The sixth form fights back William Rees-Mogg As long as ministers prefer Wayne Rooney to Isaac Newton, Britain's literary heritage will never be safe IN THE SECOND half of the 19th century, English public schools fell under the spell of athletic prestige. Both masters and boys were encouraged to admire the “muddied oafs” of the first XV or the first XI. Correspondingly they tended to look down on the scholars of the sixth form. This anti- intellectualism is well described in the memoirs of those scholars, such as Robert Graves’s brilliant account of pre-1914 Charterhouse, Goodbye To All That. I...