PositiveThe ObserverIn his fascinating, enraging polemic, Verkaik touches on one of the strangest aspects of the elite schools and their product’s domination of public life for two and a half centuries: the acquiescence of everyone else ... Verkaik’s larger theme is the toxification of British public life by the private school system and the injustice and inequality that educational apartheid based on wealth entails. But the blatant theft of public resources is the book’s sharpest point. From the very beginning the institutions— including St Paul’s, Winchester and Eton—have been hijacked by the wealthy, though they were plainly set up to benefit the poor ... Verkaik’s solution is \'slow and peaceful euthanasia.\' He would suffocate the schools ... My money says private schools will survive: since the second world war successive governments have failed to curtail them in any significant way.
