period relatively little distinctive argot, other than nicknames for the masters. 1 Words in common use outside the school are imbued in the argot with a special meaning, a meaning which may vary with the context and the circumstances of its use. At the research school 'smooth' is a term of abuse about another boy in some circumstances, and a term of admiration in others -a 'lusher' can refer to another attractive much admired boy, in addition to its derogatory meaning as one who attempts to use what charm he possesses to gain some reward. As has been described, one of the requirements of the new boy is to master the argot and the various implications behind the words. See Winchester's Notions o . cit. and Charterhouse by the Boys o . cit. 'Glossary'. 9ý CHIPTER 5 FGIATIVr DLPRIVATIDN The concept of relative deprivation was first used in the social sciences, as an interpretative intervening variable, by S. A. Stouffer and his fellow workers in their report of an official American Army research programme; it has been rejected by Glazer, on the one hand, as not empirically nullifiable, and appraised by Merton on the other. 1 Runciman interpreted the concept in the following terms: 'A is relatively deprived of X when (i) he does not have X, (ii) he sees some other person or persons, which may include himself at some previous or expected time, as having X (whether or not this is or will be in fact the case), (iii) he wants X, and (iv) he sees it as feasible that he should have X. Possession of X may, of course, mean avoidance of or exemption from Y. ' 2 Further than this, Runciman maintains that relative deprivation must be understood to mean a sense of deprivation, and that this may vary in frequency ('the proportion of a group who feel it'), in magnitude ('the extent of the difference between the desired 71), and situation and that of the person desiring it j5s he sees it degree ('the intensity with which it is felt'). Although this chapter will throughout document instances where a sense of relative deprivation was noted among public school boys during the research, it must be emphasized that such perceptions of deprivation were exhibited, selectively, and on certain issues by some of the boys some of the time. It is acknowledged that at 1. Stouffer, S. A. et. al. The American Soldier. Vol. I: Adiustment during Army Life, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1949, pp. 52,125 and 153 for instance. The concept, however, was not explicitly defined. Glazer, N., " 'The American Soldier' as science" Commentary Vo1.8,1949, pp. 487-496. Merton, R. K. 'The Concept of Relative Deprivation' and other sections in his essay 'Reference Group Theory' in Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press (Revised ed. ) 1957 pp. 227 ff. 2. Runciman, d. G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1966, p. 10. any one time the perception of relative gratification is dominant for many boys in the public boarding school, particularly in terms of the facilities provided in the school for academic work, for hobbies, and for sporting activities. ' A public school boy's sense of deprivation at a particular time may be related to the degree and nature of the disparity between his 'presenting culture' on entry and the way of life associated with organizational membership and is not independent of the reference groups and the mode of adaptation to the school organization that he has adopted at that time. The perception of relative deprivation varies therefore both in magnitude and degree between boys, and in the same boy at various stages in his school career, and the frequency of the perceived relative deprivation varies among different groups, particularly age-groups, in a school. This major qualification must be borne in mind when the comments in interviews and in the discussion among the boys, are considered. The suggestion, for instance, that their school was a 'prison' was voiced by boys at the research school and at most of the schools visited in the course of, and subsequent to, the period of research, the obvious implication being that the school restricted their personal liberty, and that their experiences and perceived deprivations appeared to them to be similar to those of the prisoner, also confined for a considerable period within a small area of legitimate access and to membership of a single-sex community. 2 Many boys however did not feel this way at the time. 1. Kalton gives some indication of the wide range of organized games, athletic activities and spare time societies available in public boarding schools. See Kalton, G., op. cit., pp. 110, ff. 2. See also Punch, M., op. cit. p. 17, and extracts in Appendix I. of material written by research school boys. lo1 Certain conditions imposed on the public school boy at a boarding school do restrict his personal liberty which may or may not lead to a sense of relative deprivation at some point in his school career. The public schools investigated take considerable care in framing their regulations to define areas, for example, which are prohibited. There is usually a blanket rule which prohibits the boys from travelling beyond a certain area, or from visiting neighbouring towns: 'All towns are out of bounds without special leave. Those who are allowed to bicycle may pass through them, but not stop in them except for shopping with the housemaster's permission'. (Repton school rules). There is also a general prohibition in these schools on the use of any means of public or personal transport except as a privilege. Schools do however, to a varying degree, allow boys to cycle outside the vicinity - Malvern specifies 'up to five miles', Marlborough 30 miles, but in certain directions only, whereas Sedbergh and Oundle have no official limits. ' There are in addition limitations on a boy's movements in the immediate vicinity of the school. Several schools (Marlborough, Bryanston, and Clifton, for instance) display maps indicating by shading or colouring the exact territories within which it is legitimate for the boy to be seen; others, Sedbergh for instance, include in the school rules lists of forbidden and approved streets. Boys in many of the schools may not enter certain categories of public building - usually public houses, cinemas, libraries, dance halls, fish and chip shops, cafes, other schools, industrial works and garages, but often the prohibition extends explicitly to all private houses other than those of masters: 1. The use of bicycles is normally, as at the research school, a privilege which is granted on occasions to individual boys, and as an automatic privilege to a small number of prefects. IV Z 'Except with special signed leave, no boy may under any pretext enter a tobacconists, brine merchant's shop, teashop, or restaurant or any hotel or railway station, nor may he buy food at any shop in the town. No boy may go into any private house, except a master's house, without leave ... (Malvern School Rules) Even within categories which are not altogether forbidden there are usually some individual establishments indicated: 'The following cafes are out of bounds: K Snack Bar, Fish Bar, Edith's Cafe, Prouts, Manton Milk Bar, Merlin Auto Service'. (Marlborough School Rules) Further prohibitions usually refer to areas within the school precincts, extending, with varying emphasis in different schools, to other school houses, the dining halls except during meals, the kitchens and to the sanatorium: 'The Class Rooms, Theatre, Scout Rooms, Art Room, Carpentry and Metal Shops and Music Rooms are out of bounds except for official purposes'. (Ampleforth School Rules) Besides geographical boundaries the regulations normally stipulate times when a boy may go to those places that are not proscribed at all times. Shopping, and in particular shopping for food, is often limited to certain hours, between 2.00 p. m. and 2.30 p. m. in the research school. 'The town is out of bounds for a boarder at all times except from 8.30 a. m. to 9.00 a. m., or with written leave from his housemaster'. (Sedbergh School Rules) The boy's day is divided into periods, during which he is under varying degrees of constraint. 1 In the research school the boy spends the greater part of the morning going through a round of 1. See Kalton, G., op. cit. Kalton estimates from his data that 10 to 20 per cent of a public school boy's (academic) work is done independently. tv3 compulsory activities - working, eating and attending prayers. After lunch he may have half an hour at his disposal before afternoon school and/or compulsory games, and then on certain days, he is 'free' until the evening meal at 7.00 p. m. Many public schools lay down that for each boy one afternoon each week should be free from compulsory games - called a 'N. C. E. ' in the research school (Non Compulsory Ixercise): 'Games are organized so as to leave boys one half-holiday a week free to follow their own bent, whether bird-watching, fishing or fell-walking, and on extra half-holidays they have the same privilege. This feature in the life of the school has valuable results in encouraging a taste for Natural History and a love of the beautiful scenery surrounding Sedbergh. ' (Sedbergh School Prospectus) However, during a 'free' period or afternoon, and especially if he is a junior boy, there will be some activities that must be performed, and others that are forbidden. The boy may have to clean his Combined Cadet Force uniform for the next day's parade, or to light the preproom fire; he may not be allowed to leave the house (after at sunset in winter) or have a wireless on (during 'quiet hour'). Evenings are supposed to be taken up with school work, prayers and preparing for bed. Several schools maintain a strict curfew throughout the school after dark. At nightfall all the outside doors of the houses are locked and boys only allowed out if they carry official passes, or leave notes signed by a member of staff or a senior prefect and stating the destination and purpose of the mission. At Eton twenty-five men are employed specifically to carry out the task of locking and unlocking the doors each time a boy passes in or out. ' 1. See McConnell, J. D. R., op. cit., pp-53 ff. fO4- Many schools have regular checks on the presence of each boy, either by inspection or by roll calls, although it is becoming more usual now for housemasters merely to utilize the frequent assemblies necessary for other purposes. Thus meals, prayers, choir practice, games and Combined Cadet Force parades enable a master to check on the absence of any boy, and this is sometimes formalized so that it becomes the boy's neighbour's duty to report his absence, and the reason for it. Geographical restriction per se is probably less significant when considering the boys' sense of relative deprivation than the directly consequent social restriction. The implicit, rarely explicit, aim of the rules is social, rather than geographical, restriction. On entry to the school the new boy interacts mainly with the set of other boys who happen to share his common room, or dormitory, or to sit next to him at meals. This is intensified when, as is the practice in some houses in the research school and at some other schools, a large proportion of his social relationships is the result of allocation by staff; in extreme cases he will sleep, eat, pray, and do his private work next to the two boys immediately above and below him in the house list. He will be allocated to places in the changing room, to his position in the junior study, and in Combined Cadet Force parades and all similar activities and to his seat in chapel, so that his five years will be spent in the immediate company of a small group of his age in his house who happened to have come at the same time or a term previously or subsequently: 'You are supposed to have friends in your own house, and to go around with boys from other houses is in some sense unpatriotic'. (Recorded interview, sixth former). Opportunities for friendships with boys, or girls, outside his own (b6- school, and with adults who are not connected with the school in some way, are very restricted especially at this stage in his school career. Certain schools, such as Ampleforth, forbid the boy to use a telephone without permission. In some, incoming mail is scrutinized before distribution, sometimes by the housemaster in the case of the research school. The boy's opportunities for maintaining his previous emotional relationships, and his choice of new ones are, as a result restricted, to a various extent, in the different schools. In girls' boarding schools, apparently, the restrictions may be more stringent than in the boys' schools: 'Until she is sixteen, no girl at Cheltenham may go shopping unaccompanied by a member of staff or a prefect. She may not accept visiting invitations without an authorization from the hosts, her parents, her houselady and sometimes her headmistress. ' (Reported by 18 year old undergraduate who had just left Cheltenham Ladies College). Many of the boys' schools have recently encouraged certain boys to undertake certain 'Community Service' responsibilities in the locality, although under the school's control. The relationships considered particularly reprehensible by the staff appeared to be those either which involved individuals of a different social level and/or who were outside the school's control. Fraternization with the daughter of a member of staff is often legitimate in a school where to be seen talking to any girl outside the school system would incur punishment. An incident during the research in 1963 illustrates the principle of social restriction in operation in the research school. One of the school chaplains advocated in a sermon that boys should invite local boys into their studies for coffee and get to know them , his reason being that there seemed little provision for youth in the district. The suggestion was, however, overridden - after overt I conflict in the staff common room and after several housemasters had announced their rejection of it to the boys in their houses. The school had imposed bounds upon the interaction possibilities within its culture and outside it, and organizational ties were expected, with certain recognized exceptions, to constitute the opportunity structure for social interaction during term-time. 1 In view of the school's attempts to minimize expenditure and so restrain fee increases, it is not surprising that the standard of living existing in the public boarding school is lower than that to which the majority of boys are accustomed during the holidays. The school provides the basic material needs; the boys are fed, kept relatively dry, to some extent warm - although the dormitories and changing rooms were generally unheated, and communal buildings inadequately so, in the schools investigated. 2 Medical care is provided and each boy has to exercise regularly, but there is a general lack, particularly evident in some schools, of certain aesthetic and physical amenities which usually have a significance beyond the bodily comfort they provide - such as a reasonably comfortable bed and adequate toiletry arrangements. The boy is effectively divested of many of his personal possessions on entry to the research school; he has been informed in a variety of ways that he will not be 'allowed' to take them to school with him. By tradition, he is expected to arrive at the school with only a 'tuck box', and a trunk which should contain the items prescribed on his clothing list, and various additional items which have been formally, or informally, specified as legitimate - certain foods, jams, sweets, chocolate, for instance, and a number of 1. For a discussion of the importance of the boundaries on social interaction see Goffman, E. Behaviour in Public Places, Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1963. z. Note is sometimes made of this in the Reports of H. M. Inspectors after official inspections. la7 books and materials for a hobby. The 'Inventory of Clothes' used at Kingswood ends: 'No articles of clothing, other than those listed above, may be brought back to school. Any such clothing will be sent home immediately. ' And, if any of the prescribed items are missing: '... they will be replaced immediately from the School Shop and charged to the termly account. ' II The removal of such personal possessions as clothes is also a feature of some girls' public schools. Christ's Hospital allows no personal possession of any garment. Each girl is allocated items from a central pool of clothes which are then laundered before reallocation. A symbolic possession in a boy's early years at the research school is a foam cushion. These are used on the hard wooden chairs provided in the preproom and may be carried to certain school entertainments such as films - to provide not only comfort but a necessary elevation. But, the new boy may find that his seniors may forbid or limit his use of his cushion, if they choose at any time to make its use privileged. The public schools differ widely in the degree to which they extend organizational control to goods brought in from outside. The headmaster of the research school in announcing to the school that permission would be given for individual boys to attend a youth club fete after the summer examinations emphasized: 'The usual rules will apply about alcoholic refreshments and tobacco. This will be handed in to housemasters when you return. But I've told the organizers not to give you prizes in this form. So you'll be relieved of this conflict. ' Some schools inspect incoming parcels and presents brought by parents at visiting weekends, but the majority find it sufficient to maintain a general and informal code, which can be enforced should 1. Kingswood School, Inventory of Clothes 1966. fag a situation be brought to staff notice which could be defined as a flagrant abuse of the rules. The maximum amount of money that an individual boy may possess on his person at any one time during term is specified in the research school rules; the remainder must be handed over to the boy's housemaster on the first day of term. The housemaster retains this money and holds 'bank' sessions several times each week, on which occasion boys can request small sums until their reserves are exhausted. This mode of procedure enables the housemaster to investigate, among a number of possibilities, any large items of a boy's expenditure. At Bryanston the rules read: 'Money. 1. No boy may have more than ten shillings in cash in his possession unless the money is required for a special and immediate purpose. 2. No boy may buy from or sell to another boy anything costing more than ten shillings without the approval of the housemasters concerned. Notices advertising items for sale for more than ten shillings must be initialled by the advertiser's housemaster. ' (Bryanston School Rules) A survey conducted within Marlborough suggested that most boys received about £6 a term, to include train fares to and from school at the beginning and end of term. The boys' financial impoverishment may cause certain problems even when they have to incur expenditure of an approved nature, and the schools investigated generally solved this by the institution of some form of substitute currency. In the research school, chits, on which tie boy wrote details of the required item and then obtained the signature of a member of staff to authorize payment, substituted for money the nature of the transaction was therefore transformed in that the initials of the staff member took on the nature of currency, those of the house matron for medical and clothing supplies and of an appropriate subject master or form master for books and stationery. (o9 Outside the school system, activities categorized as entertaining rather than instrumental are usually an important part of a boy's life. He may participate in dances and in heterosexual social and athletic club activities, and vicariously enjoy a very wide range of films, plays, popular music, teenage magazines, and paperback literature, for instance, and these play a significant part in his maturation. No school in the research imposed a total ban on all such activities and items, but often a school would either permit them only as a privilege, possessed by virtue of a special dispensation, or would tolerate them temporarily and selectively. The public school boy appraises this situation within a particular frame of reference, often yielded by comparing himself with others outside the public school system, and at any point in time he may or may not perceive his situation as relatively deprived. In Runciman's terms, the boy can be said to experience a sense of relative deprivation where he does not have access to some object, or participate in some activity which he perceives a reference group as enjoying - although this may not be the case. He perceives the object or activity as potentially contributing to his well-being, and can see no reason why he should not be allowed to participate, or to have access to it. He may, on the other hand, experience a sense of relative Stratification at any point in time. Many schools censor the newspapers and magazines subscribed to by the boys, sometimes by cutting out pages before allowing the boy to look through them; in some schools only one or two are allowed. Only the Daily Telegraph is allowed on weekdays at Christ's Hospital for girls. 'Newspapers and periodicals bought or received by boys are subject to their housemaster's approval'. (Marlborough College, School Rules, revised edition, 1966). ho Many housemasters in the research school remove pin-ups displayed in the boys' studies and common-rooms, and a complete prohibition is exercised on boys' own pictures in dormitories, bathrooms, changing rooms, etc. - in fact all rooms outside their own studies. Until they achieve enough seniority to be allocated a study, the only legitimate place the junior boys in the research school can exercise freedom of expression is their own locker (measuring about two feet square and four feet tall); on the inside of the door they are allowed to stick pictures, maps, drawings, etc.. It is here that the new boy is allowed, only, however, in accordance with a strict code of 'suitability', to affix whatever he chooses. If his tastes are not acceptable to his companions, or the prefects who carry out public inspections of these lockers, if he puts up photographs of nudes, for instance, they may be torn down and the boy publicly ridiculed and fined. In addition the boy may be issued with a 'Reading List' of either recommended authors or book titles, the contents of which seem approximately related to his academic level in the school. In one school, St. Edmund's, Canterbury, for example, the middle and lower fifths are recommended to read Bronte, Dickens, Kipling, Masefield, Saki, H. G. Wells and Wodehouse, among others, while the upper fifths and removes are recommended a larger list including, in addition, Amis, Beerbohm, Peter Fleming, J. B. Priestley, C. P. Snow, Virginia Woolf, Voltaire, Pasternak and Tolstoy ("in translation") and Sons and Lovers and The White Peacock, by D. H. Lawrence. The use of wirelesses and gramophones is normally a privilege in the schools studied, where they are forbidden privileged boys may be allowed to listen to specified programmes on communal sets. In one house at Ampleforth the housemaster tape-recorded a weekly record programme 'Two Way Family Favourites' for later playback to N the boys, while the highlight of the school prefect's week was to eat their Sunday tea to 'Top of the Pops'. Ampleforth, whilst organizing dances for its domestic staff, to avoid excessive staff turnover, still refused to organize dances, or even dancing lessons, for the boys. Marlborough stopped dances in 1966 when they led to friendships developing with girls outside the school. The public boarding school for boys, as for girls, is usually a single sex xommunity. Charterhouse has now (1967) admitted six girls to its sixth form and Eton, Marlborough and Clifton have recently initiated similar small-scale schemes. With the exception of the house matrons and staff wives and daughters, the boys legitimately come into contact with few females while within the school system. The regulations enforced at the research school and the others studied preclude as far as possible informal social contacts between boys and girls outside the school, and specifically prohibit boys from talking to female domestic staff on or off duty: ' ... One just saw them for an hour each day in the dining room where you could not betra anything on your face because - he housemaster/ was watching like a lynx. He knew this was the weak link in the thing. ' (Recorded interview, sixth . {ormpr) In laying down the 'bounds' such considerations may be the principal factor in deciding which areas of the school property and public spaces are to be forbidden. This leads to arrangements such as the division of the town of Cheltenham so that at no time could girls of Cheltenham Ladies' College and the boys of Cheltenham College be in the same area of the town; pupils had to walk longer distances along approved routes rather than the shortest route through the town. Limitation of heterosexual contacts is also extended in some schools to the substitution of vicarious materials. The different I1Z policies of the schools concerning D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was readily available in bookshops and had been the subject of an unsuccessful but well publicised prosecution, provided some indication of the attempts schools were prepared to make on this issue. At Malvern the headmaster had telephoned all local bookshops ordering them to refuse to sell them to his boys, others reserved it for senior boys, and some merely announced a ban on it within the school: 'You can read it all in the holidays, but do keep it away from the juniors. ' (Headmaster, one of the schools in the research) Similarly the selection of plays for houses or the school to perform is restricted in the research school and in others. The performance of much modern drama is still, although read by the boys, avoided because of the sexual roles portrayed. Anouilh's Becket was performed as a house play at Repton with the part of the king's mistress entirely omitted. A number of schools continue to experiment with modifications of this single-sex character, and some have at various times experimented with activities run jointly with girls' schools. Clifton College allows certain boys to take part in dramatic, and musical productions with girls from Clifton High School. Some schools sometimes allow local girls' schools to provide partners at end of term dances; many including the research school run dancing 'lessons', sometimes limited to boys supplemented by the masters' daughters if there are any of the same age group. Where dances have been incorporated into the school system they appear to be arranged as fixtures with local girls' schools on a similar basis to that of athletic fixtures (Brighton College and Roedean, bundle and Stamford Girls School, for instance). They are closely ýý: ý supervised by staff members and operate between clearly defined limits (for instance, 7 p. m. to 10 p. m. ) with regulations to limit prolonged absences from the dance floor. During 1963 the History Sixth at the research school held such a dance under these conditions. They are not favourable to the development of affective relationships. 1 Even so some schools have suspended even this experiment (Nariborough in 1966 for instance, as noted previously), sometimes attributing this to 'lack of support'. The belief held by some staff that athletic activities adequately redirect the boys' sexual drive seems to be based on selective perception and a reluctance on the part of the boys to admit to the staff (and often to themselves) the existence of a sexual 'underlife' in the school. There is no evidence that any psychological problems created by the lack of heterosexual relationships are mitigated by the round of prescribed sporting activities. Sykes reported anxieties about masculinity among prisoners 'regardless of whether or not they are coerced, bribed or seduced into an overt homosexual liaison'. 2 Similarly, whether or not homosexual tendencies are activated, even if never overt in behaviour, the public-school boy may experience acute anxieties about his masculinity - anxieties which will be particularly acute if the boy has, as a result of mounting physical 1. See Kalton, G., op. cit., pp. 122-3, also Dilike, C., Dr. »ioberlv's IiintNark, a study of 4inchester College, London: Heinemann, 1965, p. 165: 'There has also been a relaxation of monasticism: a belated recognition of the connection between repression and vice. Visits to the cinema are allowed. Girls from a local school read parts in the school play-reading society. Boys attend dancing classes. An Eton match dance is a fairly new development. But the line is still drawn a long way short of encouraging any emotional involvement. ' 2. Sykes, G. H., o cit., p. 71. fi(4- desire, or in an attempt to receive affection, direct experience of homosexual practices. At the adolescent stage especially, he is searching for identity and, Talcott Parsons and others have maintained, is attempting to emancipate himself from identification with his mother during childhood. ' Anxieties about masculinity can only partially be compensated by illegitimate exploits during term: 'There are various solutions to this ... one is to go out with the girls in the town or in the houses. This was fantastically dangerous because the repression techniques were very well developed. You notice how all the houses are built. After they knew what went on in - Lthat hous7. Still does go on there. They then saw that the only way to build a house was to build it as a fortress. You notice that with - and -. The house is built on an L-shape, and the girls live in the middle so that the way through into the girls' bedrooms is covered in one case by the housemaster's bedroom and the matron's bedroom together in - with those very creaky boards in the middle. And on the Lother hous] side at least by the matron's bedroom, you see. So obviously they knew what was going to go on ... for many people this was the only solution. Quite a lot of this did go on. There was a lot of double thIgall the way on about this; I think by and large the schoo1,, 4ought it was rather good. Getting caught on this was just about the end. Somehow to go out with girls from the town was kind of laddish, like when the rugger team used to go and pee in the chapel gardens pond, for instance. This was rather laddish. ' (Recorded interview, sixth former. ) When there is homosexual behaviour between boys in the school, it is difficult for a boy to be insulated from the observation or experience of it, and, particularly during their early years at the research school, the majority of boys become aware, if only indirectly, of homosexual activity in the school. The amount of such activity varies a great deal from year to year and between different schools and different houses in the same school. 2 1. See Parsons, T., 'Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States', in Essays in Sociological Theory, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1951.. 2. See Marlborough by the Boys, op. cit., pp. 61-2. <seem to have a 'reintegrative effect', re-establishing the boy's self respect' 'Being a house prefect ... it is just that you have reached this position and you feel you have made it'. (Recorded discussion, sixth former, research school). was secretary of Rugger and I was made a school prefect ... I must say this, to have a bike is certainly a privilege. It sort of raises you up. It gives you a bit of a kick as well, you know, being able to ride over the school. It means a lot ... ' (Recorded interview, school prefect, research school). Ritual, and ritualistic symbolization, can play a significant part in social control in the publicboarding school for through it certain values and norms may be transmitted, certain restraint learnt and)often)a sense of well- being induced. 2 Certainly the overall predictability of official school ritual permits the semblance of a high degree of control of the participants - an appearance which is particularly desirable when persons from outside the school system are present. The degree of conformity is such that the part- icipants in their prescribed roles appear to have consented, to an extent, to the abrogation both of spontaneity and of individual assertion. 1. Goffman, E. (1961), op. cit., P-49- 2. See in particular Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A _Study in Religious Sociology, translated by Susin, J. `7., London, Allen & Unwin, 1915; and Alpert, H., 'Darkheim's Functional Theory of Ritual', reprinted in Emile Durkheim, edited by Nisbet, R. A., Englewood Cliffs, H. J., Prentice-Hall, 1965. q'6 All the boys at the research school are required to be in their seats two minutes before the time fixed for the beginning of the morning ritual of school prayers, the school prefects march down the centre aisle in single file to take their seats in the front row of the chapel, and the staff enter casually and sit in the back rows. At the appointed time the headmaster enters the front of the chapel to sit in a prominent, elevated enclosure opposite the pulpit. Whether he is to conduct prayers or not, he sits facing the boys, and provides a focus for attention throughout - especially in an unexpected contingency, such as the breakdown of the organ. The significance of his position in the whole associated complex of ritual in chapel was apparent during the research period, in the opposition over several terms from both masters and boys to the prominent position assumed by the director of music in these services. In his efforts to raise the standard of choral singing, this member of staff had started to conduct a number of hymns from the centre of the aisle beside the headmaster's pew. Opposition subsided when he compromised by conducting only specific choral works from the front pew of the chancel, using more restrained move- ments of his arms, or nodding his head. This daily service of worship, though based on moral egalitarianism, serves to emphasise, or to identify hierarchical levels in the school. Differences in dress, in seating, in the order of arrival and departure, in the performance of organizational responsibilities and of specific and distinc- tive duties emphasize the various strata, quite apart from the criteria of age and size. Characteristically evident in the public school system is the ritualistic symbolization of the social values on which it rests. There is ritualistic symbolization of significant changes in the status of individual boys. Public schools usually provide a public induction of a new prefect, when he is presented with the relevant insignia while other members of the school/ by appropriate lsl behaviour , express deference to his status; informal practices such as 'debagging', or the immersion of the boy involved in a bath of cold water may follow at a later stage. Informal initiation procedures for the new boy into the school were discussed earlier. l During such ritualistic meetings, whether on a small or large scale and whether officially sanctioned by the school organisation or not, relevant beliefs, norms and statuses are characteristically emphasised. Thus, though. a small-scale and informal meeting, even the fag's tea canbe regarded as a form of status ritual. The practices differ in detail in different houses, but a general pattern can be discerned; the boys who act as personal servants to the prefects during the rest of the year are treated to the remainder of the prefects' provisions in many cases served by their normal taskmasters who may also, if it is the end of term, give them money (up to ¬1) as a 'fag tip'. In most public boarding schools ritualistic symbolization linked to sporting and other non-academic activities is more evident than that in the academic sphere. In the research school the achievement of academic excel- lence was symbolized only by announcements of the top three boys in each class each term at 'list reading' ('reading over' at Eton) and the collection of 'form orders' each fortnight by the headmaster from the top boy in the class, nomally in front of the assembled school. Sports teams in the research school with their mascot, typically march from their house or changing rooms with arms linked in a single line extending across the road, singing a traditional song and followed by a number of the more enthusiastic supporters, among them matrons, parents, masters and boys, 1. See Chapter 4. /ý giving enthusiastic vocal support. ' Successful participants in such activities are distinguished by the research school with 'colours' for sporting achievements, which entitled the holder to various insignia and perquisites. 'Colours' are formally presented by the 'captain' of that sport, who has until then kept the names of the recipients a secret, on a lawn outside the assembly hall in front of the whole school after morning prayers. Non-participation by significant numbers of boys in such activities however can present control problems for the school organization. I"rany sixth-form boys at the research school expressed the feeling that time spent as a supporter on such occasions is 'wasted' and individual senior boys did not always accept a moral obligation to give vocal support to the enthusiasts. It was not uncommon to find that the boys watching an important house match in a major sport were'out- numbered by the staff and staff families - both in their numbers and the volume of their support, and this in spite of notices such as. 'The House is expected to watch the house match v. - House on the Long Acre at 2.15'. (Research School, House notice board, October 1962). Obviously where the norms and values embodied in the ritual and ritualistic symbolization were rejected such ritual tended to have a negative effect in contributing to the social control techniques in the school system. 1. C. f. Frankenburg's experience of the function of football matches between teams from neighbouring villages: 'Recreational activi- ties ... serve ... as a symbol of village prestige and unity in the face of the outside world ... A poor performance at a football match or play or eisteddfod spoils the village's reputation ... Combining in recreational activities has social value to the villagers because it emphasizes their relationships one to another in a community. ' Frankenburg, R., Village on the Border, London: Cohen and lest, 1957, PP. 152-4. /ý criafrý 7 ADAPTATION X THE äCHUÜL The question arises both as to how boys living in the socio- cultural context of the public boarding school respond to it, and as to how sociological perspectives can enter into an analysis of the prevailing practices and behaviour of these boys. The problem of explicating how and why the socio-cultural elements of social structures can enter into an individual's experience and lead to certain modes of adaptation has been tackled in a seminal article by A. K. Ierton. 1 His approach has proved controversial. Despite several attempts at reformulation there undoubtedly remain a number of specific objections which can be levelled against it and which will be instanced later on in this discussion. Merton himself has been ready however both to modify his original formulations and to consider the modifications of others. His is an approach which can and has accommodated both change and revision and, with its amendations and extensions, certainly represents a substantial body of work since the idea of anomie was first propounded by Emile Durkheim. Within the general argument that social structures exert a definite pressure on certain individuals (or those in certain social positions) to engage in non-conforming behaviour of various kinds, Merton has isolated two elements of social and cultural structures. On the one hand there are the culturally defined goals, purposes and interests 'held out as legitimate objectives for all or for diversely located members of the society', and, on the other, there is a second element of the cultural structure which defines, regulates and controls the acceptable means of reaching these prescribed objectives. 2 1. Merton, R. K. 'Social Structure and Anomie' in Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press 1957 pp. 131 If. 2. N: erton, R. K. op. cit 1957 p. 132. ýý lnaiviaual. s may eitiner accepti or rejects Lne cul. LUral goals, ana tine3 may either accept or reject the institutionalized means. Thus although the cultural goals and institutional means may be considered to operate together to shape the prevailing practices this does not mean they bear a constant relation to one another, they are two variables each of which may take two values. On the basis of this distinction between goals and means Merton identifies a mode of adaptation he terms conformity, when both the goals and the means are accepted, and also four alternative responses. The table below indicates what these possible outcomes are and how they are related to acceptance (+) or rejection of (-) cultural goals or the means of striving for their attainment. The categories 'refer to role behaviour in specific types of situation, not to personality. They are types of more or less enduring response, not types of personality organization'. ' TYPOLOGY OF I110DES OF INDIVIDUAL ADAPTATION (IiiertonJ. Diodes of Adaptation Cultural Goals Institutional i1ieans I Conformity II Innovation III Ritualism IV Retreatism V Hebel-lion ++ + + + + '... where (+) signifies "acceptance", (-) signifies "rejection" of the prevailing values and substitution of new values'. This typology, Harary points out, exhibits two 'sins of notation': Merton not only uses the same symbol for two or more different ideas, he also uses two different symbols for the same idea. 2 The minus sign denotes indifference in the case of the goals of ritualism, and rejection (with the substitution of new objectives) in the case of the means of innovation, a rejection which, in the case of the goals and means of rebellion, is symbolized by the + symbol. This ambiguity 1. Merton, H. K. op. cit. (1957) P. 11+0. 2. harary, F., 'i. ierton Revisited: A New Classification for Deviant Behaviour' Amer. Sociol. iRev. Vo1.31,146.5,1966. (6( leads to difficulties in the interpretation and use of the typology in practice. Harary makes the distinction between a negative relationship such as rejection, and a relationship of indifference, and symbolizes the former by (-) a minus sign, and the latter by (0). The table then becomes: i ; VL &ii 2YP011JGY (H i Ai-. Y) är ýý1. Goals valence + 0 N. ieans 0 Retreatism Valence + Ritualism Conformity Innovation Rebellion To include the additional element covered by the original typology, he then adds two further valences. The first to indicate the ordinary negative valence without replacement, and the second 'ambivalence'. The valences are then five: Indifference (i) (previously 0) Positive (p) (previously +) Negative (n) (previously 0) Ambivalent (a) Rejection with replacement (r) (previously -) Harary's revised and enlarged typology is as follows: RSVISE. D TYPOLOGY OF WJ S OF INDIVIDUAL iWAPfAfIÜN (H"t 41) 62AGß 2. Goals Valence ipnar i Means p Ritualism Conformity Valence n Hetreatism a Retreatism Hetreatism r Innovation xebellion (6Z Merton set that he admitted to be an arbitrary dichotomy between cultural goals and the institutional means to achieve these goals but it is difficult to see how a distinction can be made easily in practice as both are so linked in social reality. There is considerable support for the contention that there are no values that always constitute ends nor values that always constitute means. 1 There is also the difficulty in identifying a set of values or cultural goals which is universal in a society; Clinard observed that 'the ends sought grow out of multivalue claims made on individuals participating in diverse groups'. 2 rk legitimate objection to the early formulation of I-erton's approach was that it tended to conceive of an atomistic actor choosing his adaptation to the social system in isolation from others who serve as his reference groups, but Merton's position now acknowledges the significance of the response of an individual's associates in his choice of mode of adaptation. It is important also to emphasize that the individual's response which leadsto classification of his mode of adaptation is a response which has been built up through an interactional process and is influenced by societal response to his previous responses and by the extent and form of social control. But, while acknowledging that there are objections on several grounds to i,, erton's approach, his analysis does provide a sociological framework within which to consider the connections between pupils' 1. See Lemert, 3. ki. 'Social Structure, Social Control, and Deviation' in Clinard, M. (ed) Anomie and Deviant Behaviour Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press 1964 pp. 61 ff. and Turner, R. 'Value- conflict in Social Disorganization' Sociology and Social Research Vol-38 (1954) p. 305. 2. Clinard, M. 'The Theoretical Implications of Anomie and Deviant Behaviour' in Clinard, i,,. (ed) pp. cit. P-55. 43 responses Lo liie in Lae scnool aria its socio-cultural structure. - As Cohen points out: it makes it possible to talk about conformity and the several varieties of deviance in terms of a simple and parsimonious conceptual scheme - i. e. 1 dichotomous (either-or) choices on each of two variables. ' Following Merton it can be said that the socio-cultural structure of the school will operate to exert pressure on the pupils to adopt one or other of alternative modes of adaptation to the school, although they may shift from one alternative to another - at different stages in their school careers and as they engage in different spheres of social activities within the school system. Sociologists other than harary have attempted to develop Merton's approach either by suggesting modifications or by extending the categorization. Dubin has extended herton's typology of four adaptations to fourteen by subdividing the adaptations innovation and ritualism (as he considered that i-Merton's typology did not adequately define the outcome of its operations). 2 Cloward has emphasized the importance of access to the illegitimate, as well as to the legitimate, means to achieve cultural goals. 3 It is however in Harary's revised form indicated above that terton's typology will be used in this discussion, although Harary, in fact, adds further modes of adaptation which are not included above. 1. Cohen, A. K. Deviance and Control 3nglewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall 1966 p. 77. 2. Dubin, R. 'Deviant Behaviour and Social Structure: Continuities in Social Theory' Amer. Sociol. Review Vo124 No. 2 (1959) pp-147-64. 3. Cloward, A. A., 'Illegitimate Means, Anomie and Deviant Behaviour' Amer. Sociol. Review Vol-24 146.2 (1959) pp. 164-70. In the same volume Merton comments on these two papers. tLL In the research school five principal modes of adaptation were identified - referred to in this account as 'conformity', 'retreatism', 'colonization', 'intransigence' and 'rebellion'. The overall pattern of adaptations within a school is clearly affected by and affects its character, and the pattern of adaptations made by the individual boy during his school life figures significantly in a discussion of the affects the school has on him. At the research school most boys in their early years seemed to adopt the 'coloniza- tion' mode while a small minority attempted to retreat. By their third year in the school a number had adopted the mode referred to here as 'intransigence', a mode which was infrequent among the boys in their first or final years. By their fourth and fifth years boys typically returned to the 'colonization' mode, while substantial numbers seemed to 'conform', 'retreat' or 'rebel'. A small number of boys seemed to have adopted, to an extent, the retreatist mode throughout their school careers. This pattern of adaptations is clearly related to the structure and opportunities for various responses within the school organization, and the patterns prevalent in other schools might have significant implications in an analysis of the shared and contrasting features of the educational process in the public boarding school. The revised typology below, in addition to presenting the predominant modes of adaptation to the school, indicates the stages in boys' careers in the school with which they appeared to be associated. 14 ý PLEVIS'LD rYP07lJGY OF M0D; 3S Of IITJIVIJUr1L t\i7r3rAl'IOiý Showing principal modes of adaptation by boys to the public boarding school. Goals Valence Means Valence ip i 11 ttLl'iUATI3Pi p; Conformity r n a COIDITILMOiJ r Intransigence -------------------------- Rebellion na Ai:, r. -UAr16ý, Key i= indifference p= positive n= negative a= ambivalent r= rejection with replacement Early years - mode in capitals later years - Mode underlined Major movements in the career of the boys shown by arrows. Modes characteristic of early years in school : Colonization (+ retreat) diddle years : Intransigence (+ colonization and retreat) Later years : Colonization (+ conformity, rebellion and retreat) rq VVlllVlllLLV ý Conformity is indicated as (p. p. ) in the N. evised Typology. both the school's goals, at least as perceived by its headmaster, and the officially approved means of reaching them are accepted. Thus the means valence and the goals valence are positive. Contrary to the expectations of many staff and parents this is not a mode which is adopted by most of the boys for most of their school life. Goffman suggests that senior inmates in the 'total institution' tend to choose this mode of adaptation. 1 Prisoner-of-war camps sometimes have their 'suckers' and prisons their 'square johns' and the new admission to a mental hospital may be offered the opportunity for conformity by adopting the psychiatric view of himself. In the research school there seemed to be a small core, particularly of senior boys at any one time who made this their dominant mode of adaptation and whom the staff not unnaturally regarded as 'successes'. 2 In the research school most of those who adopted this mode had come up the school in the science rather than the history forms, and many had impressive records in sport. The principal aim of a boy adapting in this way is often a post of responsibility and prestige within the school, with its corresponding privileges. He characteristically presented himself as someone whose enthusiasm for the school and for its reputation equalled or even exceeded that of the staff, at whose disposal he clearly put himself, even before being given a post of responsibility. By adopting this mode a boy generally makes a stable adjustment to the social structure of the school, if he is a senior boy. If he 1. See Goffman, 1-1. o . cit. (1961) pp. 63 ff. 2. cf. 'How the tide turned', Hughes, T. Tom Brown's 6choolda-vs,. London: Harrap 1923. pp. 161 If. 467 is not a senior boy, however, it may caus3 a considerable degree of strain in his relations with his fellows. It is a mode which the 'scholarship boy' may attempt to adopt on entering the school - though the unpopularity involved may be considerable for in a boy's early years at a public boarding school the informal penalties for what passes as 'sucking up' to the staff are stringent, and it is unusual for a boy in his first or second year to adapt in this way; the officially sponsored ideal is in general only adopted at a later sta-e. The mode is manifested in similar forms at different schools. At iýiarlborough it is characterized by the term 'staunchness' -a word taken from a hymn used frequently in school services: 'LStaunchnesi normally involves a reluctance ever to break the rules or do anything at all risque, and a general willingness to volunteer for anything.... the boy who is considered staunch today is not far removed from the public school ideal of a few decades ago - upright, honest, reliable, with a very deep-rooted sense of duty and a tendency to be rather narrow-minded about it'. 1 Retreat. Despite the restrictions imposed by the school organization on the extent of boys' autonomy and privacy, a degree of non-involvement in all but the most rigorously enforced school affairs is a mode which boys may sometimes adopt in the early and middle years of their school life, although it becomes progressively more feasible in their later years at the school. 'In contrast to the conformist, who keeps the wheels of society running, this deviant is a non-productive liability; in contrast to the innovator who is at least "smart" and actively striving he sees no value in the success-foals which the culture prizes so highly; in contrast to the ritualist who conforms at least to the mores, he pays scant attention to the institutional practices. ' 2 1. r: arlborbW h by the Boys op. cit. p. 5 2.1 erton, tt. K., op. cit., p. 154. (6s He is, as Tierton put it, 'strictly speaking, in the society but not of it' -a position which will be particularly evident in the public school boy's house if he adopts this mode of adaptation. ' Among boys in the research school adopting this mode a feeling was often implied or expressed that the time spent at school was taken from their lives rather than being part of it, that real life is lived in the holidays when they were in the 'real' world. '... I managed to find myself an attic down in the school buildings, and I painted it all up and did it out and moved all my things down there in fact, which was more or less saying that I would not have anything more to do with the house, you see. And this was very unpopular. I only had about three books in the study. fhe rest was all moved down there. Tape recorder, gramophone, radio, all down there. And I used to spend most of my time down there. I used to go and work down there at nights. The Headmaster knew about it, but he didn't say anything, you see. ' (Recorded interview, sixth-former). Boys in their early years at a public boarding school may attempt to remove themselves from the pressures of the 'ranking' process for instance by seeking areas outside their house, which afford some degree of privacy - or by taking long walks when no compulsory activities are arranged. Some may make frequent visits to the music school where they can legitimately practise alone; others may find a corner of the library, or of a classroom where they can remain relatively undisturbed. however, the school routine described in earlier chapters, and the conjectures to which solitary activity may dive rise in the school, considerably limit the opportunities for junior boys to adopt this mode. 1. I; erton, R. K., op. cit., p. 153. t69 Inglis recalls his schooldays at Shrewsbury: 'There was nowhere to escape. Boys whose parents had paid for extra-curricular activities, such as music or carpentry were reluctantly conceded the right to attend their classes; but to go and read, say, the school library was not done - the convention being enforced not by the monitors but by the other scum ... At the Dragon (preparatory schoolg we had been treated as reasonably responsible individuals... to play games if we wished, but to bicycle out to the Oxford country- side or read in the library or do nothing, by ourselves, if we preferred. At Shrewsbury we were regimented as boys in a remand home; there was an institution actually called "Lock ups" designed to ensure that nobody could take advantage of the early darkness of a winter evening to enjoy solitude. 11 While the full rigours of school life cannot be removed, they can be mitigated by patterns of withdrawal accompanied by certain social interactions without the school's knowledge among the boys themselves. During the research period this took the form of individual boys getting up during the night to wander round the school precincts or the town, perhaps meeting up with a boy from another house: 'One of my releases was to get out at night and walk round the place when it was dark and there was no one around... just walk around. This is very exciting. It's like escaping from prison.. People like --- are known to patrol around. They do. You sometimes see them. There's something about wandering about the place at night. It's just different. You see you get so sick of the place seeing it every day for five years. You just hate the very stone. I used to go down to --- Lhous] and wake up Simon -- and Andy ---, and we just used to go down and sit by the river for half an hour and just watch things. We weren't doing anything wrong in fact. Je were just out at night. Smoking, that was all. But we'd be smoking during the day. ' (Recorded interview, sixth-former). A temporary attempt at symbolic retreat from the official life of the school is made by boys participating in unofficial and spontaneous non-creative pursuits, referred to by Goffman as 'removal' 1. Inglis, B. op. cit. r7o activities, which are sufficiently exciting or engrossing to enable the boy to pass or to 'kill' time. There was a wide variety of these activities even within the same school. At the research school boys in some houses did not have a paved yard on which yard games could be played, and so other games were devised. The most popular were ones which demand little preparation, no strict teams and are adaptable to whatever number of participants are available at any one time. At some schools yard football is most common, for instance at Malvern, where it is called 'Yarder'. At the research school some houses provided a paddock in an adjoining field, which in fine weather provides space for a variety of these sports; particularly popular some years ago was 'bike polo'. Activities of this nature most frequently observed in the research school were yard tennis, cricket, or football in fine weather, and, throughout the year, the playing of popular music on wirelesses and record players. Since it is an essential part of the staff's ideology that life in the school is of benefit to the boys, the majority of these activities are disparaged by the staff and made the object of critical comment. In any case they restrict as far as possible the times and places for the pursuit of these activities. Lt the same time, their existence is tolerated so long as boys do not appear to find them too engrossing or take part in them for a disproportionate amount of their time. In the research school during the period of the research the headmaster selected this aspect of school life for particular comment in his end of term rri exhortation. He referred to the amount of time 'wasted' in the school: ' .. playing unworthy records, reading unworthy books and rzasazines...... or trivial games. For instance, I see how much time you waste, fritter away playing yard cricket... and just mooching about, being irked by the regulations. Those of you who are restless would be restless anywhere. ' (Headmaster's speech at 'List Heading', Research school, Summer 1963. ) By adopting retreat as his dominant mode of adaptation a boy expresses his rejection of or indifference to the goals and the institutional means of the school, normally without replacement in either case. ' The retreatist approaches nearest to the alien in the public boarding school system. Rather similar in some respects to the tramp in the wider society, he has relinquished (by rejection or an attitude of sheer indifference) the principal features of the official ideology of the school - its character training, prestige system, authority structure - and tends to behave in a manner which does not conform either to the official or to the unofficial norms. In the notation of the devised Typology, his adaptation can be referred to as (n, n), (n, i), (i, n) or (i, i). 2 1. However the latent effect of his rejection of the school's ends may be for him to develop new ends, only to be reached after he has left the school. 2. Harary does not include, for reasons he does not state, the i, i position as retreat, but as 'vegetation'. ý72 Although boys adopt different modes during different phases of their school careers, the mode of adaptation to the public boardin; school which many of them adopt for a significant period of their lives in the school combines an ambivalence about the formal rules and regulations with an indifference to the school goals, represented as (a, i) on the typology. the boy adopting this mode accepts that the school is to provide his basic social environment during term-time for five years and attempts to establish a relatively contented existence within it by maximizing what he perceives as the available gratifications, whether they are officially permitted or proscribed. He can, to an extent, by this adjustment reduce tension between his home and his school environment, and concentrate on making the time pass easily, comfortably, and as quickly as possible. Goff man uses the term Colonization for a similar mode of adaptation to the 'total institution' and it is adopted here. There are, however, certain differences; in particular, while Goffman suggests that the staff of a 'total institution' may be 'vaguely embarrassed' at the satisfaction that the inmates obtain from colonization as a mode of adaptation, the staff of the boys 'public boarding schools' in the research appeared to interpret it in more favourable terms. Also, the boys in the schools tended to exhibit a considerable pride in the sense of gratification that they gained from manipulating the school's organizational structure, whereas the inmate of Goffman's 1 73 'total institution' was unlikely to admit to a fellow inmate that such gratifications were attainable. 1 Boys at Marlborough have reported that the school rules are accepted as necessary, yet their relevance is not immediately obvious, they are a nuisance, and the problem is how to avoid them .'2 The first feature of this mode of adaptation is the boy's developing concern with the gratifications provided by the privilege system, with the insignia and practices associated with the various statuses in the school organization. In the research school a boy adopting this mode will probable be much concerned with keeping himself well informed about the possibilities of promotion in his house order, and about the intentions of possible school leavers, so that he can predict to which study, dormitory, and place in the changing room he will be allocated the following year, whether he will be exempted from certain duties, or moved to a table ' higher' in the dining hall. The relative progress of individuals in their house, the standing of their house relative to other houses and the significance of the occasional withdrawal of privilege are, for such boy, a source of concern. The boy will probably learn to distinguish and later strive to be awarded the various badges, scarves, caps, ties and other clothing by which certain statuses in the school are symbolized. A 'house colour', for instance, may be awarded for a number of sports, each of which entitles the recipient to wear a distinguishing piece, or pieces, of clothing in the colours of his house - for rowing a black peaked cap embroidered with a pair 1. See Goffman, E. op. cit. (1961), pp. 62-63. 2. Marlborough by the Boys op. cit. p. 57 174- of crossed oars, for rugger a woollen scarf with horizontal coloured stripes, for cricket a silk scarf, and similar items for athletics, swimming, fives, tennis etc ..; a boy who has further distinguished himself in a school team, may wear similar items of clothing in 'first' or 'second' team colour. These symbols, together with the ritualistic awarding procedures and prestige associated with them, and the specific privileges for their wearers, can also provide a significant concern. Although access to such privileges in the research school revolves mainly around the house and sporting activities, there are other privileges associated with a wide variety of school activities. Good speakers are sent a formal letter from the becretary of the Debating Society, informing them that they have been elected 'members', certain rules may be relaxed for a boy who is considered to have distinguished himself in service to the school, lists of promotions and commendations are posted at intervals by the adjutant of the C. C. F. and those mentioned are entitled to add a crown or a stripe to their uniform. Unlike the 'total institution' described by Goffman, the privileges in the public boarding school are not so much related to the possession of favoured foods and others goods, but more to the symbols provided by the organization itself, the majority of which have meaning only within the school. 1 1. Each house in the research school displays, usually on the walls of the dining hall, a large number of framed, varnished 'Cock House Boards, and framed group photographs which identify the members of the House who were members of the individual teams in the inter-house sporting competitions; In the older houses these records stretch back over 70 years. In many houses there are also smaller boards displaying lists of boys with 'Academic Distinctions' predominantly scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. 171ý' A second feature of this mode is a concern with 'keeping out of trouble', a concentration on the semblance of maintaining the official rules. Accompaxing this is a fora of deceit by which he acts as a 'good boy' when alone with staff; boys at Marlborough reported that lying to the authorities to escape punishment .... is widespread though not universal, and it is certainly not condemned by public opinion. ' 1 One research school boy's written 'Advice to a brother' illustrates the ambivalence towards the official rules that is a feature of this mode of adaptation : I Do not smoke in obvious places. Do not go into the local when there are masters arouhd. The masters are harmless so do not take them too seriously. Do not have too many arguments with the Headman or he will throw you out. Make the best of your last days of freedom before you come to this school ... Give up Latin as soon as possible. Don't get off all sports, as one can have a slacker time without them. p. s. My coxing is coming along fine and we are the best "four" on the river' ('Advice to a brother. ' 14 year old, research school). The third feature of the colonisation mode is the use of practices which, without directly challenging the authority of the staff, or grossly infringing the rules, enable boys to obtain proscribed gratifications or to obtain permitted ones by proscribed means. Coffman refers to these practices in the 'total institution' as 'secondary adjustments' which he disting- uishes by contrasting them with the 'primary adjustments' by which an individual contributes actively officially sanctioned conditions. 2 to the organization under the Seconc; ary adjustments are the arrangements whereby the member circumvents the organization's 1. Marlborough by the Boys op. cit. p. 58. 2. Goffman, E. op. cit. (1961), p. 54, ff and 188 ff, on which the discussion of secondary adjustments is based. ýTý ý ........ .. v . ý,,.. uiu uv uL1 what he should be. These practices are neither equivalent to 'informal' activities nor merely activities that are omitted from the organization's schedules, nor are they equivalent to 'unofficial activities' - which can merely refer to those activities where the official aims are furthered in an unscheduled manner. But there are certain problems with the concept: secondary adjustments must be related to the de facto interpretation of the rules rather than to the rules themselves, and, further than this, certain adjustments may become incorporated in the school's assumptions about its boy's behaviour. A boy at karlborough explained that he kept the toaster under his bed, not so much because he might want to use it to make toast, but because it to some extent established his autonomy in the school. In the same way, in the research school boys would organize hazardous feats often of an athletic nature, involving climbing roofs and towers, which they rarely divulged but which satisfied them of their autonomy. The most prestigeful of such feats in the research school was the night-time ascent of the parish church spire. Punch cites a hazardous canoeing venture in which he was invited to take part at one of his research schools. 1 In the research school a group of senior boys ridiculed the 'games cult' by holding a meeting identical to that used to confer sports colours and 1. Punch, i.. op. cit. ! 77 awarding colours for tiddleywinks, and another instance during the research was the removal of all the copies of the research scnool song. Among the younger boys the secondary adjustments range from ridicule of staff behind their bacxs to organized refusal to make the expected effort in a rugger or cricket match. The mere pursuit of a secondary adjustment seems to provide a source of satisfaction. Secondary adjustment was evident at the research school in the league matches played on half-holidays between teams from different houses of boys without exceptional talent comprising their compulsory sport for the day. 1 In rugger, members of the two teams drawn to play each other in the afternoon, would frequently meet informally and try to agree on a policy for the match. Although there were one or two houses renowned for their 'keenness' usually, a reciprocal arrangement would be made to limit the efforts of both sides to that necessary to persuade the referee, or other staff present, that suitable exertion was being put into the game. The superficial impression at many of these matches was one of great effort, with appropriate groans in the scrums, displays of speed by the wingers, a chorus of cheers for points scored, and pointed concern over 'injuries' sustained, while in reality, the participants were putting on an act for the benefit of the referee 1. A small number of the most talented boys are recruited for school teams. They generally practise and play together and do not take part in routine league matches between houses. (78 and spectators. Similarly in cricket leagues, where though the school had attempted to regain control by the legitimation of shorter matches by limiting the number of overs bowled, there was deliberately bad batting and an encouragement to batsmen of both teams to take unnecessary risks, their own as well as the fielding side frequently exhorting them to 'have a go' even 'get yourself out', so that the game could be ended in the minimum time. If both sides agreed in principle, and no master was present, these matches effectively lasted only as long as the participants felt that they need do for the purposes of persuading the housemaster and captain of cricket that a legitimate game had been played. Where legitimate activity proceeds beyond the point to which it was intended by the organization, Goffman refers to 'working the system'. ' As the boy learns the rules and norms of the school he gains a knowledge both of its official and unofficial workings. As he learns the organizationally legitimate behaviour at meal-times, at sport, on shopping expeditions and at academic work, he also becomes aware of opportunities for secondary adjustments he may be able to make. In most schools, by obtaining permission to take part in some special approved activity, assignment or recreations, the boy-member also has access to certain incidental gratifications which normally require a further special dispensation from the school. During the research period a visit, supposedly by the research school Art Society to the Tate Gallery was particularly heavily over- subscribed because of the destination - London - and the fact that the participants confidently expected at least an hour without supervision in the vicinity before their return. . part from a few enthusiasts, the applicants' interest in art seemed to be transitory. Rehearsing for the school play or editing the school magazine qualify a boy to be out of his house 1. ýoffiýan, ý, o cit. (1961) pp. 209 if. 1 79 in the evening; by taking up photography he can be alone in the school darkroom for long periods by taking up painting or sketching he can cycle alone into the country : 'I managed to get myself onto sketching instead of rowing that term, which meant I just whizzed off into the countryside with my rucksack and saw her Chis girl friend). It was absolutely pathetic, very tawdry and very crummy, but it was the only thing really that kept you going. It was the only thing that had any reality, because it was outside the place. ' (Recorded interview, sixth former). In fact, the only way at the research school of forming a relationship with a girl was by 'working the system'. A number of activities enabled this to take place: the school orchestra included a small number of daughters of masters, who also came to dancing lessons and meals. In one house, the housemaster had two teenage daughters, an attractive wife and a dog. His wife ran surgery, and the dog needed exercise. Thus the queues for the surgery were long and the dog received considerable exercise, so much tnat for a time, 'going to surgery' and 'taking the dog for a walk' became recognised euphemisms. In other schools ,, Yu r choral and, activities organised jointly with girls' schools provide the occasional opportunity for an albeit transitory interaction. Other ways of working the system included working long hours to obtain extra hours in the study before bed or permission to get up early, arranging, with conniving fringe staff members, business which could only be conducted out of hours, volunteering for any activity at all where proscribed gratifications could conceivably be gained. Boys did not generally, however, seem to Igo fake illness. In the research school the benefits for this were few; illness and residence in the sanatorium involved the boy in isolation from his fellows and a sense of being out of touch on his return to normal school life. Residence in the sanatorium had few dispensations to offer to compensate for its additional deprivations. The members of an organization may utilise organizational territory, accomodation, equipment and facilities for their own purposes, and tnus modify the way of life formally prescribed by the organization. Three categories of territory can be disting- uished within the school organization; staff regions, surveillance space and free places, each providing the boy with different opportunities for working the system. Staff regions are those to whuk 'S access, deemed to be the prerogative of the member or members of staff to whom they have been allocated, and boys may enter them only with tneir permission, or accompanied by an authorised agent. These regions include, in the research school, ail staff houses and their precincts, certain specific areas in each school house, the staff common room, and, more marginally, the classrooms where each master customarily taught. A masters classes come to his, in the research school, in his room, and since he might teach in that room for two-thirds or more of his scnool periods he usually adorned it with maps and pictures and used the desk for storing a variety of academic and other possessions; a few senior sixth form classes came to be closely associated with their form-master's room, but essentially most of these rooms were known by the master's name rather than by the class he took. rsl In the research school at least, a certain scope for secondary adjustments was available within these staff regions for the more senior boys, who could use the school rooms of sympathetic masters for occupations which might not have met the approval of their house- master. A small number of the staff who were only partially committed to the instrumental goals of the school, and who had no duties concerning the custody of the boys, made a habit of entertaining selected usually senior boys informally during time when they were free, and these groups provided for the boys concerned a form of association of which their housemasters could hardly disapprove: 'During my last year I was all right because I knew the ---s, the ---s and the ---s and Dick---. And I'd talk to them about Lmy feeling]. But this was very unusual. ' (R. ecorded interview, sixth-former). Goffman suggested the term 'surveillance space' for those regions of the 'total institution' to which, provided he is not required to be elsewhere at the time, the inmate has legitimate access but under organizational control. ' 'Surveillance space' in the research school is considered here to include most school territory except staff re; _, ions and that part of the environs which were within bounds at the time. Although many areas had one or more staff specifically assigned to their supervision, areas such as the houses, by the river and in the Chapel, all staff members had the right to extend their surveillance to these areas, and the extent to which a boy might use an area for secondary adjustments depended to a great extent on his status in the school, his relationship with the staff member involved, and on the concessions that the latter were prepared to make on that specific occasion. In the research school housemasters usually made concessions to and exercised minimal vigilance over their senior prefects in their studies, generally knocking on the door before entering. Vigilance was, however, considerably more rigorous, for younger boys, even those in the junior studies. 1. Goffman, S. o . cit. (1961) pp. 22$ ff. I$z Certain areas and rooms in a school which emerge, with the tacit co-operation of many staff, where staff vigilance is minimal constitute the third type of territory in the public boarding school, and tend to provide the most likely venue for secondary adjustments. In the research school in the period 1962-3 one of these 'free places' was the 'Tower Room'. This small room on the top floor of the main school building had originally been allocated to the 'bookaen' - senior boys who had volunteered to assist with the classification of books in the school library, but during the following years the room came to be used by boys from the history Sixth, many but not all of whom were 'bookmen'. The intervention of a housemaster or another member of staff in the affairs of this room was unlikely and it soon took on the atmosphere of a homely retreat from the control procedures of the rest of the school - with equipment available for making coffee and tea and frying food, censored magazines and, on occasion, cans of beer and ash trays. There were, however, some intermittent attempts by one or two members of the senior staff at the research school to maintain surveillance; one boy who was found entertaining a younger boy and assisting his with his work in this room, was expelled for this (among similar offences) by the headmaster. Each school has a number of these free areas, some frequented for the performance of spedifically tabooed activities and others merely to obtain time away from more immediate staff control, access to most of them having been obtained as an incidental aspect of same specific assignment or responsibility. In some schools, such as the research school and Ampleforth, the school prefects l$3 have been allocated a common-room for their exclusive use, and in most schools, the participants in activities such as school plays and editing the school magazine are allocated areas which may be appropriated as the venue for secondary adjustments. The latter, however, are open to a reimposition of staff control and tend to be a less secure tenure. Free places of the more permanent kind tend in the school to acquire association with those who use them most, and these frequent users usually attempt to restrict access to boys who are acceptable to them. The place becomes regarded as the property of the users, in a sense their 'home' and the sense of ownership is sometimes as great as that of members of the staff about their classrooms. 1 At the junior level, this can be seen when the older boys in the junior studies and changing rooms reserve areas, such as around the fire or behind a row of clothes pegs, for their own use. Throughout a school various fields, rooms, lavatories, and even coat-hooks and shelves may be appropriated by groups of boys. Some such areas may be appropriated by an individual rather than a group of boys; these personal territories are officially discouraged in the boys' early years, although to a greater or lesser extent in different schools, the senior boy may be allowed some scope to develop such an area - preferably within rather than outside the general surveillance of the school staff. Personal territories are most developed in schools which allocate a small partitioned section of a room in which the boy is to sleep or use as a study -a (carrell' (Charterhouse) or a 'toy' (Winchester) 1. Goffaan, E. op. cit. (1961), refers to these as "Group Territories", p. 239, ff. Iq4- Boys spend hours of their first weekend Z-of the term) decorating this place of their own. The aim is to make the study as individual as possible, and the means collage. A hasty glance would suggest that the result is merely uniform .... but the ingenious juxtapositions, the crude vitality, the dynamic urge to transform the wall, all entitle one to use the word "art" without the slightest hesitation ... A monitor spent his first weekend in making his study warm, sightly and fragrant, as follows. He started with a room ten feet by eight feet with a table, a chair, and the book shelf. Wooden panelling covered the lower half of the walls, above which rioted vivid red and blue flowers in a wallpaper pattern. The only regulation he had to observe was not to use drawing pins but Sellotape instead ... He laid his thick, serviceable carpet, hoisted thick curtains and si. uck Sellotape round the window frames. Thus warm, he blotted out the flowers with photographs of Switzerland put out by a travel agency, and stuck green baize covers over all the panelling. Ceiling apart, the room was now totally covered. There followed the installation of musical apparatus and a Fresh Aire spray and a primus stove., 1 These personal territories provide for the boys innumerable opportunities for working the system - decorations, possessions and activities are covertly extended so that proscribed gratifications can be obtained. There is no clear line where this practice becomes illegitimate; there is a dynamic process by which the boy makes repeated attempts to extend his use of the territory, and the staff responsible increase the degree of vigilance and make intermittent raids on the territory to limit it. However, in the schools visited, it appeared that many of these checks were carried out with little enthusiasm and even the most vigorous often seem to have only temporary effects. A further aspect of the boys' atteapts at 'working the system' is their use of facilities for the storage and conveyance of certain possessions. At home, the boys usually have special places of safekeeping for their personal possessions, and these, 1. Charterhouse by the Boys, op. cit. p. 31, ff, See also a discussion in Chapter 4, above, and Wilson, J. op. cit. p. 99, ff. (gS like the items tney retain, represent an extension of their autonomy, partly because these places protect their possessions from misappropriation by others. On entry to the public boarding school, the boy is not only restricted in the nature of the items he may bring with him, but also in the storage places he may use to shield them from the attentions of others. Schools vary in their specific regulations on this issue, but the majority neither provide nor permit any completely private storage facilities. Few allow boys to lock their desks or cupboards. Keys to most room; cupboards and buildings are retained by staff rather than boys, who normally sign a receipt if they need to use one. Those facilities that the boy may legitimately use are limited and no storage place in the school is secure from inspection by a master, who may without notice, at any time choose to search for illicit items or check on the tidiness or condition of the possessions in it. Further, especially in his early years, the boy is informed that each item - towel - coat - books, clothes, food, have only one legitimate semi-public storage place. The absence of any item may on occasions, be as important as the possession of an illicit item. In the research school a junior boy may be fined if he can give no reason for the absence of his towel from the appropriate hook in the changing room. The boys therefore devise illicit storage places, concealed from the staff and perhaps from all other members of the scnool. l In the research school, attics, cellars, bicycle 1. Goffmn refers to these illicit places as 'stashes' which, in the Central Hospital, ranged from lockers in the recreation building to hidden pouches concealed in the patients' clothes. Goffman, E. op. cit. (1961), pp. 249. ! gý sheds and school outhouses were used to store larger possessions even extending to the outhouses of local farmers, where motor bicycles and in one or two cases vehicles were concealed. Marlborough and some other schools now allow boys with their housemaster's permission, to bring cars to school for 'vehicle maintenance' in the CCF, specifying however that Such vehicles may be driven only on the Parade around (not past the Rand (Room at one end, nor past the Science Labs at 1 the other) and only in the continuous presence of a master. ' At the research school during CCF periods, certain boys were allowed to learn to ride a motor cycle as prospective 'dispatch riders'; others worked on rebuilding an old car in the school workshop. But most illicit goods - mainly cigarettes, alcohol, love letters and contraceptives plus a few forbidden books and magazines - were hidden in containers apparently containing legitimate items. Alcoholic drinks were stored for example, in bottles labelled as photographic chemicals, and cigarettes in hollowed out books or food tins. Where the storage places are fixed, a variety of means are devised by the boys for transporting their possessions from storage place to the place of use and from place of acquisition to the place of storage. Since most boys, as long as they perform their other obligations are under constant surveillance, there are innumerable and simple ways of transporting smaller possessions around the school. Day boys are employed to buy cigarettes and 1. Marlborough Schools Rules (revised edition), 1966. (87 alcohol, visitors persuaded to bring proscribed items with them, and these are carried around in boys pockets, in boxes, bags and books. larger possessions are not used usually on the school premises because of the risk of detection and confiscation. The boys with motor cycles and cars at the research school occasionally managed to use them to travel some distance, and one during the research period was involved unknown to the staff in an accident. Intransigence Intransigence is a mode of adaptation which combines a rejection of the school's institutionalized means with an indifference to its ends. In the Revised Typology this adaptation is indicated as (r, i). NicConnell describes this mode as it appears to him as a housemaster at Eton : 'This is the point at which Lt-he boy7 hates the rules and regulations of boarding school life most .... He wants to beat the system which is restraining him. his wide-eyed wonder at the kaleidoscope of the Eton scene is a thing of the past; he is desperately bored with the four walls of his room and the view from the window .... He particularly resents the authority which boys only a couple of years older than he are allowed to exercise over him. His thoughts about the future are completely vague .... Every square inch of his room is designed to provide a contrast with his present environment ...... His school dress has been made as "hep" as the regulations will allow. The trousers have been narrowed by his tailor and his footwear consists of a sort of soft black moccasin, sewn together crudely by thick stitching. The stitching is now wearing out and his feet are beginning to probe through the seams. Most of his dressing time is spent with a comb getting his hair right. He is growing it long at the back and is pleased with the way it is beginning to curl upwards and outwards. This is important to him, partly because he likes it that way and partly because it irritates exactly the kind of people with whom he does not wish to be identified. ' 1 In adopting this mode the Etonian is, from 1-. cConnell's description, not unlike the boy in any other public boarding school in the research. In the argot of most of these schools there were terms which applied to this mode 'anti' or, as in the 1. TicConnell, J. D. Q. op. cit. pp. 50-66. 1$g research school and many others, the term 'bolsh' or ('bolshie'). Ollerenshaw has written of the girls' public boarding schools : Eery experienced headmistress knows and recognises this "broody" phase; good schools have &, heir own techniques of deliberately driving or cajoling girls through this time of despondency'. ) The 'bolsh' typically attempts to symbolise and assert his autonomy in his style of dress. At the time of the main research this involved wearing tight trousers, 'Chelsea' boots or pointed shoes, a coloured or black shirt and a distinctive overcoat, and in the boy growing his hair and encouraging it into a distinctive style. The modal 'bolsh' in the Aspleforth news at Ampleforth was satirically contrasted pictoztally with the 'Right' approach to life in the school. The 'Right' approach was labelled as follows : Brain, always finding new ways to make boys keen, good unobtrusive etc ... Close cropped hair, Shows inability to get round shac [-school] barbers. Mouth, only opened when told to be. Ear. Never dirty. Expressionless face, Shows lack of character. Also shows tremendous house spirit. "Happy"badge, to show keenness to please. Pens, Like all good boys have. Patch, for covering holes worn by constant scraping past masters in passages. Empty hand, no status symbol. Pocket, full of hand, sweets, scraps of paper, etc White handkerchief, for continually blowing nose, cleaning pen, cleaning up split food in refectory. Patch (on knee), worn out by constant kneeling in prayers, church submission to monitors. Grey. thick, wool socks Floor, for piercing up litter, wiping up spit. Hard-wearing, metal tipped, well worn brown heavy leather brogues designed to last from 8 years old to 18 years old, without re-soling 1. Ollenrenshaw, K. op. cit. p. 173. to) Snake belt. salvaged from prep school days Yet another Pen Crumby books for taking notes in, especially during History, R. I. etc... Black tie, because he has to wear one. Braces, to help belt keep trousers up. Same old (unobtrusive) blazer or jacket. White, floppy-collared shirt, bought in school shop, as are all other clothes. Optional NHS glasses for scholars Memorised expression shows keenness to see all from 7.10 on. ' The contrasting 'Wrong', or l bolshiel , approach was labelled : Wall (to prop up) Hair (no comment) Mind (allegedly one-tracked) Specs (to look intellectual) FFa - Wednesdays and holiday only Slouch Spots (indicate virility) (Tie) corps CC. C. F. 7 bootlace Badge (C. N. D. ) (optional) if idealist Stripes [-on shirt lurid red and peuce brown Chip (optional) for shoulder Obtrusive blazer or jacket Buckle (belt optional) Pocket (to hook thumbs in) Earphone for pocket transistor radio set Lower lip (adjustable) under cynical beatnik expression Paper to relieve boredom during class Gee-tar (status symbol) need not be played. Group (optional) such as Hairy Helmsley Hipsters Vulgar 12-inch corduroy trews Lower part of wall (to stub out fags on) [-Trouser] Bottoms flared to regulation 16 inches Sox (lurid) Sanforised plastic flourescent (spots optional) Creepers (electric squeak chamber included) Bass can (empty) Floors (to sit on or spit on, as the mood strikes you. Also useful for depositing litter, fag ends on) Gum (chewed)' 1 Such overt manifestations of the intransigent mode present a challenge to the staff to ascertain, if possible using universalistic crieteria, the legitimacy of this behaviour, and in particular of this apparel within the school organization. In sane schools individual staff members spent considerable time devising, discussing 1. Anpleforth Newa Exhibition number 1963. I49FC, and revising measures of the length of boys' hair, the shape of their shoes, the colour of their shirt and other aspects of their style of dress; at Ampleforth staff challenged certain boys to remove his trousers over his shoes as a test of the width of the bottom of his trouser legs, the unsuccessful being punished. The adoption of the intransigent mode results in a distinctive type of defiance of the means prescribed by the school organization. The 'bolsha' perception of relative deprivation is typically heightened and typically also their behaviour is such to bring them to the attention of the staff. Boys at Tonbridge have observed that, I For them, the closed community is an artificial and embittering world. None of its compensations operate to reduce the sense of being misplaced and mishandled. An individual boy or master may reach them. But it seems to us, some of whom have experienced this state of mind, that if it endures, it is best to leave early. The school cannot cater for every temperament and not much is achieved by subjecting both parties to the ordeal. A reluctance to conform, a diffidence about friendship, a sense of privacy and a need to be withdrawn are not the virtues that a public school can readily accomodate. One only has to think of places where a boy can safely smoke a cigarette : they are usually damp and always uncomfortable. The individualist is bound to suffer in any communal setting; and a public school cannot ever fully satisfy him' 1 In the research school the defiance characteristic of this mode appeared most evident in houses which at the time were run by the more autocratic housemasters. The houses were often instanced by boys and staff in discussions of bolshiness in the school. 1. Tonbridge by the Boys op. cit. p. 36. I91 The adoption of this mode involving, as the boys at Tonbridge expressed it, 'a cynical indifference to the life of the school' is for many a temporary adaptation before they adopt another mode. Rebellion A few boys, however, move on from the intransigent or 'bolshie' mode of adaptation to an adjustment, typically in their later years in the school, which in addition to a rejection of the means, rejects also at least some of the fundamental goals of the school with the substitution, or partial substitution of other goals and means to those goals. On the Revised typology this rebellion mode is indicated as (r, r). Lindsay, the headmaster of Ealvern described this mode to a meeting of the Headmasters' Conference in 1963 s 'There should be no need to spend much time in describing a situation with which we are all familiar. I believe that it is our fate to be headmasters at a time of great perplexity and uncertainty and that at this difficult time we are faced with problems to which there is no easy solution - certainly no solution reached by a mere reinforcement of past methods What is perplexing to so many of us is that normal, straight- forward, friendly and decent young men suddenly kick over the traces in ways which we are forced to treat seriously but which more often than not are just plain stupid. towards the and of the summer term - the post 'A' level danger period - you find yourself forced to bring to a premature end the school career of fundamentally worthwhile young man, probably a prefect, who is involved in a breakout from his house by night, with all that so often goes with a breath of night air. When asked by a College or potential employer to write testimonial on such a boy, how many of us refer to the escapade ? Do we not by our silence admit that we have dealt with the temporary lapse and that the punishment was meted out quite as much as a deterrent as a method of reforming the evil doer. In most cases we still have faith in the ultimate reliability of the boy once he returns to sanity. Let me repeat we are not dealing with a perverse or crooked generation; we have to guide a generation who, in the words of the Crowther Report, have substituted "the public opinion of their peers for the wisdom of the ages". As one boy remarked : "I am sorry if I've let you down. I didn't want to do that. But I simply cannot accept your hoarny public-school values". ' (From paper read to the Headmasters' Conference 'Freedom, Authority and the Older joy'. Oct. 1963). ('ý 2 Rebellion takes various forms in different schools at different times. In many cases individual senior boys repeatedly refused to take positions of responsibility, to become prefects, or waived the right to employ a fag. But such boys may alsg end to precipitate their leaving the school, typically as soon as they have attained a standard of education consistent with their immediate substitute goals. ' Younger boys seldom appeared to have adopted this mode in the research school; to them the opportunities for rebellion at this stage in their school career rarely appears realistic in the light of the school's control techniques, and the implicit or explicit liaison between their parents and the school staff, and between the latter and the prefects. The rejection of the schools organizational means and objectives and the substitution of alternative goals and means to those goals in certain schools, including the research school, was sometimes expressed collectively by a group of rebels : 'There are always people who said that this place is terrible, but it didn't get any idealogical basis until this movement came along. There were two young people - Andrew and Edward. They left about two years before they were due to, because they couldn't stand it. They were in the same form with me and they had a big influence on me. And then you see, when I dropped Christianity, I used to read a lot of Socialism, and began to think it wasn't just that a few people had all the cream and were at this school, sort of thing and would go to cushy jobs. From then on the development was easy ... You have the school prefects in anything that's going on, but we used to like to think that the real power lay in handling the magazine and in handling the library and having the school behind us, which they were in a way. There was a lot Lof troubl7 about the Tower Room. We used to have a lot of mud slung about the "'rower Room clique" - how they monopolised all the school offices, which we did you see. de carried every school office except those that the school prefects got hold of such as captain of rugger and things. And there was a lot of bad blood about at one stage, but it was never serious in that we had far more popular support even though we didn't have spotted ties. And this gave us a certain amount of power. ' (Recorded interview, sixth former). 1" ° practice which seems to be more widespread in certain 4r1s' public boarding schools. t 93 some housemasters attempted to control rebels in their houses by depriving or threatening to deprive them of the privileges which accompany positions of responsibility in the school: 'I didn't turn up to one of the House rugger matches to cheer. And the Housemaster just had me in and screamed at me for a couple of minutes. During which time it was made clear that I just wouldn't be made a prefect next year. This was meant to break me you see. Well it didn't of course, and that was the end of him. That was the only Lsanetio 7 that he could use. That was the only thing he could think of because everyone in a way wants to be house prefect because it gives you more freedom. And they can play the authority game and they can yell at; juniors, misuse their fags, you see ... (Recorded interview, si:. "th foý., l r) Others attempted to identify the rebels with the school's means and goals by allocating them responsibilities. 1 It is important, however, to note that boys who have adopted alternative modes of adaptation to the school, do not necessarily disapprove of the intransigent or the rebel mode; Punch's enquiry showed that in one public school, when asked 'What might an unpopular boy be called ?' the least frequently used were 'rebel', and 'anti'. 2 The boys' responses to life in the socio-cultural context of a public boarding school have been presented in this discussion within the framework of a revised form of Ierton's typology of individual adaptation, but the nature of the research data precludes more than observations and tentative suggestions on the I. See Tom Hughes'description of this mode in Arnold's rugby; fom is given the responsibility for a younger boy whom he must inform of the rules. Hughes, r. 'How the tide turned', op. cit. 2. Punch, Iii. op. cit. 1966. ýý4- public school boys' responses to the school, and on the determinants of their choice of mode of adaptation. Considerable further research is required to locate, in particular, these determinants, and to order them in a systematic classification which would provide propositions relating classes of determinants to alternative modes of individual adaptation such as those put forward by 1ierton in his typology. Undoubtedly the boys' presenting culture and their choice of reference objects would figure significantly in any subsequent analysis along such lines in the public boarding school. 19. < CriaFP&t $ S'L . FF Among the factors contributin to the decision to join the staff of the public boarding school economic incentives are not, in most cases, probably of first importance. ) At the majority of public boarding schools a member of the teaching staff is paid only slightly more than are his colleagues in state schools. Kalton states an average actual salary figure of £ 1,554 for public school teaching staff in his survey, but Douglas Hillard, bursar of Felsted, has written of his astonishment at the results of 'some recent enquiries' made by him to certain public schools. 2 'I was astonished at the wide variation from starting salary to finishing salary, as well as the extraordinary difference in amounts paid for extra responsibility. In one school a responsibility allowance of £50 was given for a particular task, yet in another the same responsibility attracted an additional payment of £4001 Some schools started their salary scale Z300 a year more than others, and in some schools the maximum was reached in 15 years, whereas in others it took 23-32 years to reach. ' 3 Salary scales in many public schools are based on the national Burnham scales with supplementary payments for extra responsibilities. Subsidized accommodation is usually provided, as is an additional £ 50 or Z 100 per annum. Kalton reported from his data that 80 per cent of public boarding school masters lived in accommodation provided by the school and that about half of these paid no rent. 4 1. There will be no detailed consideration of the domestic staff of the public boarding school here, but their potential power as a group should be borne in mind. In some schools they have founded union branches and in a few schools these have enough support for them to be recognized by the school. In one or two instances they have organized strikes and stoppages, but this has been unusual. In general, domestic staff have shown their discontent with wages - they are paid as little as £2.10.0. per week (plus full board during term) at some schools - and conditions by moving on an individual basis to other employment. 2. Kalton, G., op. cit. p. 71. 3. Millard, D., 'The Fees are Rising', Conference Vol-5, lb-1, 1968, p. 35. 4. Kalton, G., o cit. p. 74. 1 Beyond this, housemasters in particular receive further benefits in kind, such as free heating, food and service for themselves and their immediate families during term and, to a more limited extent, during the school holidays. The headmaster of the research school determined his scale by 'periodically asking the Local authority theirs, adding it all together, then adding an additional X per cent and reallocating it on the basis of the responsibilities of individual (staff members). ' (Interview with the headmaster of research school, July, 1962). All the teaching staff in the main part of the research school have the opportunity of free accommodation, but the headmaster stated in an interview that he may offer 'about x100 a year at my discretion' as an alternative. The public boarding school when recruiting its teaching staff takes into account the multiple tasks and roles that they will be expected to undertake. lllthough, on average, a full-time staff member teaches 27 to 29 periods each week, that is, 18 to 19 hours per week, with reduced teaching loads in some schools for housemasters, about 45 per cent of the masters at public boarding schools, according to the data Kalton presents, are involved in formal duties directly related to boarding, Apart from the preparation and marking of school work the master, but not the housemaster, is formally free after school hours, but most staff are either appointed on the understanding that they will take on further responsibilities at a later stage in their career at the school, or are encouraged to do so when they arrive. In the research school ten of the sixty teaching staff had received commissions from the afar Office and ran 1. Kalton, G., op. cit. p. 69. In the research school, a housemaster's teaching load is reduced by 3 to 8 periods a week. The headmaster teaches about seven periods a week, mostly classics, but also some science, which is not his own subject but one which he feels is a necessary element in his own education. Kalton, G., op. cit., reports that 88 per cent of the staff of public boarding schools are full time, the main exception being music staff, three quarters of whom are part time. 177 the school C. C. F.; three or four organized the two scout troops; others ran the societies, were responsible for the magazine, library, the school printing press, and assisted in the refereeing of games, in judging competitions and in training boys in school and house games teams. The school, in effect, makes extensive demands beyond those of the classroom on the time and energies of all members of the teaching staff. They are expected to attend a variety of school functions, especially the chapel services, school prayers, and the official public ceremonies, and are thus involved in school affairs for a major part of their time during term, Their holidays, however, usually in the region of 16 weeks a year, are about four weeks longer than those customary in the state sector. The staff are indirectly rewarded by their social environment both during and outside term. The research school is situated, as are the majority of such schools, in a small-town community where the staff member shares the prestige of the school, and usually receives privileytged treatment in the locality, treatment which is not generally experienced by others in the same occupation in the state sector. Within the school the staff have authority over a large number of boys and in most of their interactions are treated with deference and referred to respectfully by the boys. They wear distinctive dress both in and outside the school buildings for a significant proportion of the time - consisting of a black academic gown, to which is added on certain occasions (such as school chapel services) a lined hood appropriate to their university degree. They drive cars around a town where the majority of boys must walk. They occupy positions of precedence at formal ceremonies, and they and their families are accorded the right to use certain school facilities for their enjoyment. The research school, for instance, owns the only chlorinated swimming pool in the town, and its use, during the school holidays, is limited to staff and their families (and to certain residents who can, by their close association with the school, r9g receive permission from the headmaster to use it). In the term time special times are reserved for 'staff families' to use the pool. Similarly, staff members and their families have the best seats at school film shows reserved for them. The wives of staff, in particular, share aspects of their husband's status: '... the headmaster's wife will organize flag days and deputy assistant masters' wives to carry the flags, visit the boarding house matrons and invite them out to supper or the theatre; and similarly the wives of housemasters have a status slightly superior to other wives'. 1 Perhaps more significant than the nature of the task and the conspicuous returns for the job is the fact that many individuals seeking employment on the teaching staff of a public boarding school will be returning to a familiar social environment, and in a role that they, presumably, have earlier come to esteem. Their experiences and socialization within the residential environment of a public school, especially if followed by a collegiate life at university, and by service in the forces, often appears to lead to a preference for a continuation of a similar way of life. John di-Ison states categorically that, from his experiences of the public school system, staff do choose this career 'to clothe themselves (or reclothe themselves) in the public school aura which they knew as boys; to be able to feel part of a community, at once respected and respectable, earning a reasonable salary and being honoured both within the community and outiide it. Though they have not as much money as the Jaguar-owning parents who crowd the chapel on Sundays, and proudly watch the young men whom they pay to educate their young process in gowns and hoods down the aisle, they can meet them on equal terms. Their position in the chain of command and precedence, their exact status in the school, is clearly defined and secure. They like calling the headmaster "sir", and being called "sir" by the boys... t. 2 Certainly nearly three-quarters of the public boarding- school masters in halton's survey had attended a public school themselves, and approximately one in eight had attended the school at which they were now teaching. 3 1. Wilson, J., op. cit. p. 81. 2. Wilson, J., op. cit. p. 80. 3. Kaiton, G., op. cit. P. 53. 199 At the research school 10 to 15 per cent of the staff over the last 15 years have been past pupils of the school. ' Kalton also reports from his data that over half of the staff in the schools surveyed had taught at no other type of school; including the 40 per cent who have taught at no other school, that 31 per cent had taught at their present school for over 15 years, and that 93 per cent of the staff with 20 or more years teaching experience had spent ten or more of these years at their present school. 25 of the 60 staff in the research school in 1963 had been teaching there in 1950; none of these 25 had moved to other posts by 1967. The teaching staff of public boarding schools are predominantly male, aged between 25 and 60, more than half being under 40.3 About three quarters of the masters are married, whereas, in the girls' public schools, two-thirds of the mistresses are single. On the whole, they have good academic qualifications - 60 per cent of the masters holding degrees with first - or second - class honours. But there are a small, but significant, number - about 12 per cent according to Kalton - without a degree. Of those with degrees, two thirds had read arts subjects and one third science. 4 At the time of the research 12 of the research school staff had taken a first in one or both parts of their degree examinations, and six, including some of these, held higher degrees. 83 per cent of the graduate staff in Kalton! s survey had received Oxford or Cambridge degrees. 5 1. There are at present (1967) ten past pupils on the staff. 2. Kalton, G., op. cit. pp. 76-78. 3. See Kalton, G., op. cit. pp. 44-5; headmasters are excluded from his figures. Weinberg gives some data on the social and educational background and attitudes of public boarding school headmasters, Weinberg, I.; op. cit. Chapter 4. 4. See Kalton, G., op. cit. pp. 45-51. 5. Kalton, G., op. cit. p. 47. It is worth noting however, without assessing the casual factor behind his finding, that Szreter maintains that the overall trend between 1939 and 1961 indicated a decline in Oxford and Cambridge graduates on the staff of public schools. ' About two thirds of the staff had no formal qualification in teaching. Further than a degree in their subject, all McConnell considers necessary for new staff at Eton is an introductory course on how Eton works: 'The supposition here LEtor7 is that a man either can or cannot teach and no amount of theory can alter the fact. New masters are given their classes and they must either sink or swim ... At Eton ... one must develop a technique which can be discovered nowhere else. Eton has no "method". The curriculum is there, the syllabus is there. How a master gets through it is his own affair, so long as he does it. ' 2 It is not usual for a teacher's performance in the public boarding school to be rated on a universalistic basis among his colleagues in the common room; the latter in general do not distinguish between the objective assessment of a master's teaching (and counselling) methods and his adherence to the staff code - especially that aspect which concerns the maintenance of the social distance between the staff and the boys. hasters who do attempt to maintain a close and informal contact with boys usually have to do this covertly, and to be discreet about it during their conversations with other members of staff. In the majority of instances a master is assessed not so much by the effect he has had in an academic sense on individual boys but rather by his ability to maintain order in his classes, his house or in any group for which he has been allocated responsibility. On appointment a new master is usually in his early twenties. If, after three or four years, his performance in the tasks and roles bo which he has been allocated is considered satisfactory, he may be appointed a house tutor or allocated some specific organizational responsibility. kle will be considered by the headmaster for a 1. , 2 Szreter, it... 'A Note on the Staffing of the Public Schools', British Journal of Sociolozy, Vol, JVIII, No. 2 (1967), pp. 187-190. i, icConn, 3ll, J. ll. R., o . cit. pp. 93ff. 7-t housemastership within a further five to ten years, a post which he will be allowed to hold for 15 years. By then, his duties in the school organization have become more numerous, his responsibilities have widened, and typically his private life increasingly embraces the life of the school. During his term of office as housemaster he will probably identify with his house to an extent which is unusual among the boys in it, interpreting all kinds of individual performance in terms of house performance and prestige. He may become more excited than the boys in his house over successes in inter-house competitions. A research school boy perceived the situation in his house in the following terms: ' loves to have his head of house head of school ..... This gives him a good feeling. He gets as many school prefects in the house as possible. Because it meant that his house was obviously top house. There's a lot of this petty pushing between housemasters ... It's ridiculous. It's like a lot of racehorses. 3ach housemaster has to feel that his house is doing well. If somebody gets expelled from your house, it means that you would be rather afraid of showing your face in the Common Room, because some idiot like would start making cutting comments, "It's a disgrace to the house, etc. ". ' (Recorded interview, sixth former). Housemasters and other senior staff may constitute a conservative core within the school with which the headmaster has to contend. This was illustrated in the research school when the bursar decided to combine the arrangements for providing house meals into a more centralized system. The first move was to build a new refectory block for three adjacent houses, comprising a kitchen, run by a caterer/supervisor, and dining facilities for the boys. But the refusal of the three housemasters involved to compromise over the exact times, over the seating layout and over the arrangement of the accommodation meant that the school had to provide instead three separate dining halls in the same block with separate entrances, each with its own time-table and design. A housemaster may be made a head of department during his 15 year term, but, unless he is made assistant to the headmaster, once his housemastership terminates he, in effect, moves from a focal position to one in which his responsibilities are significantly reduced, and correspondin; ly, symbols of his status in the school, such as his seat in school ceremonies and the accommodation provided for him, are gradually withdrawn. An ex-housemaster has expressed his reaction to these changes in an article 'On not being a House- master': 'Your life suddenly displays an astonishing lack of problems. True it is that they have given you many more private pupils, true it is that you have a brand new history period to teach, but no longer does the knock on the door set you wondering whether it is "leave to go to the town" or "Snodgrass has run away" - and there are times when you rejoice in the absence of anxiety. On the other hand you miss the cheerful noise and company about you, you are, perhaps, surprised at the extent to which you have been sustained by the great machine, and the sight of familiar colours makes you wonder how the wearer is getting on. ' 1 Part of the staff task is to produce and to process a variety of written reports, receipts and instructions containing brief information for other staff members, and in some cases for the boy's parents, on the school's treatment of the boy and the effect it has had on him. This aspect of the staff's work is most apparent in the arrangements made when the routines of the normal school day are to be disturbed by events outside their control - such as an outbreak of an infectious disease, a change in the academic demands of the universities, or a national event such as Hamilton, R., 'On not being a Housemaster', School and College, Vol. 30, I40.3,1966. 203 the death of the monarch, and a recurrent disturbance of this kind is the consequence of the detailed requirements of the examination bodies who organize the '0' and 'A' level examinations each July, for these requirements have an imperative quality which the school is obliged to recognize. Certain dispensations and ameliorations may be perrnitted certain boys by the school organization where a boy has a particular strong case for special treatment. But while most of the staff maintain a degree of social distance, insulating themselves as far as possible from the boys' perspective, and avoiding sympathetic identification with them, certain boys may, on occasion, become the objects of fellow-feeling and even of affection, a situation more likely to arise where the boy is perceived by the staff to be undergoing specific hardships. iiany boys however make repeated attempts to become the object of staff's sympathetic concern and some of the staff, often those on the fringe of the school system, may become involved in what Goffman refers to as as 'involvement cycle'. 1 1. üoff]nan, E., op. cit., 1961, p. 82. 20L. This occurs when a new staff member, perceiving the social distance between the boys and the staff, attempts to adjust his perspective so that it is in line with the boys' definition of the situation. But, because this identification with the boys' perspective provides what the other staff define as a threat to their own stand towards the boys, he experiences pressure from his colleagues to establish what is considered to be the appropriate social distance in relation to the boys. Waller has emphasized in this context that: 'The teacher must maintain a consistent pose in the presence of students. He must not adapt to the demands of the childish group in which he lives, but must force the group to adapt to him.... The teacher must not accept the definitions of situations which students work out, but must impose his own definition upon students. (He holds a) position as an agent of social control, as the paid representative of the adult group among the group of children ... ' 1 Most schools contain a small number of staff who, as a consequence of their position in the school, can, if they choose, adopt a different mode of adaptation to their staff role, and can have a significant influence in the school system partly because they gain access to the sub culture or 'under-life' of the boys. Such staff frequently lack some or all of the accepted credentials of staff membership. They may have had a grammar school rather than public school education, have no degree or one from a provincial or foreign university, and/or hold a part-time post with no further duties outside their immediate specialism. They may in some cases have a role involving duties defined by the other staff as, at most, only marginally academic - being responsible for art, individual music lessons, the C. C. F., sporting activities or even the 1. Waller, w., o cit. 1932 reprinted 1965, p. 384. library. ' In different schools different roles carry the stigma of marginality among staff members as a whole. The implications of marginality also varied between the schools. Such staff may not be automatically accepted as full members of staff, may consistently be given lower priority in school functions, or not allocated the privileges, particularly the use of certain school facilities, accorded to other staff, nor perhaps may they wield the same authority. In the research school those teaching non-examined subjects such as art and music, those with staff status but without any recognized academic role, such as matrons, gardeners and domestic staff could be said to fall into this category. But, the relevant point as far as this research is concerned is that in most of the schools these staff contained among their number one or two who provided facilities for certain boys to retreat, for short periods, into a valued environment where the direct influence and control of the school appeared minimal. In the research school, a number of marginal staff members - in some houses the house matron, in others the boilerman or gardener - provided this facility. During the research period one of the music 1.14aller cites a number of staff members with no teaching duties who have an important function in the school organization. £he janitor, and also the keeper of the school stores, he suggests 'represented a harmless and easily manipulable substitute; he enabled youngsters to maintain an emotional rapport with the older generation and at the same time to even scores with it'. Waller, W., OP-cit. 1932 reprinted 1965, p. $3. 2a6 masters allowed his house to become the best-known and most significant retreat for a number of discontented senior boys. His role was in no way public and many of the staff neither knew nor probably would have wanted to know about his role; however, in an informal way he risked the disapproval of the senior staff by using his house as the meeting place for a small number of retreatist and intransigent boys and one or two of the rebels. 1 The school, a major agency of culture transmission in society, becomes institutionalised when the degree of specialization in society becomes such that it is unlikely that certain aspects of the society's culture would be transmitted (and thus preserved) within a child's family) or during the course of his everyday experiences. Traditionally the staff of a school have been the bearers of this culture to their pupils. But, potentially in conflict with the cultural perspective which the school aims to transmit through its staff, is an alternative set of assumptions and standards - suggested by some to constitute a 'youth culture' - which is held to varying degrees by a significant proportion of pupils in a school. Investigators of aspects of this so-called youth culture, such as Parsons, Smith, Coleman and Berger, have, as Sugarman has pointed out, if effect put forward two propositions: 'One asserts the existence of distinct values and norms among youth which conflict with some of those held in adult society; the other asserts that there are strong social pressures among the young enforcing conformity to the norms of the youth culture in preference to those of the adults'. 2 1. In an interview the headmaster referred to another member of staff who performed this role in a minor way as 'a headache', and his senior staff clearly felt that the marginal staff are in some sense the cause of trouble among the boys. 2. Sugarman, B., 'Involvement in Youth Culture, Academic Achievement and Conformity in School', British Journal of Sociolozv, Vol. 18, No. 2,1967. See also Parsons, T., 'Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States', in Essays in Sociological Theory, Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press, 1954; Smith, E. A., American Youth Culture, Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press, 1962; Coleman, J. S., The Adolescent Society, Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press, 1961; Berger, B., 'Adolescence and Beyond', Social Problems, Vol. 10, Spring, 1963. Zo7 Both these propositions have been challenged. Certainly on the basis of this research, Remmers and Radler's claim that there is selective acceptance of peer group standards among different sets of standards on some issues, and of other standards in others, seems the more tenable hypothesis. I Thus on some issues (e. g. monarchy and politics in the research school) the standards of staff (and also often of the parents),, Y prevail, while there may be selective rejection of the culture transmitted by school staff on other issues (such as religious views, standards of dress and language, for instance). There is in addition the potential conflict between cosmopolitan and local orientations. 2 Whereas in day schools there may be a contrast between the relatively cosmopolitan orientation of the staff and the local orientation of the pupils, in the public boarding school the relatively cosmopolitan life situation of the boys outside term time may conflict with the relatively local orientation of some of the staff of the school. Except for the few local scholars or day-boys (who may be strongly motivated to adjust to the predominate culture transmitted by the school staff to avoid)or to minimize, a stigma of inferiority) most of the boys come from homes in large cities or their environs at some distance from the school. They have been brought up in predominantly urban families, professional and mobile, to which they return each holiday, and often have developed considerable sophistication in their intellectual and social lives. Many travel widely and have visited a number of other countries; many have a catholic taste in reading matter, cinema, 1. Renners, H. H., and Radler, D. H., The American Teenager, New York, Bobbs Merrill, 1957, pp. 222-3. 2. For the original discussion of these two terms, see Gouldner, A. W., 'Cosmopolitans and Locals: toward an Analysis of Latent Social Roles', Admin. Science Quarterly, Vol. 2, Dec. 1957, pp. 281-306, and March 1958, PP. 444-480. , k2jý! theatre, and mass media. Only 20 per cent of the boys in the research school in 1963 had not already travelled abroad, 20 per cent had visited five or more foreign countries. The majority went to the theatre and cinema frequently. ' The majority of the staff on the other hand spend most of the year in a small town usually with few of the facilities of the city and in the company of other staff members and their families. The issues and politics of the locality tend to predominate even in the vacation. Although some, especially the bachelors, can afford to leave the town for short periods to spend a few days each school holiday in ffý m-AMU London the majority of the staff live in the town and are part of its social life - generally only the headmaster's family lives at an economic level comparable with that enjoyed by the majority of the boys in the holidays. 2 1. Survey carried out by the boys 1963, research school. 2. The tendency towards a local orientation among the staff is more marked in the girls' public boarding schools where most are unmarried and where headmistress and housemistresses in particular live on the school premises. Ollerenshaw mentions one school which has attempted to alleviate this by allowing resident staff to ' ... spend two days with the intervening night out of the school ... once a fortnight'. Ollerenshaw, K., op. cit. Pe146. 21t; l) Cclisl''r,?, iti 9 coNCLUSioIl; i-: ost public boarding schools for boys are at present prosperous enterprises, employing highly qualified accountants and bursars with considerable experience of the management of school resources. 1 Apart from the fees and gifts they receive (often at concessionary rates and considerably in advance of the date of the boy's admission) they enjoy considerable benefits from their charitable status in law. The income of these schools is not taxable. They can claim an income tax rebate on a covenant at the rate the covenantor would have paid tax - one third of the £3N donated recently by a group of industrialists consisted of such a rebate. dates are paid at half the normal rate, and Selective Employment 'Tax refunded. Local authorities currently assist about 20,000 boarders at public and other independent schools, and industry assists many more. any schools are in fact being effectively subsidized to the equivalent of £50 to £100 per pupil each year including endowments. The schools' traditions, their historic buildings, generous facilities, and spacious grounds, together with the commitment of those parents who have 'invested', or have decided to invest, large sums of money in school fees and the conspicuous distinction achieved by certain of their past pupils all contribute towards a definition of these schools which is generally favourable -a definition recently re-emphasized by the establishment of a 'Public Schools' Commission' to investigate ways of 'integrating' them with the State system for the country's benefit. Further, the schools make continual efforts to legitimate their organizational structure and ideology - for instance by encouraging past pupils to adjudicate in school competitions, conduct inspections and to participate in the activities organized by associations devoted to the interests of past pupils and their school. 1. See Dillard, D. (r3ursar of Felsted School) 'the Fees are using' Conference Vol. 5 no. 1,1968. o A . ul w1-La ; -uuuy Li11GAG atillVVyo 1m; Lvu ueen L: unsluereu from a socio- logical perspective as residential organizations in the context of research findings and concepts developed in studies of other residential organizations such as military units, hospitals and prisons. The size of the public boarding schools and their residential nature, which involves them in the custody of their pupils, give rise to certain specific organizational problems to which similar solutions have been devised by most of the schools. Certain aspects of the social process involved in the education provided by the schools have been indicated here by an examination of their admission procedures, their processes of socialization on entry and the concomitants of organizational membership, and of the agents and means of social control - together with a discussion both of the boys' perception of relative gratifications and deprivations with respect to various reference groups within and without the school system, and of the boys' different modes of adaptation to life in the socio-cultural context of the school. Education in the public boarding school is as much the attempt to socialize its pupils ('character training') as to enable them to pass public examinations or otherwise achieve academic ends, and it is with this former aspect that this account is principally concerned, for while the basic organizational unit in the day school is the class, in the boarding school it is the house. It is an expectation of staff members in many organizations that their interpretations of the goals of the organization and their perception of its other participants will be to some extent adopted by those participants themselves. In some organizations one of the principal goals of the staff may in fact be to encourage these participants to adopt the staff's view of their behaviour, so becoming 2! f 'educated' or 'cured'. ýýost staff in public boarding schools perceive it as one of their chief tasks to persuade the boy to adopt their perspective of his behaviour in an attempt to persuade him to internalize the official ideology. The enforcement of a degree of behavioural conformity is therefore equated with 'character buildin; '. Certainly their combined custodial and educational commitments make the maintenance of social order within them of fundamental significance. 3y anticipatory socialization in the home and at preparatory school, by their methods of recruitment and selection and procedures associated with entry, and by a formal system of control exercised partly through a prefect system and backed by an array of sanctions which may include corporal punishment or exclusion from the school temporarily or permanently, by a privilege system, by certain ritualistic activities and ritualistic symbolization, and by diverse other means discussed in earlier chapters, the staff combine a high degree of organizational control with high scope and pervasiveness. During term a boy is engaged almost exclusively in activities involving other members of their school and organizational status embraces his life to an extent which is approached by few other types of organization in English society. The staff and past pupils of the schools exert considerable influence in forming a highly favourable image of the schools as organizations and particular features of their structure, as has been discussed in earlier chapters. For instance past and present headmasters continually assert the educational benefits of high organizational scope and pervasiveness: 7, + z. 'A cynical remark Lby a master% in the dormitory, a party political aside at a mealtime, a casual comment about the use of a toothbrush, and appreciative mention of yesterday's sermon - all these are absorb? d and become part of the lives of all those who hear them. ' Rationalizations of the prescriptions and proscriptions in a residential organization may be provided or sought by the staff or inmates or both. In religious organizations such rationalizations are actively sought, whereas deprivations and mortifications are the rationale for the existence of prisons and concentration camps; in army units what are perceived as deprivations by the men are said to contribute to the development of 'tough' men for combat. In the public boarding school economic or educational benefits are generally cited to rationalize the prevailing conditions and practices: 'Much of Lour teaching of self-discipline7 ... comes from the experience of living together with others at close quarters in studies, bedrooms, and common rooms, often in antiquated buildings with suspect plumbing and fuse-prone wiring, or on economy food budget, surrounded by constant bells and noises, and without the adult's recourse to tranquillizers. he must learn to share and to adapt'. 2 All personal money is 'banked' with a master to create a degree of equality, to prevent theft and the temptation to steal. The privilege system is rationalized on the grounds that some facilities are too limited to be used by all the boys and restriction of hetero- sexual relationships on the grounds that participation would distract the boys from their work. Such rationalizations are often successfully transferred to the boys: If there were more girls in the school it would ruin you for work. ' (Recorded interview, school prefect, research school) 1.1olfenden, J. The Public Schools Loday London: University of London Press, 1948, p. 48. 2. Hart, 14. (Headmaster, 1iM Hill) "Ehe i3oardin;; House as a Community' Conference Vol-5, no. 1,1968. z+3 following terms: '..... Privacy is thus not a feature of life of the school, If one accepts this disadvantage ..., quite considerable advantages can be recognized. The individual learns to live with others; the group learns to tolerate the individual; a boy learns to concentrate on his books when he is sitting in a room with a number of others ... The layout of 'dinchester hall is probably significant. The boys' flat- topped desks are fixtures standing sideways to the wall, with a cupboard and bookshelves up against the wall and a six-foot partition between one desk and the next. As he sits at the desk the üilykehamist can look to the side and see what is going on within the hall, but he learns to : ritiiira; a into his recess ... College, the boarding house for the seventy scholars, has the same type of organization ... The impact of this intellectual power-house can scarcely be exaggerated ... ' 1 Although entry is mainly from a narrow social stratum, and al thou,; ü there are complex restrictions during, termtime on social interaction within the school system, lack of privacy, some have su;;; ested, 'teaches the boy to live with all types'. The Report of the Public Schools' Commission contains a list of the characteristics of the present public boarding schools they considered to be the most beneficial for the pupils attending them, and also a list of those features considered to be most deleterious. Apart from the fact that such schools minimize the time spent on travelling to and from school, the Commission commended two aspects of the schools: that they introduce boys to adult roles, adult authority and responsibility patterns, to adult values and to participation in adult activities, and secondly that they socialize their pupils in a 'regulated environment' in which there exists a 'high level of discipline'. The Commission did not seem to recognize that the roles, values and patterns of 1. Kettle, K. 'dinchester College' in Gross, R. L. (ed. ), 13ritish Secondary Education. Overview and Appraisal, London: Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 137-9. Zt tf- activities, -Gne means of sociaj. control ana the social environment as a whole are circumscribed by the life lived within the school, by its nature a highly distinctive and specific kind of organization. The way of life within it does not in any direct way 'represent' life outside it. 119any of the roles, values and activities have no direct counterparts outside the school organization. Even if some boys do adopt a number of the official patterns of behaviour and use schoolday heroes as symbols to perpetuate features of the values learnt at school, these may be inappropriate to life outside the school, to the performance of tasks in other organizations which are not necessarily run on the same lines. ' The mechanisms of social control described in earlier chapters are not representative of the mechanisms of the adult world outside these schools. They are in many instances specific to the public boarding school society - a society of adolescent boys from a particular social background which is shared by the majority of the staff in the organization - and like the modes of adaptation are not necessarily more 'adult' than those operating among their peers who live at home and attend other types of school. The contrast between life in the public boarding school and that in a direct grant day school Was clear to a boy who had attended both types of school: 'Its LShrewsbury'J members almost all come from wealthy families they are provided at Shrewsbury School with a way of life which takes little account of the world immediately outside the school ates. This is the difference between Shrewsbury and M. G. S. Manchester Grammar School which does not dictate a way of life. It offers learning and knowledge in an academic sense, but, like all day schools, it is extrovert. It has to reckon with the existence of strong, close roots in the Icholar's home environment, a consideration foreign to Shrewsbury. ' 1. See Klapp, O. S. 'Heroes, Villains and Fools, as Agents of Social Control' American Sociolo Ucal Review 7o1.19,1954. 2. Lawton, U. 'Impressions of Shrewsbury School' Ulula I4o. 521 Summer 1964, quoted by Stenhouse, L. Culture and 3ducation London: Nelson 1967, pp. 55 ff. ÜS Any conception of a high level of discipline in a 'regulated' environment should be modified by a recognition of the secondary adjustments made by boys within the official structure of the school organization. Not all boys behave as the staff believe that they do, even less as the staff advocate outside the school that they should do. For instance there are pressures on masters to turn a blind eye to many infringements of the official rules: 'Those masters ... who officiously enforce the most trivial points of discipline soon acquire an undesirable reputation as men to be avoided'. 1 To an extent formal rules act partly as a basis for common under- standing between boys and staff members, with their different perspectives and interests, but by themselves they form no adequate basis for a study of their behaviour. The features depreciated in the Report include several of those discussed in earlier chapters: the loss of warmth and affection which may be experienced by the boy attending a public boarding school, his separation from his peers in his home neighbourhood and the restriction to an 'artificial and isolated community', the lack of privacy in most schools and the rigid organization of the school day, and the emphasis on conformity to a predetermined pattern of behaviour. The effects on the inmates of life in large residential organizations other than boarding schools have been the subject of a number of studies in the past twenty years, and a number of attempts have been made to document the supposed damaging effects of such organizations. The conclusions of most of these studies must, however, be treated with caution particularly as such organizations differ in their primary goals and as the comparisons are usually only minimally matched populations. Children from children's homes have been 1. Larlborough by the Boys o . cit. P-55. V4 perceived to 'smile less' than those reared at home, to be 'backward' in speech and mental development, to display characteristic features in their personalities and to be more likely to develop psychiatric disturbances. Certain studies of ex-mental hospital patients claim to have shoran them to have developed distinctive neuroses and even to have adopted a characteristic posture. ' Studies of prisons have suggested that the structure of the organization contributes to a social and personal impairment of inmates, especially where the term of imprisonment is more than a few months. The iiorrises noted at Pentoville that, as their term progressed, men made fewer jokes, displayed increasin-, personal untidiness and becaaiie progressively more uninterested in everything outside (and even inside) their immediate environment. The researchers were told ' "Prison is a rotting life"', I "You live in a false reality"', "the danger on a long sentence is of becoming a sheer vegetable"'. 2 . dhile organizational structure and goal orientation differs between the different types of residential organization, and the availability of secondary adjustments for circumventing the commands of the organization undoubtedly affects the morale of the inmates, it is important to note that residential organizations have not always been assumed or found to have uniformly beneficial effects on their members, and that the trend is away from them in certain spheres of treatment in the field of social welfare - by instituting for instance parole systems and 'community care' instead of full member- ship of such an organization. 1. See for instance, Barton, A. Institutional iJeurosis Bristol: John Vrright 1959. Relevant literature is also mentioned in Townsend, P. The last 1iiefu e London : Routled e 1962 pp. 328 il. 2. horris, r. and P. op. cit. pp. 165-6. 7-47 sent to them in 1963 the closed nature of the schools was most frequently selected as the chief 'problem' of boarding school life, causing a strain which many suggested could be relieved for the senior boys if they were given the liberty of an undergraduate. 1 The headmasters of the most distinguished day schools have in any case occasionally expressed doubts as to the beneficial effects of boarding education, and even questioned the assumption that the residential element has any noticeable effects at all. Lord James, for instance, the then high haster of Manchester Grammar School, wrote in 1951: 'One is forced to ask whether, if we take the quality of home backgrounds from which their pupils are drawn and the standard of their teaching together, we have not a sufficient explanation of success in producing leaders without ascribing peculiar virtues to the boarding principle ... The records of a very few day schools whose achievements approach those of the great boarding schools suggest that it is all too easy to lay far too much weight on the boarding element. ' 2 The popular practice of ascribing the later achievements, occupational or otherwise, of certain past pupils of public boarding schools to their school experience is a most dubious procedure. These schools, in particular the most famous among them, cater for a very small, socially distinct group of children in English society whose families generally seriously consider no other type of school for their sons, a group comprising about one in every twenty of their age group. As the research for the Public Schools Commission has shown even those boys entering public school from state schools or on local education authority `; rants are predominantly from the homes of professional and upper class parents. The majority of boys subsidized at public school by bodies such as Middlesex County Council, 1. Steinberg, I. op. cit. pp. 108 and 185, ff. z. James, Lord, Lducation and Leadership, London: harrap, 1951, p. 87. ýý Il1 upper class homes, and over three-quarters of the children of service families who attend boarding school in 2ngland are the sons and daughters of officers rather than other ranks. There would be considerable difficulty in finding a comparable group of any size of boys who share all the aspects of the way of life of boys at public school except their public school education. Lambert and the Commission have suggested, following the Alexander Report, that there is a further considerable unsatisfied 'demand' among parents for boarding education for their sons. Some of the concepts employed in producing the evidence for such a suggestion are used erratically, and demand is not clearly differentiated from need. ' i". uch of the methodolo, of the research supporting such propositions is clearly inadequate. One survey carried out in Swindon used a preamble: 'There is a lot of discussion going on about the future of boarding schools - places like ! %Iarlborough College for boys, for example ... : 1e want to find out how many parents would like their own children to go to boarding schools if Lthere was the choic7 ... and followed it by asking, respondents whether they would like their children to attend a boarding school. riot surprisingly about a third said that they would like their child to do so. 2 A survey of 284 Young Conservatives suggested that the demand is present among younger as well as the older generation of parents. 3 1. See Lambert, t. the State and Boarding Sducation, London: Diethuen 1966; Lambert, R. "The '. Dorking Class Boarder", New Education, Vol. 2, No. 5, ilay 1966, p. 15; Lambert, it. "State Boarding -A Choice for All? " -64here, No. 21, Summer 1965. See also King, 1. "State Boarding and the Future of Public Schools", New Society, Vol. 10, o, 250, July 13th, 1967, and Lambert's reply in the subsequent issue. 2. dillmott, P. and Young, L. 'Do Parents want Boarding? ' . 1herc No. 16, Spring, 1964. 3. Nelson-Jones, J. and Colvin, 1-1. dh Pa ?, London: Bow Group, 1967. )A 9 the opportunity to board for a trial period, few now express the wish to continue the experience and where they are given the option of boarding at their present school they often prefer not to take it. The headmaster of a Bristol school was quoted in 1966 as reporting at an annual dinner: 'Up to a few years ago, our foundation boarding places were much sought after. Ie offered them to the top ten boys in the entrance examination and invariably all ten accepted. This summer we had to offer them to the top 50 boys before we got the first acceptance. Today, boys are telling their parents they do not want to go to boarding school'. 1 Woolverstone, the boarding school set up by the L. C. C., is not as overwhelmed with applicants as might be expected from the research carried out for the Commission; it is unusual for the 60 places to be more than 50 per cent oversubscribed, and most of the applicants have some special reason for applying. Few apparently apply for boarding education per se. To what extent this lack of demand is a reflection of the dominant mores of working-class family life as is suggested by lambert is a matter for further investigation. Already, although the boys at the 82 schools expect that they will have subsequently distinguished careers (well illustrated by the 'obituaries' the boys wrote for themselves during the research period) there appeared to be a tendency among them to value the school more as a means for attaining academic ends than with the 'educational experience' of boarding. Now that technical colleges increasingly are providing a wide range of courses for 'A' level examinations they could well become an alternative to the school sixth form, acceptable, and more economic, for the parent and often attractive to the boy. I. Times Educational Supplement 4.11.66. 2-to Girls' public schools have for some time been losing increasing numbers of sixth form girls to these colleges despite entreaties by their staff to parents to 'keep' their daughters at school. Some of the boys' schools now face a similar problem; as their headmasters sometimes admit: 'There is an increasing tendency ..... for boys to leave L: 3astbournpj College younger, as soon as they have achieved their main objectives (e. g. University place or 'A' level passes) ..... ' 2 'There is a greater tendency for boys who havVobtained their '0' levels here to do their 'A' levels at technical colleges, where they feel that they have more freedom ..... de are eny liberal but it is not the same as livin, at home'. Year by year alterations in the tax laws, changes in the birth- rate, new examination requirements laid down by universities and by professional associations prompt the public boarding school to adapt its structure. Jhile these these changing circumstances and the demands of pupils, parents and staff are generally accommodated by modifications of various organizational arrangements in the schools, over the last century the staff have exhibited a conspicuous reluctance to change the basic structure of the schools or to attempt extensive experimentation with new organizational forms. 4 Unlike a small number of their distinguished 1. See Ollerenshaw op. cit. pp. 59-60. 2. Letter to the Editor of The Times from the headmasters of Eastbourne College and Eastbourne Grammar School, The Times 1$. 3.64. 3. The Headmaster of Ruthin. See Western Hail 0.5.67. 4. Factors associated with resistance to change have been studied in mental hospitals and prisons, but there has been little attention to them in schools. Weinberg and others suggest that pressures on them from outside may be forcing the public schools to become less closed. ('1einberg, op. cit. p. xiv. ) See Pearlin, L. I., 'Sources of resistance to change in a mental hospital', Amer. J. Soc. vol. 67, NTO. 3, (1962) and, weber, G. H. 'Emotional and Defensive Reactions of Cottage Parents', in Cressy, D. R. o . cit. zaA predecessors, the headmasters direct their energies more to defending 010ft present organizational structures than to changing them. The schools' apparent 'success' and the assumption of parental commitment to the status quo encourages the schools to meet each demand with traditional responses, producing a surprising uniformity among them - a lack of variety and radical innovation which is all the more remarkable in the light of the independence and prestige many of them enjoy. this may arise in part from their dependence on fees. : 3conomi- tally it is essential to the public school that it is full, and seen to be full, to capacity. It has been reported that every empty place costs the school £400 - £500 p. a., since the major costs remain the same even when a small number of places are unfilled. 1 Jhile this does give rise to the constant pressure to expand, it also seems to contribute (especially when as at present a fall in the birthrate reduces demand for places) to a reluctance to instigate changes which might deter parents of boys on the school's waiting list. In the past headmasters have tended to respond to the demands of senior boys for radical changes by minor adjustments to school routines and by attempts to neutralize their demands. New subjects (such as 'business studies' or 'modern drama') have been introduced in some schools within the existing structure. But headmasters more generally forestall changes 7 often by the technique of postponement - the implementation of the new proposal is postponed on one of a variety of grounds: that it is plainly 'irresponsible', that facilities or funds are not immediately available, or that there is no master available to supervise. In many cases if a proposal for change is implemented on a trial basis, no agreed criterion of success or failure exists. 1. See ]Yiillard, D. op. cit. Z2-7- An experimental period at the research school during which attendance at religious services in chapel was voluntary was clearly a 'failure' from the chaplains' perspective because only a small number of boys attended the voluntary services, while the boys considered it a great 'success' on the grounds that it gave each boy the freedom to spend his Sunday morning as he wished. Similarly at i-iarlborough while school dances were considered by the staff such a 'failure' as to warrant termination, they were generally enjoyed by the boys. An additional factor which contributes to the 'failure' of such experimental schemes is that once such experiments have been attempted more than once or twice and the official organizational norm relaxed, it is frequently found difficult to reinstate and legitimate the previous pattern. I, asters also bear in mind that the instigators will before long be leaving the school or, if not, soon be recruited to the control function, when they are generally found to be less persistent in their proposals. An alternative approach to new proposals, used by some headmasters and their members of the staff, is to maintain a front of full agreement with the principle of the idea while at the same time attempting to diminish its impact by imposing strict conditions on any minor concessions that are made. One or two public boarding schools have recently made limited experiments with various methods of electing boys to take responsibility. At Sevenoaks in one house composed entirely of senior boys a sc. udent committee was recently sponsored by the staff. The co: runittee Is function was defined by the staff as were its rules and constitution. It was also elected by and from a group of boys selected by the staff for the experiment - the boy with low commitment to the officially z23 sponsored practices is considered 'an extreme example of ... faulty selection'. The exercise as reported is an example of a benevolent autocracy disguised as a democracy and the minor importance of the matters reported to have been discussed suggest that this was realized by the participants. ' 6imilarly, 'elections' to the elite groups at Eton, especially 'Pop' and 'i)ebate', involve close consultation with staff who may influence the procedure of nomina5L., candidates. 2 The proposal by the Public Schools Commission that public boarding schools should admit a large proportion of boys from a different social and educational background is certainly the most significant change likely to affect the schools in the next few years. It will necessitate many and fundamental changes in school organization. The public school experience for the working-class child is one of both symbolic and social change, whereas when experiences in school and outside it are congruent the effect is cumulative and later experiences tend to repeatedly reinforce earlier ones. Lambert expresses it in culture-conflict terms: 'Our present pattern of boarding, which derives essentially from the way of life of the Victorian upper middle class and which involves the child living for long continuous stretches away from home and family, violates the close-knit family and neighbourhood life and -ulture of most vaorkin; - class people and perhaps others. ' Certainly socio-economic criteria significant in day schools in the state sector are even more so in the closed educational organization. Boys from different social backgrounds, with a 1.6ae Scra; g, 3. in 'i-Jkiite, Bob, et al, 3xpeririients in , ducation a'U äevenoaks, London : Longia. ns, 1965, p; ). 100, ff. 2. "cConnell, J. D. 2. op. cit. p. 58. 3. Lambert, ii. op. cit., 1966, p. 40. different prior experience o. f the educational system, different expectations and ambitions will almost certainly adapt to the public boarding school in significantly different ways. Entrants to the boarding school's sixth form, coming from state day schools are unlikely to readily accept the high scope and pervasiveness that education at these schools involve. There is already evidence that the boys entering at 13 as the 'guinea pigs' of the Fleming proposals responded to the schools quite differently from their other pupils: 'I never invited anyone home in the holidays because unfortunately my parents' home was a very untidy one, not at all well ke-Dt. 1, mother wasn't interested in house- work so I never invited people home at all. I remember on one occasion someone called unannounced to see me, an acquaintance in my own house at school, who lived only about ten to twelve miles away: he called because I was the person who lived nearest to him - and he thought it might be a good idea to invite me for the day so his mother drove him over and he called at my house. I am sure he got as much of a shock at seeing the house where I lived, but I deliberately didn't invite him in -I just kept him talking on the doorstep. When he called I'd just finished the washing, up after the family -I say the family, my mother and my father and my young brother had all gone out to work at 8 o'clock - in fact my brother may not have been at work at the time, he may still have been at school - he'd only be about 14 then - but certainly my mother and my father had just gone out to work and I had been finishing; the washing up - I'd just got this done and there was a knock at the door -I opened it expecting to see some tradesmen or postman or something like that and lo and behold there was one of my acquaintances from school and he - well I suppose after he'd come this far, he did what he'd come for and invited me to spend the day with him. His home was a very smart detached house with a large garden and room for their dogs to run around - in fact I went there, spent a very enjoyable day playing cricket with him and romping with the dog and so on. But he never invited me to his house again. ' 1. "Hoye from outside", Times educational 6upplement 21 , 'ay, 1965, P. 1593. There is as yet no systematic evidence on the experiences of boys with different socio-economic backgrounds to those of the majority of pupils, but reports from some of them have suggested that the tension between aspects of life at school and the life to which they have been accustomed prior to entry has been considerable, a tension which is greater because of the boys' lack of a preparatory school background: 'It is the ordered way of life that many boys who have not been retained in prep. schools find it difficult to accommodate themselves. It is often, I think, the sheer oppressiveness of unendin,; routine which those unused to boarding schools find it difficult to accept. ' 1 Since the Fleming report's proposals in 1944, the policy of providing a small number of scholarships for boys sponsored by local authorities has been pursued in a number of schools, but the experiment, on the school's criteris, has not been generally successful. 2 At a conference on boarding education the Headmaster of Christ's Hospital, who is quoted above and who has considerable experience of admitting scholarship boys, reported that they cause more behaviour problems than average and are more hostile to boarding school traditions - an experience which has recently been repeated at iiarlborough. Although the Commission concerned itself in some detail with the means by which state-sponsored pupils might be selected and financed at public boarding schools, little attention is paid in 1. Seaman, C. Paper read to a conference on the place of boarding in state education, School and Coflcje, Vol. 29, No. 9, Sept. 1965. 2. One public school . ghere the experiment has been continued is iill Hill, where 25io of the pupils were sponsored by i", iddlesex County Council. In '. ales, Carmarthenshire C. C. support 20 per cent of the entry to the junior department of Llandovery. ?i& its first report to the organizational characteristics of these schools, to the different adjustments made within them by pupils currently attending them and to the implications for the schools of new methods of recruitment. The Commission's recommendations relating to the admission of a large number of state-sponsored boarders to the existing schools have profound implications for both the public school and its ideology. For instance the high selectivity inherent in traditional recruiting practices represents a key mechanism in their control structure, and considerable problems of control would be raised by the recruitment of a significant proportion of pupils unused to the level of control of time, movement, activities and relationships and to the limitations on the degree of their autonomy and choice. . Jhile concerning itself with changes in recruitment procedures, little is said in the Commission's report of the changes required to accommodate those recruited under the proposed scheme. Certain amendments in the administration of the schools are suggested by the Commission - that corporal punishment and personal fagging be dropped, compulsory military training and team games become optional, that expensive uniforms be 'reappraised' and pupils allowed a greater degree of privacy and encouraged to have more contact with their families. But throughout the report the implicit assumption seems to be that attendance per se at one of these schools confers certain definite social and educational benefits which could not better or more economically be provided by any other means for those defined by Lambert as 'needing' boarding education. In this account the boys' responses to life in the socio- cultural context of a public boarding school, and in particular the dominant subsystem of the multi-age-group 'house', have been 227 ? resented within the framework of a revised form of Iierton' of Individual Adaptation. The nature of the research data precludes however more than tentative suggestions concerning the public boarding school boys' responses, the objective availability of the various modes of adaptation and the determinants of their adoption by a boy at a certain stage of his career in the school. Research is required to locate these determinants and to suggest propositions which relate determinants to alternative modes of adaptation such as those put forward in the Revised Typology, and it is likely that the boys' presenting culture and their choice of reference groups would figure significantly in a subsequent analysis.. One question which arises is the relationship between the objective availability of various reference groups and their selection by a particular boy. The reference groups available and selected by particular pupils undoubtedly influence their achievement in school and in their later careers. Aspects of public boarding school life have been indicated which may involve boys in the schools experiencing a sense of relative deprivation rather than relative gratification, such perceptions usually being exhibited selectively and on certain specific issues by some of the boys. 4hether a boy does in fact experience a sense of relative deprivation depends very much on his definition of the situation at the time - an appraisal which is related to the degree and nature of the disparity between his presenting culture on entry and the way of life associated with organizational membership, to the pattern of expectations that he has built up, and to the mode of adaptation and constellation of reference groups he has adopted at the time. 7-zSs APPENDICES 1. List of the 82 Schools. 2. Extracts from Prospectuses and Rules of some Canadian Private Boarding Schools. 3" The Careers of Past Pupils of the Research School. 4. Extracts from material published by two boys indicating the restricting nature of life in the school. 5" The Dress Regulations at the Research School. 1ý 41 . J1VJ11 L. L1/J1 VL' IJVINVyJ List of the 82 Independent Boarding schools in inland and : tales with the headmaster a member of the Headmaster's Conference havin, at least a third, and ab least 200. Boarders (1963)1 Aldenham School Allhallows School Ampleforth College Ardingly College Beaumont College 1 Bedford School Bishop's Stortford College Bloxham School Blundell's School Bootham School Bradfield College Brighton College Bromsgrove School Bryanston School Canford School Charterhouse Cheltenham College Christ's Hospital Clayesmore School Clifton College Cranleigh School Dean Close School Denstone College Douai School Dover College Downside School Eastbourne College Ellesmere College Epsom College Eton College Felsted School Gigue eswick School Gresham's School Hailebury and I. C. C. Harrow School Hurstpierpoint College Kelly College King's College, Taunton King's School, Bruton King's School, Canterbury King's School, Ely Rin,; swood School Lancing; College Leighton Park School The Toys School Llandovery College Lord dandsworth College i, alvern Coll e,, e i arlboröugh College 1onkton Combe School fount St. i,, ary's College Oundle School Radley College riatcliffe College Repton School Rossall School Royal N, asonic School Rugby School iiydal School St. Bees School St.?. dmund's School, Canterbury :., t. Sdward's School St. John's School St. Lawrence College St. Peter's School Sedburgh School Sherborne School Shrewsbury School Stoneyhurst College Stowe School Subton Valence School Taunton School Tonbridge School Trent College Uppingham School 4ellingborough School 'viellin;; ton College destaninster School '; Jinche ster College , 4orksop College : 3rekin College Jycliffe College 1. Since 1963 the Headmasters of Milton abbey, need's School, St. George's College (1eybridge) and Queen's College (Taunton) have been admitted to the Conference and Durham school has admitted further boarders. The list for 1967 would therefore include these schools. Since 1963 Beaumont College has closed. (Mill hill has been excluded from this list, since, although independent, it recruits 25 per cent of its pupils through the local authority). 13 APPENDIX 2: EXTRACTS FROM PROSPECTUSES AND RULES OF SOME CANADIAN IRIVATE BOARDING SCIIOCIS During the research, rules and prospectuses were gathered from a small representative sample of Canadian private boarding schools. The prospectuses are normally written in more conservative terms than are their United States counterparts; but are more explicit than most English public schools: 'Like most independent schools, Rothesay subscribes to certain definite principles. Its founders and governors, regarding education in its widest sense, had several main objects in mind. They wanted: - 1. A definite programme of religious training, this being essential to the development of a sound character. 2. A better standard of scholarship possible only where classes are comparatively small and are taught by men of wide experience; also an earlier beginning in some subjects. 3. A Comprehensive Physical Training and Athletic Programme, knowing that it is on the athletic field where many of the most important lessons in life are learned. 4. Military Training, realising that this is an excellent medium for teaching discipline, leadership, bearing and citizenship. 5" Wider participation in Music, Dramatics, Debating and general hobbies than was previously possible. 6. Close association of boys with men of outstanding character and personality and, similarly, with other boys, realising that this was best achieved where the life was residential. 7. A school situated in pleasant buildings in attractive country surroundings, well removed from the distractions of modern living. ' Ridley College, motto 'Terar dum Prosium' ('May I be worn out in service'), attempts, '..,. to produce young men who will be of service to their family, to their country and to their fellow men - young men whose knowledge of the past, of the present and of the possibilities of the future is a little above average, and who have learned through the true sportsmanship of games and a full community life to be in all things 1. Rothesay Collegiate School, General Description, 1966, p. 1 23( honest, determined, and well balanced in judgement. Moderation, a hatred of intolerance and a live sense of justice, the ability to accept misfortune and to rise above them, a fitting deportment, and understanding of discipoine and a sense of command - something of each of these is instilled in every boy who receives his education at Ridley. '1 The clothing regulations at Rothesay are strikingly similar to some of those enforced at English schools: 'Extremes of Clothing are Not Permitted The wearing of narrow cuff trousers is not permitted, nor is their possession at the School allowed. Boys who have them must leave them at home. For rough wear around the School, khaki drill slacks are required. They should be styled like grey flannels, not like blue jeans. With khaki shirts, they constitute the casual wear clothing. Only school colours (Navy Blue and White) may be worn at the School. The School makes available for purchase the necessary sweaters and sports equipment. School navy blue cloth windbreakers may be pur- chased at the School. Fancy or leather windbreakers are not allowed although ski clothing and parkas are permitted. The cadet cap, the school toque and ski cap are the only headgear permitted. Overcoats are not necessary. A station wagon or duffle coat, and raincoat of normal design or colour, are permitted. Boys travelling to and from destination for the holidays in private cars may wear School windbreaker and sports shirt. However, those going by public conveyance must wear coat and tie, with overcoat or duffle coat, where a coat is needed. Haircuts. Only short brush cut (sides shorter than top) or normal (parted) hairdressing is allowed. '2 The rules of University School, Victoria BC, are as follows: '1. These rules and regulations are printed as a guide to assist present and future boys. It must be remembered that "Ignorance of law excuseth no man". The following places are OUT OF BOUNDS: (a Boiler Rooms b School Workshop c Groundsmen's Sheds d Brown Hall Kitchen (e The Masters' Common Room f Living quarters of resident staff g Harvey House to members of School House, and vice versa h All classrooms when not in use for normal instructional purposes. The exception being the particular classroom(s) designated for extra study which may be used without prior permission. In 1. Ridley College Prospectus, 1965, Introduction. 2. Rothesay Collegiate School Clothing List, p. 3. w 7-37- general each classroom is allocated to a particular master and should not be entered without the permission of the master con- cerned. In normal class periods, the class must await, quietly, the arrival of the master before entering the classroom. ýi The Bell Tower j The Main Hall as a passage-way to all save Prefects (k) Cadet Corps offices such as QM Stores, Armoury etc., save to the appropriate cadets engaged on Corps business. 2. Smoking either on or off the school premises is forbidden. 3. Boys operating model aeroplanes and similar objects requiring inflam- mable fuel must obtain the permission of their Housemaster before bringing it to the school and ensure proper safeguards for its safe storage. 4. Cards are a popular pastime but boys must NOT play for money nor indulge in gambling of any description. 5. No boy may be in possession of or consume alcoholic drinks at any time either on or off the school premises. Failure to observe this rule may result in summary dismissal. 6. (1) Cars and Motorcycles: Day boys in possession of parental and Headmaster's permission may drive motor vehicles to school and carry specified passengers under the same conditions. They may not drive boarders - save on special occasions as authorised directly by the Headmaster when another Master will always be a passenger. Cara will be parked on the Quad. (ii) Boarders may not possess or hire any motor vehicle while at school. They may drive cars if accompanied by parents, and if questioned by traffic authorities must give the home address since regulations differ between provinces and states and unnecessary trouble may be avoided thereby. 7. Radios and record players: These are permissible at the following times: (a) Weekdays: 7.30 - 8.30 a. m.; 5.00 - 6.00 p. m.; 8.00 - 9.00 p. m.; and after prayers until "silence" time. (b) Saturdays: after breakfast to "silence" time if no official school activity - e. g. rugger practice or school match is taking place simultaneously. Radios must not be played while being carried from one place to another nor so loud as to become a nuisance to other people, nor outside the actual school buildings. 8. Leave is a privilege to be granted only if work and conduct are satis- factory. Conditions and times are under constant review. At present leave at weekends may be granted as under: Saturday. From the satis- factory completion of duties after lunch until: (a) 5.45 P. M. for Grade 8 and on alternative Saturdays for Grade 7. (bý 8.00 P. M. for Grade 9. (c 9.00 p. m. for Grade 10. (d) 9.30 P. M. for Grade 11. (e) 10.00 P. M. for Grade 12. (f) 10.30 P. M. for Prefects. 233 Extension of these times may be granted only for special occasions e. g. celebrity entertainments, school dances, but under no circum- stances will leave be granted beyond 11.55 p. m. Sunday. From after Chapel - approximately 10.30 a. m. until 8.45 P"m" with parents and relatives. "Country" leave i. e. Mt. Tolmie and Uplands are NORTH of Lansdowne Road may be granted from after lunch until 5.00 p. m. in winter terms and 5.45 p. m. in the summer term. Whether on "Town" or "Country" leave boys wishing to visit friends or relatives must give name and address of person to be visited, in the usual way. Boys must cheek OUT and IN. Plaza leave comes under the heading of "Country" leave and is available at weekends only. Over- night leave is granted at Half-term, Cadet Inspection, Speech Day and similar occasions. It should be requested otherwise only if the circumstances are exceptional, e. g. Medical. 9. Swimming may take place at any time at least one hour after the conclusion of a meal provided that a master is present or a life-saver authorized by the Headmaster. 10. Food must not be kept nor consumed in dormitories. 11. It is an offence to chew gum. 12. Shoes must be changed for house slippers before entering dormitories or surgery. Dormitories must not be entered between 8.30 a. m. and bed time without prior permission of a Duty Master. Large musical instruments, tape recorders, etc., must not be stored in dormitories. 13. Save in emergency the surgery may be visited only at the times appointed by Matron. These times are posted and must be memorised. 14. Gym shoes only may be worn on the tennis courts and in the gymnasium. Soccer, indoor tennis and similar games may not be played in the gym. Games equipment, as all other clothing and personal property, must be clearly marked with the owner's name. The correct games clothing must be worn for the appropriate activity. 15. No boy may engage and charge a taxi to the school save in an emergency when the circumstances must be reported to the Bursar at the earliest opportunity and not later than within 24 hours. Taxis, when required on a boy's behalf, will be ordered by the Bursar, Matron or Duty Master and, in the event of two last making the order, the Bursar must be informed as above. Since Victoria and the school are linked by normal bus service it is unnecessary and not permissible for boys below Grade 12 to engage taxis for the purpose of afternoon leave. 16. If a boy feels too unwell to attend class activity, parade or meal, he must3sport to the Matron and/or Duty Master and not absent himself without permission. 17. Money in excess of the permissible weekly allowance must be deposited in the school bank. 18. Medicines, tonics, etc., brought to the school, must be placed in charge of the Matron. 19. Valuables not in daily use should be handed to house tutors for safe- keeping, and all others, e. g. watches, should be marked with a boy's name or initials. ý4- Generals The School grounds must be entered and left by the gates provided. The climbing of fences and trees is forbidden. Bicycles must not be ridden in front of School House nor on the Quad. Candy paper and other litter must be placed in the receptacles provided. To be careless in this matter is an offence. Advice: (i) All school property, particularly desks, chairs, etc., must be treated with care and respect. (ii) When addressing visitors and masters, boys should stand upright, keeping their hands out of their pockets and with due courtesy. Lounging habits which lead to slovenliness and general apathy will not be tolerated. (iii) "Neither a borrower or a lender be". If borrowing becomes essential, make sure that the article borrowed is with the owner's permission and is returned immediately after use. (iv) Report breakage and losses to the Duty Master or House Master immediately (v) Try to co-operate with staff by removing books from classrooms after use for the day and by leaving rooms tidy. (vi) Study FINE DRILL orders, and be sure you know what to do in case of a fire. Conclusion: A breach of common sense is a breach of school rules. il 1. University School Rules and Regulations, Timmis, J. J., Headmaster, dated September, 1965. Z34 APPENDIX 3: THE CAREERS OF PAST PUPILS OF THE RESEARCH SCHOOL' In September 1963 the Register of the Old Boys' Club of the research school contained the names and addresses of about 95 per cent of all the past pupils of the main school who were still alive. Most of these members had paid a life subscription at the time of leaving the school and had continued to receive, free of charge, a special magazine written and edited by members of the staff containing news both of events in the school and of the engagements, marriages, distinctions and deaths of their contem- poraries. Although the Club also sponsors cricket, rugger, golf, sailing and other teams, only a very small proportion of the membership takes part in these activities. The past pupils of the Day House do not join the Club since they are not considered to be full members of the school, but a register of as many as possible of their names is maintained by the master- in-charge of this House. In July 1963 the total number of names on these two lists was about 4,400, including a number from which previous circulars had been returned 'not known at this address'. A short questionnaire printed on a postcard was sent out to every name on these lists asking the respondent to give: 1. Date that he left the school. 2. The number of years of full-time further education he had received, the institutions he attended and the subjects he studied. 3. His first full-time occupation. 4. His present (or, if retired etc., his immediate past) principal occupation. 5. His present marital status and number of children. 1. A number of surveys of the past pupils of public boarding schools have been carried out recently. See Bishop T. J. H. and Wilkinson, R. Winchester and the Public School Elite London: Faber 1967; Hans, N. 'Independent Schools and the Liberal Professions' Yearbook of Education 1950 the Bulletins of the Public Schools Appointment Bureau No. 98 Feb 1962 onwards Weinberg, I. op. cit., p. 127ff.; The Director Vol. No. Jan 1963; Ward, D. 'The Public Schools and Industry in Britain after 1870', Jour. of Contemporary History Vol. 2 no 3 1967; Reader, W. J. Professional Men, 'Public Schoolboys' Occupations 1807-1911' London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1966. See also McConnell, J. R. D. op. cit. p. 67ff. -131 In an accompanying letter the respondents were assured that in their replies they need not give their name so that anonymity could be maintained, and that individual replies would be treated as confidential. The cards were printed with the address of the Club for return. 2,653 completed cards were returned in time for analysis, a response rate of about 60 per cent. I Over 30 per cent of the returns arrived within 1 week and 98 per cent within 4 weeks. Although there were some differences between different occupational groups in the speed at which the card was returned (for instance self-employed professional workers tended to return the card in two weeks or not at all), a small check on a random sample of a hundred old boys from the original list who were sent a second card and reminder did not suggest any large discrepancy in distri- butions of replies between those returning the first card and those replying only on the second occasion. Table 1 Date of Leaving Research School - All Respondents Date Left No. Per Cent Age Group* Before 1930 567 24 50+ 1930-1944 680 29 35-50 1945-1954 588 25 25-35 1955-1962 513 22 Under 25 Total (N-) 2348 100 * Assuming leaving age 17-18 1. A few respondents omitted their present occupation, since they con- sidered that this would lead to their immediate identification. 3-37 Table 2 Geographical Distribution of Past Pupils - All Respondents (from postmark on reply Per Cent London and SE England 31 Midlands 16 Lancashire and NW England 11 E. Anglia 8 Yorkshire and NE England 8 SW England 5 Wales, Scotland, N Ireland 4 Abroad, outside Commonwealth 4 Commonwealth 3 Illegible postmark, 'unknown' 12 Total (N. ) (2653) Table 3 Years of Full-Time Education Completed - All Respondents Six or more Four or five Three Two One None Continuing Total (N-) Per Cent 11 19 26 76 11 9 23 1 (2579) There were approximately equal numbers of respondents in each of four age groups: those aged over 50 who left the school before 1930, those, now between 35 and 50 who left in the 1930s or during the second world war, those leaving in the late forties and early fifties, and those 7 3Zl who had left during the eight years prior to the survey (Table 1). The analysis of the geographical distribution of the respondents (Table 2), based on the postmark on the replies, indicates the past pupils are now distributed in England and Wales in proportions very similar to that of the population distribution of the country as a whole. A total of seven per cent were returned from abroad, probably under-representing the number of past pupils abroad at the time. Education after leaving the School About two-thirds of those leaving the research school during the years 1958-1960 had attained two or more passes at the Advanced level, and during the last fifty years it seems that most of the leavers have continued their education after leaving the school. About three-quarters of the respondents had completed at least one year of full-time further education after leaving school, and almost a third had received more than four years -a high proportion of whom had studied medicine. Many of the 9 per cent who had only received one year expected to continue at a later stage, and many of the others had completed one year part-time courses in agriculture or accountancy. A comparison between age soups (Table 4) suggests that the proportion of the leavers continuing full-time education after leaving the school has been increasing, though the increase is small and there are noticeable regional differences. For instance, 42 per cent of those returning their cards from the Midlands had received no further education compared with 23 per cent of the respondents as a whole. Table 4 Years of Education Completed by Date of Leaving Research School - Respondents Leaving School before 1955 Years of FE Date of Leaving School Per Cent Before 1930 1930-44 1945-54 3 or more 51 57 61 1 or 2 18 22 13 None 31 21 26 Total (N-) (514) (730) (632) 73ý 998 of the respondents (38 per cent) had studied at one of the two ancient universities (Table 5), of which 95 per cent had stayed for more than a year. On average during recent years boys from the school have gained 6 or 7 open awards at these universities each year, and, as with some other large public schools such as Marlborough, 200 to 300 past pupils may be attending one of them in any typical year. Over half of all the respondents who had studied medicine, law and for arts degrees and three-quarters of those studying pure science had done so at one or other of the tro universities. 1 Only 8 per cent of the respondents had studied at London University, which was attended by only 5 per cent of the respondents studying pure science and 3 per cent of those studying arts subjects. A considerable proportion of the whole group had attended provincial universities - more frequently in the applied sciences than in arts. An increasing proportion seem to be studying at universities abroad - in particular in courses in arts and in management, and a higher proportion of those who had studied for an arts degree (10 per cent) had done so abroad than had done so at British universities other than Oxbridge. 1. Arts degrees are defined here to include all subjects normally taught in an Arts Faculty with the exception of law, which is treated as a separate category. 24-0 Table The Institutions Attended for Further Education - All Respondents Institutions attended (some attended more than one) Per Cent Oxford and Cambridge 38 ) London University 8 64 Other British University 14 University abroad 4 Technical College Agricultural College Service College: Army Navy RAF Commercial College Law to Art Theological It Other (including Music) 8 3 3 1 * 1 1 1 1 2 No Further Education No Higher Education** Total (N=) 23 30 (2653) Less than 0.5 per cent ** Note 'higher education' defined as attendance full-time at universities or other degree awarding institution, including Service Colleges. Analysis of the returns by the date at which the respondents had left school suggests that some significant changes have taken place over the past 30 years. While more than 70 per cent of the leavers in each age group have received a university education, there has been a decrease in the proportion of these which are at Oxbridge. While of the leavers going on to university before 1929,52 per cent had gone to Oxbridge, of the youngest group only 40 per cent had done so. However the proportions going to pro- vincial universities has been increasing and the overall proportion with no further education of any kind after school has declined from 31 per cent in the oldest group to 19 per cent in the youngest. At the time of the survey there were more students at London and provincial universities than at Cambridge. 7444 Table 6 Selected Institutions of Higher Education Attended by Date of Leavinz School - All Respondents Institution Date of Leaving Per Cent Before 1930-44 1945-54 1955-62 'students'* 1930 Oxford and Cambridge 37 44 32 28 33 London University 8779 15 Other British University 13 13 12 17 24 No Further Education 31 21 26 19 No Higher Education 29 23 31 30 * Percentage of those referring in their reply to their present occu- pation as 'student' The curriculum in the research school is on the whole traditionally more strongly oriented towards science than the majority of public schools, and this is reflected in the subjects studied by the past pupils. The highest number (24 per cent of those with any Further Education) studied medicine. Next came engineering and other applied sciences (Table 7). There is some indication that this order is changing, and there is a tendency for more of those who have left the school in recent years to choose law, agriculture and management subjects. Table Subjects Studied during Further Education - All Respondents with Further Education Per Cent Medicine (including dentistry) 24 Engineering 20 Other applied science 22 Arts 16 Pure Science 11 Law 7 Agriculture 5 Accountancy 1 Management 3 Other 5 Total (N-) (2,013) 7-4-Z First and Present Occupation Not only do the majority of past pupils of the School hold positions of some prestige but also their first occupation is of a high status, (Table 8). Table 8 Socio-economic Group of First and Present Occupations of Past Tinils Compared with 'Economically Active I-Tales in Eland and ;, ondents Socio-economic Group 1. Employers and managers in central and local government industry, commerce, etc. - large establishments 2. Employers and managers in central and local government, industry, commerce, etc. - small establishments Per Cent Past Pupils of All Econ Active Research School Males E&W 1961 First Present Occu- Occu- pation pation 14 33 3.6 14 34 9.5 *15.9 3" Professional workers - self-employed 4" Professional workers - employees 2 11 39 25 0.8 3.0 5. Intermediate non-manual workers 753.9 6. Junior non-manual workers 10 3 12.6 7. Personal service workers *)*)0.9 8. Foremen and supervisors - manual * 0ý 3.3 9" Skilled manual workers 4) 5 1) 1 31.6)58.8 10. Semi-skilled manual workers 1* 14.7 11. Unskilled manual workers *08.3 12. Workers on own account (other than professional) 0*3.4 13. Farmers - employers and managers 561.0 14. Farmers - own account 06061.0 4.3 15" Agricultural workers 1*2.3 16. Members of armed forces 9+ 3+ 2.0 17. Indefinite, other, 'retired' *41.7 - Students 8 Total N- (2,608) (2,644) 14,49,000) ** Sources SEG Tables 1961 census Reports London HMSO 1966 + excluding National Service Few past pupils of the research school started in manual occupations, and many especially in the period 1920-55 started by taking responsible positions in management (particularly in the engineering and mining industries ) and the professions. The most frequently mentioned first occupations were (classified using the Registrar General's categories and definitions) medical practitioners; accountants, professional company secretaries and registrars; farmers; mechanical engineers; technologists (nec)1 and clerks, cashiers and machine operators - in that order. Some differences appear between the different generations. While a high proportion of the oldest goup started their careers as self-employed professional workers, more of their successors in the 19308 started in farming, which however few of the youngest group seem to have chosen. The choice of a first occupation has implications for subsequent geo- graphical mobility. The analysis of the postmarks on the returns for instance shows that while a higher proportion of those starting in industry or farming have stayed in the Midlands, those starting in the professions tend to live now in the South East of England. The initial occupational choice has implications for the decision whether or not to continue education. While about a quarter of the respondents had received no further education, and only half of those start- ing in farming, manual or junior non-manual occupations had gone on to college from school, only a few of those entering farming in particular had received further education - 77 per cent had received less than 3 years - and only 24 per cent had attended a university. 1. Not elsewhere classified. Table 9 Present Occupatiorof Respondents Numbers of Respondents 000 Fishermen 1 001 Farmers, farm managers and market gardeners 174 002 Agricultural workers n. e. c. 5 005 Foresters and woodmen 4 014 Workers below ground n. e. c. 1 051 Installers and repairmen - telephones 1 067 Fitters, machine erectors etc. 4 072 Metal workers n. e. c. 1 073 Watch and Chronometer makers and repairers 1 085 Woodworkers n. e. c. 2 092 Cutters, lasters, sewers, footwear and related workers 1 093 Leather product makers n. e. c. 1 107 Textile fabrics and related products makers and examiners 5 108 Textile fabrics etc. production process workers n. e. c. 1 113 Clothing and related product makers 1 121 Butchers and meat cutters 2 122 Brewers, wine makers and related workers 1 113 Food processors 5 133 Printing press operators 1 134 Printers (so described) 1 135 Printing Workers n. e. c. 1 142 Craftsmen n. e. c. 2 ý 153 Builders (so described) 2 190 Deck, engineering officers & pilots, ship 3 191 Deck & engineroom ratings, barge and boatmen 2 192 Aircraft pilots, navigators & flight engineers 4 198 Inspectors, supervisors, transport 1 201 Telephone operators 1 202 Telegraph & radio operators 1 220 Typists, shorthand writers, secretaries 1 221 Clerks, cashiers, office machine operators 15 222 Civil Service executive officers 7 223 Civil Servants, local authority officials (so described) 7 230 Proprietors & managers, food sales 18 231 Proprietors & managers, non-food sales 68 236 Garage proprietors 2 237 Commercial travellers, manufacturers' agents 36 238 Finance, insurance workers, financial Egents 35 239 Salesmen, services, valuers, auctioneers 34 251 Police officers and men 1 253 Publicans, innkeepers 2 255 Lodging house, hotel keepers, housekeepers, stewards and matrons 4 256 Restaurateurs, waiters, counter hands 4 264 Launderers, dry cleaners and pressers 4 265 Athletes, sportsmen and related workers 2 ý-ý 266 Hospital or ward orderlies, ambulance men 1 267 Service, sport and recreation workers 3 270 Ministers of the Crown; M. P, s; senior government officials 27 271 Local authority senior officers 4 272 Managers in engineering and allied trades 181 273 Mangers in building and contracting 15 274 Managers in mining and production n. e. c. 149 275 Personnel managers 8 276 Sales managers 91 277 Company directors 84 278 Managers n. e. c. 142 280 Medical practitioners 215 281 Dental practitioners 8 282 Nurses 1 283 Pharmacists (dispensers) 2 285 Medical workers n. e. c. 1 286 University teachers 45 287 Teachers n. e. c. 91 288 Civil, structural, municipal engineers 79 289 Mechanical engineers 87 290 Electrical engineers 34 291 Technologists n. e. c. 98 292 Chemists; physical & biological scientists 57 -2ý 293 Authors, journalists & related workers 25 294 Stage managers, actors, entertainers, musicians 12 295 Painters, sculptors and related creative artists 5 296 Accountants, professional; company secretaries & registrars 140 297 Surveyors & architects 57 298 Clergy, ministers, members of3eligious orders 30 299 Judges, barristers, advocates, solicitors 101 310 Social welfare & related workers 2 311 Professional workers n. e. c. 45 312 Draughtsmen 3 313 Ieb. assistants, technicians 8 314 Technical & related workers n. e. c. 21 320 Armed Forces (IIK) 92 321 Armed Forces (Commonwealth & Foreign) 4 330 Inadequately described occupations 8 Students n. e. c. 200 Total 2,648 The present occupations of the respondents classified on the lines of the 1961 Census are given in Table 9. The occupations most frequently given are: medical practitioner; managers in engineering; managers in mining and production (n. e. c. ); farmers; managers (n. e. c. ); accountants etc.; judges, barristers, advocates and solicitors; technologists. While a high 74sR proportion of those who left school before the second world war entered medicine (14 per cent of this group is now practicing medicine), there has been a tendency since the war for more to enter other professions, especially accountancy. Of those at present referring to themselves as ' engineers', the highest proportion left the school between the wars. Unlike many other public schools the research school has produced few senior civil servants, and all but one of the respondents in this category had attended Oxford or Cambridge after leaving school. 26 (1 percent) of the respondents now hold senior positions in the civil service (including some M. P. s, ministers and shadow ministers). 18 of these were at Oxbridge and a half have an arts degree. This predominance of Oxbridge degrees is also evident among the 45 respondents who are university teachers and among the 91 school teachers. Over 80 per cent of both groups had studied at Oxbridge. 59 per cent of those now employed as doctors, 62 per (ant of the lawyers and 17 of the 19 starting in the Church had attended these same iro universities. Nearly all those who left the school before 1955 now hold professional or managerial positions. Only 12 of the 1,835 respondents who had left before that date are now employed in a manual occupation, and only a quarter of the 69 in junior non-manual jobs at present are aged over 35, most being considerably younger than this. Thus it appears that, while the small proportion who achieved positions of distinction outside industry have generally continued their education at Oxbridge after leaving school, the majority of the very small number who enter manual or non-professional occupations, achieve a similarly distinguished occupational status within 10 years of leaving school. A high proportion of the present managers entered industry direct from school, often $enugh a family contact or the Public Schools Appointment Board. 1 34 per cent of the managers in the survey had received no further 1.79 respondents mentioned a 'family business' - most of them in Yorkshire, Lancashire and the North Midlands. kt-91) education and only 45 per cent had received more than 2 years' education after leaving school. Those of them who had attended university tended to have studied applied science (56 per cent). Although the respondents are distributed throughout the country, there are occupational differences in this distribution. While there is a tendency for the intermediate non-manual workers and those in the professions to move to London and the South East, farmers tend to farm in the South East and South `Nest of England and managers tend to live in Lancashire, Yorkshire and other parts of the North of England. The Day Boys Although only 81 (3 per cent) of the respondents were past members of the dayboy House, their replies suggest that their later careers are distinctly different to those of the boarders in the main school. It has been pointed out that the dayboy holds a structural position in the school which is inferior to that of the boarder. His later career is also less distinguished. First, while the typical ex-pupil is mobile and has a cosmopolitan career, there is a strong tendency for the dayboy to stay in or return to the region around the school. This has been his home district during his school life and over half of the respondents who were dayboys at school sent replies postmarked in this region) Table 10 Postmark on Reply - Dayboys and Boarders Compared Postmark Past pupils who were: Per Cent dayboys boarders Region of School 54 9 Outside Region 46 91 Total (N=) (71) (2580) 1. This may in part be accounted for by a number of the respondents com- pleting their return and posting it while on a short visit to their parents. ý ý/ Table 11 Full-time Further Education - All Respondents Number of Years Per Cent Past pupils who were: dayboys boarders None 45 22 1 or 2 20 21 3 or more 35 57 Total (N-) (76) (2503) Similarly more of those at college had entered for applied subjects and started at a generally lower level in their first job, with the exception of farming. Few started in managerial or self-employed occupations like the boarders, and the first occupation for a high proportion of. them was classified as junior non-manual. In their present jobs too, few have entered management or the professions, and the highest proportion have made their career in farming or the armed forces. It is clear that the subsequent careers of the dayboys, like their lives in the school, are significantly less socially distinguished than those of the boarders. 2S, Appendix 4s published material by two boys indicating restricting nature of life in the school. 1. .... ten years ago, when I was at the school, the town had about 2,000 local inhabitants, most of whom were old or invisible. It is a mere village, a dead one at that. Geographically - is ideally placed for a public schools a completely isolated community, very far from any town of importance, monastic to the core. We were warned against speaking to any of the very few young local women we might see; we were encouraged to think of "Woman" as an exotic and dangerous beast which one might be unable to avoid meeting during the holidays, but from which we were protected during term. The headmaster's maxim wass 'The Zresearch school Boy is a Busy Boy; the Busy Boy is a Happy Boy'. In the fantastically intense round of games and work and societies, there was no time to think at all; homosexuality hardly existed, or was reduced to perfectly harmless romantic friendships. ZThe research achoo7 was a well-regulated and compared with the barbarities described in the review Jby Robert Graves of Charterhouse by the Boys%, an extremely civilized place. Yet there was almost by definition no opportunity for a boy to make acquaintance with ordinary life. Outcry has recently been raised against the intensive, un- natural rearing of farmyard animals; the cruelty is not so different in public schools. The public school myth is a superficially attractive myth, with very unpleasant long term effects. I do hope that a Labour Government will do its best to kill it., (Sunday Times 19.4.64. ) 2 ýZ 2. '... Rather strange, isn't it dear? But later I learned that he had only just left, so presumably he wrote it in one of his black moods. He was often like that. Anyway I thought perhaps you might like it, so I enclose it here, along with the rest of your stuffs "For a long time, I knew the fresh air, the accepting love of the earth, green fields and living creatures. I enjoyed the singing of the birds, the frantic, feverish downpours of rain, and I liked the company of my parents and friends. I knew boys and girls alike, content to accept them both as humans no different. I loved all without caring why it was so good to be living, although I never realised how much those past days were to mean to me. For now I am still in the quick- sands. "This year I was on holiday by the sea, when I happened to be walking in some sand dunes. Quite suddenly I realised I was sinking into the ground. I straggled to free myself, calling for help all the time. I screamed, I yelled and frantically tried to get out. No obe came. Meanwhile the skies grew dark, the air closed in, turgid and oppressive, and I felt very weary, weary and sick. I remember giving one last scream before the darkness seized me and carried me off. "When I woke up, there was someone of my own age standing near me. Although his face was blank, I asked him to help me, for I had sunk to my chest in the cold, empty clutches of the mine. He looked at my worn face, and then began to pull me out with a rope he had found and thrown to me. I tried to help him as much as I could and for ten minutes we worked steadily. Then the rope broke and I quickly sank back to my former position. But I had hopes and felt less tired, since he called to his friends who had just appeared on the beach. They all came running up and stared at me blankly. Then suddenly, one of them roared with laughter and began throwing stones at me. The others joined in and for half an hour, I was frantically busy defending myself against their vicious attack. You see, they had the ad- vantage of position and mobility. I was virtually helpless, and my stones, the ones I had collected from them, had no force behind them, merely lobbing feebly into the air, while they, laughing all the time, caught them easily and hurle* them back at me, weak as I was. My hands became a bloody mesa because I used them to protect the rest of my visible body, but after hitting me all over, they went away, laughing at me as I sank back into unconsciousness. "It was dark when I came to, feeling very weak and useless, and for some time, I contemplated vaguely on ending the struggle there and then. I was alone with the heavens and the earth and neither seemed interested in me. What did they care whether I lived or died? "After all, " they seemed to argue, "if you are ý3 so stupid as to get yourself into such a position, you will have to pay for it. Besides you have got to die some time, and it doesn't make any difference to us if you die now! " How I hated them for that; I cursed them with all my heart and the cruelty of nature and man alike. I hated them all, for I lmew I was so much better than all of them and yet they were mercilessly killing me. In my ravings, I struggled to free myself so that I could destroy them for ever. They had no love or tenderness, and sympathy was equally unknown; so why should they exist at all? But my efforts only made me sink in further, so ineffective and useless had I become. So I ceased from my anguish until I was quite calm and resigned to my fate, although I noticed that deep inside me there was a small wisp of hope remaining. "Three days later I was up to my neck in the sand, growing more feeble all the time, until - Yest A man was passing fairly close by. He saw me and moved on pretending not to have noticed me at all. Three more went past in the same way, hoping that I had not seen them. But the fourth took pity on my wretched condition, got some friends, and together they managed to find and fling a rope across to me. Curious, but I did not feel good then. I little cared whether they could make it or not. It was all the same to me. But I allowed myself to be pulled, although it was a very slow job at first. The next day they had got me out as far as my waist, when a change came over me. I realised that I had not asked thhem to help me at all, or at any time encouraged them in their battle. So why should they be so kind to me, a complete stranger? My heart suddenly broke my stubbtrn head, and warmed to these generous people who sacrificed their time and strength for me, a foolish teenager stuck fast in a swamp. So I felt much better, for I felt that they would certainly succeed, so determined did they seem. So I spurred them on despite their fatigue, and thought of the past and the fut4'e - glorious days of rock-climbing, running, and swimming in warm sunshine, fresh, blue, green and brown. I thought of the time when I would be free again. I decided that I would leap up and run and then celebrate with my rescuers. But my elation dropped when my helpers stopped to rest, while one of them went off for more help. Why had they not thought of that before, and why did they gradually let the rope slip between their hands until I called to them to hold it? However, more people soon arrived, and I relaxed, content to let them pull..... ". From IA PARABLE', Research School Magazine Vol. 3, No. 7,1963. Appendix 5. DRESS REGULATIONS AT THE RESEARCH SCHOOL. (Revised October 1962) 1. The following types of dress should be distinguisheds- (1) School Uniform. The rggLlation jacket, with dark grey trousers of flannel or worsted (including any terylene mixture). The jacket must either be made by Messrs. ---, or to a specification obtainable from the Bursar; the trousers must be of conservative cut and with a minimum leg width of 17". Shirts must be of poplin-type material, white or of a plain quiet colour; collars detachable, white or to match the shirt. The blue tie is obtainable from Messrs. H. ----. A grey pullover or cardigan may be worn with this dress, and shoes must be black (except as set out in Note 2. ). (ii) Formal Suit. A dark grey or dark blue suit of any plain material (no pattern or stripe). The cut must be conservative. Other clothes as above, except that white collars must be worn. (iii) Summer Dress. School blazer, white cricket shirt and grey trousers. No pullover or cardigan may be worn with this dress. (iv) Informal Dress Any garments permitted by a Housemaster for wear in 'house precincts'. After 5.30p. m. 'House precincts' for the Houses will be held to include the tennis courts, and for the walk to and from supper at the Dining Hall. 2. The dress for everyday wear is (i) above, and teams going away will usually wear this dress. If a blazer is particularly required for the game, it may be worn instead of the jacket. If a master in charge considers the occasion sufficiently formal, he may give in- structions for suits to be worn. Suits are the wear for (a) attendance at full School Sunday Services. (b) parties leaving the School on organized expeditions to London, Coventry, etc. If a master feels that a party he is taking (e. g. to a factory) requires something less formal he may give instructions for jacket and trousers (not blazers) to be worn. (c) all leave out with parents and friends, journeys for interview etc. When a boy is going out immediately after school, he may wear his suit in school periods, unless specifically forbidden to do so by his Housemaster. Summer dress may be worn any day in the summer term after lunch (except to school periods), and after general permission has been given as an alternative to (i) on all occasions. Boys watching matches may substitute white sweater for the blazer. 71-ý Games clothes or other clothes for rough wear may be worn for any recognised out-of-school activity. Boys who have to walk or cycle through the town may not enter shops in this dress, or even school buildings unnecessarily. Coloured shirts and sweaters are not permitted on the playing fields; and sweaters worn elsewhere must be white, grey or navy blue. Track suits, when worn, must be navy blue. Notes. (i) In the workshops boys may wear old clothes of any type, provided the master-in-charge approves. Boys in the workshops may wear rough clothes, but in Chapel and any periods they attend they must wear the jacket (or blazer) and grey trousers. (ii) Black shoes are the normal dress for all occasions, but brown shoes may be worn: during Workshops Wekk(even in Chapel and School periods). during parades, and to and from parades with summer dress for watching matches, with informal dress. (iii The blue tie must always be worn in Chapel and school periods; but teams and other parties or individuals leaving the school may change into House or School ties if they prefer it. Headmaster. 12th October, 1962. Z-16 ( Bibliography While the author hasappreciated the significance of much of the published material about the Eaglish public boarding school, a large amount of it is only marginally relevant to the purpose of this account. The majority of the many historical and biographical accounts and the novels based on life at these schools are not mentioned in the text and will not be listed here. Other minor references are given in the footnotes where appropriate. Only those studies which have been found directly relevant to the research and the writing of this account are given belows B Bamford, T. W. Barnard, H. C. Bateman, F. and Dunham, H. W. Becker, U. S. Bidwell, C. E. Brogan, D. W. C The Rise of the Public Schools Londons Nelson 1966. A History of English Education from 1760. Londons University of London Press 2nd Edition 1961. 'The State Mental Hospital as a Specialized Community Experience'. American Journal of Psychiatry vol. 105 No. 6 1948. 'The Teacher in the Authority System of the Public School', Journal of Educational Sociology, Vol. 27, 1953, pp. 128 - 141. 'The School as a Formal Organization' in March, J. G. (ed). 2p. cit. The English Peopi3 New York: Knopf, 1943" Carlson, R. O. 'Research and the School System as an Organization', School Review, Vol. 66 December 1958, PP"473-83" Charter W. W. 'The School as a Social System', Review of Educational Research, Vol. 22, No. 1, February 1952, PP"41-50. Charterhouse by the Boys London: Kenneth Mason 1964. Cheetham, A. and Eton Microcosm Londons Sidgewick and Parfit, D. Jackson 1964. Clemmer The Prison Community New Yorki Rinehart 24-7 1 Cloward, R. A. at al. Cohen, E. A. Coleman, J. S. Cressey, D. R. (ed) C rump. G. D Dancy, J. C. Dornbusch, S. M. Dreben, R. E Etzioni, A. Etzioni, A. (ed). Etzioni, A. Etzioni, A. F Farmer, J. S. Fichter, J. H. rct-: co I is j-: ýý- I2 ,,, iz, t of the Prison New Yorkt SocialSci: nce Research Council 1960. Human Behaviour in a Concentration Camp, New York, Crosset 1953" The Adolescent Society Glencoe, Illinois Free Press 1961. The Prison. New York, Holt, Rinehart 1961 Bedales Since the War London: Chapman and Hall 1936. The Public Schools and the Future. London Faber 1963 and 1966. 'The Military Academy as an Assimilating Institution' Social Forces Vol-33 1955" 'The Contribution of Schooling to the learning of Norms'. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 37, No. 2 1967. 'The Organizational Structure of 'closed' Educational Institutions in Isreal' Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 27 1957" Complex Organizations: A Sociological Reader. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961 a A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations, New Yorks Free Press 1961 b 'Organizational Control Structure', Chapter 15 in March, J. G. (ed) Op. cit. The Public School Word Book Privately issued, 1910. Parochial School (1958) New edition New York: Doubleday 1964. The Fleming Report (The Public Schools and the General Educational System). Fleckerp H. L. O. Floudq J. E. Londons HMSO 1944. 'Character Training: The English Public School'. Year Book of Education 1955. 'The Sociology of Education' in Welford, A. T. (ed. ) Society: Problems and Methods of study non: outledge 1962. ýR Ploud, J. E. and Halsey, A. H. G Gamson, Z. F. Giallombardo, R. Goffman, Z. Gordon, C. W. Grant, N. Greene, G. Gross, INC. H Hargreaves, D. H. Hoylev L. I Inglis, B. (ed) J Johnson, W. K Kalton, G. Katz, F. E. Klapp, O. E. t): iý. t_: il f Sociology, vol. 7 iýo. j. ly5s. 'Utilitarian and Normative Orientations towards Education' Sociology of Education Vol. 39,1o. 1, Winter 1966, pp. 46-73. Society of Women, a Study of Women's Prison New Yorks Wiley 1966. Asylums New Yorks Anchor 1961. The Social System of the High School Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press 1957" Soviet Education Londons University of London Press 1965. The Old School Londons Cape 1930. "Sociology of Education, 1945-55" in Zetterberg, H. L. (ed) Sociology in the United States of Americas A Trend Report, Parisi UNESCO, 1956, pp. 62-67. Social Relations in a Secoda School Londons Routledge 1967- 'Organizational Analysis in the Field of Education' Educational Research, Vol. 7, No. 2, February 1965- John Bull's Schooldays. London: Hutchinson 1961. A, Handbook for Independent School Operation New Yorks Van Nostrand 1961. The Public Schools. London: Longmans 1966. 'The School as a Complex Social Organization: a Consideration of Patterns of Autonomy', Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 34, No. 3.1964" pp 428-455" 'Heroes, Villains and Fools, as Agents of Social Control', American Sociological Review, Vol-19 (19754) pp52- 2. Zýj L Lambert, R. Lambert, R. Lemert, E. M. Lowie, R. H. M The State and Boarding Education Londons Methuen 1966. 'The Public Schools: A Sociological Introduction' In Kalton, op. cit. 'The Folkways and Social Control' American Sociological Review, Vol. 7 (1942TP) Social Grganization Londons Routledge 1950. McCockle, L. :. and Korn 'Resocialization within Walls' American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals Vol. 293, May 1954. McConnell, J. D. R. Eton, How it Works London: Faber 1967. March, J. G. (ed) Handbook of Organizations Chicago: Rand McNally 1965. Marlborough by the Boys Londons Kenneth Mason 1963. Masters, P. L. Preparatory Schools Today London: f. and C. Black 1966. Mayntz, R. 'The Study of Organization: A Trend Report and Bibliography', Current Sociology, Vol. 13, Nod 31 Merton, R. K. Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe Illinois: The Free Press 1957. 0 Ogilvie, V. The English Public School Londons Batsford, 1957" P Parsons, T. Pear, T. H. Punch, M. E. R Robinson, G. 'The School Class as a Social Systems some of its functions in American Society' Harvard Educational Review vol. 29, No. 2,1959" 'The Training of Character in Some English Schools' Yearbook of Education 1951. A Comparative Analysis of Three Boarding Schools as Complex Organizations Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Essex 1966. 'The Private School since 1944' District Bank Review No. 163, September 1967. S Simpson, J. B. Hope Snow, G. Stenhouse, L. Sykes, G. M. T Rugby Since Arnold Londons MacMillan 1967. The Public School in a New Age, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1959" Culture and Education, London: Nelson 19 7. Society of Captives Princeton: Princeton University Press 1958. Taylor, L. C. (ed) Experiments in Education at Sevenoaks Londons Constable 1965. Taylor, W. The Secondary Modern School London: Faber 19 3" Tonbridge by the Boys Londons Kenneth Mason 1964. Turnert R. H. V. Vaisey, J. w Wa11er, N. Weinberg, I. Wilkinson, R. Wilson, B. Wilson, J. Wolfenden, J. F. Worsley, T. C. 'Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System' ASR Vol. 25, No. 1 1960. The Costs of Education London: Heineman 1958" The Sociology of Teaching (1932) Reprint New Yorks Wiley 1965. The English Public Schools, New York Atherton Press 1967. The Prefects London: Oxford University Press 1964. 'The Teacher's Role -A Sociological Analysis' British Journal of Sociology. Vol. 13. No. 1.1962. Public Schools and Private Practice London: Allen & Unwin 1962. 'The English Public School' Yearbook of Education 1957. Barbarians and Philistines London Secker & Warberg 1940. 741 Journals: Conference School and College The Independent School The rimes : educational Sutj rnent. School Prospectuses, Rules and Calenders. Uz