Preparing for Power

The difference between a public school and an elite private school is, in one sense, the difference between a factory and a club. Public schools are evaluated on how good a product they turn out, and the measure of quality control is inevitably an achievement score of some kind [...] to compare public and private schools in terms of their output really misses the point. (p. 34)

The shared ordeal of the prep rite of passage would create bonds of loyalty that differences in background could not unravel. (p. 36)

The preservation of privilege requires the exercise of power, and those who exercise it cannot be too squeamish about the injuries that any ensuing conflict imposes on the losers [...] The founders of the schools recognized that unless their sons and grandsons were willing to take up the struggle for the preservation of their class interests, privilege would slip from the hands of the elite and eventually power would pass to either a competing elite or to a rising underclass. (p. 36)

ready to take command without self-doubt. (p. 37)

Boarding schools were not founded to produce Hamlets, but Dukes of Wellington who could stand above the carnage with a clear head and an unflinching will to win. It was, after all, the Iron Duke who said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. McLachlan was on to something important when he saw a relationship between boarding schools and innocence; only he was off course, as it is the destruction of innocence that occurs in the status seminary, not its preservation. (p. 37)

There is no door in this entire country that cannot be opened by a Choate graduate. I can go anywhere in this country and anywhere there's a man I want to see ... I can find a Choate man to open that door for me (p. 212)