Talk:Public school (United Kingdom)

Link to List of Victoria Crosses by School

I note the link to the above list was deleted on 4/10/21, when the list itself was deleted. I am disappointed to see this list disappear. It was deleted, noting the discussion, on grounds of 'lack of notability', 'advertising/marketing/puffery', 'trivia'. It is too late for me to join the deletion discussion but I do fundamentally disagree. The value of the list is being part of UK and Commonwealth social and economic history evidencing the role of (mostly) public schools in proving the officer class in the UK armed forces. Indeed it also shows how officers may well be over represented as recipients of this medal. I am unsure how this deletion may be appealed.Hjamesberglen

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Public school (United Kingdom)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 20:22, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, I considered a quick fail for this article as there are quite a few basic things wrong with it. But there is much that is good here, and the subject certainly deserves decent coverage. I'll proceed in stages so as not to waste time making comments that don't get actioned.

Hjamesberglen - I think we're now ready to address the issues below. Could you respond to each item please? I do not believe they will take at all long. Probably the lists just need to be deleted, honestly, and we can move on to GA. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:48, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Immediate comments

• The article is rather weakly structured. That there are currently 14 top-level chapters is an obvious sign of that. Chapters 2 to 6 are all evidently "History" and should immediately be grouped as subsections of that new chapter.

• Fixed.

• The chapter "Scotland and Ireland" is almost entirely uncited, and mainly a list of examples at that. And what about Wales? This should be replaced by a reliably-cited discussion of the issues.

• The chapter "Minor public schools" is clearly very minor. I suggest it be merged into "Definition" as a single short paragraph.

• Fixed.

• The list "Television documentaries" is problematic. It's not clear why we'd want such a list here at all; it could be farmed out as a separate list article. It is very poorly cited: many are to IMDb, which is not a WP:RS; they mostly do not have dates, authors, or publishers; nearly all are WP:PRIMARY. The citations are weirdly placed in the middle of the list items when they should all be at the ends; but since most of them need to be deleted and replaced, that's the least of the worries. It would make much more sense to have a paragraph cited to two or three reliable independent sources, like articles in national newspapers discussing documentaries about public schools and offering opinions on which are actually worth seeing; if there aren't any such, then deletion would obviously be appropriate. In short, I'd suggest we WP:TNT the list and start over, as no amount of polishing the citations will turn this pig's ear into a silk purse. Finally, the new paragraph with its new sources should form part of an "In the arts" (or similar title) section, which will include the current "Literature" and "Theatre and film" chapters. To be clear about this, saying that person P made a film called F on date D begs the question, why are we mentioning them at all? In the case of Harrow: A Very British School we can obviously say a bit more, and need to; in the case of the others, I suggest we either find a bit more to say from secondary sources or delete them (this isn't a catalogue).

• The material about the 1968 film if ... obviously needs to go into the "In the arts" chapter. I would have thought this so important given its prizewinning status that it deserves a paragraph of its own.

• The "Overseas expansion" chapter is problematic. Its "Haileybury" claim needs to be reliably sourced with a complete citation. The rest of the section is an uncited claim followed by a list which is wholly primary-cited (this is called WP:OR by synthesis), and again we have the weird phenomenon of citations in mid-clause; but as they're all primary I suggest we simply delete the list and find a reliable source for the phenomenon. If the chapter is rewritten and reliably sourced, it should then be moved to become part of "History".

• We will then have the structure:

1. Definition
2. History
   2.1 Early ...
   ...
   2.6 Overseas
3. Curriculum
4. Charitable status
5. Schools for the ruling class
6. In the arts
   6.1 Literature
   6.2 Theatre and film
   6.3 Documentaries

If that all works then I'll have a detailed look through the article. A hint: check that all statements are reliably cited. Good luck! Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:22, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Referencing

<s?Well, I see editing is continuing apace, so I will wait until the article stabilizes. Meanwhile, I've checked the top few citations, and many are incomplete (as indicated in the "cn" tags) while a few are broken. Some of the "title"s are descriptions rather than the actual titles given; authors, publishers, and page ranges are missing, etc. I expect this will be true throughout the article, so I suggest you check EVERY citation for completeness and accuracy please. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:47, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Images

• Why is the paragraph about "particularly old" schools (King's Canterbury c.597, etc) illustrated by an engraving of Eton from 1690, not one of the schools named and founded over 700 years later? A photo of King's Canterbury would make more sense.

Lists

The uncited/primary sourced lists in the 'Scotland and Ireland' and 'Overseas expansion' chapters are now removed. This leaves 'Television documentaries' although all now have reliable sources and most have secondary citation. There is also something of a rationale for this list. However my main thinking on this is if we can have a bibliography to allow readers to go deeper into this subject if they wish, why can't we also provide a list of television documentaries most of which unsurprisingly are easily located with an internet search?

Thank you for those actions.

Well, you're right that this list at least has something going for it. What it's missing is the usual thing, any sort of source for the thing as a whole, where someone says that public schools have had a lot of documentary attention and while A, B, and C were hagiographic, D, E, and F attacked etc etc. I'm sure you can see that that'd be an improvement on the unstructured list, which just says, look, we've been able to collect this pile of wet leaves, see if you can add some more and forget even to cite them as you do so. One option is to split the steaming pile off as its own list article, aka permanent too-difficult-pile; that may be best when the list is long. Hope you see the issue. Chiswick Chap (talk) 01:06, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Summary

This article now presents a coherent overview of Britain's "public schools", with good sources and well-chosen illustrations. As such, it is a worthy GA and you should be proud of your accomplishment. Chiswick Chap (talk) 01:17, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The "public" in public school

Public schools were originally so named because they were operated by the people, in contradistinction to church schools, which weren't. This should be included in the lead paragraph; instead of being squeezed out like juice from a recalcitrant lemon later in the article. Nuttyskin (talk) 16:10, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Is it not now true that the term "public school" only applies in England?

My understanding is that Scotland and Wales do not use the term "public school" at all nowadays. In which case the title of this article surely should be "Public School (England)". I can't bring myself to read the article in its entirety as it's thoroughly boring and stinks of elitism, but if it does not already make it clear that even in England the term 'public school' is becoming increasingly deprecated, then it should do so. Whether "public schools" were originally so-called because they were "open to anyone" or "run by the public", it's a fact that any English school still using the "public school" moniker is most certainly not open to anyone or run by the public. Flusapochterasumesch (talk) 21:33, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

You might be right, Cambridge dictionary says the name is used in England only ([1]). We probably need to start a WP:Requested move process to move to Public school (England). Vpab15 (talk) 21:56, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Vpab15. The potential for confusion in the term "public school" is obvious. In USA, a public school is a state-funded school: which is logical and intuitive. I rather suspect that owners, staff and alumni of English "public schools" revel in the blatant contradiction in terms. I can recall as a child being utterly brain-scrambled when I was told that the polar-opposite words "private" and "public" in fact meant the same thing when succeeded by the word "school".

In contrast the term "private school" is, I think, wholly unambiguous. It would be a lot simpler and clearer if articles about private/independent/fee-paying schools used the terms private, independent or fee-paying. Perhaps, excusing my facetiousness, with a "footnote" to explain that some of those connected with private schooling in England like to call it 'public schooling' as an extension of their elitist ethos. I'm only here by unhappy accident, and I'm going to exit stage-left and leave any changes to someone else! I've put my point-of-view into the public/private domain for posterity :) Flusapochterasumesch (talk) 22:21, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

A quick glance over at the Glenalmond College shows this in the references - a Scottish source, using the term "public school" to refer to a Scottish independent school. So I don't think we can unambiguously say this is a purely England and Wales usage. I've rephrased more cautiously in the lead.

I've also removed the wording "Fee-charging schools are referred to as private or independent schools" - of course, these terms are also used in England, but don't have the same meaning as "public school". This reads, as do some of the comments above, as if "private school"/"independent school" and "public school" are being read as synonyms? They aren't, public schools are a specific group of schools and are associated with a specific culture - the two terms aren't interchangeable. TSP (talk) 15:38, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

All public schools are private/independent schools. But not all private/independent schools by a long shot are public schools. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:33, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 13 November 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Bensci54 (talk) 17:22, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

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• Public school (United Kingdom) → Public school (England)

– The term "public school" to refer to a type of private school is used in England only, per Cambridge dictionary ([2]). Everything the covered in the article, from the Clarendon Report to all the schools explicitly mentioned applies to England only. As far as I know, the term is not used at all in Wales or Northern Ireland. In Scotland, as the article mentions, it refers to a state school. The proposed name is more WP:PRECISE and correct. Vpab15 (talk) 12:11, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject United Kingdom and WikiProject Education have been notified of this discussion. 𝚈𝚘𝚟𝚝 (𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚟𝚝) 18:45, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• Whatever the outcome, can the article title and talk page title please be aligned? Currently we have Public school (United Kingdom) and Talk:Public school (England). Adabow (talk) 09:25, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. According to the OED, the term was used throughout Britain and Ireland and also in parts of the British Empire. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:10, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose It is 100% incorrect to consider that the term public school is unique to England. Three examples, Christ College Brecon is a public school. Likewise Fettes College and Glenalmond in Scotland. The latter two appeared in the first Public Schools Yearbook published in 1889.Hjamesberglen (talk) 17:06 19 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.