Sne,—Some of your correspondents and those of a daily paper
appear to be much exercised as to the future of the Public School; they apparently fail to realise the social and economic revolution which has occurred during the past thirty years, and that the Forsytean world for which the Public School catered has nearly vanished. No- body seriously suggests that the scholastic lore imparted at one of these institutions is superior to that which a boy acquires at any sound Grammar School, or that in an open examination a Secondary School boy could not hold his own with a candidate from one of our world- famous schools. To what then was the vogue of the Public School for the last zoo years to be attributed? To the fact that the majority of boys educated there came from the homes of wealthy or distin- guished and, sometimes, cultured patents, and that they moved among social equals who had, like themselves, a home background of ease and assurance. The successful father who had himself started life without these advantages usually took very good care to send his son to a Public School, where it was hoped that the imitative faculty would assist him to acquire the poise, assurance and tone of a Public School man. To such, and to such only, certain pleasant and remunerative careers were open and were closed to those less well launched in lift A senior officer, the head of a Government Department or a big employer not unnaturally preferred as a subordinate one who talked. ate his food, behaved and generally viewed life much as he did himself —one, in brief, who was in that simplex age described as a gentleman.
Bernard Shaw has told us that the modem hero is the chauffeur mechanic; wheel ..... that be so or not, there is no doubt that for better or worse the ideal for atter the war for which all mankind appears to be striving is a kind of artisans' paradise, where technical efficiency will be more highly esteemed than the graces, where the docker and the doctor will get his L5-£15 per week. according to his ability and where few or no perquisites will remain for a small caste of birth and wealtn. Doubtless in that brave new world the purveyor of grace and charm, the well-bred, the well-read and the witty will continue to find the wheels of life more smoothly oiled than will their more gauche fellows, but the prestige of a Great School will no longer be the "Open Sesame " to social and worldly success that it once was, and it appears unthinkable that the parent of I950•will be prepared to cripple himself financially in order to provide an edu- cation for his son which will give no return commensurate with the sacrifices entailed.—Yours faithfully, A R. ESLER. Farnborough Park Hotel, Hants.
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