The gift economy of elite schooling: the changing contours and contradictions of privileged benefaction

Abstract

Privileged benefaction in elite schools and the moral dilemmas, contradictions and power politics involved are the focus of this paper. The notion of ‘the gift’ provides our analytical lens. We concentrate on two girls’ schools – one in South Africa and one in England. These were both built, in various ways, on the British model of public schooling. These schools pride themselves on their gifting practices. We offer a broad overview of the different local and global manifestations of and justifications for these practices as they occur in these schools and in the transnational organisations of which the schools are members.

Keywords:

• elite schools
• gift economy
• charity
• class
• colonialism
• globalisation

Notes

1. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP1093778) and respective universities. Researchers: Jane Kenway, Johannah Fahey (Monash), Fazal Rizvi (Melbourne), Cameron McCarthy (Illinois), Debbie Epstein (Roehampton) and Aaron Koh (NIE Singapore). PhD students; Matthew Shaw, Howard Prosser (Monash) and Mousumi Mukherjee (Melbourne).

2. The 1868 Public Schools Act applied exclusively to boys’ schools. The 1868 Taunton Report focused on educational institutions for the middle classes and included a chapter on the education of girls (notably, there were only 13 secondary girls schools in England at that time). The Endowed Schools Act of 1869 arose from the Taunton Report and the Endowed Schools Commission. Formed on the basis of the 1869 Act, the latter became the Charity Commission in 1874 (Gillard 2011).

3. Delamont (1989, 98–100) points out: ‘In the nineteenth century, Presbyterian families did not want their daughters mixing with Anglicans or Methodists and vice versa … In Britain, the Anglicans were active in founding schools for their daughters, with the Woodward Schools and the establishment of the Church of England’s Church Schools’ Company … In Australia, the same segregation took place. Melbourne, for example, saw three girls’ schools, or rather ladies’ schools, one each for Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians’.

4. While anonymity prevents us naming this official history, details will however be lodged with British Journal of Sociology of Education’s editors.