Education Boarding
With boys in particular, going to boarding
school can be seen as part of a natural, healthy process. As Steve Biddulph argues in his bestselling Raising Boys, separation from one’s mother, learning to survive away from hearth and home, adopting older males as mentors, is a necessary part of becoming a fully rounded man. A boy who would have been apprenticed to a squire in the Middle Ages now needs to fi nd his feet on the rugby pitch, in the CCF or on a Duke of Edinburgh weekend. No parent depositing a nine-or ten-year-
old child at boarding school is ever going to feel other than guilty. They will worry that they will not be there for their children when they are most needed. And no teacher can
replicate the love of a parent. But that does not mean a boarding school is second best, a mere administrative convenience. A good boarding school will supplement a good home, not compete with it. “He has been transformed,” says
No teacher can
replicate the love of a parent...a good boarding school
will supplement a good home, not compete with it
the father of James, a ten-year-old who has just started boarding at the Dragon School in Oxford. “Six months ago, we were in despair. James wasn’t happy at home, he had developed strange eating patterns and he was picking on his younger brother. Now his dimples are back, he seems more adult and, above all, he has learned to negotiate his own space with other boys, which we could not help him with at home.” James had already been at the Dragon for two
years, but as his parents lived just a mile from the school, the boarding option had never been
considered. His mother was initially against the idea but her misgivings have proved unfounded. “I have realised that I didn’t understand boys well enough to give James what he needed at this stage in his life,” she says. “At the Dragon, they have been nurturing
boys for over 100 years and have that wealth of experience to draw on. So it is not surprising that they have been able to help him through a rough patch. The daily to-ing and fro-ing from school used to be stressful, but now James doesn’t have to put on a new face every morning. His life is a happy, seamless whole and there is a little bit of air between us that was not there before.” The stereotypes of English boarding schools
– cold, uncaring institutions where children cried themselves to sleep, bore no relation to the
modern Dragon School, where the house parents in charge of the boarding houses are typically young couples with children of their own and boarders can enjoy all the trappings of normal domestic life, from dogs to cake-baking. That boarding would not suit all children is
axiomatic. And even parents attracted to the boarding option need to ask searching questions of the boarding schools they are vetting. It is important to establish, for example, how many children are going to be around at weekends. Some boarding schools have made such a substantial shift to weekly boarding that, if you are not careful, your child could end up leading a painfully lonely existence on Saturday and Sunday. But the social stigma that is often attached to
parents who send young children to boarding school has no place in a forward-thinking world. It just could be the right option for the right child at the right time
St Leonards-
Mayfi eld School, East Sussex
✎ 34 FirstEleven Michaelmas 2011
www.fi rstelevenmagazine.co.uk
Sunningdale Prep School, Berkshire (courtesy BBC)
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