ABSTRACT
Public schools were first established to educate relatively poor boys in the classics, so the word ‘public’ meant available to the public. English public schools also became intimately connected with the idea of character formation. Public schools were effectively run by the students and according to Chandos their education consisted largely of street fighting, poaching and rioting. The English public school was essentially about conduct and manners, status and appearance, reputation and social expectation. The public schools provided poor teaching and had lost the idea that a classical education had the power to breed character. The evangelical campaign against the perceived immorality of independent schools from the 1830s onwards was successful. Public schools used powerful moral principles in forming the character of their students imposed by demanding headmasters, which is why many historians of the Victorian period place the concept of character at the centre of their analysis.
