ABSTRACT
The research problem posed by this preliminary scrutiny of grammar school records in Huddersfield may be considered in two ways. We may ask: why is it that so many middle-class children successfully complete the total grammar school course? Or we may inquire: why is it that relatively few working-class children do so? Our declared personal interest lies behind the answering of the second question; but before we follow the working-class child through school into a profession, it will be helpful to have a look at a group of middle-class boys and girls. We had neither time nor money for a full-scale survey here, but nevertheless thought it worth-while to sketch in a setting for our main study, if only by visiting a handful of former middle-class children. There was time only to see ten. Their names were drawn at random from the list of boys and girls who had passed their ‘A’ level at any Huddersfield grammar school between 1949 and 1952, and whose fathers were in social class I and II. 1 They are now men and women aged between 26 and 30. We also interviewed their parents, and the sketch that follows, while making no claims for typicality, does try to make up in detail what it lacks in range. It moves very freely around both the child and the family, to catch the texture and feel of life behind their success at school. We begin with the parents and their world.
