An Analysis On The Characteristics Of The Contemporary English Public School And Its Historical Cultural Origin

The Public School is the most distinctive school in England secondary education system. It boasts a long history of 600 years and is titled "the living educational fossil", "the cradle of elites" for its unswerving guiding principle of elite education. The public school in the UK enjoys a good reputation in the secondary education in Britain and even the world. It pays highly attention to enforce mental education through the classical works and tries to cultivate the gentleman ship of the students through character training and extracurricular activities and its one-gender boarding system is also very admirable .This thesis attaches importance in concluding public school's characteristics in its management and teaching model. As public school was born and nourished in the nation's culture, it has a close relationship with the society an the national characteristics .Therefore, this thesis makes a probe into exploring the historical and cultural reasons for the characteristics of public school and some public school phenomenon by observing the public school's historical development and it's inter-action with the traditional culture of Britain. In the end, the thesis puts forward four pieces of propositions on solving some educational problems in China by assimilating the success of the public school in the UK.This thesis consists of six parts:Part 1: Explaining the reason for doing this research and introducing the present domestic and foreign research situation as well as the main concepts.Part 2: Sketching public school's history for six centuries, explaining the historical development of the public school briefly and objectively by relating the social political economic and cultural factors.Part 3: Summarizing and revealing the main characteristics if the public school by some concrete examples.Part 4: Analyzing the historical and cultural reasons of public school's characteristics, uncovering its affects on the public school's features by relating to the historical traditional civilization and viewpoints of the UK.Part 5: Pondering over on some of the public school phenomenon: mainly on its conservative ideas Part6: Finally, revealing public school's strong points, it can offer beneficial enlightenment for the secondary education in China.