Word: etonisms
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Next fall, as a reluctant concession to the Ministry of Education, Eton will admit two state-supported boys - but only as an "experiment." Says Eton's 74-year-old Provost Sir Henry Marten, who was Princess Elizabeth's private tutor in history: "We English are very slow, and we never rush into anything...
Dukes Must Fag. Eton's apologists point out that it has its own kind of democracy. Unlike other English public schools. where masters appoint boys as prefects and monitors, elected student committees govern Eton. The 20-odd top boys who make "Pop" run the sports, carry out the school rules, enforce discipline. and get special privileges. Even young dukes and princes must "fag" (do chores) for older Eton boys. To prove that this system teaches both obedience and leadership. Etonians point proudly to products like the Duke of Wellington,* ten Prime Ministers, including Gladstone, the elder Pitt...
...more than 100 years, Etonians have worn top hats to school and to military drill, sometimes stuffed with pencils and books like an extra pocket. Since 1820, Eton boys have worn black, in mourning for George III. Only boys under 5 ft. 4 in. wear Eton jackets and wide Eton collars; when they grow bigger they graduate into tail coats and narrow collars. Etonians must always leave the bottom buttons of their waistcoats unbuttoned, say "absence"' when they mean roll call, and talk a jargon that new boys study from a glossary, may not furl their umbrellas unless they...
...boys have usually passed the general examination for their School Certificate (university entrance credits), by 16. In the student days of Shelley, Gray, Swinburne and Fielding, both Latin and Greek were compulsory; today most still study Latin, about half Greek. Etonians spend their last two years at Eton specializing in some favorite subject (e.g., history, science) under a tutor's guidance, go as fast as they like. Eton's educational reputation: tops. Eton's educational secret: "We give the boys time to educate themselves...
...Eton's standards a mere babe in the educational woods, Trinity College (Cambridge) last week had a birthday too. King George VI, a Trinity man himself, showed up for the 400th birthday party. Beneath a Holbein portrait of Henry VIII, who founded Trinity, George raised his glass in a toast: ". . . Like many of you undergraduates, I myself came here [in 1919] straight from the fighting services, and I found in the atmosphere of Cambridge ... a steady and mellowing influence." Others under the influence: Newton, Bacon, Coke, Byron, Dryden, Tennyson...