(4 of 9)
Induced Euphoria. Xenophobic headlines still erupt with every real or fancied slight from Washington, but many Britons are embarrassed by Fleet Street chauvinism, are eager for firm U.S. leadership of the West. During the furor over Dean Acheson's mild remarks about Britain's uncertain role in the postwar world, Lord Gladwyn—who as Gladwyn Jebb was an able U.N. ambassador in 1950—pointed out: "This is true. But she will never find a role if she merely concentrates on hating everybody at the same time—the Americans, the Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese, even some of the emergent states —clutching as well a ruinously expensive deterrent and trying to create an economic third force out of the ashes of a vanished empire."
This is exactly the reaction of many young Britons each time that their press and politicians explode over some trivial and usually out-of-context quote from the New Frontier. They have few illusions about the value of Britain's nuclear force —"the papier-mache deterrent," as David Frost calls it. With greater social mobility, their generation has gained an instinctual distrust of the ossified values and superstitions of the old ruling class. They look skeptically on the "induced euphoria of the late '50s," says Social Critic Raymond Williams, and are too knowledgeable to accept the official "fictions and manufactured images" of British life. For despite radical social reforms, to the worldly younger generation, the country is still a long way from being a lively, open-minded, contemporary society.
What is most exhilarating to imaginative Britons today is the feeling that, Jimmy Porter to the contrary, there are good, brave causes left—and that they should be fought.
Bravest challenge of all is root-and-branch reform of the nation's educational system. Its schools, like the civil service and the railways, are a legacy of the Victorian age, designed to fit England's 19th century needs and social patterns. At expensively spartan "public" (i.e., private) schools such as Eton, Winchester and Rugby, young gentlemen receive an intensive liberal education that aims also to inculcate "character," muscle and Christian gentlemanliness. After four years or so, they are expected to go on to Oxford or Cambridge, where they learn more and more about less and less from some of the best minds in Britain. With all its defects, the system provides one of the best-rounded and most civilized educations in the world—for those who can afford it.
The Way to the Top. With the exception of a few famed grammar schools, where the standards are at least as high as Eton's, Britain's state-supported schools are mostly overcrowded, understaffed, badly housed and educationally lackluster. The state schools are short 10,000 teachers; less than half have indoor toilets. The majority of the 7,000,000 state-educated students—including four of every ten in the "top ability group"—drop out at 16. Most state-educated children who continue their studies go on to socially inferior "redbrick" universities (many of which offer better science courses than Oxbridge). Less than 1% of all Britain's students go to Oxford or Cambridge, and the majority of those come either from the public schools or superior grammar schools.