ABSTRACT
The dominant cultural image of veteran teachers is conveyed in the fictional life story of Mr Chipping of Brookfield School as conveyed in James Hilton’s short novel Goodbye, Mr Chips. This reflects emerging ideals and practices of teacher professionalism in England from the 1920s onwards in terms of its emphasis on autonomy and individuality, and its characteristic of a conservative tendency in English institutions of male middle class secondary education to celebrate the continuity and renewal of established traditions. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the elite male Mr Chips stereotype has retained a significant influence, representing a moral universe that is increasingly anachronistic yet with a continuing role of harking back to lost values and standing firm against contemporary educational and social change.
