Changing Eton

Into a beautiful little town across the Thames from Windsor Castle, with narrow streets, ancient Gothic and Tudor buildings and the fairest cricket pitch in England, visitors poured last week until it looked like a crowded London suburb. All came to see a 100-year-old ceremony at a 500-year-old school--Eton's famed Fourth of June festival celebrating the birthday of Patron George III. They looked at the playing fields where Waterloo was won, watched the fireworks, the traditional cricket matches, the river procession of ten racing shells. They were no end impressed by the strange little chaps who on this day not only wear their top hats but are allowed to don colored waistcoats and wear flowers in their lapels, to furl their umbrellas as only the members of "Pop" (the exclusive Eton Society) may ordinarily do. But the sophisticated observer last week noticed that there were fewer students about than ever before. Every young Etonian who can, nowadays flees Eton for the Fourth.

Eton, England's biggest (1,150 students), most expensive ($1,225 tuition), most exclusive "public" (i. e., private) school, today is on the defensive, abroad as well as at home. Traditional training ground for Britain's ruling "Gentlemen," it has produced ten Prime Ministers. One-sixth of the members of Commons are old Etonians. But in trade and government service, everywhere, except in Britain's Foreign Office, Etonians are being shouldered out by the products of more plebeian schools. Even those who cherish Eton's traditions most tenderly admit that Eton needs some reforms. A few have been introduced by Eton's new (since 1933) headmaster, Claude Aurelius ("The Emperor") Elliott. A typical Etonian, Headmaster Elliott at 50 still climbs mountains and writes articles on mountaineering and history.

In many ways Eton is more modern than newer schools. Discipline (except for shirking studies) and games are almost entirely in the students' hands. The members of Pop and of "The Library," elect their own successors, make rules, impose punishment. Fagging (running errands and making tea for their elders) humbles young aristocrats.

Lest the school fall into too deep a rut, each of the 28 houses in which Eton boys live changes its name and its tutor every 16 years (three Eton generations). The curriculum changes more slowly. A hundred years ago every boy studied Greek and Latin, today most still study Latin, about half Greek. But now all boys must take mathematics, science, French and history. A revolutionary development in this 500-year-old classical school is the popularity of its new workshops, where about 100 of Eton's 1,150 young aristocrats, in their spare time, use lathes and machines, build bookcases, boats. Symptomatic also of the change in Eton is the fact that in their-weekly one-hour drawing period boys today may draw railway engines if they like, instead of the conventional pair of oranges and a banana.

Life at Eton is full of strange and inhuman punishments for Lower Boys. They tremble at a summons from "The Library," dread the tutor's ticket which carries penalties ranging from a sharp look, or writing 100 lines of Latin, to a sound tanning. But Eton's humbling birch rods, fagging and games are no match for the educational effect of Eton's snobbish traditions. Today it is still true of its products that "Etonians as a class are not popular with non-Etonians."

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