ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the private secondary school-both the local day school and the boarding school-and certain fashionable eastern universities serve the sociological function of differentiating the upper classes in America from the rest of the population. Private school attendance clearly differentiated the members of the upper class from the rest of the Philadelphia elite in 1940. The growth in popularity of the New England boarding school coincided with, and reinforced, the development of a national upper class in America. Both the growth of these inter-city, educational institutions and the national upper class which supported them, however, were a product of tremendous technological and economic changes in American society during the half century preceding 1940. The chapter explores the sociological role of the New England boarding school and the "Ivy" university in fostering the growth of a national upper class in America at the expense of a declining local loyalty and pride.
