Superiores y superioridad

Una cita sobre el sistema educativo inglés a principios del siglo XX («public schools»), y otra cita sobre la necesidad (externa o autoimpuesta) de sentirse/ser superior a los demás

I have hardly mentioned a Master yet(…)
It is difficult for parents
(and more difficult, perhaps, for schoolmasters)
to realize the unimportance of most masters in the life of a school.
Of the good and evil which is done to a schoolboy masters, in general,
do little, and know less(…)

(…) the deadly thing was that school life was a life almost wholly dominated by the social struggle;
to get on, to arrive, or, having reached the top, to remain there,
was the absrobing preoccupation.
It is often, of course, the preoccupation of adult life as well;
but I have not yet seen any adult society in which the surrender to this impulse was so total.
And from it, at school as in the world, all sorts of meanness flow;
the sycophancy that courts those higher in the scale,
the cultivation of those whom it is well to know,
the speedy abandonment of friendships that will not help on the upward path,
the secret motive in almost every action (…)
in some boys’ lives everything was calculated to the great end of advancement.
For this games were flayed;
for this clothes, friends, amusements, and vices were chosen

Ambas extraídas del estupendo libro «Surpised by Joy», de C.S. Lewis. Libro en el cual se inspira parcialmente la película «Tierras de Penumbra» («Shadowlands»)

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