So Eton, everything I expected and more

[JoanBias]

My DS is at a private school, so I have experience of private schooling, but my word Eton was like another world.

Not just the school, but the people there.

There was one prep school being shown around, all in tweed jackets, and to a boy the spitting image of Draco Malfoy (well there was one Chinese boy, but otherwise....).

One of the mothers doing the tour was not quite right in some respect, I'm not sure how but something wasn't wired up correctly or something. She was immacuately dressed, 6-inch heels (pretty daft considering the confirmation letter warns about having a long walk), but she was just bizarre. The admissions tutor said 'we have a waiting list of 80 boys and typically 35% of these will make it through', and she asked afterwards 'so 80% of the boys from the waiting list make it through?', and it was then explained again, but you could kind of hear the cogs going round and she clearly didn't get it. She had asked several other similar questions; e.g., it was explained that some Houses are catering and others go to a central cafeteria, so she then asked 'so they all eat in the cafeteria'? She pointed at the Fives Court and asked me 'what do they play here?' I said 'Fives' 'Is it squash?', she said. 'No, Eton Fives.' 'So is it squash?' It seemed as if this woman had had the benefit of the 'Finishing School for the Terminally Dim', because she was otherwise every inch the presentable upper middle-class wife.

Another family had a son who looked the prototypical pre-Etonian, and sure enough Daddy spent the tour braying on about his House when he had been there.

The facilities were extremely impressive, although they didn't bother to show us any of the academic parts, and basically the impression was 'if your son is incredibly pushy and self-motivated, send him here and we will teach him to be entitled'. They said 'every year we reject about a third of the highest performers on the test', essentially because they aren't pushy enough. (The House Mistresses seemed quite nice though.)

Fantastic training for future managing directors and whatever, but not for us.....

Well worth it to sign up for a tour, very illuminating. They take about 100 a day from what I can see, so obligation at all....

I think you are best off buying seafood frozen, unless you live in Grimsby or something.

I go in Waitrose and look at their 'fresh seafood' display and it's a joke, all this previously frozen stuff that has been sitting around days, or come from a prawn farm swarming with lice in Madagascar.

Just buy it frozen and you cut out all the pretending-to-be-a-fishmonger bollocks from the supermarkets.

Yes I agree that frozen fresh straight from the boat is the best way if you're miles away from the sea. I love salmon, sea-bass, haddock in fish pie, smoked salmon, chicken, lots of lovely veg and some fresh pasta. Brown rice of course.

My downfall is butter but I still maintain that is better for you than those awful 'spreads' that proport to be 'butter' but are just heart attacks in a tub.

I'm still chuckling at the vision of people main-lining cream buns in front of the telly!

Xenia your island sounds absolutely idyllic and yes what a fab way for the heart and spirit to live.

I will absolutely only give my family crab which is caught by our village fisherman, cooked in his outdoor crab stove and handpicked by his wife. All other crab is utterly vile.

joan you haven't yet told us what it is about you that's so much better than everyone else. Can we have a proper answer if poss? Is it class? money? intellect? beauty? Interested to know. You don't half sound snooty so I've placed my own personal bet :)

joan, I've been wondering where your money has come from. Rude of me I know.
Its just that the people I know who are super rich[as far as I know] and have had money for generations, dont tend to look down on people [again, as far as I know].

It's all a lot better than biscuits or donuts, though. Most people don't really have the choice of whether they have their sardines fresh or from a tin but those differences are tiny compared instead to living on the standard English diet.

What do you think the standard English diet is then Xenia?

I think that's correct amillion. Looking down = insecure I'd have said. Not to mention obnoxious. And deluded.

New money

I think we all know. It is whatever has led to 60% of us being overweight and the massive rises in diabetes and all the rest. I suspect it's better than the standard Scottish diet however. The traditional English diet of your hearty meat or eggs breakfast and kippers and then your hunk of meat for lunch etc was not actually that bad.

We would be much better on the standard Mediterranean diet.

Yellowtip, shellfish is much better purchased live.

The most egregious crime against shellfish is however those New Zealand green-lipped mussels they sell, tasteless and rubbery.

I'm not sure if it's supposed to impress people that it comes from New Zealand, god knows why it would when we've got very good mussels of our own, likewise with their lamb.

Xenia, the English diet is one of the worst in the world, albeit better than the American diet, and probably on a par with the other Germanic countries, but worse than pretty much anything else.

I don't eat shellfish or bacon for that matter. Oh and I didn't get to eat my duck either. I went on the school run, having left the duck on the side in the kitchen. Someone must have left one of the doors open, I found the cat tucking into the duck when I got home! Bloody animal, he looked very pleased with himself as he slunk off.

I like fish but I'm not very good at cooking it. Before we had children we ate out, something which is fairly rare now, I ate mainly fish. I like Bream and sole. I do eat a lot of sardines and mackerel.

I should have thought that in palolithic times we ate more root vegetables and fruit than meat. Women provided most of the food, the men were not always successful in bringing home the bacon. Hunting would have been tiring, opportunistic or taken several days perhaps and still been fairly hit and miss.

I'm not sure you need to go back to paleolithic times necessarily. Apparently we as British have a booze gene, cos we used to drink ale instead of water (it was dirty), which is absent in say the Japanese, and this dates back perhaps 1000 years.

Shit food, shit meat, mutant chickens, and so on is actually something that has come in really the last generation or two, so it's no wonder our bodies can't cope with it.

What do you like about Merchant Taylors Joan?

Well they're big on maths and physics, which is good for my DS. More Further Maths A Level entries than English Lit, for example. And there are obviously plenty of v. bright boys there.

But can't say much beyond that atm, till we've visited.

This thread is mental !

There is a lot of research into how we ate and debates about whether you should study bush Africans and inuit nowadays who may not be typical of how people were. Fruit was fairly rare (it is a fructose sugar hit) as it is seasonal and you don't always come across it. We ate a lot more leaves than roots and the argument is over how much fish meat and eggs v anything else.

There will also be people saying we shouldn't eat any animal products but I don't think there is much evidence for that - quite the contrary. I suspect meat and fish was always top of your list and if you had none of that you'd go for the other stuff.

I don't think people need to get too worried about it. As long as they are mostly eating well they will be fine whether they strike out all roots and cereals or not. Either way they will eat much much better than most people and be fine.

I was mental earlier when I realised the cat had started on my duck.

I've been trawling the cookbooks this evening I must say

I bet you were Mini

It is quite simple- eat less and exercise more.

Yes, but some very thin people live on diet coke and chocolate and that's not very healthy (even though they are thin) and some people trying to lose weight find that meat, vet, fish and eggs fill them up better and make them binge less later than if they had porridge, brown bread and processed foods.

Eton - today's Times

"What is it about Eton? The school now has former pupils running both Church and State. Not only is the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Rev Justin Welby, an Old Etonian, but the Prime Minister, David Cameron, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson and the new Government Chief Whip, Sir George Young, are also alumni.

The future King of England, Prince William, was educated at the school, as was the latest British Nobel Prize winner, Sir John Gurdon, who was bottom of his class. Six Olympic gold medal winners and the screen stars Damian Lewis and Dominic West went there. Even in fiction Old Etonians dominate: James Bond and Downton Abbey?s Lord Grantham. The school has created a YouTube sensation with Eton Style, which has had three million hits.

?Don?t forget about Captain Hook,? says Tony Little, the Head Master, his gown flapping as he leads us across a courtyard to his rooms after chapel. ?He was an Old Etonian ? plays up to all the myths.?

Mr Little is an OE. But the son of a Heathrow security guard and a secretary, who won a bursary to the school, says that Etonians can?t be stereotyped. ?There are many people who are not classically Etonian. There is much more diversity than people assume. Two of the best-known Old Etonians [Mr Cameron and Mr Johnson] may be a particular type, in the sense that they are in the same political party, both went to Oxford and were in the Bullingdon Club, but that is not a true reflection of the sheer range of characters, attributes, talents and social backgrounds ? up to a point. The great fun in a place like this is the mix.?

The secret of the school?s success, he says, is that it celebrates diversity. ?You may be a star rugby player but the boy who does the stage lighting is considered just as impressive. You can?t be trained for one specialism in life any more. You need a broad background, you may change careers several times.?

Academic results are not the only goal. ?It?s about what you are going to do with the rest of your life, not just what your grades are. The expectation is that we do very well, but that race to be top of the league tables isn?t part of the culture. Often the Chinese are amazed to hear that we do sport every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon and give considerable amounts of time to other activities. Children have to learn how to juggle life. Our boys are stretched. One of our besetting national sins is that we dramatically underestimate what teenagers are capable of. If you pitch to low expectations, people will play down to it.?

His aim is to foster enthusiasm wherever he finds it. ?We teach nine modern languages and 30 sports. If any boy shows an interest in something, we try to accommodate it. We recently had two boys who wanted to learn the didgeridoo ? so we found a teacher.?

About a third of the top 100 applicants who pass the entrance test for Eton don?t get offered a place ? ?because they aren?t suited or they are mono-dimensional and only focused on academic work?.

A school should, in his view, be as much about culture as about learning. ?At the end of every year I see the 260 boys who are about to leave. What I want to see is a young man who is engaged, confident and enthusiastic. They need a true sense of self-worth, which means they can stand up for themselves and a purpose higher than themselves. They may decide their aim in life is the abolition of schools like Eton ? that is fine, as long as they do it with passion and intelligence and integrity.?

He warns against a ?born to rule? attitude. ?Confidence can tip into arrogance. We try to stop it by having a healthily sceptical attitude. When someone gets on their high horse they are ripped to shreds.?

The fees at Eton are £30,000 a year ? more than the national average annual wage ? so surely it?s easier for the pupils to succeed in life because they come from privileged backgrounds? ?You cannot underestimate the effect of family on the upbringing of a child and their educational chances,? Mr Little says. ?But it?s not just about material wealth. The real privilege is to have a happy family with lots of interest in the child. You can have very rich parents with no time to do those things with their children.?

He insists he is trying to broaden the intake; about 250 pupils have subsidised places, and 45 pay no fees at all. ?We have a full-time access adviser whose job is to identify families and reassure them. It?s one thing to raise money for this kind of stuff, it?s harder to spend it in the right way.?

The 1,300 boys at the school, which was founded in 1440, seem a breed apart, with their tailcoats, wall game and own language (teachers are known as ?beaks? and matrons described as ?dames?). But the Head Master says that the uniform and traditions are designed to bring the school together as a community, rather than exclude outsiders. ?If you are a scholarship boy from Liverpool and you put the funny clothes on you are immediately on the inside. It makes everyone feel very inclusive.?

Eton Style, a parody made by pupils of the rapper Psy?s hit single, Gangnam Style, is a perfect example of the ingenuity he wants to encourage. ?It?s a short, funny, self-deprecating piece of fun. It?s not pompous and if some people see our boys being normal,that?s great.?

The school?s Spanish teacher acted in the spoof, driving a Rolls-Royce.

The staff at Eton are expected to carry on their jobs outside the classroom. ?The teachers are well paid and live here but their work runs right through the evening. They can join a union but everyone understands the deal.?

Is there anything state schools can learn from Eton?s success? ?I would break schools down into more manageable sizes. Here there are about 16 to a class. And to have a great academic school you need a strong pastoral system. We create community day by day or it dies. With teenage boys you?re going to get boorishness ? you are dealing with the shifting sands of adolescence ? but the focus must be on relationships and the way people treat each other.?

It all sounds more touchy-feely than stiff upper lip. ?We?re not going around whipping boys. We are open to emotions,? he says. ?But it?s wholly misguided to have happiness as a target. Happiness is a chimera. It?s a consequence of being busy, active, challenged, excited.?

He insists that teachers need more ambition for their pupils, wherever they come from. ?It?s patronising to assume that children from a particular background can?t cope with knowledge. You have to give them the tools to shape their destiny and change the world. It?s better to encourage young people to aim for the top than keep everyone floundering at the bottom.?

Parents should also give their children ?a range of opportunity? outside school. ?People say you can take a horse to water but you can?t make it drink. That?s true, but if you don?t take the horse to water in the first place they?re never going to drink.?

He worries that children?s lives are becoming too narrow and focused on academic grades. ?There are too many public exams. I seriously question the point of having GCSEs at all. We might need a snapshot of what 16-year-olds are doing in English, maths and maybe science, but I can?t see why people should do 10 or 11 GCSEs. You could do so many more inventive things.?

Michael Gove?s replacement exams for 16-year-olds could make the problem worse. ?The EBacc in my view is neither fish nor fowl, it?s saying history is important but music isn?t.? Having been a head for 24 years, he has seen a worrying shift towards the lowest common denominator. ?There?s a lack of trust in teachers, which is constraining. If you don?t have that trust the tendency is to pin things down ever more minutely, to give no room for manoeuvre at all.?

Originality is being stifled, he warns. ?English A level is now marked like maths. It used to be the case that, if you had a candidate who was prepared to explore the highways and byways, go a bit off piste but was intelligent, you would make a judgment and give credit, but now that?s all blue-pencilled because it?s not ticking the box. We had one very bright boy, our best historian, who spotted in one of his modules in his history A level that the question was flimsy and argued it back to front. He got a U for it. We sent the papers to a couple of dons at Oxford and Cambridge and they both said it was first-class honours stuff, but we looked at the template and we had to agree with the exam board.?

Mr Little thinks that pupils are being short-changed by the system. ?I will be very careful with the phrase ?dumbed down? because that?s pretty loaded, but it?s all been reduced into bite-sized chunks. If you believe, as I do, that part of the great purpose of education is to encourage young people to see the hidden connections between things, then the more you atomise it, the more difficult it is for young people to do so.?

The noble desire for fairness has had damaging side effects. ?We celebrate elitism if it?s Premier League football, but I want to employ an elite plumber, I want to have an elite doctor and I like people to do very well indeed academically. The word elitism is so laden with baggage it?s almost not worth using, but we should be unashamed about excellence.?

Mr Cameron, accused of elitism himself, must sometimes think it is a disadvantage to have gone to Eton. ?If you?ve been here you?ve had a good education. The fact that, subsequently, people hold you to slightly higher account is no bad thing,? Mr Little says. ?I say to the boys: ?You?ve had tremendous opportunities but if you choose to behave in the way a tabloid would imagine an Old Etonian would behave, then you deserve everything you get?.?

The benefits, in his view, far outweigh any downsides. ?There?s a history to this place. We don?t talk about prime ministers and all the rest of it, but the fact it?s all around you does have an effect. It asks you that implicit question: If these people have done those things, why not you??

Curriculum Vitae

Born 1954

Family Married to Jennifer Greenwood, one daughter

Education Eton College on a bursary; Corpus Christi, Cambridge, choral scholar

Career English teacher and housemaster at Tonbridge School, Kent; head of English, Brentwood School, Essex; headmaster, Chigwell School, Essex; headmaster at Oakham School, Rutland. He became Head Master of Eton College in 2002

Notable Once said, ?Eton is a four letter word?

Very good read Xenia. Particularly agree with this -

The noble desire for fairness has had damaging side effects. ?We celebrate elitism if it?s Premier League football, but I want to employ an elite plumber, I want to have an elite doctor and I like people to do very well indeed academically. The word elitism is so laden with baggage it?s almost not worth using, but we should be unashamed about excellence.?