Boarding school
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Alma ...@aol.com (Dana Sherman)
I was wondering, just how prevelent is boarding school education in the UK? They exist in the U.S. but they are very rare. Most prep schools in the states are day schools. They seem to be much more common in the UK.
I can't imagine being packed off to boarding school (even Hogwarts) at the age of 11. I cried my eyes out when I went to camp at that age! I was horribly homesick.
For Harry, it doesnt matter much. He never felt at home when he WAS "at home".
Ron has 3 brothers and a sister in the school with him. But what about Hermione? Or the other students who left families at home.
I am the mother of a 2 and a half year old little girl. I can't imagine packing her off to boarding school and almost never seeing her. Yet there are many families in which this is common practice.
What is everyone's opinion of the boarding school tradition? Is the superior education and social skills learned worth bringing up a child in an atmosphere away from his parents and family??
Dana
Sky Rider O...@cyberscriber.com
<snip> Lots of kids seem to love it... never miss their parents and do really well... others hate it.
I'd hate to lose seeing my little girls grow up.. and I want them to learn *my* take on life, the universe and everything and not someone elses version of what's 'right'.
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jonat ...@buzzard.org.uk (Jonathan Buzzard)
Not really, they are fairly uncommon in the U.K. Less than 1% of children go to one.
The HP books saw a huge increase in the interest in boarding schools/ My father hated it, on the other hand his two sisters thrived on it.
JAB.
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Jonathan A. Buzzard Email: jonat...@buzzard.org.uk Northumberland, United Kingdom. Tel: +44(0)1661-832195
"Catherine Newberry" voyager_...@optusnet.com.au
I get the impression that they are more common in the UK. We have quite a few of them in Australia, they cater mainly for overseas students and students from the country I couldn't imagine doing it either.
I put myself through university by working as a prep supervisor in a boarding school. What I saw made my hair stand on end. (It was a smaller school which now doesn't have boarders anymore.) There were a number of mixed up kids -- one little girl who had been sent to boarding school in kindergarten, because her parents didn't want her! Several other kids with family problems who'd packed them off to boarding school. And a lot of little brats from Hong Kong, New Guinea, even one from Lord Howe Island.
Some of those came from wealthy families and looked down their noses at the others. In my opinion, being in boarding school exacerbated their snobbery and gave them the opportunity to make life miserable for the less privileged ones. There was one little girl who came from the middle of Australia and the alternative presumably would have been the School of the Air. Frankly the whole experience put me off boarding schools for life. And by the way, I'm by no means convinced they developed superior social skills or had a superior education. Some of them were damn near illiterate; I used to tear my hair out over some of the English homework I was checking nightly!
But I'm sure there are others out there with a more positive spin on the whole boarding school thing!
Cathy
John King J...@JohnAndDeb.com
No, you're thinking of Switzerland. :-)
Tennant Stuart tenn...@argonet.co.uk
I went to an English boarding school, but as a day boy. Like Hogwarts, there were four houses, but two were for boarders, two for locals. We 'lived' in them in much the same way, we just didn't sleep there, and so I guess we were more easy going, quite like Gryffindors I guess.
In my experience, the boys who boarded never seemed to mind being away from home all that much, but thinking about it now, they did seem to be a bit weird - either very studious, into sports, or as vicious as only young boys can be. Quite like the other three Hogwarts houses.
A major difference (as well as there being no girls) is that boys used to start there at only 9 years old - so by my time all the boys began in the *third* year. We then spent 2 years as fourth years, and 2 years as fifth years, a year as sixth years, and could then opt for a further year in the upper sixth (I didn't). So instead of going 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 we went 3/4a/4b/5a/5b/6/6u which still seems perfectly normal to me!
Also, at 30-35 boys per year, cl*** sizes were *smaller* than Hogwarts which is about 40. And we had school *six* days per week, we had to go on Saturday mornings, but we day-boys did get Wednesday afternoons off.
Oh yes, and only fifth & sixth years (bear in mind this is really fourth to seventh years) were allowed to visit the local village. As day-boys we cycled through the village every day, but were not allowed to visit any shops in uniform. We *never* went back to the village on Sundays...
Tennant Stuart
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pe ...@table76.demon.co.uk (Peter Murray)
It may depend on where the family are. For instance, my father worked for the British Foreign Office, meaning he'd spend two years ***igned to an Emb***y in a foreign country somewhere. That could mean moving schools every two years - if there were even schools available that taught in English, and taught the British curriculum. Having to go to a foreign-speaking school would probably have been good for learning another language*, but it wouldn't do much for the comprehension of a subject like maths.
However, my parents didn't believe in sending us to boarding school, so the countries my father could be sent to were limited by whether we could go to school there. (It's only recently occurred to me this probably didn't help much with his career, limiting his options like that.) * Yeah, right; I could apparently speak French fluently at two or three, when we were living in a French-speaking country and education wasn't a problem, but I'd forgotten it all by the time French lessons started in the curriculum.
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Knights: Uh-huh. Yup. Yes. -- [Blazing Dragons "Tournament Day"]
dicc ...@radix.net (Richard Eney)
I knew three siblings who went to boarding school in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s. They seemed to be all right emotionally and educationally, but they were amazing snobs and I know they didn't get it from their mother. Their social skills seemed about average otherwise.
I also knew a man who went to boarding school as a teenager in the late 1940s. It was a single-sex school. It did little or nothing for his social skills, but it did provide some stability for him; up to then he had gone to a new school once or twice a year (his parents moved frequently).
I also knew a woman who went to boarding school in the UK for family
-related reasons. She did all right apparently; not having known her family then, I don't know how much of her personality came from her family and how much came from having been at boarding school.
Personally, I don't think it's worth it in most cases. If the local day schools are absolutely dreadful (such as the local comprehensive in the HP books), then it might be worth it just to get the child out of a bad neighborhood. But it might be better to move, if the town is such that the kids in the local school are horrors.
=Tamar
caraa ...@yahoo.ca (Siobhan)
I was a housemother at a boarding school in Toronto, Canada. A few kids who came had parents working overseas in Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia. THose countries require that foreign children over the age of 13 must only spend 3 months in the country, so they are sent at the parent's company's expense to school back in Canada. (But they knew each other so it wasn't so traumatic) Others lived nearby but not close enough to travel every day, so they often went home on weekends.
Quite a few were sent because their parents were just about to get divorced and didn't want the kids around for all the heated fighting.
I had one girl whose father owned a big business here in Canada. He thought the best education was at boarding schools in England so he sent her there at the age of 11! She was a sweet,gentle homebody kind of a kid and it nearly destroyed her. The headmistress told the family by November that she couldn't support the decision to send her to England because the girl was so distraught. SO they brought her home to tyhe greater Toronto area and sent her to our boarding school.
She cried all over again. We finally persuaded the dad that boarding school wasn't the only way to get a good education. If he wanted her to come to the school (and it's a top school)then he should find another means that would allow her to stay with her family. He finally realized that having her chauffeured every day was as cheap as boarding her and did that. She was cheerful and her marks jumped right up. But what a nightmare for that poor kid. Most kids make friends quickly enough that living there doesn't really bother them.
They have as much access to phoning home as they want and most turn out to be much better at compromise and team work than children who live at home in their own room. There is a lack of privacy but for those who really needed a quiet space, I would lent them spend time in the staff suites when we were out doing other things. One girl was happy just to watch MacGivor once a week. Her mother loved us for allowing her that.
For the kids who were coming from families splitting up, they admitted in the long run, they were glad to be with friends than being asked daily to take sides by their idiot parents.
Like any other thing, you have to know your child and let them take part in the decision. Warn them about what they may be feeling and talk about it. Set time limits - like you have to stay at camp for 5 days then we'll see how you feel. Even sleep overs when they are young help them work up to camps, etc. Not all children are suited to life away from the family but for some, it makes them blossom into amazing people. Siobhan
Richard Sliwa j...@plum.cream.org
(I've been away for a while; I'm trying to work through old afhp posts and things I say may have already been said by others) On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 03:53:41 GMT, Dana Sherman borrowed Hedwig to send the following to alt.fan.harry-potter: They're perhaps more common than in the USA, but in terms of pupil numbers, they're barely significant. According to the DfES (Department for Education and Science, ie the UK's Education Ministry), of about 6 million secondary school pupils, about 60,000 are in boarding schools, ie about 1% (the numbers I've seen don't specify how may of those pupils are actually boarders, and day pupils currently make up a sizeable proportion of attendance at such schools).
However, in terms of their impact on British society, boarding schools gain an astonishingly dispropotionate importance, as alumni represent some 20% of the House of Commons (and another 20% or so are from non-boarding private schools). The judiciary consists of about 30% boarding school alumni and the CEOs of major British corporations are also disportionately represented.
That is the main thing which makes Britain "cl***-ridden".
When I was 10, I was offered a scholarship to attend a boarding school abroad (VERY long story!). Interestingly for me, the choice of going there or taking up the offer to attend what was considered the best (day) school in my home town was the first time in my life my parents had asked for my opinion about anything important. If I hadn't wanted to take up the scholarship, my parents wouldn't have sent me. At the time, I recall thinking of it a great adventure and I jumped at the chance.
The only time I felt even remotely homesick was when my maternal grandfather died during my third year and I didn't get to attend the funeral. But that was only for that one day. I witnessed a great deal of true homesickness, though, and very few chronically homesick boys stayed very long.
For the record, I wasn't escaping an abusive home environment or anything even vaguely like that. :-) <snip> Despite having gone through it myself (and enjoyed it tremendously, although I have a few minor regrets), I would never consider sending a child of that age off to a boarding school. Should I ever have children, I would consider it for 15-16 year olds for a couple of years, if they wanted to do so and I could afford it.
The old adage about that kind of environment building up self-reliance and self-confidence is very true in my experience, and having the opportunity while already largely formed yet still a child sounds like a reasonably good idea. I know that this happens for most people when they go off to university, but I feel that that kind of environment whilst still being protected as a child has lots of advantages.
Sending pre-teens away from home for such long periods is IMO a bad idea, though, as such kids lose the opportunity to bond properly with their parents and siblings. I certainly know that's true of myself and several of my school mates.
Another downside in my experience is that it engenders a lot of cliqueiness and, in single-sex schools (which most boarding schools are), a certain lack of confidence around members of the opposite sex...
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