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Exchange report: Adam Duxbury Eton College, England
With 570 years of tradition, passion
and excellence, Eton College in England is a school deserving of several
superlatives. I spent three privileged months of my Hilton career at
Eton, and I loved every second of my exchange. My housemaster and peers were very welcoming from the outset of my journey. I will never forget my first night at Eton, bombarded with questions about whether it was true or not that I had pet lions, and the exciting introductions. Not many of the boys that I met knew anything about South Africa and it was a privileged position to be able to tell them about the alternative life-style in South Africa and at Hilton. Many of the boys were very wealthy and living in a class of people that South Africa does not really have. I found this different and enlightening.
Eton College has an older history than
South Africa’s, which puts into perspective Eton’s ancient traditions
that are plentiful and still upheld today. Eton College began as an
institution solely for very academic students, but as time went by, the
school increased in size and now it has 1350 boys. Admission to Eton is
very difficult as it is very academically orientated and even has one of
the houses assigned solely to the boys on scholarship at the school.
This house has its own library with very old, hand-written books with
values of up to ₤500 000 per book (over millions of Rands). Eton boasts
an average of over 90 boys each year being accepted into either Oxford
or Cambridge universities, which shows the value that top universities
see in Eton boy’s academics.
Eton’s facilities are phenomenal, and
range from a magnificent stained glassed windowed and stone chapel with
requisite organ music and harmonious choirs, to private dining rooms for
some of the houses, and a huge library. The school is based in Eton
Town, and so there are residential houses between classroom blocks, busy
streets, shops, McDonald’s, Indian restaurants, tailors and small stores
all within metres of some of the houses. The school is constituted of 27
houses, and a private bedroom with Internet connectivity for every one
of the 1350 boys at the school.
The school also has its own pub,
called The Tap, for the boys in the last two years of school, where each
boy is allowed 2 pints of beer or cider a day. Surprisingly, this system
is rarely abused, and the idea is that Eton boys can learn that drinking
is social, and should not be done in excess. By great fortune Hilton
boys somehow understand this innately.
Eton has a very interesting tutor
system- each boy is assigned a tutor not by his house and grade, but by
his interests and what profession he would like to get involved in after
school. I was put into one of the tutor groups for students who would
like to study medicine, and although I have no plan to study medicine,
it was really enjoyable. In tutor periods, we went through university
application processes and possible university choices. I believe that
this was very useful for some boys who have decided what they would like
to do after leaving school and they were given an opportunity to get a
unique and very specialist insight to getting to their desired career.
For the boys who don’t have particular ideas about what to do after
school, there are other mixed tutor groups that don’t have a ‘theme’.
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