Boarding school

• 1. Global Boarding School Models

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  A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word boarding is used in the sense of room and board, meaning lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend across many countries. Their functioning, codes of conduct, and ethos vary greatly. Pupils in boarding schools study and live during the school year with their fellows, housemasters and housemistresses. Some boarding schools also have day pupils who attend the institution during the day and return home in the evenings.

  Pupils who board at the school are called boarders, or day pupils if they don't board. Pupils may be enrolled for one to twelve years or more in boarding school. There are several types of boarders depending on the intervals at which they visit their family. Full-term boarders visit their homes at the end of an academic year, semester boarders visit their homes at the end of an academic term, weekly boarders visit their homes at weekends. There are also semi-boarders who attend a boarding school in the school hours for formal instruction and activities but return home by the end of the day. In some cultures, boarders spend the majority of their childhood and adolescent life away from their families.

  Boarding schools are relatively more prevalent in the United Kingdom, India, China, and parts of Africa. These countries begin boarding schools at a very early age and for a longer span of time. Boarding schools are less prevalent in Europe and the U.S., where it is mostly seen for grades seven or nine through grade twelve, the high school years. Some are for either boys or girls, while others are co-educational. The United Kingdom has a long tradition of boarding school education, and the term public school has an elitist association. There are also some state boarding schools, many of which serve children from remote areas.

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• 2. Historical Evolution And Origins

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  The practice of sending children, particularly boys, to other families or to schools so that they could learn together is of very long-standing, recorded in classical literature and in U.K. records going back over 1,000 years. In Europe, a practice developed by early medieval times of sending boys to be taught by literate clergymen, either in monasteries or as pages in great households. The King's School, Canterbury, arguably the world's oldest boarding school, dates its foundation from the development of the monastery school in around 597 AD. The author of the Croyland Chronicle recalls being tested on his grammar by Edward the Confessor's wife Queen Editha in the abbey cloisters as a Westminster schoolboy, in around the 1050s.

  Monastic schools as such were generally dissolved with the monasteries themselves under Henry VIII, although Westminster School was specifically preserved by the King's letters patent, and it seems likely that most schools were immediately replaced. Winchester College founded by Bishop William of Wykeham in 1382 and Oswestry School founded by David Holbache in 1407 are the oldest boarding schools in continuous operation. Boarding schools in Britain started in medieval times when boys were sent to be educated by literate clerics at a monastery or noble household. In the 12th century, the Pope ordered all Benedictine monasteries such as Westminster to provide charity schools, and many public schools started when such schools attracted paying students.

  These public schools reflected the collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as in many ways they still do, and were accordingly staffed almost entirely by clergymen until the 19th century. Private tuition at home remained the norm for aristocratic families, and for girls in particular, but after the 16th century, it was increasingly accepted that adolescents of any rank might best be educated collectively. The institution has thus adapted itself to changing social circumstances over 1,000 years.

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• 3. The British Public School Tradition

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  The classic British boarding school became highly popular during the colonial expansion of the British Empire. British colonial administrators abroad could ensure that their children were brought up in British culture at public schools at home in the U.K., and local rulers were offered the same education for their sons. More junior expatriates would send their children to local British-run schools, which would also admit selected local children who might travel from considerable distances. The boarding schools, which inculcated their own values, became an effective way to encourage local people to share British ideals, and so help the British achieve their imperial goals.

  In 1998, there were 772 private-sector boarding schools in the United Kingdom with over 100,000 children attending them all across the country. They are an important factor in the British class system. About one percent of British children are sent to boarding schools. Children as young as 5 to 9 years of age are sent to boarding schools.

  In the late 19th century, the United States government undertook a policy of educating Native American youth in the ways of the dominant Western culture so that Native Americans might then be able to assimilate into Western society. At these boarding schools, managed and regulated by the government, Native American students were subjected to a number of tactics to prepare them for life outside their reservation homes. In accordance with the assimilation methods used at the boarding schools, the education that the Native American children received at these institutions centered on the dominant society's construction of gender norms and ideals.

  Thus boys and girls were separated in almost every activity and their interactions were strictly regulated

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• 4. Forced Assimilation Policies In North America

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  along the lines of Victorian ideals. In addition, the instruction that the children received reflected the roles and duties that they were to assume once outside the reservation. Thus girls were taught skills that could be used in the home, such as sewing, cooking, canning, ironing, child care, and cleaning. Native American boys in the boarding schools were taught the importance of an agricultural lifestyle, with an emphasis on raising livestock and agricultural skills like plowing and planting, field irrigation, the care of stock, and the maintenance of fruit orchards.

  These ideas of domesticity were in stark contrast to those existing in native communities and on reservations: many indigenous societies were based on a matrilineal system where the women's lineage was honored and the women's place in society respected in different ways. For example, women in native society held powerful roles in their own communities, undertaking tasks that Western society deemed only appropriate for men: indigenous women could be leaders, healers, and farmers. While the Native American children were exposed to and were likely to adopt some of the ideals set out by the whites operating these boarding schools, many resisted and rejected the gender norms that were being imposed upon them.

  The aspect of boarding school life with its round the clock habitation of students with each other in the same environment, involved in studying, sleeping, and socializing can lead to pressures and stress in boarding school life. This is manifested in the form of hypercompetitiveness, use of recreational or illegal drugs and psychological depression that at times may manifest in suicide or its attempt. Studies show that about 90% of boarding school students acknowledge that living in a total institution, like boarding school, has a significant impact and changed their perception and interaction with social relationships.

  It is claimed that children may be sent to boarding schools to be given more opportunities than their families can

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• 5. Psychological Impacts And Socialization

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  provide. However, that involves spending significant parts of one's early life in what may be seen as a total institution and possibly experiencing social detachment, as suggested by social-psychologist Erving Goffman. This may involve long-term separation from one's parents and culture, leading to the experience of homesickness and emotional abandonment and may give rise to a phenomenon known as the third culture kid, or TCK.

  The term boarding school syndrome was coined by psychotherapist Joy Schaverien in 2011. It is used to identify a set of lasting psychological problems that are observable in adults who, as children, were sent away to boarding schools at an early age. Scharverien's observations are echoed by a boarding schoolboy, George Monbiot, who goes so far as to attribute some dysfunctionalities of the U.K. government to boarding schools. British psychotherapist Nick Duffell refers to adults who have gone through boarding school separation as boarding school survivors. He has described some of these individuals as exhibiting behaviors such as a sense of detachment from any relationships, workaholism, compulsive behavior, and a penchant to control.

  Thomas Hughes's novel Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and Frederic W. Farrar's Eric, or, Little by Little (1858) are particularly religious and moralistic treatments of the theme. L. T. Meade's A World of Girls (1886) and dozens more girls school stories followed. Greyfriars School, created by Charles Hamilton writing as Frank Richards in 1910, became the first of what became 1,670 stories, many featuring Billy Bunter.

  George Orwell's essay Boys' Weeklies suggested in 1940 that Frank Richards created a taste for public schools stories in readers who could never have attended public schools. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (1997, 2007) features Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In film, Pink Floyd , The Wall (1982) and Dead

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• 6. Boarding Schools In Popular Culture

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  Poets Society (1989) explore themes of rebellion and mentorship within boarding environments.

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