Boarding Schools

[Buffy]

Well we don't have a Pedagogy forum here, but this is close enough...

 

I have a friend who's daughter is convinced that she wants to go to boarding school (the kid is 11). One of her friends older siblings goes to one, and having heard some tales, she thinks its the greatest thing since sliced bread. My friend is diplomatically working to disabuse her of this desire, but mostly by deflection rather than actually arguing against it (tweens are on the verge of that state of total wisdom about the world known as teenagerhood, so direct argument is a *bad* approach! ;) ).

 

Some parents I've met seem to *need* boarding school because they are totally clueless about parenthood. Among the rich, its supposed to give kids an academic and social leg up to go to very exclusive boarding schools, although this is really an "east coast" thing, that you don't see much of here on the Left Coast (although there are many very fine ones, I've been told).

 

I have a relative who is associated with a top notch boarding school who had kids go there and have a horrible time, leading to interesting arguments between them.

 

I personally would never even think of sending my kid to boarding school and although she's happily going off for several weeks of summer camp in the wilderness this summer, neither of us could stand the separation.

 

So, whatta ya all think? Irish homeschools her kids, and that's kinda the polar opposite. Anyone with good/bad/indifferent opinions?

 

Yearn to Learn,

Buffy

[ronthepon]

Well, I have recently been to boarding school.

 

All I can say is that though it was a wee bit painful at times, it makes one ready for the world.

 

It gives a person the required mentality for surviving in a tough social environment.

 

It is nessecary at times because the child gets too much of protections from his/her guardians and ends up completely unable to take care of the self.

 

I guess that here I'm applying the philosophy of 'no pain, no gain'

[Buffy]

And there lies one of my primary questions: was it good for *both* your social maturation as well as your education? Do you think you missed anything? Do you think there are any things about it you could get nowhere else?

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[ronthepon]

Well, defintely helps at a later stage if one goes early to boarding school.

 

For one thing, if you go to a good boarding school, you get to understand the need to study your self sometimes much better than you do at a day-scholar basis.

 

But I have got to warn you, this scenario is sometimes not true. Some kids tend to go the wrong way in boarding schools.

However, since you have a daughter I would not worry a lot about that.

 

And, since yu have specifically asked, I have missed the pampering a child wishes for. I can't say if that is good or bad.

[ughaibu]

I went to state schools until I was thirteen, I then spent two years at two boarding schools, fortunately I was expelled from the first and the second promoted me a year, so I was able to abbreviate my stay. I would class my time at these boarding schools as a social, emotional and educational disaster, not that I regret it now but I wouldn't dream of subjected anyone else to a similar ordeal.

[ronthepon]

Ordeal???

 

Why do you feel so?!

 

I had loads of fun in my boarding school!

[InfiniteNow]

Great for learning "book smarts," not so good learning one's social position in the world. I have no personal experience in this regard (although, my older sister did go to one when we lived in Connecticut), however, when I encounter boarding school kids, they're snobby little pricks who need a good *** kicking.

 

Oh... but they know how to pass a test really well, and have connections.

 

Two sided coin for sure. :eek_big: Much more like college and dorm life than normal high school. You should check out some movies ('cuz that's where the real information is found...) like:

 

School Ties

Dead Poet's Society

Rushmore

Toy Soldiers

Boarding School

Cruel Intentions (hey... isn't that buffy?)

Girls Boarding School (although, I'd venture a guess that this isn't what you're after...)

[C1ay]

Boarding school might be a good option considering this news story:

 

California judge voids school exit exams

 

A California judge struck down the state's controversial high-school exit exam Friday, potentially clearing the way for thousands of seniors who have failed the test to graduate with their class next month.

 

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman issued a preliminary injunction against the testing requirement, ruling it places an unfair burden on poor and minority students who attend low-performing schools.

 

"With the bold stroke of a pen, Judge Freedman has given 47,000 students an opportunity to walk the stage with their classmates and to receive their high-school diplomas," attorney Arturo Gonzalez said. Gonzalez filed the challenge to the exit exam in February on behalf of a group of students and their parents.

 

More....

If this holds up then a California High School Diploma will no longer be an indicator that one actually has a high school education.

[Freddy]

My old Sociology professor used to say that boarding school would be the only method of child rearing in the future. This would free the parents to persue their careers and visit their children regularly. He felt children would be better behaved and receive a superoir education. The economy would prosper and crime would drop. I doubt it will ever happen.

[ronthepon]

they're snobby little pricks who need a good *** kicking

 

ahhh... um... ahem... *cough* ...er...

 

I'm a pretty nice guy, you know...

[InfiniteNow]

ahhh... um... ahem... *cough* ...er...

 

I'm a pretty nice guy, you know...

 

Good call, ronthepon... I think I was displacing frustration from something else. Also, I was generalizing, which is not my style. Thanks for calling me on this.

 

I should have prefaced by saying that "Quite a fair number of them..." are snobby little... :)

[CraigD]

From 1975 to 1979, I attended and graduated from a “prestigious boarding school”, Philips Exeter Academy. Although it’s difficult to put into a few words the experience of being a human being age 15 through 19, regardless of where one does it, I’ve had decades to reflect on my PEA experience, and think I can now summarize its impact on me with a single broad positive and a single negative.

 

The positive is that it disabused me of many introjections and fallacious self beliefs. Up to the age of 15, my experience supported the belief that I might be the smartest human being to ever live, an opinion that friends, parents, and WV public school teachers did little to discourage, and one that resulted in me being, I believe, delusional to the point of being slightly, dangerously, crazy. I was, in short, a profoundly insufferable brat.

 

Exeter is an academically top-notch school. With the brief trip of a few thousand kilometers, I was transported from being (as measured by my state’s standard academic achievement test) the smartest kid in my junior high to being somewhere in the middle two quartiles of a school were many of the kids had not only better basic educations than me, but an ethic of academic competition beside which my public school experience seemed an exercise of selflessness and philanthropic affection. After a hundred days or so of trying to reason our how I, the assumed smartest human existent, could appear so much less smart than so many people – developing some novel psychological and philosophical hypotheses in the process – I was forced to conclude that these people appeared smarter than me because they were. There’s no experience quite like spending time with genuine geniuses to convince one one is not one.

 

Once the keystone of my personal delusional system was gone, much of the rest of it collapsed like the proverbial house of cards. Abruptly, I understood that I’d been indoctrinated by parents, relatives, and some peers, into a very elitist political and philosophical school of thought, which, while a potent system for making one feel really good about oneself, was not based in objective reality. Meeting brilliant people my age who came from astonishingly humble circumstances – in a few cases, literally the children of peasants – put the lie to the idea that I was a member of some meritocratic noble biological and cultural family, and illuminated some very ugly racist and classist unspokens of my elitist upbringing.

 

(If you are experiencing dissonance at how a 1975 US $8,000 / term private school could have among its students the children of peasants, here’s how: Exeter, and other high-academic-standard private schools maintain this standard through large financial endowments, allowing them to provide many scholarships. When I attended it, about 80% of the student body received some financial assistance, with about 10% of the student body having 100% of their tuition, board, travel and in some cases vacation living expenses paid by the foundation. The nature of this arrangement, while not explicitly stated, is made clear in the course of ones attendance: such schools are in the business of produce financially successful, rich, generous alumni, who donate big $$$s back to the school)

 

Although I’d not planned it, Exeter was in many ways ideally suited to having this influence on someone in my condition. With its round “Harkness” tables deemphasizing established hierarchy and authority, and its many Latin mottos translating to phrases such as “not for oneself”, and “goodness without knowledge is merely sad, but knowledge without goodness is dangerous”, it had an entrenched faculty culture focused on humbling people like me. While not successful in this mission with every student – Exeter alumni contain their share of pretentious, preppy snobs – I believe it was successful with me.

 

The negative impact of my PEA experience is, I believe, related to the positive. Pendulum-like, I swung from an elitist philosophy to one of exaggerated egalitarianism, in which the practical mechanics of social class were irrelevant, and ones work the total measure of ones worth and predictor of ones success. For next decade, and to this day, I bristled at the merest appearance of privilege. I purposefully went to college at the largest, least expensive school I could (West Virginia University in Morgantown), finding work washing dishes, waiting tables, tearing up and putting down concrete, painting, tutoring, and many other low-paying jobs. When I couldn’t afford a car and an apartment, I paid for and lived out of a car, even though my parents, though financially set back from their affluence in the early 1970s, were ready and willing to help me financially.

 

There are, therefore, deep flaws and omissions in my education found less often in alumni of Harvard or MIT than in alumni of WVU. I completed only a BS before, driven by the need to support a couple of families of my kids, I was lured into the lucrative but academically backward world of Information Technology.

 

If I could offer Buffy’s friend’s daughter advice, it would be to be as realistic as possible when making life decisions, including academic ones. There are, for people of most mindsets, no “promised lands” where good things come without toil, but at the same time, toil alone is not enough to assure a good life. The world is full of people and institutions intent on assisting individuals. Some demand money in return. Some demand other compensation. Some are free. Some will pay you. Realistically aware of what is offered and what it costs, it’s folly to reject whatever help you can find.

 

Another bit of experience-based advice: The academically best (as measured by various standardized tests) private schools are, in my experience, almost monastery-like socially, nearly the opposite of the social scene one might expect when getting out of you parents’ house. These place care primarily for their students academic success – the party is secondary, if present at all.