Controversies over the Purposes of Schooling and the Meaning of Work: Selected Readings in the History of American Education Book

The great British Public Schools were the formative ground for the ruling classes of the 19th and early 20th Centuries in Britain. From the reforms of Dr. Thomas Arnold at Rugby in the mid-19th Century, the Public Schools evolved a comprehensive curriculum and ethos that was inculcated into generations of boys and young men. This ethos, in turn, informed and lead to the generation that would go on to lead during the battles in the trenches of the First World War. And that was where the ethos would be broken.

Parker traces the changes and the development of that ethos, one of service, Christianity, structured society, and a sanitized Classicism. He shows how the expansion of the Public Schools coopted the affluent middle classes and aligned them with the ruling upper classes. In turn, the use of Missionary efforts and the literature of the Public School story helped to bring the working classes into the same ethos.

Parker balances his tracing of the Public School ideal with a look at how the experiences of the trenches lead to the writings of Siegfried Sassoon and Owen (and others) which changed the idea of "Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori" from a value to live by to "The Old Lie." At the same time, it is also admitted that the same ideal that lead so many Public School graduates to the trenches was also of some small value of helping to sustain them through their experiences and providing a framework to help them interpret those same experiences.

This book would be of value for someone interested in the lines of thought that lead up to the First World War and who wanted to know how and why people were so eager at the start of the war.