ABSTRACT
Harry McKenzie, headmaster of Uppingham School, closed his Speech Day address in July 1914 with a challenge to his boys: ‘Be a man useful to your country. Whoever cannot be so is better dead.’ No-one in the audience knew that this ideal would soon be put to the test, even though the assassination of the Archduke of Austria in Sarajevo a fortnight earlier had already set the course for war. McKenzie came to regret his words.
How Thring’s belief in holistic education could descend in half a century to a cult of military imperialism is examined over four chapters. The fifth traces the survival of Thring’s original ideal to its realisation in the best practice of today’s schools.
