Export Groton?

Massachusetts' exclusive Groton School believes that what its boys need most is religion, sportsmanship and selfdiscipline. The prep school's formula is Spartan: up at "bell" (6:45 a.m.), cold showers, dark suits on Sundays, chapel (Episcopal) every morning, black marks (which have to be made up through chores like leaf-raking) for misbehavior. The boys must get their Latin conjugations straight, and are encouraged to play a creditable game of football. Such a regime, thinks Brazil's Millionaire Press Lord Assis Chateaubriand, is just what is needed by Brazilian students, for the most part gay youths more given to sambas than study. "Chato's" proposal: Brazil must have three institutions like Groton,* which he calls "the Rolls-Royce of schools."

To raise the needed funds, Chato has turned the whole pressure of his 28 newspapers, five magazines, 19 radio stations and two TV transmitters on Brazil's other millionaires. Last week Chato pulled off his flashiest fund-raising stunt: a fiesta on the cruiser Almirante Tamandare (once the U.S.S. St. Louis) in Rio Harbor. Piped aboard from gigs and barges came Senators, ministers, governors and industrialists, together with their ladies. Chato greeted them, fed them Beef Stroganoff and champagne punch, and made a speech.

"The country is choking on generalized ignorance," he said, over the ship's loudspeakers. "We must create an elite . . . capable of forming opinion on high levels of morality . . . with 90% of the young men who seek jobs almost illiterate, not knowing even how to write a letter, after having gotten out of those peddlers' houses called high schools, who will not receive the plan . . . as a blessing?"

The afternoon's contributions toward the projected schools totaled $150,000. Added to $1,500,000 already collected, it looked as if Chato had enough for his project. Beaming happily, Chato then turned to a lighter matter, showed the guests a $10,000 diamond-and-aquamarine necklace--which Chato's news photographers had earlier seen modeled on the lovely neck of Countess Nicole de Kergal, a member of the former royal family of Brazil (see cut). With that, Chato clambered over the side of the Almirante Tamandare and flew off to Britain to present the necklace to Queen Elizabeth, leaving Brazil's youth wondering darkly about what they were in for, facing not one, not two, but three Grotons.

* With modifications, e.g., religion optional.

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