The CBB :: View topic - Themes: The Evolution of the Chalet School

What I think is interesting as well is speculating what the CS would be like *now* - ie what would have happened next in its evolution

I wonder if it would have developed into a franchise, with . . . an antipodean branch . . .

...I just did a quick search on Swiss boarding schools and the fees for just one year are astronomical! If the Chalet School were to become that expensive I can see it becoming a school for just the rich which would be sad.

How many pupils does the Swiss branch have by the end of the series? Around three hundred? .... That's actually not that large in my opinion. The high school next door to where I work has over 1000 students in grades 9 to 12 and I attended grade 7 in a high school with around 600 kids in grades 7 to 11. So while the school certainly grew in size in the course of time I never considered it a very large school.

The one thing that I find sad as the series goes on is the loss of local colour/the involvement of local people. I appreciate that EBD didn't know the Oberland, and also perhaps that her audience's mood had changed after the Second World War and it was considered better to concentrate on characters from Britain/the USA/the Commonwealth, but the world of the Gornetz Platz is so insular compared with the world of the CS at the Tiernsee.

I find the larger school actually less convincing, partially because EBD doesn't make the whole transition. It's a school of 400+ students, in Switzerland, with half term expeditions, skiing, music lessons and a speciality in languages, which as others have said would be very expensive. However, they still have the whole school trooping off for walks or skiing at a moments' notice, and the school only has one secretary. Even the Christmas pageant - everyone still takes part in the later books, but that's 400 people! Even with all the stock characters, I don't see how to arrange a pageant with that many people.

“How many forms are there?” Adrienne asked with interest.
“In Senior School? Five – Inter V, Vb, Va, VIb, VIa,” Judy replied.
“Yes; but how many in the whole school?” Adrienne persisted.
“Gosh! I can’t tell you offhand. Anyone else know?”
“I do.” Janice spoke in her low, rather lazy voice which Adrienne had noticed already. “There are four in Middle School and five in Junior School. Fourteen altogether, Adrienne. You’ve done your entrance exam, haven’t you? Yes,” as Adrienne nodded. “I thought so. I guess you’re going to be with us – Inter V – as you’ve been put with us for the journey. That’ll make us twenty-seven. I say, you folk, we’ll be the largest form in Senior School anyhow.
“A long way the largest,” Ailie said emphatically. “They don’t like forms to be more than about twenty-five or six. I wonder why we’re so big this year?”

But for the fifth and sixth forms, EBD takes what are clearly upper and lower fifth / sixth, as everyone goes through both (OK, apart from the odd girl who skips her lower fifth year), and then calls them invariably Va / VIa and Vb / VIb.

Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest?

Alison H wrote:

Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest?

Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS!

Have a vague memory that Gordonstoun has a 'branch' in Australia - didn't Prince Charles go for a term? But this may have been a 'twinned' school rather than an actual branch

Alison H wrote:

Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest?

Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS!

Alison H wrote:
Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest?

Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS!

I can't think of a good way to put this, but as the school gets bigger in later years its world conversely gets more closed ... does that make sense?

Hope that makes some sense somewhere!

The main Swiss feature is the food!

Alison H wrote:

Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest?

Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS!

United World Colleges (UWC) is unique. It is the only global educational movement that brings together students from all over the world – selected on personal merit, irrespective of race, religion, politics and the ability to pay – with the explicit aim of fostering peace and international understanding.
UWC was founded in 1962 and originated in the ideas of German educationalist Kurt Hahn. Hahn believed that much could be done to overcome hostility and conflict if young people from different nations, races and religions could be brought together to learn from each other.

Probably the closest think you'd get to a CS set up would be something like the school I went to - a Catholic school founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart. There are Sacred Heart schools all around the world (two in Britain that I know of are Woldingham (sp?) and Kilgraston), but they are all individually run and although they have differing amounts of contact with each other, there's no central curriculum etc.

If the Swiss branch had been truly a new epoch in the life of the school, as opposed to simply being a transferal of all the main characters to the Oberland, I think those books would read much better.

The Swiss books didn't have the same element of challenge and adventure as the earlier ones.

I just did a quick search on Swiss boarding schools and the fees for just one year are astronomical! If the Chalet School were to become that expensive I can see it becoming a school for just the rich which would be sad.

and Nita Eltringham both came from homes where money was perpetually short, and neither would have been able to come, but Miss Annersley, Head of the school in England, had offered to pay her young cousin’s fees, an offer thankfully accepted by Nell’s widowed mother; while Nita had been awarded what was to be known as “The Josephine Bettany Scholarship” which was open to girls of the original school. Most of the others were the daughters of rich or well-to-do folk who could afford this year abroad easily for their girls.

I can think of a fair few cases of two sisters at the Swiss branch at the same time, but other than the Maynards can't think offhand of three sisters there all at once.

JayB wrote:

I can think of a fair few cases of two sisters at the Swiss branch at the same time, but other than the Maynards can't think offhand of three sisters there all at once.

Julie, Betsy and Vi Lucy were all at the School during the first year in Switzerland, but I can't think of any others.

Author:	Róisín [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 1:15 pm ]
Post subject:	Themes: The Evolution of the Chalet School
The School changed drastically over the course of the series, from a small family school to a 'giant' mega-corporation with three branches. Did this evolution occur naturally? Was it a good change, or did the school lose character later?

Author:	Travellers Joy [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 1:54 pm ]
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I think it happens more quickly in each of its phases than might be realistic perhaps, but the move from small family school to corporation over the years seems quite natural for me: I doubt if the school could have survived financially if it hadn't grown and evolved as it did. That evolution certainly changes the flavour of the school but I do like the school in each of its incarnations - I like different things about each timeframe.

Author:	Alison H [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 2:07 pm ]
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Part of the change is "forced" due to the Anschluss and the war and it'd be interesting to know how EBD originally envisioned things working out, but I agree that the growth of the school over the years is natural. By the Swiss years it seems to have become more expensive/exclusive than it was originally, but that again doesn't seem unnatural. Very few organisations manage to succeed and to stay small at the same time, and the sort of school that Madge originally set up was becoming rare by the late 1950s when the series ended.

Author:	Jennie [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 2:50 pm ]
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Madge was always concerned that the school should be economically viable, and IIRC, was worried about that point in Guernsey when they restarted it. I can see that the large school was inevitable, as its reputation grew, but I think that it lost a lot once they had to have more than three classes. And I never knew where they put everyone once the school began to grow in Tyrol days and before they built the new house.

Author:	JayB [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:38 pm ]
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I think the change was inevitable, given the social and technological changes of the 20thc. With more girls wanting to take public exams, go on to further education and/or follow a career, it became necessary to have qualified staff in all subjects, and therefore necessary to have more pupils in order to be able to afford them. In the early Tyrol years at least, the majority of the pupils had family fairly locally, or had no other home to go to (or none that wanted them, in some cases). That contributes to the sense of family and being part of the community. After the war, better transport, and the possibility of flying in an emergency, perhaps made parents more willing to send their daughters as far away as Switzerland. I like the character of the school in the early years, but it is very much a product of its time and place; the pre-war world was more innocent in many ways, many of the girls came from conservative Central European families. I think a great part of its charm is that it is a world that has now disappeared, whereas many of us here remember the 1950s and 1960s when the later books were written. I don't think it would have been realistic or possible to maintain the atmosphere of the early books in 1940s England/Wales or 1950s Switzerland, when the girls had experienced air raids, even occupation in the case of many Continental girls, had access to cinema and even television, and listened to rock'n'roll.

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Themes: The Evolution of the Chalet School http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4310

Author:	Róisín [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:15 pm ]
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I love everyone's posts so far - feels like we are doing an audit for Madge What I think is interesting as well is speculating what the CS would be like now - ie what would have happened next in its evolution I think it would have branches myself. At the end of the series there was the Welsh/English branch and the finishing branch, and wasn't there talk of a kindergarten branch?

Author:	JayB [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:27 pm ]
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I wonder if it would have developed into a franchise, with a transatlantic branch, an antipodean branch, now perhaps even an east European branch - all headed by Old Girls, of course, to ensure that the ethos was maintained!

Author:	CBW [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:54 pm ]
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Quote: What I think is interesting as well is speculating what the CS would be like now - ie what would have happened next in its evolution I wonder how the post war drop in boarding schools would have hit it. The Englsh branch could have been much more a day school but how would the swiss branch have managed?

Author:	abbeybufo [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:10 pm ]
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JayB wrote: I wonder if it would have developed into a franchise, with . . . an antipodean branch . . . RCS of course

Author:	macyrose [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 8:56 pm ]
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How many pupils does the Swiss branch have by the end of the series? Around three hundred? And since Felicity Maynard attends by the end I think it takes pupils from around 8 to 18. That would make ten grades/forms. If you divide 300 by 10 that equals only 30 pupils in each grade/form. That's actually not that large in my opinion. The high school next door to where I work has over 1000 students in grades 9 to 12 and I attended grade 7 in a high school with around 600 kids in grades 7 to 11. So while the school certainly grew in size in the course of time I never considered it a very large school. Due to the increase in size it was bound to lose the family feeling that it had in its early years in Tirol. And I think the curriculum became more formal with more students taking public exams and needing to be prepared for university entrance. If the Chalet School were still going on now I would hope it would expand religion wise and admit girls who are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc. I would also think it would become more expensive to attend. I just did a quick search on Swiss boarding schools and the fees for just one year are astronomical! If the Chalet School were to become that expensive I can see it becoming a school for just the rich which would be sad.

Author:	Róisín [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:08 pm ]
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macyrose wrote: ...I just did a quick search on Swiss boarding schools and the fees for just one year are astronomical! If the Chalet School were to become that expensive I can see it becoming a school for just the rich which would be sad. I did that google search before (for drabble reasons!) and may I say, in full agreement with you, YIKES. V. expensive/exclusive indeed. Saying that, I wouldn't turn down a job teaching there!

Author:	Alison H [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:31 pm ]
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I've done similar searches for potential drabble research and, as you say, the fees are horrendous! It must have been pretty dear even by the end of the CS series, taking into account travel costs, the cost of all those half term expeditions (in the early books people who didn't live nearby spent half term with Madge, Gisela or other Austrian-based friends), all the winter sports gear and other extra bits of uniform and equipment they had, and so on. The one thing that I find sad as the series goes on is the loss of local colour/the involvement of local people. I appreciate that EBD didn't know the Oberland, and also perhaps that her audience's mood had changed after the Second World War and it was considered better to concentrate on characters from Britain/the USA/the Commonwealth, but the world of the Gornetz Platz is so insular compared with the world of the CS at the Tiernsee. Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest?

Author:	JayB [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:48 pm ]
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Quote: How many pupils does the Swiss branch have by the end of the series? Around three hundred? .... That's actually not that large in my opinion. The high school next door to where I work has over 1000 students in grades 9 to 12 and I attended grade 7 in a high school with around 600 kids in grades 7 to 11. So while the school certainly grew in size in the course of time I never considered it a very large school. I think perhaps it was large for a boarding school by the standards of the time. In the UK the state comprehensive day school with 1000+ pupils is a phenomenon of the mid 60s onwards. My grammar school had 600 pupils when I was there. It was only 10-15 years old in my time and had already outgrown its premises - it was built for 500. EBD talks about having a maximum of 25 girls in any form - but with the a & b divisions, that would be up to fifty in any year. I would expect there to be more girls in the 13-16 age group (the Fourths and Fifths) than in the older and younger forms, but I don't think EBD really thought through the whole question of total number of girls:numbers in forms.

Author:	Anjali [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:21 am ]
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Alison H wrote: The one thing that I find sad as the series goes on is the loss of local colour/the involvement of local people. I appreciate that EBD didn't know the Oberland, and also perhaps that her audience's mood had changed after the Second World War and it was considered better to concentrate on characters from Britain/the USA/the Commonwealth, but the world of the Gornetz Platz is so insular compared with the world of the CS at the Tiernsee. Absolutely - while the Swiss school seems to go on a lot of expeditions, they all seem exactly the same, and I would be hard-pressed to recall one in any detail! Whereas all the Tyrolean expeditions stand out in my memory - probably due to their rich local colour. While I understand the fact that a much bigger school meant pupils couldn't just go off on their own, it makes the Platz seem so boring and closed-off....contrast this to the quartette who could walk down to the post office to buy stamps, listen to Tzigane bands by themselves or even wander unsupervised in Innsbruck! The triplets never seem to go anywhere without a whole cavalcade of CS staff and students or their own army of siblings.

Author:	jennifer [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:41 am ]
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The tone definitely changes. The family based school in the early days, with Madge as the mother figure, Mlle Lepattre as an older aunt, (and Herr Anserl as crazy uncle?) was something that had to fade as the school became larger and more standardized. I find the larger school actually less convincing, partially because EBD doesn't make the whole transition. It's a school of 400+ students, in Switzerland, with half term expeditions, skiing, music lessons and a speciality in languages, which as others have said would be very expensive. However, they still have the whole school trooping off for walks or skiing at a moments' notice, and the school only has one secretary. Even the Christmas pageant - everyone still takes part in the later books, but that's 400 people! Even with all the stock characters, I don't see how to arrange a pageant with that many people. It is true that the books loose local colour in the Swiss days. The expeditions feel like excerpts from travel books, unlike the engaging descriptions of the Tyrol days. I think, though, that this was due to EBDs lack of personal experience with the territory.

Author:	Han [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 9:48 am ]
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jennifer wrote: I find the larger school actually less convincing, partially because EBD doesn't make the whole transition. It's a school of 400+ students, in Switzerland, with half term expeditions, skiing, music lessons and a speciality in languages, which as others have said would be very expensive. However, they still have the whole school trooping off for walks or skiing at a moments' notice, and the school only has one secretary. Even the Christmas pageant - everyone still takes part in the later books, but that's 400 people! Even with all the stock characters, I don't see how to arrange a pageant with that many people. That's what I struggle with as well and - although I haven't read a lot of them - why I think they lose a little of the atmosphere. There are still elements of the family school where everyone knows everyone and everything. So some people seem to know it all but others are left out of the loop completely. And some people seem to be involved in everything and others are left out. It makes me feel that the school must have been incredibly cliquey towards the end, which is normal for a school really but with all the Old Girls on the staff, I don't see how they could have avoided getting caught up with certain cliques as well and that must have made it quite hard for the outsiders.

Author:	Caroline [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:31 am ]
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Yes - I think EBD really struggled to get her head around the realities of a school of +400 pupils. This contributes to one of the problems I have with the later Swiss books - which is that I just can't visualise the school itself and its layout. Or its locale, come to that. Originally, it is supposed to be a big winterports hotel - which suggests one big building - and then it seems to become a bunch of linked chalets with really confusing covered passages and bridges everywhere. EBD never seems to be able to make up her mind what rooms belong in the central school section and what rooms are in the linked buildings - common rooms, for instance, seem to jump all over the place - and you get the same situation as in Mallory Towers where we are constantly told that the girls are all in different houses with their own common rooms, but what we actually see is all the main characters in each form are always in the same common room. I think EBD was in love with the idea of a school made up of Chalets and couldn't quite accept that this wouldn't work for a school of +400 girls and staff in a climate like Switzerland where going outside might be impossible for weeks at a time. And although she was a teacher and a headmistress, she never worked in anything approaching the major girls public school she would have us believe the CS was by the end of the series, so I imagine her grasp of the logistics of such an organisation - form arrangements, number of rooms required, number of staff required, the hours they worked, time taken for +400 people to eat lunch etc. - might be rather lacking...

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:47 am ]
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It's all rather confusing generally. For example, some forms - Lower IV, Upper IV, etc - seems to be divided into "a" and "b", and rather than these being streams for people of the same age but different abilities people seem to go from one to the other at the end of the academic year. So it could take over 10 years to get through normal secondary school!

Author:	Han [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:00 pm ]
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Quote: “How many forms are there?” Adrienne asked with interest. “In Senior School? Five – Inter V, Vb, Va, VIb, VIa,” Judy replied. “Yes; but how many in the whole school?” Adrienne persisted. “Gosh! I can’t tell you offhand. Anyone else know?” “I do.” Janice spoke in her low, rather lazy voice which Adrienne had noticed already. “There are four in Middle School and five in Junior School. Fourteen altogether, Adrienne. You’ve done your entrance exam, haven’t you? Yes,” as Adrienne nodded. “I thought so. I guess you’re going to be with us – Inter V – as you’ve been put with us for the journey. That’ll make us twenty-seven. I say, you folk, we’ll be the largest form in Senior School anyhow. “A long way the largest,” Ailie said emphatically. “They don’t like forms to be more than about twenty-five or six. I wonder why we’re so big this year?” All sounds rather confusing to me! If an average of 23 per class is assumed that would take it to 322 pupils. But there is no way that can have stayed constant for any period of time. There doesn’t seem to be any set time for newbies to start or for older girls to leave; they just seem to come and go as they please regardless of age or point in the school year. The amount of girls skipping forms and being moved up halfway through the year must have made it a nightmare to get any consistency in the teaching of a form (quite apart from illness, disruptions for nice weather, Joey’s visits and the multiple languages).

Author:	Caroline [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:11 pm ]
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I don;t think it helps that EBD gets her Upper and Lower and 'a' and 'b' mixed up all the time, sometimes using them to mean the same thing as each other, and sometimes using them to mean different things. So, for most forms, there are upper and lower forms (which are different years), and then a and b streams (which are different abilities within that year), so you might go through school always being in the 'a' stream (IIIa, Lower IVa, Upper IVa etc.), or change streams at some point. But for the fifth and sixth forms, EBD takes what are clearly upper and lower fifth / sixth, as everyone goes through both (OK, apart from the odd girl who skips her lower fifth year), and then calls them invariably Va / VIa and Vb / VIb. So, sometimes 'a' and 'b' are streams and sometimes they are not..... Inconsistent lady!

Author:	JB [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:28 pm ]
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Quote: But for the fifth and sixth forms, EBD takes what are clearly upper and lower fifth / sixth, as everyone goes through both (OK, apart from the odd girl who skips her lower fifth year), and then calls them invariably Va / VIa and Vb / VIb. And then there's Inter V, which starts off as a form for girls not ready to tackle the "advanced" work of the fifth form but becomes an additional form through in which almost everyone spends a year.

Author:	Mel [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:19 pm ]
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I don't think they are ever streams according to ability. It seems to me that girls stay in one form until they are advanced enough to move up, as did the Ozanne twins, and didn't Joan Baker say that she would never make the sixth form? All very bizarre showing that EBD never actually thought it through properly IMO.

Author:	jennifer [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:25 pm ]
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My theory is that EBD sucked at math You have a fourth that consists of L4a, L4b, U4a, U4b, where the Upper and Lower seem to by age, and the a and b by ability, or possibly just split because of the number of girls. Then you have Inter V -> Vb -> Va -> VIb -> VIa as a year by year split. First math problem - girls are about 15 on average when they hit Inter V. That means that they will be 19 or 20 when they graduate , instead of 17 or 18. Second math problem - if you have 25 girls in U4b and 25 girls in U4a, then you logically have 50 girls in Inter V and then in Vb, and possibly much more, as a lot of girls come to the school at about age 14 or 15. However, both those forms contain about 25 girls, which means that approximately half the girls must drop out after U4b. By Lower 6, the form size is more like 15, so they lose nearly another half of the class before sixth form. Then there are the staffing issues - one PT teacher and one secretary for 400+ students. Plus, while several French teachers are mentioned, poor Miss Denny seems to teach all the German, plus Italian, Russian, Spanish, junior piano, junior geography, junior history, junior grammar and handicrafts. I think my period for the books is the British, partially because of the war story lines, and partially because some of my favourite characters - Bride and Tom and their group - are featured there. The Tyrol is the best for sheer atmosphere, and the school character.

Author:	Emmy [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:37 pm ]
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Alison H wrote: Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest? Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS!

Author:	abbeybufo [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 6:54 pm ]
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Have a vague memory that Gordonstoun has a 'branch' in Australia - didn't Prince Charles go for a term? But this may have been a 'twinned' school rather than an actual branch

Author:	jenster [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:14 pm ]
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I was at an all girls boarding school (convent actually!!) in the late 80s and early 90s, and despite not being anywhere near anything as romantic as mountains there were a lot of similarities in the way the school ran, the relationships with staff and girls and rules. Ok, perhaps as I was obsessed with the CS I was looking for similarities but I was think a lot about the school itself rang true in terms of the boarding environment and all girls together. In fact I always imagined the CS would have been rather like my school if it had updated (we always thought it was far too old fashioned) TV once a week (top of the pops!) was the only programme allowed in my first year and group walks to the beach as the only 'expedition' and don't start me on our hobbies clubs and CHristmas fair!

Author:	Fiona Mc [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:10 pm ]
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Emmy wrote: Alison H wrote: Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest? Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS! Geelong Grammer has a couple of branches I think-one in the country/bush away from everything and the other in Geelong. (It's a private school for both boarding and local kids)

Author:	evelyn38 [ Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:11 pm ]
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abbybufo wrote Quote: Have a vague memory that Gordonstoun has a 'branch' in Australia - didn't Prince Charles go for a term? But this may have been a 'twinned' school rather than an actual branch Gordonstoun is a member of Round Square ( an organisation founded by Kurt Hahn, which has several international schools as members) and PC I think therefore went to another Round Square school. So yes, twinned rather than anything else

Author:	Caroline [ Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:23 am ]
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Emmy wrote: Alison H wrote: Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest? Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS! Roedean had (has?) a South African branch at one point. (It was evacuated from the Brighton area to the lake district during the war, too; was set up by a group of sisters; started in a bunch of houses in the town and ended up with purpose built buildings outside the town, which they were always growing out of. I think they built their own chapels, too... All very Chalet!)

Author:	flovie [ Sun Apr 13, 2008 5:59 am ]
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Quote: Alison H wrote: Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest? Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS! Finally plucked up the courage to actually post something... Probably the closest think you'd get to a CS set up would be something like the school I went to - a Catholic school founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart. There are Sacred Heart schools all around the world (two in Britain that I know of are Woldingham (sp?) and Kilgraston), but they are all individually run and although they have differing amounts of contact with each other, there's no central curriculum etc. Although I wonder how much control the CS really had over the other branches? Apart from a few girls who come to Switzerland from the Carnbach branch, there doesn't seem to be much contact between the branches. Perhaps as it evolved the CS would have ended up almost as a 'franchise' type operation!

Author:	Alison H [ Sun Apr 13, 2008 7:54 am ]
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Congratulations on your first post, flovie ! I can't think of a good way to put this, but as the school gets bigger in later years its world conversely gets more closed ... does that make sense? We start off with a family who, by the standards of the times, are well-travelled, attend services of other religious denominations which most people at that time would not have done, and - whilst it seems patronising now - are praised for taking an interest in Marie Pfeifen's family in a way in which most mistresses/masters wouldn't have done, and make friends with a lot of local people. We end up in a world where none of the adults socialise with anyone who doesn't work at either the school or the San, almost all of whom are British; and where everyone is obsessed with people's connections with Old Girls. Hope that makes some sense somewhere!

Author:	JB [ Sun Apr 13, 2008 8:44 am ]
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Quote: I can't think of a good way to put this, but as the school gets bigger in later years its world conversely gets more closed ... does that make sense? Quote: Hope that makes some sense somewhere! Entirely! I think that's a perfect way of describing it. None of the mistresses are Swiss, neither are any pupils who are major characters. The main Swiss feature is the food!

Author:	Pat [ Sun Apr 13, 2008 12:59 pm ]
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Quote: The main Swiss feature is the food! And even then the school's food is still mainly Austrian, since that's where Karen comes from.

Author:	champagnedrinker [ Sun Apr 13, 2008 1:56 pm ]
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Emmy wrote: Alison H wrote: Are there any RL leading schools with different branches, just out of interest? Harrow has a Hong Kong branch IIRC, but I can't think of anywhere else. However most schools don't have the country hopping history of the CS! The nearest I could think of would be the United World Colleges ( http://www.uwc.org/about_us/colleges ) - which I think that E B-D might quite like: From their "about us" page they say: Quote: United World Colleges (UWC) is unique. It is the only global educational movement that brings together students from all over the world – selected on personal merit, irrespective of race, religion, politics and the ability to pay – with the explicit aim of fostering peace and international understanding. UWC was founded in 1962 and originated in the ideas of German educationalist Kurt Hahn. Hahn believed that much could be done to overcome hostility and conflict if young people from different nations, races and religions could be brought together to learn from each other.