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We have only begun to work on volume III of our British E-Book. Volume III will be a series of photo essays based on the photograps we took on our visits to British preparatory schools. As we did with the printed edition of Boys Preparatory Schools we are using some of the poems, quips, and written work of the children and comments by the teachers to provide insights on the schools. Much of this comes from school publications, but we have added some of our conversations as well. The photographs provide glimses of the schools, but the written pieces provide useful insights into school life that enhance the photographs.
The authors, two amateur photographers, set out to create a photographic essay of Britain. It soon occurred to us that this had been done before by more talented photographers than ourselves. One of the subjects we found interesting was the many wonderful parish churches throghout Britain and the graveyards nearby with tombstones dating back centuries. The churches often had huge books with the names of parishoners who died in the two world wars, especially World War I. Often the vicar would be nearby to tell us about his church. During one of these to a church in Devon , a nearby prep school attended a church service and the headmaster who we met afterwards invited us to their afternoon fete. We were fascinated by the event and the headmaster invited us to photograph the school. It soon occurred to us that this was something unique. There are large numbers of school photographs, but most are formal portraits of the whole school or individual classes. Some photographs were taken in classrooms, but usually very stiffly done photographs of the children sitting in their desks often with their hands folded on their desks. Some schools even cleared the children out of the way and took photographs of empty classrooms and dormitories. We decided to compile photographic essays of British schools, realistically depicting school life. We eventually visited about 100 different schools throughout Britain. We are extremely grateful for the headmasters and teachers who agreed to participate in our project. Most of all we are grateful to the many prep school children who enthusiastically participated in and contributed to our project. We hope that they will be pleased with the final project.
We are organizing our British Preparatory Schools E-book into two separate volumes of E-Books. Volume I: Volume I was released in 2005. It is a topical treatment of the British Preparatory School with details on the organization, program, and the people involved. Here there is extensive discussion of the schools and preparatory school program based on a series of visits to the schools in the 1970s and 80s. Included with our assessment are numerous insights offered by the staff at the various schools we visited. Volume II: Volume II is the book you are reading here. It will be more of a photo essay organized roughly along the school's daily schedule. Here we will include along with our explanatory text some of the work by the children describing their schools and school experiences. Volume II is still in progress, but our initial pages can be viewed at this time. Volume III: The volume here is volume III and is a series of photo essays. This will address issues or aspects of the prep schools that raeders do not believe were adequately covered in the first two volumes.
Britain has some of the best known schools in the world, especially its public schools which are really elite private fee-paying schools schools. Some of the public schools date to the 16th century. Some have even older origins. Quite a number, however, date to the 19th century when Britain was expanding its educational system to train administrators and technicials for its huge overseas empire. It was at this time that preparatory schools began to appear. Public schools originzlly taught boys of varying age, some quite young. Public schools could be very rough places, especially for younger boys. Educators by the early 19th century increasing realized that the educational needs of the younger boys required a school specifical suited for their needs. Thus the preparatory school was created, a school designed to prepare boys for the public schools. The educational history is discussed in volume I of our e-Book. Many preparatory schools are still run on quite traditional lines and still have the imprint of the schools from which they have evolved.
The schools that we visited provided us a range of their publications. These include school prospectives, litrary magazines, school magazines, and newslettrs. This material has provided information on the schools as well as description of school activities. The publications also include charming pieces from the children themselves describing their schools and their school experiences. This written work provides a valuable counterpoint to the photographic images. The written material gives some background on the activities pictured in the images. It also gives us an insight into wht is on the mind of the children and the teachers. The images of course are not of the actual individuals who wrote he written pieces but we have chosen the images to mirror the subject matter of the written pieces.
Here we have aseries of photo essays on different aspects of the British preparatory school experience. We will add drawings, snipets of written work, and quotes from the children as well as material provided by the staff describing the schools and their educational programs. All this written material is designed to to help illustrate the photographs and to give an idea about what is on the mind of the the childeren pictured. The photo essays will cover all aspects of prep school life from beginning school in the morning to going to bed at night and is arranged in a kind of rough daily schedule order as well as a range of topics that do not fit into a time-table approach.
The photographs here were taken by the authors, except for the historical photographs in the chronological section. You may notice that many of the photographs are not technically perfect. Here the choice was between technical perfection and realism. We are sure that teachers and former pupils will see this and our other schoolnpublications as very realistic depictions of school life. This is in large measure because the idea of the project was take candid photographs showing the children and teachers going about their normal everyday activities. By candid we do not mean that the children were unaware of us, but that the photographs were not formal portaits in which the children were especially dressed up and posed. Setting up photographs in classrooms would have not only been disruptive, but would not shown class activities as they actually occurred. The same is essentially the case of the freetime photographs, only here we had a little more flexibility to make minor changes so that we were not, for example, shooting into the sun. The children were very interested in our project and anxious to be photographed. Here we did a little posing to get interesting backgrounds or to take photographs in small groups. Also the children may many suggestions to us about where to take photographs of interesting activities or good views of the school, grounds, and facilities. We found that the children especially liked to be photographed with friends so we often took smll group rather than single photographs. Even with the free time photographs, however, the photographs are primarily candid shots. Thus what you see here are the schools as they were operating on a normal day.
There are a number of advantages to our new E-book. Publishing a photographic book in full colr is a very expensive undertaking. This would require us to set the price of any such book very high. And it would place a limitation on the number of images we could reproduce. Here you get to see the beautiful Apertures Press images in full color. Another advantage is that you get to see the book as it evolves over time. You also get to participate, if you wish, in the books publication as Apertures welcomes comments or submission of written work, short literary pieces, art work, and photographs. British readers are encouraged to submit their school insights and experiences. Non-British readers should feel free to send along questions they my have. The E-book will also include many more color photography than will be feasible in the published book because of the high cost of color printing. We eventually hope to load about 200 pages and 300 images.
Apertutres Press welcomes contributions from readers to our book. We were able to visit only about 100 schools. There are of course many more preparatory schools. If you would like to contribute material about your school or your school experience, we incourage you to do so. Contrubutions can be photographs, drawings, essays, or just little written snipets--what ever you may care to contribute.
This British Preparatory Schools E-Book is part of a major effort that Apertures Press has under taken to put a human face on schools around the world. The objective is to draw a realistic picture of the school experience in different countries around tge world. We hacve done work in Australia, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We are still in the process of preparing our photographic work and written insights for publication. We are interesting in contacting teachers, shool administrators, and photographers in other countries that would be interested in future e-Books that Apertures Press could publish. Interested parties should contact Apertures Press through the e-Mail link here.
If you have any questions about British preparatory schools, do not hesitate to send us an e-mail. We will be glad to post your queries here and attempt to answer your questions about this exciting new Apertures Press project in the innovative E-book format. Our British readers will have a better knowledge of the British school system than readers from America and other countries. We will try to find photographs to illustrate the issues you raise and our answers to them.
The concept of an E-Book is still fairly new. Many of you have asked questions about the mechanics of the book and how it is set up. Note that substantive questions about preparatory schools and British education are dealt with in the previous section above. Here we are talking about the mechanics of an E-Book. Check here for some of the most frequantly asked questions as your question may have already been asked and answered. If not we will be glad to add your question here. There is also some information about out future plans for the book.
We welcome reader input to our eBooks. In fact you as a reader can make an important contribution to the books. This includes both our British and non-British readers. We have added a range of observations to our eBooks an attempted to analize the images in some detail. We believe, however, that the ideas and experiences of our readers can help to add to our observations. Thus we encourage you to comment on the various pages as you read them. This includes both factual observations and questions. Questions can be just as useful. If there is something you do not understand, it is likely that others had the same experience. Thus it is a topic or photograph we need to explain better or in more detail. If it is a new topic, we will look for a new image to illustrate it.
Apertures Press has published a 125-page hard cover book depicting every-day life at British preparatory schools. The book includes about 250 never before published black and white and color photographs illustrating school life during the 1980s. There are also many older photographs to illustrate a brief historical essay providing background information on these splendid little schools. Accompanying the photographs are poems, essays, and quips by the children themselves describing their school experiences. Most of the photographs were taken in England and Scotland, but British preparatory schools in Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ulster are also shown. Please have a look at the various pages of our web site for information on Boys' Preparatory Schools.
