Having been through the public school system myself I feel I can shead some light upon some of the issues raised.

“Thus students endured bullying, corporal punishment, sexual abuse, and separation from their families”.

- Bullying; true enough I guess, we still have fagging and running the gauntlet and the great upper school fights etc. but thats just tradition, the running the gauntlet has been going on in my boarding house along the same corridor every year for 120 years.

- Corporal Punishment; this does still persist at public schools, though the beaks dont do the traditional caning.

- Sexual Abuse; what?!?! never happened to me! I dont know where that one comes from!

- Seperation from our Families; well yes, thats the point of boarding school, and let me tell you, the years that I have spent at boarding school have been the happiest and most exciting of my life.

Now for the bit about interpersonal relationships; you try living for five years in a house with 70 other people you have never met before and come back and tell me that your social skills havent improved.

As for the “illusion of superiority”, try comparing the grades, or social skills, or ability and learning in pretty much every single concievable field, and it is obvious, sometimes painfully obvious, that the public schools are far, far superior.

The issue, or I guess the ‘problem’, is with the class system. People dont like to employ the lower classes for high powered jobs because they are not taken seriously.

As for the slavery connection, I dont know where that came from, my school was funded by fees not the slave trade…