Our Great British Public Schools

[poliphilo]

I don't know where paedophilia comes from and I may be barking up entirely the wrong tree but it occurs to me that if you place young males of the ruling class in schools where it's covertly (or not so covertly) accepted that bigger boys take smaller boys as their bitches you shouldn't be entirely surprised if some of them carry this behaviour over into adult life.

Comments

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's enough as an explanation - "public schools" surely date back to when it wasn't unusual for grown men to marry little girls. That's just as likely to be the root of paedophilia

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Public school culture as it exists today was surely created in the mid-19th century. I've only the haziest of notions of how things were before the advent of Dr Arnold and Muscular Christianity.

Obviously a lot of paedophiles don't go to public school, but I can't help thinking that public school culture must warp the sexuality of some of the people who pass through the system.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I see the confusion.I was thinking that Eton, for example, has 16th century foundation, but was created to give more children the opportunity of the medieval assumption that noble children should be sent into another household for their education. Therefore, I was assuming that all public school culture is based on sending children away from home as beneficial opportunity. I don't know much about 19th century public schools

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose most of our public schools are 19th century foundations.

Anyway, it's the 19th century ones I presume to know something about because I was a boarder at one of them.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I've only worked at prep schools, and taken part in historical recreations with prep school children