ON THE ENGLISCH PUBLIC SCHOOL AS THE NURSERY OF THE ELITE

By the Education Act in 1944, the three new type secondary schools, Modern, Technical and Grammer school, were established for all the English youth, but at this time the old type secondary schools, so-called the public schools which contained Winchester having her origin in 14th. Century were not abolished and even now remained to be the secondary school for excellent boys who are expected to be the elite in future. These facts are surprising to us today, so this article aimes to investigate the socio-history of the public school as the nursery of the elite. Viewing historically, the public schools were originally not always for the elite. When did the public schools change into the nursery of the elite in future, to say, the school which put out really most elites in various occupations in England? It seems this change occurred after 1840s, namely after the industrial revolution in this country. From this period many public schools (about half, 41 out of 84 public schools) were established and their education created the patterns of English elite behaviors and their old boys were promoted to form the elite group in various occupations. Of course, each public school is individualistic in school color, therefore, there were many differences among schools in occupations and rate of OBs being promoted to form the elite groups and so on. For example, Eton was prominent in the politics, Harrow in the armed forces and Winchester in the academic professionals. But, generally speaking on the public school elites, the armed forces and the law provision continued to be popular, and bussiness gained rapidly in prestige in all schools after 1860s. On the other hand, the church provision was on the decline in every school and natural science and engineering were almost ignored. In this article the author investigated these tendencies mainly in the 9 great public schools, especially the one in the oldest school, Winchester