Alumni of Britain鈥檚 elite schools are consistently overrepresented in positions of power and influence. It is no surprise, then, that elite schools play a pivotal role in reproducing inequality. In An Elite Education, Emma Taylor draws on years of immersive ethnographic research and teaching experience at one of Britain鈥檚 leading private boys鈥� schools to highlight how these institutions cultivate the dispositions that propel students into elite universities and professions.
Taylor finds that elite schools provide a forgiving, flexible and exclusive training ground, enabling students to push boundaries, bend rules and negotiate with those in authority. She argues that this ability to navigate elite spaces with confidence鈥攚hich she conceptualises as 鈥渁udacity鈥濃�攊s a carefully cultivated form of privilege that is frequently mistaken for merit. Behind the formal fa莽ade of architecture, traditions and rituals lies a messy web of everyday interactions through which students learn to assert themselves without fear of consequence.
An Elite Education ultimately calls for a deeper interrogation of the taken-for-granted dispositions that continue to shape access to opportunity in Britain.
Emma Taylor is lecturer in education at King’s College London.
“British private schools are the subject of myth and legend. But they are rarely studied from the inside. In this compelling and sensitive book, Emma Taylor unpicks how they actually engineer privilege. The result is a powerful political statement as well as a brilliant piece of sociological research.”—Mike Savage, London School of Economics and Political Science
“We know elite private schools propel. But the power of this excellent book lies in its ability to take readers behind the closed doors to show us exactly how. Drawing on painstaking ethnographic fieldwork, Taylor sensitively and thoughtfully explores the ways private schools scaffold a sense of fearlessness and above all audacity that gatekeepers in Britain continue to misrecognise as a virtue.”—Sam Friedman, author of Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite
“An Elite Education is essential reading for all those interested in the workings of power and privilege. A beautifully written and engaging ethnography of an elite private boys school, the book reveals how private schooling insulates pupils from failure, providing a flexible, forgiving, and exclusive training ground for future economic and social success.”—Diane Reay, University of Cambridge
"An Elite Education is a brilliantly observed ethnography of a leading British boys’ school, showing with remarkable clarity how privilege is woven through the everyday spaces, rituals and relationships of school life. Taylor’s central insight is that what elites like to call ‘confidence’ or ‘polish’ is more accurately a cultivated audacity, nurtured within overwhelmingly white, male and forgiving institutional worlds. The book forces a fundamental rethink of how we talk about merit, success and fairness and is essential reading for anyone trying to understand how elite education continues to reproduce inequality in contemporary Britain.”—Adam Howard, Colby College
