Public schoolboys are human, too

Logie Bruce Lockhart

"What do you do to get your boys to meet ordinary people?"

"Don't they feel that they are an elite?"

"Why don't you teach them Sociology?"

And so on. The same old questions. This time asked by a party of 'A' level sociologists from the Tech: many of them intending to be teachers. A pleasant enough group: an ex-policeman, an exRAF man, a variety of bearded youths with shoulder-length hair, an ex-direct-grant school Marxist historian. Ordinary people of the intelligent kind, friendly and interested; kind enough, even, to say that they were impressed.

This conducted tour was just another part of the business of trying to make friends for the public schools. In the last few years they have suddenly become aware that, apart from their own faithful and increasing clientele, nobody seems to know anything about them. What they read about themselves seems unrecognisably distorted either by preconceived attitudes or the fact that most literature on the subject is the product of angry middle-aged men satirising those responsible for their unhappy schooldays of long ago. It is, however, no good the public school staff sitting on their backsides bemoaning the fact that they are misunderstood or that nobody appears to love them ... it is their own fault. If you are in any way part of the establishment, love is something you should live. by, but never expect to be returned. The public schools have been so desperately busy seeking to put their house in order, seeking to deserve the sacrifices made for them by their parents, that they have not taken the trouble to tell anybody what they are up to. Brought up to dislike and distrust all forms of advertisement and `public relations' they are now unjustifiably. surprised that people have reached their own conclusions on what little evidence is available to them. At last there are signs of movement. At national and regional level the Independent Schools Information Service is doing its able best to put the public schools' case and to defend their interests, operating on a budget which, by industrial standards, is still parsimonious. Instead of snapping at any phone call

from a reporter or fobbing off any possible bit of publicity with a growled "No comment!" head masters are to be seen drinking with editors and television pun dits. After years of suspicious cold war between town and gown, the inhabitants of public school towns are surprised to find themselves wooed with invitations to Open Days, concerts and lectures. Social Service groups spend as much time as they can afford redecorating, providing firewood, visiting geriatric wards, and help ing in homes for handicapped children. Many schools help to run boys' camps and missions in their often busy holiday time where they have opportunities for 'social mix' far beyond what most neighbourhood schools provide.

The traffic is not one way. Sociologists Gf all kinds are descending upon the public schools with all manner of different approaches. There was, for instance, the phone call from a lady, who claimed to be working on behalf of the Schools' Council, asking me if I could let her interview two 'typical public schoolboys' ... What could I do but ask her what she wanted me to prove? There was a graduate from Essex University researching into class attitudes in different kinds of school. I turned out my entire sixth forms for him for an hour. After the boys had been asked to ponder ten alternative questions about the Queen ("Do you think she is cruel or kind, lazy or hard working, proud or modest?"), I still remember the pained expression on that sociologist's face when he discovered that a considerable number had crossed out the question altogether, adding words to the effect that, as they had never had the chance to meet Her Majesty, they were in no position to hazard guesses about her character.

Many remember that wellknown don of a decade ago (since' then suitably punished by becoming headmaster of a progressive school) who sold his sociological work on public schools by quoting from the intimate diaries of boys. The proportion of boarding school boys who keep diaries of their intimate fantasies, except for the special benefit of sociologists, is not high, and it is a fair assumption that those who do so are unlikely to be representatives of the norm.

His conclusions were not much more valid than those of the young female reporter for a New England journal who, some years earlier, wandered round the edge of the Tonbridge cricket field asking a random selection of amused spectators how often they indulged in a wide and detailed list

of sexual practices. Even the astoundingly improbable picture of

sexual athleticism that emerged failed to alert this singularly naive lady to the fact that the boys had seen her coming from a great way off and had arranged a man-sized leg-pull.

Never mind: the sociologists are interested, and I suppose we ought to be grateful, just as I suppose we — like the state school headmasters — must be grateful for the endless forms, official, semiofficial and hopeful, which ask us how we spend our spare time, how many square feet each of our thousand or so rooms measure, where each boy comes from, where each goes to. If at times we add incorrectly to the piles of. often superfluous and unreliable educational statistics, I hope it may be forgiven us.

I fear the mountain of strange misconceptions and deep-seated prejudices may be too big to be shifted by busy men who are struggling to mind their own hard-working and demanding business. The battles still surge round the image of schools of thirty years ago or more, instead of being concerned with the best developments for them in the future. The chinless wonders, the games snobs and the perpetual adolescents who populated the autobiographies of the 'thirties and the television of the 'sixties do not represent the whole truth any more than Tom Brown, 'If' or 'Fat white woman,' but for the great majority who have never been near a public school, such programmes will not only be more fun than the truth, but will be the only accessible information. The truth will never reach them for the simple reason that it is dull.

We are ordinary people teaching ordinary boys and girls, some more successfully than others. We are struggling to do a good job because we believe passionately both in the right to be independent and the need to provide boarding schools on a scale which the state has always refused to do. Most of our pupils come from middle class backgrounds because successive governments have refused to support our efforts to admit those who want to come to us and could benefit from what we offer, but cannot afford the fees. ft is no more or less wicked to think of middle-class kids as being less or more than ordinary human beings than to think of miners' children or black children in that way.

The modern teenager has achieved classlessneSs more than any of his predecessors; little fingers are not left protruding from tea cups; uniforms are worn — not to crush individualism, but to eliminate outward signs of differences of background and

Spectator May 11, wealth; to emphasise that the value of spending money °I1 fashion-following is false in 31 world where shortages are widespread. In most public schools pocket money is limited to about E5 a term, and many of the homes,' often the best and most loving, are making tremendous sacrifices far the education they believe in. Far some of them luxuries are a thing'

of the past; second cars, holidaYs abroad, smoking and drinking have often gone by the board. They are, in short, ordinall human being contributing all theY can to equipping their children t°

help in the best possible way in a difficult world. Of course there areA some very wealthy parents, anu some very unpleasant ones; theY exist in other countries and in other schools too.

Are they privileged and cons,' cious of being an elite? It is hail' to define what constitutes privilege. At present, with thel thermostat turned to 63° giving all, effective temperature of 51° or 52,f in remoter classrooms, with hal the bulbs removed from the corridors and even the bursar

huddled over his desk in a great'

coat, it is easy to feel that one i3 not more privileged than the Cit),; College, blazing with light arlu

with all rooms and offices cosilY warm. It is not in feeding'

friendships or material comforts that public schoolboys are privileged.

In spite of the great extra demands on schoolmasters' time made by the boarding school set'

up, the financial advantages to the staff are minimal. The staffing N. tio similarly is only better because the very large sixth torms and toe boarding set-up make it necessarY; Most people when they think 01 public school 'privilege' are tot thinking in terms of better teaching or better facilities, even, like Mr Hattersley, creaming off boys and teactiers and "using scarce resources at tW expense of the state." They are, still thinking of the suppose!' monopoly of positions of powel

and influence. The Foreign Office

the Civil Service, Oxbridge, the, City, Parliament, judges ato, bishops, generals, admirals auu air marshals — eminence in these institutions and offices is still, supposed to depend on the 131' School Tie.

Figures are earnestly quoted which do indeed show that the public school representation l! big compared with gramMa,,' schools, and vast compared it

secondary moderns or comprehensives. It is convenientV forgotten that, as most of the distinguished folks are ov Jer sixty, all that is prove' is that the fiublic schools iO the 'thirties produced large numbers of people who rose t0 eminence in those walks of life; Since then there has been a wort°, war, a social revolution and tvv° generations, and the myth h° longer resembles the fact. Evell, more than trade unions any, management, the blimps any trendies of the 'seventies are fighting the battles of yesteryear' The Foreign Office does all it call to attract candidates from the state schools, but they still hesitate to apply. The Admiralty interview board bends over backwards to make allowances for the state school day boy who may have little experience of coping With unfamiliar situations in strange surroundings, for the very good reason that he may never have been away from home before. A Tutor for Admissions at Cambridge was recently stung by the critics who deplore the still substantial representation of public schoolboys into explaining, we could choose no differently unless we did so on political grounds." And the Lord preserve US from that. Many are the tycoons who send their sons to Public schools to speak posh and earn £10,000 a year, only to find that their sons end up by devoting a life-time to badly paid unremitting toil in humble positions of service.

If there is any privilege I believe it is in belonging to schools which

set out to be dedicated to community service and idealism. Of

course public schools have no monopoly of these ideals and like others they fail to achieve them; but let there be no doubt of their intention.

I remember the headmaster of an LEA school saying that his fifteen-year-olds (all of whom were, like some of us, 11-plus 'failures') when they went with some hesitation and reluctance to play games against their public school contemporaries, would come back and say in astonishment, "You know, they're quite nice blokes after all, no different from us!" As though they had expected toffee-nosed snobs who wouldn't speak to them.

That seems to be our first task. To establish that just like politicians, Nigerians, Arabs, Israelis, Russians housewives, doctors, pop stars, dockers and policemen, public schoolboys are ordinary human beings, and that the common ground between people is more important than the differences. It is dull and therefore unsuitable for publicity. But then the truth always is dull.

Logie Bruce Lockhart is headmaster of Gresham's School