Saint Grottlesex
The term Saint Grottlesex refers to several American prep boarding schools in New England. These schools have historically sent their graduates to the nation's most prestigious universities.[1] All schools, save St. Paul's, which left in 2016, are members of the Independent School League.
The schools are:
- St. Mark's School
- St. Paul's School
- St. George's School
- Groton School
- Middlesex School
The term is a portmanteau of the St. part of St. Mark's, St. Paul's, and St. George's, then part of Groton, an extra t, and then ended with Middlesex. The St. Grottlesex schools were founded in the nineteenth century for well-to-do Episcopal Church boys (excepting nondenominational Middlesex, founded in 1901), and were consciously styled as the American equivalent of famous English public schools. In contrast, the Academies, notably Andover, Exeter, Milton, and Deerfield, were generally founded in the late eighteenth century as places to "combine scholarship with more than a little Puritan hellfire" and, originally, were often the first educational step in preparing men for the Puritan ministry.[2] The St. Grottlesex schools retain an aura of preppy establishment.[3]
References
- https://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051010crat_atlarge
- Cookson and Persell, Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools (Basic Books, 1985).
- E.g., Birnbach, Lisa, The Official Preppy Handbook, Workman Publishing, New York, 1980, pp. 194–195.