著者

井上 美雪

出版者

東洋大学社会学部

雑誌

東洋大学社会学部紀要 = The bulletin of the Faculty of Sociology, Toyo University (ISSN:04959892)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.2, pp.39-49, 2014-03

著者

井上 美雪

出版者

東洋大学社会学部

雑誌

東洋大学社会学部紀要 (ISSN:04959892)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.1, pp.45-56, 2014-01

著者

井上 美雪

出版者

東洋大学社会学部

雑誌

東洋大学社会学部紀要 = The Bulletin of Faculty of Sociology,Toyo University (ISSN:04959892)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.56, no.2, pp.137-146, 2019-03

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This paper examines education and class in James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1933) in terms of middlebrow of Mr. Chips. Recent studies on middlebrow reveal that it entails classlessness. Applying this finding to the reading of the story shows that Mr. Chips, who has long been thought to praise the glory of England and its famous educational system, public schools, has a drive to make a classless society. Mr. Chips, a Latin master at a grammar school with a long history, is in truth a middlebrow. He loves reading detective novels such as Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Thorndyke, and Inspector French. He does not think learning Latin deepens students’ characters. It only helps when understanding quotations. The story tells, “he was not ... a very profound classical scholar.” If education and educators at grammar schools have middlebrow inclinations, then the schools would lose their uperiority. At the end of the story, Mr. Chips leaves all he has to establish an open scholarship. It is indicated that the school is beginning to change even without his scholarship, since the last student he meets in his lifetime is the first to go to a public school in his family, which is a rare example at the school. But his open scholarship would boost the tendency. Thus, on the contrary to the common understanding, Mr. Chips is a middlebrow who brings classlessness to an educational institution for the privileged.