ABSTRACT
As the pendulum of educational opinion swings back to the view that the academic die of boys and girls is cast before the age of eight — indeed if not before the age of five — attention has switched to what happens in school before and after those ages. This is especially so since the parents are now so much more interested in what the schools can do that they are having to be promised a much greater say in what schools intend to accomplish for their children. By the beginning of the twentieth century both the public and preparatory schools recognized their mutual inter-independence and the latter were regarded as being a very important part of the public schools’ infrastructure. The rise of the public schools themselves, therefore, constituted a most important factor in the rise of the preparatory schools.
