Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:08:01.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Training an Elite: The prefect-fagging system in the English Public School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Paul Nash
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the past 150 years England has been ruled largely by leaders who were educated in the English Public Schools. A knowledge of the dominant values and atmosphere of these élite schools is therefore an important clue to understanding the nature of English leadership, and hence the “tone” of English life. Vital to an understanding of the Public Schools is a knowledge of the methods by which their values have been inculcated and discipline maintained. The most distinctive single feature of these methods is the prefect-fagging system. A study of this system should therefore shed light upon some significant aspects of English history and society.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1961 , pp. 14 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1961, University of Pittsburgh Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. In each of the lower chambers there were to be at least three scholars of good repute (honesti), more advanced than the rest in age, sense and learning, to “superintend the studies of their chamber-fellows, and diligently oversee them, and when called upon, truly to certify and inform the Warden, Sub-Warden, and Master Teacher of their morals, behaviour, and advancement in learning.” Arthur F. Leach, A History of Winchester College (London, 1899), 174.Google Scholar

2. Cook, A. K., About Winchester College (London, 1917), 119.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., 21.Google Scholar

4. Maxwell Lyte, H. C., A History of Eton College, 1440–1875 (London, 1875), 142–143; Edward Creasy, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians (London, 1876), 91–94.Google Scholar

5. Thornton, Percy M., Harrow School and Its Surroundings (London, 1885), 74.Google Scholar

6. See, e.g., Trollope, Thomas A., What I Remember (London, 1887; 2 vols.), I, 122; Lytton Bulwer, Edward, England and the English (London, 1833; 2 vols.), I, 273n; Public Education; Consisting of Three Tracts reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, The Classical Journal, and The Pamphleteer (London, 1817), 115.Google Scholar

7. Griffin, Gregory, The Microcosm; a Periodical Work (Windsor, 1788), 278; John Moultrie, “The Dream of Life,” Poems (London, 1876), Vol. I, 396–397; Rev. T. Mozley, Reminiscences, Chiefly of Towns, Villages, and Schools (London, 1885; 2 vols.), I, 380; Arthur D. Coleridge, Eton in the Forties (London, 1896), 82.Google Scholar

8. Trollope, , What I Remember, I, 112; Thornton, Harrow School, 74.Google Scholar

9. One writer maintained that while the fagging system was not beneficial to fag or fag-master, it was of great benefit to the tutor “inasmuch as it saved him the wages of some two or three servants, whose menial work was performed by us lower boys.” [Matthew J. Higgins], “Paterfamilias to the Editor of the ‘Cornhill Magazine’,” Cornhill Magazine (December, 1860), 647.Google Scholar

10. “English Aristocratic Education,” The Westminster Review (October, 1835), 314.Google Scholar

11. Gaskell, James M., An Eton Boy, ed. Gaskell, Charles M. (London, n.d.), 17. Gaskell was at Eton in the 1820's.Google Scholar

12. Coleridge, , Eton in the Forties, 4–5.Google Scholar

13. e.g., Hogg, Thomas J., The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1858; 4 vols.), I, 27; Moultrie, John, “Memoir,” in The Poetical Remains of William Sidney Walker, ed. Moultrie, John (London, 1852), x; Thomas De Quincey, Autobiographic Sketches, Vol. II of The Works of Thomas De Quincey (N. Y., 1876), 173; Mozley, Reminiscences, I, 381; Moultrie, Poems, I, 388–389; Gaskell, An Eton Boy, 29, 45.Google Scholar

14. Hare, Augustus J. C., Memorials of a Quiet Life (London, 1873; 2 vols.), 1, 163.Google Scholar

15. See, e.g., Leach, , History of Winchester, 414–417.Google Scholar

16. Whitridge, Arnold, Dr. Arnold of Rugby (N. Y., 1928), 143.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 143–144.Google Scholar

18. Arnold, Thomas, “The Discipline of Public Schools,” The Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold, D.D. (N. Y., 1845), 362; William H. D. Rouse, A History of Rugby School (London, 1898), 226, 337.Google Scholar

19. In a letter to Lord Palmerston, December 14, 1853, Charles Vaughan, Headmaster of Harrow, called the prefect system “that principle of graduated ranks and organised internal subordination, which, amidst some real and many imaginary defects, has been found by experience to be inferior to no other system in the formation of the character of an English Christian gentleman.” Thornton, Harrow School, Appendix I, 450.Google Scholar

20. Escott, Thomas H. S., England: Its People, Polity and Pursuits (London, 1885), 296; Leach, History of Winchester, 461.Google Scholar

21. Bradley, Rev. G. G., “The Hostel System in Public Schools,” Macmillan's Magazine (March, 1870), 406; Arthur T. Benson, The Upton Letters (N. Y., 1905), 48–49.Google Scholar

22. Welldon, J. E. C., “The Training of an English Gentleman in the Public Schools,” The Nineteenth Century and After (September, 1906), 404.Google Scholar

23. “Tom Brown's Schooldays,” The Edinburgh Review (January, 1858), 174; Strachey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians (London, 1918), 213.Google Scholar

24. “A Famous Eton House,” The Quarterly Review (April, 1908), 409.Google Scholar

25. Parliamentary Papers, 1864, Vols. 20, 21. “Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Revenues and Management of Certain Colleges and Schools, and Studies Pursued and Instruction Given therein.” (London, 1864.) Appears as Vols. 5 and 6 of Reports from Commissioners for 1864 (Claredon Commission Report), I, 43.Google Scholar

26. Ibid. Google Scholar

27. Allison, C. R., “The Future of the Public School,” The Journal of Education (December, 1940), 523; Gerard Fiennes, “Public School Boys in Industry,” The English Review (December, 1924), 810; Ronald Gurner, “The Public School System,” The Journal of Education (September, 1926), 645.Google Scholar

28. Herbert, James, “Fagging,” The Nation and Athenaeum (November 1, 1930), 156; M. Chaning Pearce, Chiron; or, the Education of a Citizen of the World (London, 1931), 79; W. B. Curry, “What Will Happen to the Public Schools?” The Journal of Education (February, 1941), 50.Google Scholar

29. Jones, L. E., An Edwardian Youth (London, 1956), 12.Google Scholar

30. Shaw, Bernard, “Sham Education,” The Collected Works of Bernard Shaw (N. Y., 1932), Vol. XXII, 359.Google Scholar

31. Clarendon Commission Report, I, 55 (Recommendations: xxix).Google Scholar

32. “If prefects caned to make a boy keen, honest, truthful, noble—well, there would be much to say for the cane. But they don't. They cane the odd, the weak, the sensitive, the swot, the thinker, the original.” Ex-Monitor, “Our Gentlemen's Schools,” The English Review (March, 1923), 260.Google Scholar

33. Quoted by Pear, T. H., English Social Differences (London, 1955), 206.Google Scholar

34. The Times (London), May 10, 1930, 9.Google Scholar

35. Norwood, Cyril, “The Crisis in Education—II,” The Spectator (February 16, 1940), 207; ‘J. K.,’ “Fagging,” New Statesman and Nation (May 17, 1930), 180; James Herbert, “Fagging,” loc. cit., 156–157.Google Scholar