OT: Public Schools

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 187804

Rick Kennerly wrote:
> John Granger in /Harry Potter's Bookshelf, the Great Books Behind the Hogwart's Adventure / explains that what Americans think of Public School would be called a Comprehensive School in the UK. US Private Schools (including church schools) would more or less equal Public Schools in the UK.
<snip>
> As Geoff makes the point, there are points of departure and as I read it Granger was looking more backward (the Tom Brown series, Bronte & Austen) than describing the current UK educational system, which is an appropriate vantage point.  After all, HWs was much closer to a Medieval environment as far as architecture, quills, scrolls, and smoky sconces. 
> 
Carol responds:
Yes, except that Jane Austen's characters don't go to school and Jane Eyre's school is a nightmare (though the children don't wear uniforms). But we were discussing Muggle school uniforms (Dudley's for Smeltings, which seems to be a parody of English public school uniforms) and the one Harry would have worn for Stonewall High, which (IMO) sounds more like a prison uniform than anything worn at a comprehensive school (I hope).

Here's a uniform for King's School, Rochester, the sort of thing that JKR seems to be poking fun at via Dudley's Smeltings uniform:

http://www.archivist.f2s.com/bsu/boater/btr3.jpg

And there's the still more distinctive and very old-fashioned uniform still worn by students at Christ's Hospital:

http://www.archivist.f2s.com/bsu/ch/ch4.jpg

I can't find one that's really close to Smeltings' (with knickerbockers), but maybe someone from England can help me.

I agree that the Hogwarts environment and its uniforms are medieval(I think the robes resemble the academic gowns worn by Oxford students from its founding until at least the early twentieth century), but it, too, has elements of the British public school (or boarding school). However, as of the chapter we're discussing, neither the reader nor Harry has seen them yet.

Carol, thanking Geoff for clarifying the concept of a British public school