Contents
-SUBJECT INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
Page 120
over there corresponds to our
prep school; it is a place maintained chiefly by endowments, wherein boys of the upper classes are prepared for the universities. What we know as a
public school is called a
board school or
council school in England, not because the pupils are boarded but because it is managed by a school board or county council. The boys in a public (
i. e., private) school are divided, not into
classes, or
grades, but into
forms, which are numbered, the lowest being the
first form. The benches they sit on are also called
forms. An English boy whose father is unable to pay for his education goes first into a
babies’ class (a
kindergarten is always a private school) in a
primary or
infants’ school. He moves thence to
class one, class two, class three and
class four, and then into the
junior school or
public elementary school, where he enters the
first standard. Until now boys and girls have sat together in class, but hereafter they are separated, the boy going to a boys’ school and the girl to a girls’. He goes up a
standard a year. At the
third or
fourth standard, for the first time, he is put under a male teacher. He reaches the
seventh standard, if he is bright, at the age of 12, and then goes into what is known as the
ex-seventh. If he stays at school after this he goes into the
ex-ex-seventh. But many leave the public elementary school at the
ex-seventh and go into the
secondary school, which is what Americans call a
high-school. “The lowest class in a secondary school,” says an English correspondent, “is known as the
third form. In this class the boy from the public elementary school meets boys from private preparatory schools, who usually have an advantage over him, being armed with the Greek alphabet, the first twenty pages of ‘French Without Tears,’ the fact that Balbus built a wall, and the fact that lines equal to the same line are equal to one another. But usually the public elementary school boy conquers these disabilities by the end of his first high-school year, and so wins a place in the
upper fourth form, while his wealthier competitors grovel in the
lower fourth. In schools where the fagging system prevails the fourth is the lowest form that is fagged. The
lower fifth is the retreat of the unscholarly. The
sixth form is the highest. Those who fail in their matriculation for universities or who wish to study for the civil
