单项选择题
| All over the world mention of the
British education suggests a picture of the "public school", and it suggests in
particular the names of certain very famous institutions—Eton, Oxford and
Cambridge; but people do not always realize what place these institutions occupy
in the whole educational system. Oxford and Cambridge are universities, each
having about 12,000 students out of a total of over 250,000 students at all
British universities. Eton is a public school and the best known of the public
schools, which, in spite of their names, are not really public at all, but
independent and private secondary schools taking boys from the age of thirteen
to eighteen years. The public schools in reality form a very small part of the
school system of secondary education of Great Britain; only about one out of
forty English boys goes to a public school, and one out of 1,500 to
Eton. Apart from the so-called public schools there is complete system of state primary and secondary education, which resembles in its general form the state education in most other countries. All children must, by law, receive full-time education between the ages of five and sixteen. Any child may attend, without paying fees, a school provided by the public authorities, and the great majority attend such schools. They may continue, still without paying fees, until they are eighteen. The public schools, although unimportant numerically, have been England’s most peculiar and characteristic contribution to educational methods, and they have an immense influence on the whole of English educational practice and on the English social structure. |