Post by kimster on Aug 1, 2006 3:34:38 GMT -5
a very interesting article here:
A New Kind of Elite
The most famous name in schools is cleverly reinventing itself. But is what's good for Eton good for Britain?
BY J. F. O. MCALLISTER
Twenty or so boys dressed in white tie and tails are being taught by Liam Maxwell on a recent Friday at Eton College, the exclusive boys' school 35 km west of London. For centuries Eton — founded in 1440 — has been synonymous with privilege, the place where Britain's élite is given its polish and an air of entitlement. But this class doesn't feel like a hothouse for languid aristocrats. The boys are not declaiming Latin
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but staring into computer screens, trying to master the database program Microsoft Access. Though a student once told Maxwell that typing was something he could leave to his daddy's secretary, the school insists that all first-year students learn to type, so that they can use their mandatory laptops on the fiber-optic network that links every classroom and bedroom to teaching resources and the Internet. Some accents reveal the distinctive bray of the upper crust, but most are generic middle class. The questions are earnest and Maxwell is able to illustrate his answers on a giant whiteboard onto which an image from his computer is projected (most classrooms have the same high-tech setup). The project the boys are working on would probably not be the first choice at one of Britain's state schools — their databases are portfolios of fictional shares they manage during the term to see who can make the most money. But Maxwell, who arrived two years ago after running the IT department of a large recruiting firm, has no patience for the self-pleased. "I tell the boys that 30% of them are going to work for a Chinese or Indian company," he says. "They're going to be judged on what they are and can do, not where they came from. Being an Old Etonian won't be that relevant."
But being a New Etonian could very well turn out to be. For years, many of modern Britain's proud meritocrats have thought of the school as a four-letter word, typifying everything that was wrong about a class-bound society, a generator of snobs who didn't deserve yet another benefit from a nation that had long awarded life's glittering prizes to those who were lucky enough to have been born to land, money, privilege or all three. But Eton is having a makeover. It's trying to marry the lessons about educating adolescent boys acquired over 566 years to the spirit of a less hierarchical, more competitive, more globalized Britain, and the effort is bearing fruit. If it plays its cards right — especially if it can open its doors not just to the very bright sons of the wealthy but to the brightest boys there are, anywhere — Eton has a decent shot at becoming the nursery for a 21st century (male) élite. And it won't be just a British élite, either.
In much of Britain today, being an Etonian is not something you really want to brag about. The well of resentment is too deep. Rory, a student in his fourth year (students' last names are being withheld at the school's request), still regrets answering honestly on a transatlantic flight when his seatmate asked where he went to school. "For six hours he kept making snide remarks," he says. Douglas Hurd, Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary, wrote in his memoir that his family believed "that if I had not gone to Eton I would have become Prime Minister in 1990." (That was the year that the Conservative Party opted instead for John Major, who attended Rutlish Grammar School in south London.) It's not because Eton lacks famous alumni. Its graduates include 19 British Prime Ministers, the founder of modern chemistry Robert Boyle, the Duke of Wellington (the one who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo), economist John Maynard Keynes, writers Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Orwell, Soviet spy Guy Burgess, actor Hugh Laurie, Princes William and Harry, the fictional James Bond, even a Roman Catholic saint — as well as generations of less illustrious worthies. The problem is that in a more meritocratic age, Eton became synonymous with "English aristocrat." Its well-worn image is as a finishing school for not-necessarily-deserving boys whose parents can afford $44,000 in fees each year (Harvard costs nearly the same) to ensure they develop the easy confidence, posh accent and useful contacts that will guarantee access to the top of British society.
At least among many metropolitan commentators, that fed an anti–private school, anti-Eton mood for years. A lot of smart money during the Tory leadership contest in 2005 discounted 39-year-old David Cameron simply because he was an Old Etonian. He had to fight the image: "It's not where you come from but where you are going that counts," he said, as if he had had to escape a deprived childhood. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, a former ship's steward, targeted Cameron as part of an "Eton mafia." Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Cameron's likely opponent at the next election, also dismissed him as just "an Old Etonian." Any school for teenagers that politicians can use to curse their foes decades later has powerful magic indeed. But maybe times are changing; maybe Britain is less bothered by the old engines of class division than it once was. (And maybe ordinary Britons were never as bothered by signs of privilege as the chattering classes.) When all was said and done, Cameron did win the Tory leadership. Polls rate him as more popular than Tony Blair or Brown — and his speaking style has a lot more street cred than Brown's. Blair himself is the product of an Edinburgh school, Fettes, that is often called the Scottish Eton. A lot of institutions that used to symbolize and perpetuate inequality in Britain seem to have lost their toxic punch; the royal family, for example, has never been more popular. What about Eton? What lessons is it imparting today, to what kind of boy? Is it manufacturing smug toffs, or are its students being equipped to make an honest living in a more classless, complex world?
A visitor to the school is struck by Eton's pungent combination of beauty and history that makes it seem, though it's in the middle of a small town, a world apart. There really are endless green fields, a soaring 15th century chapel, rooms where centuries of schoolboys have carved their names and a courtyard lined with plaques commemorating thousands of Old Etonians killed in service to their country. The physical setting complements other kinds of apartness the school fosters. Not just the uniform of white tie and black tailcoat, vest and pin-striped trousers, but a collection of customs and slang whose mastery confers membership in the brotherhood. Teachers are "beaks," the three school terms are called "halves," "wet bobs" are rowers, "tugs" are the 70 especially bright King's Scholars, who live together in a house called "College" on reduced fees, as stipulated by the school's founder, Henry VI.
Of course this breeds insularity and exclusivity; the upside is intensity. Classes are small, teaching is often passionate, the boys work hard — 97 out of a class of 263 were offered places at Oxford or Cambridge last year, and 110 are studying Chinese. By custom, to show the respect they want the boys to give it, teachers must mark written work within 24 hours. They're given a lot of latitude on how to teach and are well paid — two-thirds earn over $72,000, plus housing — but they're also expected to coach athletic teams and help with extracurricular activities. French and Spanish teacher Tim Beard says, "Your priority all day long is working to make things easier and better for the boys." Percy Harrison, head of science, says: "I see my family at breakfast and at dinner. I'm often working to 10 or 11 at night; and so is everyone." The admissions director, William Rees, talks of a "culture of mutual high expectations between masters and boys."
Because it's a seven-day-a-week boarding school, the high expectations extend beyond the classroom. Richard Mason, a South African novelist who published his first book, The Drowning People, three years after leaving Eton in 1996, says that as a student he got to act in several plays "in a 400-seat theater. They were quite serious productions." Classmates composed music that was performed by the school's symphony orchestra, in a hall that is attached to a professional-quality recording studio. "You can try your hand at things and see approximately what it would be like in real life, which is quite amazing. I was conscious that an enormous proportion of my parents' income went to keeping me in this place and how privileged I was to be there. My attitude was, really throw yourself into it and benefit from it," says Mason. Tom, a fourth-year student, says the school emphasizes excellence so much that "it's quite harsh on people who don't have a talent or field they excel in; it's pretty Darwinistic in that sense. If you don't fit in, that's the guy who will say, 'I'll be the druggie.'" But discipline problems and rebels are not something that particularly surprise or worry Tony Little, the headmaster. The ones he finds vexing are the "soggy" boys who drift without engaging. They're given plenty of chances to find something that gets their juices flowing. More than 200 visitors came to speak last year at events organized by the students. "It feels quite natural for a 17-year-old to invite the Japanese ambassador to speak, and for him to say yes," says Little. (That happened in May.)
One parent says what she likes best about Eton is that her son is "on his own, but not alone." There are no enforced study periods. Boys are expected to manage their own busy lives. They live in houses with about 50 others, each with his own bedroom, overseen by a senior teacher in residence, perhaps with his own family; this housemaster, whose standard term is 13 years, keeps a close eye on his charges. The reports he writes to a boy's parents are often gems of shrewd character dissection. The ethos is intimate, reinforced by a compulsory daily meeting of all teachers, who assemble in their gowns to hear a few announcements and then rapidly transact business about individual boys. "You really get to know your teachers and can be very matey with them," says Tom, the fourth-year student. "On a Saturday evening you can pop up to a teacher's house, have a glass of wine and a chat." Little says, "There's a net there trying to influence boys to make the right decisions, but it's not intrusive. The whole thing has to be built around human relations and communication; you protect that and build outward."
A paradoxical result of all this careful human cultivation is that for many, Eton becomes hard to outgrow: a more intense experience, at a more formative time, than anything that comes after. Nick Fraser, an accomplished documentary filmmaker, has just published The Importance of Being Eton, Inside the World's Most Powerful School, a memoir-cum-essay that probes Eton's lifelong influence. He speaks of classmates who marry each other's sisters in order to remain in a kind of Eton club, of their difficulties in relating to exotic creatures like women and the less privileged, and quotes writer John Le Carré, who taught at the school in the 1950s: "The boys were adult, funny, a little removed from life, even as they evolved effortlessly into the shrewdest operators. They communicated with each other in code. Most of all, I felt, they really knew how to be with each other, and that was the real Eton thing." Some boys now attending are the seventh unbroken generation of their family's male line; 40% of this year's intake have an Old Etonian father, uncle or grandfather. The most searing moment in Fraser's book is a testament to the underside of the intense human relationships the school can foster: a sinister, semi-erotic punishment for a minor infraction inflicted by the then headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, who, alone in his study at night, tipsy and sobbing, slapped Fraser's bare bottom with his hand 10 times. That was in the 1960s. Modern Eton is less of a hothouse, less self-involved and all-consuming. "You hear about weird stuff like [what happened to Fraser] from a long time ago, but I never heard anything like that happening when I was there," says a student who finished in 2004. The practice of "f*gging," where younger boys acted as servants to older ones, ended in 1980; now two incidents of bullying a younger boy can result in expulsion. Corporal punishment is banned. The boys are allowed out more on weekends. A Muslim tutor was recently appointed. The role of women is still peculiar: with the exception of teachers' wives, the few present are mainly "dames" who run the domestic side of the boarding houses and maids. But there are a few women teachers and more are coming. Next year there will be a female housemaster in College.
Nancy Garrison Jenn, the mother of recent graduate Alexandre, goes so far as to say her son's classmates were "humble and very internationally minded. They can talk to anyone." The headmaster, who signs his name "Tony," is part of this aerating trend. The grandson of a farm laborer, he is inclusive, calm and genial rather than grand and terrifying. As compared to when he was a student in the 1960s, he thinks Eton is "more outward looking, more diverse and kinder."
If so, that has helped those who leave it. A senior headhunter, John Viney of Zygos Partnership, says the job market has noticed the change in the school. Many Etonians used to be captains of industry; from the 1970s they fell out of favor as the less hidebound products of state schools and university growth supplanted them. "But the public schools like Eton have done a good job remaking themselves," says Viney. "They have money, they have good teachers, the kids get every opportunity, and they come out quite confident." Hugo Dixon, a journalist who left Eton in 1981 and now runs Breakingviews, an online financial commentary service, says that British businesses — the London financial markets in particular — are so much more competitive and international that the idea of advance based on the old school tie "is just not sustainable." The Eton network helps, but "even if you're bright, you're not going to get anywhere without effort." Because Etonians themselves now expect to work hard, having the school on your résumé doesn't raise the same worries it did 20 years ago. "No one has to live it down," says Viney. "Employers are pretty neutral." The "Eton burden," if there truly ever was one, appears to be getting lighter. Cameron is the first Old Etonian to lead a major British political party for 40 years; those seeking other role models in public life can look to the Old Etonians who have run Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
All in all, it's a good time for Eton. To let the world catch up with this news, Little says he has mused about doing something splashy like scrapping the uniform (he decided against it). But is what's good for Eton good for Britain? For all its recent economic and cultural success, Britain has not left all the old wounds of class division behind it. Contrary to popular belief, social mobility in the country has stalled. The absolute number of white-collar jobs is rising, but research shows that the chance of getting from the bottom 10% of society to the top 10% is dropping. A middle-class child is 15 times more likely to become a middle-class adult than a working-class child is to make it into the middle class, "and private schools are undoubtedly part of that story," says Geoff Mulgan, head of the Young Foundation and previously head of Blair's Policy Unit. "They've become an even more powerful part of élite formation and reproduction." Reports released by the Sutton Trust show that the privately educated retain a powerful, indeed growing, hold on many influential jobs. Even though they educate only 7% of secondary-school children, private schools are responsible for 68% of barristers, 42% of top politicians and 54% of leading journalists.
Critics believe the escape hatch private schools give to rich parents means much of the country's élite is ignorant and unconcerned about state schools. Add the conviction that places like Eton exist mainly to preserve the privileges of those who already monopolize too many, and you understand why many in the postwar Labour Party wanted to abolish them. In the 1960s, Eton took that threat seriously enough to start contemplating a move to Ireland. Under New Labour, the danger of extinction has vanished. Blair's government has limited itself to a bill that will require private schools to publish the social benefits they generate to justify their charitable tax-exemption status.
Eton has only a handful of true competitors at the top of the private-school heap, plenty of money and applicants, and it has honed its procedures to identify the smartest boys. But it is uniquely in the public eye — Princes William and Harry didn't go to Beaufort Community School — so the continuing criticisms of Eton's role in perpetuating a stratified society have an impact. The school was founded to educate "poor scholars," and while existing programs to reach beyond its pool of mostly rich white boys have scored some results, Eton doesn't mirror the diversity of modern Britain.
But a school this old knows a few things about adapting to the times — so Eton is embarking on a campaign to offer more financial aid. Already 13% of boys receive help because their parents can't afford to pay in full, worth on average half their fees. That costs the school about $4 million a year — out of income from an endowment of $315 million. To raise the share of students getting aid to about 30%, Eton wants to boost its endowment by at least $90 million. Money by itself won't be enough to bridge the social chasm that keeps many boys from hearing about Eton or thinking they could possibly fit in there. Only two or three enter each year from state schools. An existing program to identify and help needy but smart 10-year-olds to give them private schooling before entry is aimed at only five boys per year. It often doesn't get that many. Nevertheless, more money is the essential first step to broadening the base of the student body. Little says many alumni he has sounded out are enthusiastic about contributing to the capital fund if it will expand access.
Outside the school, the best test of its success comes from fair-minded observers. "If Eton were a business, it would have opened 20 more and be expanding the brand everywhere," says Mulgan. Other schools are doing just that (see box). Now 5-7% of Eton students are foreign, and the boys' range of nationalities and ethnicities is increasing. But Eton's leaders do not aspire to build an empire. On their own turf, their goal is to preserve quality, reform slowly, and set an example others will want to follow. That 1,300 boys can swim in Eton's bounty when millions of British teenagers cannot is in some sense unfair. Nevertheless, Little says that his friends who are state-school headmasters "tend to be rather pleased that places like Eton exist. They're a point of reference for what you can do if you have the money; of something that can be moved toward."
He has a point; it is unlikely — to put it at its very lowest — that Britain would be hurt if all its schools aspired to teach and treat their students with the same respect as Eton displays. Those who graduate from Eton will always have a good start in life. But they need not be snobs. And, as the school has a big chance to prove, they need not all be privileged when they show up.
www.time.com/time/europe/eu/
A New Kind of Elite
The most famous name in schools is cleverly reinventing itself. But is what's good for Eton good for Britain?
BY J. F. O. MCALLISTER
Twenty or so boys dressed in white tie and tails are being taught by Liam Maxwell on a recent Friday at Eton College, the exclusive boys' school 35 km west of London. For centuries Eton — founded in 1440 — has been synonymous with privilege, the place where Britain's élite is given its polish and an air of entitlement. But this class doesn't feel like a hothouse for languid aristocrats. The boys are not declaiming Latin
* Also on TIMEeurope.com
* Poland Looks Back in Anger
A new law could see former secret police collaborators sacked from their jobs
* Finger-Pointing is Pointless
The collapse of the Doha round of trade talks will likely create cynicism
* Who's to Blame for the U.N. Attack?
While U.N. and Israeli officials trade charges about what caused the deadly incident in South Lebanon, the Israeli military is pointing fingers at each other
* A New Ad Adage: Same Sex Sells
Why European advertisers are coming out of the closet
* The Lebanese Government: From Powerless to Power Broker?
Dispatch: A newly united Lebanese cabinet — including Hizballah — may be in the best position to negotiate a cease-fire deal
* Egypt's Mubarak: "No Light at the End of the Tunnel"
America's major Arab ally tells TIME that the U.S. response to the Lebanese crisis was "too little, too late" and reveals details of Egypt's attempt to mediate
more stories »
* Get The Magazine
* Try 4 issues FREE
Get unlimited access to the TIME Archive and free delivery to your door
* Give a gift of TIME
but staring into computer screens, trying to master the database program Microsoft Access. Though a student once told Maxwell that typing was something he could leave to his daddy's secretary, the school insists that all first-year students learn to type, so that they can use their mandatory laptops on the fiber-optic network that links every classroom and bedroom to teaching resources and the Internet. Some accents reveal the distinctive bray of the upper crust, but most are generic middle class. The questions are earnest and Maxwell is able to illustrate his answers on a giant whiteboard onto which an image from his computer is projected (most classrooms have the same high-tech setup). The project the boys are working on would probably not be the first choice at one of Britain's state schools — their databases are portfolios of fictional shares they manage during the term to see who can make the most money. But Maxwell, who arrived two years ago after running the IT department of a large recruiting firm, has no patience for the self-pleased. "I tell the boys that 30% of them are going to work for a Chinese or Indian company," he says. "They're going to be judged on what they are and can do, not where they came from. Being an Old Etonian won't be that relevant."
But being a New Etonian could very well turn out to be. For years, many of modern Britain's proud meritocrats have thought of the school as a four-letter word, typifying everything that was wrong about a class-bound society, a generator of snobs who didn't deserve yet another benefit from a nation that had long awarded life's glittering prizes to those who were lucky enough to have been born to land, money, privilege or all three. But Eton is having a makeover. It's trying to marry the lessons about educating adolescent boys acquired over 566 years to the spirit of a less hierarchical, more competitive, more globalized Britain, and the effort is bearing fruit. If it plays its cards right — especially if it can open its doors not just to the very bright sons of the wealthy but to the brightest boys there are, anywhere — Eton has a decent shot at becoming the nursery for a 21st century (male) élite. And it won't be just a British élite, either.
In much of Britain today, being an Etonian is not something you really want to brag about. The well of resentment is too deep. Rory, a student in his fourth year (students' last names are being withheld at the school's request), still regrets answering honestly on a transatlantic flight when his seatmate asked where he went to school. "For six hours he kept making snide remarks," he says. Douglas Hurd, Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary, wrote in his memoir that his family believed "that if I had not gone to Eton I would have become Prime Minister in 1990." (That was the year that the Conservative Party opted instead for John Major, who attended Rutlish Grammar School in south London.) It's not because Eton lacks famous alumni. Its graduates include 19 British Prime Ministers, the founder of modern chemistry Robert Boyle, the Duke of Wellington (the one who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo), economist John Maynard Keynes, writers Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Orwell, Soviet spy Guy Burgess, actor Hugh Laurie, Princes William and Harry, the fictional James Bond, even a Roman Catholic saint — as well as generations of less illustrious worthies. The problem is that in a more meritocratic age, Eton became synonymous with "English aristocrat." Its well-worn image is as a finishing school for not-necessarily-deserving boys whose parents can afford $44,000 in fees each year (Harvard costs nearly the same) to ensure they develop the easy confidence, posh accent and useful contacts that will guarantee access to the top of British society.
At least among many metropolitan commentators, that fed an anti–private school, anti-Eton mood for years. A lot of smart money during the Tory leadership contest in 2005 discounted 39-year-old David Cameron simply because he was an Old Etonian. He had to fight the image: "It's not where you come from but where you are going that counts," he said, as if he had had to escape a deprived childhood. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, a former ship's steward, targeted Cameron as part of an "Eton mafia." Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Cameron's likely opponent at the next election, also dismissed him as just "an Old Etonian." Any school for teenagers that politicians can use to curse their foes decades later has powerful magic indeed. But maybe times are changing; maybe Britain is less bothered by the old engines of class division than it once was. (And maybe ordinary Britons were never as bothered by signs of privilege as the chattering classes.) When all was said and done, Cameron did win the Tory leadership. Polls rate him as more popular than Tony Blair or Brown — and his speaking style has a lot more street cred than Brown's. Blair himself is the product of an Edinburgh school, Fettes, that is often called the Scottish Eton. A lot of institutions that used to symbolize and perpetuate inequality in Britain seem to have lost their toxic punch; the royal family, for example, has never been more popular. What about Eton? What lessons is it imparting today, to what kind of boy? Is it manufacturing smug toffs, or are its students being equipped to make an honest living in a more classless, complex world?
A visitor to the school is struck by Eton's pungent combination of beauty and history that makes it seem, though it's in the middle of a small town, a world apart. There really are endless green fields, a soaring 15th century chapel, rooms where centuries of schoolboys have carved their names and a courtyard lined with plaques commemorating thousands of Old Etonians killed in service to their country. The physical setting complements other kinds of apartness the school fosters. Not just the uniform of white tie and black tailcoat, vest and pin-striped trousers, but a collection of customs and slang whose mastery confers membership in the brotherhood. Teachers are "beaks," the three school terms are called "halves," "wet bobs" are rowers, "tugs" are the 70 especially bright King's Scholars, who live together in a house called "College" on reduced fees, as stipulated by the school's founder, Henry VI.
Of course this breeds insularity and exclusivity; the upside is intensity. Classes are small, teaching is often passionate, the boys work hard — 97 out of a class of 263 were offered places at Oxford or Cambridge last year, and 110 are studying Chinese. By custom, to show the respect they want the boys to give it, teachers must mark written work within 24 hours. They're given a lot of latitude on how to teach and are well paid — two-thirds earn over $72,000, plus housing — but they're also expected to coach athletic teams and help with extracurricular activities. French and Spanish teacher Tim Beard says, "Your priority all day long is working to make things easier and better for the boys." Percy Harrison, head of science, says: "I see my family at breakfast and at dinner. I'm often working to 10 or 11 at night; and so is everyone." The admissions director, William Rees, talks of a "culture of mutual high expectations between masters and boys."
Because it's a seven-day-a-week boarding school, the high expectations extend beyond the classroom. Richard Mason, a South African novelist who published his first book, The Drowning People, three years after leaving Eton in 1996, says that as a student he got to act in several plays "in a 400-seat theater. They were quite serious productions." Classmates composed music that was performed by the school's symphony orchestra, in a hall that is attached to a professional-quality recording studio. "You can try your hand at things and see approximately what it would be like in real life, which is quite amazing. I was conscious that an enormous proportion of my parents' income went to keeping me in this place and how privileged I was to be there. My attitude was, really throw yourself into it and benefit from it," says Mason. Tom, a fourth-year student, says the school emphasizes excellence so much that "it's quite harsh on people who don't have a talent or field they excel in; it's pretty Darwinistic in that sense. If you don't fit in, that's the guy who will say, 'I'll be the druggie.'" But discipline problems and rebels are not something that particularly surprise or worry Tony Little, the headmaster. The ones he finds vexing are the "soggy" boys who drift without engaging. They're given plenty of chances to find something that gets their juices flowing. More than 200 visitors came to speak last year at events organized by the students. "It feels quite natural for a 17-year-old to invite the Japanese ambassador to speak, and for him to say yes," says Little. (That happened in May.)
One parent says what she likes best about Eton is that her son is "on his own, but not alone." There are no enforced study periods. Boys are expected to manage their own busy lives. They live in houses with about 50 others, each with his own bedroom, overseen by a senior teacher in residence, perhaps with his own family; this housemaster, whose standard term is 13 years, keeps a close eye on his charges. The reports he writes to a boy's parents are often gems of shrewd character dissection. The ethos is intimate, reinforced by a compulsory daily meeting of all teachers, who assemble in their gowns to hear a few announcements and then rapidly transact business about individual boys. "You really get to know your teachers and can be very matey with them," says Tom, the fourth-year student. "On a Saturday evening you can pop up to a teacher's house, have a glass of wine and a chat." Little says, "There's a net there trying to influence boys to make the right decisions, but it's not intrusive. The whole thing has to be built around human relations and communication; you protect that and build outward."
A paradoxical result of all this careful human cultivation is that for many, Eton becomes hard to outgrow: a more intense experience, at a more formative time, than anything that comes after. Nick Fraser, an accomplished documentary filmmaker, has just published The Importance of Being Eton, Inside the World's Most Powerful School, a memoir-cum-essay that probes Eton's lifelong influence. He speaks of classmates who marry each other's sisters in order to remain in a kind of Eton club, of their difficulties in relating to exotic creatures like women and the less privileged, and quotes writer John Le Carré, who taught at the school in the 1950s: "The boys were adult, funny, a little removed from life, even as they evolved effortlessly into the shrewdest operators. They communicated with each other in code. Most of all, I felt, they really knew how to be with each other, and that was the real Eton thing." Some boys now attending are the seventh unbroken generation of their family's male line; 40% of this year's intake have an Old Etonian father, uncle or grandfather. The most searing moment in Fraser's book is a testament to the underside of the intense human relationships the school can foster: a sinister, semi-erotic punishment for a minor infraction inflicted by the then headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, who, alone in his study at night, tipsy and sobbing, slapped Fraser's bare bottom with his hand 10 times. That was in the 1960s. Modern Eton is less of a hothouse, less self-involved and all-consuming. "You hear about weird stuff like [what happened to Fraser] from a long time ago, but I never heard anything like that happening when I was there," says a student who finished in 2004. The practice of "f*gging," where younger boys acted as servants to older ones, ended in 1980; now two incidents of bullying a younger boy can result in expulsion. Corporal punishment is banned. The boys are allowed out more on weekends. A Muslim tutor was recently appointed. The role of women is still peculiar: with the exception of teachers' wives, the few present are mainly "dames" who run the domestic side of the boarding houses and maids. But there are a few women teachers and more are coming. Next year there will be a female housemaster in College.
Nancy Garrison Jenn, the mother of recent graduate Alexandre, goes so far as to say her son's classmates were "humble and very internationally minded. They can talk to anyone." The headmaster, who signs his name "Tony," is part of this aerating trend. The grandson of a farm laborer, he is inclusive, calm and genial rather than grand and terrifying. As compared to when he was a student in the 1960s, he thinks Eton is "more outward looking, more diverse and kinder."
If so, that has helped those who leave it. A senior headhunter, John Viney of Zygos Partnership, says the job market has noticed the change in the school. Many Etonians used to be captains of industry; from the 1970s they fell out of favor as the less hidebound products of state schools and university growth supplanted them. "But the public schools like Eton have done a good job remaking themselves," says Viney. "They have money, they have good teachers, the kids get every opportunity, and they come out quite confident." Hugo Dixon, a journalist who left Eton in 1981 and now runs Breakingviews, an online financial commentary service, says that British businesses — the London financial markets in particular — are so much more competitive and international that the idea of advance based on the old school tie "is just not sustainable." The Eton network helps, but "even if you're bright, you're not going to get anywhere without effort." Because Etonians themselves now expect to work hard, having the school on your résumé doesn't raise the same worries it did 20 years ago. "No one has to live it down," says Viney. "Employers are pretty neutral." The "Eton burden," if there truly ever was one, appears to be getting lighter. Cameron is the first Old Etonian to lead a major British political party for 40 years; those seeking other role models in public life can look to the Old Etonians who have run Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
All in all, it's a good time for Eton. To let the world catch up with this news, Little says he has mused about doing something splashy like scrapping the uniform (he decided against it). But is what's good for Eton good for Britain? For all its recent economic and cultural success, Britain has not left all the old wounds of class division behind it. Contrary to popular belief, social mobility in the country has stalled. The absolute number of white-collar jobs is rising, but research shows that the chance of getting from the bottom 10% of society to the top 10% is dropping. A middle-class child is 15 times more likely to become a middle-class adult than a working-class child is to make it into the middle class, "and private schools are undoubtedly part of that story," says Geoff Mulgan, head of the Young Foundation and previously head of Blair's Policy Unit. "They've become an even more powerful part of élite formation and reproduction." Reports released by the Sutton Trust show that the privately educated retain a powerful, indeed growing, hold on many influential jobs. Even though they educate only 7% of secondary-school children, private schools are responsible for 68% of barristers, 42% of top politicians and 54% of leading journalists.
Critics believe the escape hatch private schools give to rich parents means much of the country's élite is ignorant and unconcerned about state schools. Add the conviction that places like Eton exist mainly to preserve the privileges of those who already monopolize too many, and you understand why many in the postwar Labour Party wanted to abolish them. In the 1960s, Eton took that threat seriously enough to start contemplating a move to Ireland. Under New Labour, the danger of extinction has vanished. Blair's government has limited itself to a bill that will require private schools to publish the social benefits they generate to justify their charitable tax-exemption status.
Eton has only a handful of true competitors at the top of the private-school heap, plenty of money and applicants, and it has honed its procedures to identify the smartest boys. But it is uniquely in the public eye — Princes William and Harry didn't go to Beaufort Community School — so the continuing criticisms of Eton's role in perpetuating a stratified society have an impact. The school was founded to educate "poor scholars," and while existing programs to reach beyond its pool of mostly rich white boys have scored some results, Eton doesn't mirror the diversity of modern Britain.
But a school this old knows a few things about adapting to the times — so Eton is embarking on a campaign to offer more financial aid. Already 13% of boys receive help because their parents can't afford to pay in full, worth on average half their fees. That costs the school about $4 million a year — out of income from an endowment of $315 million. To raise the share of students getting aid to about 30%, Eton wants to boost its endowment by at least $90 million. Money by itself won't be enough to bridge the social chasm that keeps many boys from hearing about Eton or thinking they could possibly fit in there. Only two or three enter each year from state schools. An existing program to identify and help needy but smart 10-year-olds to give them private schooling before entry is aimed at only five boys per year. It often doesn't get that many. Nevertheless, more money is the essential first step to broadening the base of the student body. Little says many alumni he has sounded out are enthusiastic about contributing to the capital fund if it will expand access.
Outside the school, the best test of its success comes from fair-minded observers. "If Eton were a business, it would have opened 20 more and be expanding the brand everywhere," says Mulgan. Other schools are doing just that (see box). Now 5-7% of Eton students are foreign, and the boys' range of nationalities and ethnicities is increasing. But Eton's leaders do not aspire to build an empire. On their own turf, their goal is to preserve quality, reform slowly, and set an example others will want to follow. That 1,300 boys can swim in Eton's bounty when millions of British teenagers cannot is in some sense unfair. Nevertheless, Little says that his friends who are state-school headmasters "tend to be rather pleased that places like Eton exist. They're a point of reference for what you can do if you have the money; of something that can be moved toward."
He has a point; it is unlikely — to put it at its very lowest — that Britain would be hurt if all its schools aspired to teach and treat their students with the same respect as Eton displays. Those who graduate from Eton will always have a good start in life. But they need not be snobs. And, as the school has a big chance to prove, they need not all be privileged when they show up.
www.time.com/time/europe/eu/