Word: preps
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...headmaster of one small Connecticut prep school is particularly aware of this problem. Formerly his school used to specialize in giving individual attention to students, offering a well-balanced program of academic work and extra-curricular activities. Now he finds this is impossible, if not undesirable. A few years ago, he had trouble filling the school; now he has too many applicants. With the resulting selection, he has found that the curriculum of the school has become progressively harder. The well-balanced program and the individual attention are vanishing. In short, the school is no longer any good...
Another small prep school--Groton--has met the challenge of selection more successfully, largely because the headmaster, the Rev. John Crocker '22 has maintained the traditional purpose of the school. He does not believe in selecting students solely on their intellect. 'Groton's purpose, according to him, is "to develop boys in body, mind, and spirit." Many average boys are "awfully happy here," he notes. The large number of boys who regularly gain admission to Harvard--usually about 15 from a class of 40--would seem to indicate that he has discovered a satisfactory way to run a school...
Education: The best Britain provides-private prep school, Winchester, then New College, Oxford, where he took first-class honors in "Modern Greats" (politics, philosophy, economics) and first developed an interest in Socialism. During the General Strike of 1926, other students swarmed off to man buses or unload ships; Hugh got himself a union card and distributed the strikers' newspapers. When a fond aunt offered to subsidize him in an army career, Hugh replied: "My future belongs to the working class...
...Little Codfish Cabot at Harvard has to recommend it is its delightful title. This little inanity, written by Samuel H. Ordway, Jr., '21 and illustrated by F. Wendworth Saunders '24, could not possibly have enjoyed too much acclaim when it appeared in 1924. It follows the education of a prep-schooled boy at Harvard, his introduction to various customs at Harvard, and his impeccable Bostonian reaction to all situations. The cartoons are poor, and what comment there is can be summarized as inconsequental...
This type of writing, except for one or two decidedly anachronistic excresences, passed quietly away after the wane of Gold Coast Harvard. With the passing of a Harvard "type"--the well-dressed, "well-bred," socially conscious, prep-schooled, glib-talking, worldly, wealthy-son type of undergraduate, humor, both self-directed and outwardly directed, fell off sharply. Even today, a cursory glance at the kind of undergraduate publications at Harvard shows an overwhelming preponderance of the intense and earnest variety...