OT: Public Schools

[geoff_bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 187805

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

Carol:
> 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.
 
Geoff:
I think that is the important point, that JKR, as far as I can see, is not 
modelling Smeltings' uniform on any one specific school but merely 
producing a parody, as you observe. Many British public schools wear a 
normal uniform. I quoted Taunton School in a recent post where male 
pupils wear dark grey suits. 

You mention Christ's Hospital. You may have noticed that, in a recent 
post, I said that my Junior School headmaster in London tried to encourage 
me to sit the entrance scholarship exam for the school and l kicked against 
it because I didn't want to be away from home at 9. I now recall that i was 
also put off by the uniform and how folk where I lived would react to seeing 
me in it. Going back to my comment in the last paragraph, this school was
 a mediaeval foundation and, like some public schools, has kept to the 
tradition of its early uniform.

With regard to Stonewall High, I think you are reading too much into the 
description to label it as a prison uniform. Over the last thirty years or so, 
school uniform has been greatly simplified, partly because of cost and 
partly because of the generally more relaxed attitudes to dress. The days 
of blazers and ties are over in the great majority of schools. In my own area, 
the usual uniform code will be a white or plain coloured shirt with a jumper 
with perhaps a school logo on the left breast plus grey or navy trousers or 
skirts. As a more detailed example, the West Somerset Community College 
in Minehead majors on blue: mid-blue shirts, navy blue jumpers and grey 
trousers and skirts.

We know little of Stonewall except that some elements of the uniform are 
grey. Petunia is dyeing some of Dudley's old clothes obviously to avoid 
paying anything out for the "freak". The reference to elephant skin is that 
Harry is seeing the clothes in the tub when they are wet and certainly 
wrinkled and expects that they will come out looking patchy and very 
unlikely to be ironed.

We don't necessarily know that Stonewall is a comprehensive school. The 
odds are that it is, but there are some Local Education Authorities (LEAs) 
who have dragged their heels for years over implementing the change.