This is a satire/ parody/ spoof/ mockery of ‘Public School’ education (i.e. Expensive elite private boarding school) of the British “elite” and the attitudes of “elite” families.

Dick Whippington is nearly fourteen and about to go to his ‘Public School’, Beaton College. He is told it will be ‘The Making of Him’, but he is anxious about what that means. He has just left his ‘Preparatory School’, Conforming ham Academy for the sons of Gentlemen after boarding from the age of eight. He feels like an orphanage misfit, an oddity, and wonders if he’s possibly an alien. What else could account for him being so different?

Dick is at the start of the trials and tribulations of adolescence. He lives with his family but feels unheard, unacknowledged and largely unwanted as his mother constantly bosses him, dominates him, tells him what to think, what he should feel and the many ‘correct’ things he should say. He gets so much criticism if he dares to say anything he actually feels, it seems as if there is no room for him, only for a performance of him.

As if he is an actor, Not a person…

Welcome to the first term of young Dick Whippington at Beaton College, an institution that venerates duty, loyalty, honour, teamwork, the ‘Right Ideas’ and Winning At All Costs. Beaton is the most elite, eminent, esteemed (and expensive) Brutish Public School on Planet Earth an institution which teaches new boys to Consent, to Conform, and to Comply, and that they have no value except for what they win.

At Beaton the Headmaster, Dr Little-Hardman, affirms that- “We can’t have boys thinking for themselves. It is our task to teach them how to think, what to think, the ‘right ideas’ to think and the ‘right beliefs’ to hold …

….And also tells them that they are at a very super special elite school which will make them into very super special elite boy sand will enable them, in the future, to become terribly important and maybe even Leaders of the World….

(This is where many ‘top people’ in our culture were educated/ trained/ brainwashed?)This is a satire of boarding School Education, ‘Preparatory’ to ‘Public’ School, typically ten years of boarding from age eight to eighteen, away from the parental home for two thirds of each year.