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Boarding school
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A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils not only study, but also live during term time, with their fellow students and possibly teachers. The word 'boarding' in this sense means providing food and lodging.
Many public schools in the Commonwealth of Nations (called private schools or independent schools in the United States) are boarding schools. The amount of time one spends in boarding school varies considerably from one year to twelve or more years.
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A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils not only study, but also live during term time, with their fellow students and possibly teachers. The word 'boarding' in this sense means providing food and lodging.
Many public schools in the Commonwealth of Nations (called private schools or independent schools in the United States) are boarding schools. The amount of time one spends in boarding school varies considerably from one year to twelve or more years. Boarding school pupils may spend the majority of their childhood and adolescent life away from their parents, although pupils return home during the holidays and, often, the summer break. In the United States, boarding schools generally comprise grades seven through twelve, with most covering the high school years. Many New England boarding schools traditionally offer a post-graduate year, which is unknown in many parts of the US. Most boarding schools also have day students who are residents of the community or children of faculty. Some boarding schools in the United States feature military training.
Boarding school description
Typical boarding school characteristics
The term boarding school often refers to classic British boarding schools and many boarding schools are modeled on these.
A typical modern fee-charging boarding school has several separate residential houses, and in various streets in the neighborhood of the school. Pupils generally need permission to go outside defined school bounds; they may be allowed to venture further at certain times.
A number of senior teaching staff are appointed as housemasters, housemistresses or residential advisors each of whom takes quasi-parental responsibility for some 50 pupils resident in their house, at all times but particularly outside school hours. Each may be assisted in the domestic management of the house by a housekeeper often known as matron, and by a house tutor for academic matters, often providing staff of each sex. Nevertheless, older pupils are often unsupervised by staff, and a system of monitors or prefects gives limited authority to senior pupils. Houses readily develop distinctive characters, and a healthy rivalry between houses is often encouraged in sport. See also House system.
Houses include study-bedrooms or dormitories, a dining room or refectory where pupils take meals at fixed times, and a library, hall or cubicles where pupils can do their homework. Houses may also have common rooms for television and relaxation, kitchens for snacks, and some facilities may be shared between several houses.
Each pupil has an individual timetable, which in the early years allows little discretion. Pupils of all houses and day pupils are taught together in school hours, but boarding pupils' activities extend well outside school hours and a period for homework. Sports, clubs and societies (e.g. amateur dramatics, or political and literary speakers or debates), or excursions (to performances, shopping or perhaps a school dance) may run until lights-out. As well as the usual academic facilities such as classrooms and laboratories, boarding schools often provide a wide variety of other facilities for extracurricular activities such as music rooms, boats, squash courts, swimming pools, cinemas and theatres. A school chapel is often found on site at boarding schools. Day pupils often stay on after school to use these facilities.
British boarding schools have three terms a year, approximately twelve weeks each, with a few days' half-term holiday during which pupils are expected to go home. There may be several exeats or weekends in each half of the term when pupils may go home or away. Boarding pupils nowadays often go to school within easy traveling distance of their homes, and so may see their families frequently.
Most boarding schools have what is known as a "lights out" time for boarding students. A lights-out is a scheduled bedtime for students living in a dormitory. It can also occur in other places where there are strict disciplinary regulations, such as a hospital.
Some boarding schools have only boarding students, while others have both boarding students and day students who go home at the end of the school day. Day students are often known as day boys or day girls. Some schools also have a class of day students who stay throughout the day including breakfast and dinner which they call semi-boarders. Schools that have both boarding and day students sometimes describe themselves as semi boarding schools or day boarding schools. Many schools also have students who board during the week but go home on weekends these are known as weekly boarders, quasi-boarders, or five-day boarders.
Day students and weekly boarders may have a distinct view of day school system, as compared to most other children who attend day schools without any boarding facilities. These students relate to a boarding school life, even though they do not totally reside in school; however, they may not completely become part of the boarding school experience. On the other hand, these students have a different view of boarding schools as compared to full-term boarders who go home less frequently, often only at the end of a term or even the end of an academic year.
Other forms of residential schools
Boarding schools are a form of residential school; however, not all residential schools are "classic" boarding schools. Other forms of residential schools include:
- Therapeutic schools which provide clinical inpatient services for students with disabilities, such as severe anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, Asperger's syndrome, and/or for students with substance abuse and socialisation problems.
- Residential schools for students with special educational needs, who may or may not be disabled.
- Specialist schools focused on a particular academic discipline, such as the public North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics or the private Interlochen Arts Academy.
- The Israeli kibbutzim, where children stay and get educated in a commune, but also have everyday contact with their parents at specified hours.
- In rural areas of the United States, general attendance public boarding schools were once numerous; only one remains today: Crane Union High School in Crane, Oregon. Around two-thirds of its more than 80 students, mostly children from remote ranches, board during the school week in order to save a one-way commute of up to 150 miles (240 km) across Harney County.
Applicable regulations
The Department for Children, Schools and Families, in conjunction with the Department of Health of the United Kingdom, has prescribed guidelines for boarding schools, called the .
One example of regulations covered within the National Boarding Standards are those for the minimum floor area or living space required for each student and other aspects of basic facilities. The minimum floor area of a dormitory accommodating two or more students is defined as the number of students sleeping in the dormitory multiplied by 4.2 m², plus 1.2 m². A minimum distance of 0.9 m should also be maintained between any two beds in a dormitory, bedroom or cubicle. In case students are provided with a cubicle, then each student must be provided with a window and a floor area of 5.0 m² at the least. A bedroom for a single student should be at least of floor area of 6.0 m². Boarding schools must provide a total floor area of at least 2.3 m² living accommodation for every boarder. This should also be incorporated with at least one bathtub or shower for every ten students.
These are some of the few guidelines set by the department amongst many others. It could probably be observed that not all boarding schools around the world meet these minimum basic standards, despite their apparent appeal.
History
The question of when the first boarding school was founded is a difficult one to answer. The practice of fostering children with other families so that they could learn is of very long standing, with records going back thousands of years. In Europe the practice of sending boys to monasteries for their education developed. The school often considered the world's oldest boarding school, The King’s School, Canterbury, counts the development of the monastery school in around 597 AD to be the date of the school's founding. However, all of the monastic schools were dissolved with the monasteries themselves under Henry VIII. The school that can probably claim to be the oldest boarding school in continual operation is Winchester College founded by Bishop William of Wykeham in 1382
Boarding schools across societies
Boarding Schools manifest themselves in different ways in different societies. For example, in some societies children start boarding school at an earlier age than in others. In some societies, a tradition has developed in which families send their children to the same boarding school for generations.
One observation that appears to apply globally is that a significantly larger number of boys than girls attend boarding school and for a longer span of time.
Boarding schools in England started before medieval times, when boys were sent to be educated at a monastery or noble household, where a lone literate cleric could be found. In the twelfth century, the Pope ordered all Benedictine monasteries such as Westminster to provide charity schools, and public schools started when such schools attracted paying pupils. These public schools reflected the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as in many ways they still do, and were accordingly staffed to a considerable extent by clergymen until the nineteenth century. Private tuition at home remained the norm for aristocratic families, but after the sixteenth 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 a thousand years.
Boarding preparatory schools tend to reflect the public schools which they feed (they often have a more or less official tie to particular schools).
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 UK, 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.
One of the reasons sometimes stated for sending children to boarding schools is to develop wider horizons than their family can provide. A boarding school which a family has attended for generations may define the culture to which parents aspire for their children; equally, by choosing a fashionable boarding school, parents may aspire to better their children by enabling them to mix on equal terms with children of the upper classes. However often such reasons are stated to conceal the underlying reasons for sending one's child away from home. These include children who are considered too disobedient or underachieving, children from families with divorced spouses, and children to whom the mother or parents do not relate much. However these reasons are never explicitly stated, though the child himself might be aware of it. .
In 1998 there were 772 private-sector boarding schools in England, and 100,000 children attending boarding schools all over the United Kingdom. Most societies decline to make boarding schools the preferred option for the upbringing of their children, except in former British colonies; in India, Nigeria, and other former African colonies of Great Britain, for example, boarding schools are one of the preferred modes of education. In England they are an important factor in the class system.
In some countries, such as New Zealand and Sri Lanka, a number of state schools have boarding facilities. However these state boarding schools are frequently the traditional single-sex state schools, whose ethos is much like that of their independent counterparts. Furthermore, the proportion of boarders at these schools is often much lower than at independent boarding schools, typically around 10%.
The Swiss government developed a strategy of fostering private boarding schools for foreign students as a business integral to the country's economy. Their boarding schools offer instruction in several major languages and have a large number of quality facilities organized through the Swiss Federation of Private Schools.
In the United States, boarding schools for students below the age of 13 are called junior boarding schools, and are not as common and not as encouraged as in the United Kingdom and India. The oldest junior boarding school in the United States is the Fay School in Southborough, Massachusetts. Boarding schools are often referred to as prep schools. Some notable examples are The Hotchkiss School, Deerfield Academy, Phillips Exeter Academy, Phillips Andover Academy, The Lawrenceville School, St. Paul's School, and Canterbury School (Connecticut), the state's first Catholic Boarding School.
In the late 1800s, 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 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" (Adams 150). 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" (Adams 149). 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. For example women in indigenous communities 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 and continued in traditional lifestyles, thwarting the process of assimilation. Women were at the center of this resistance. One such school for Native Americans, which was famous for its size, was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Emerging perspectives
It is claimed that children may be sent to boarding schools to give more opportunities than their family can 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 may give rise to a phenomenon known as the 'TCK' or third culture kid
Some modern philosophies of education, such as constructivism and new methods of music training for children including Orff Schulwerk and the Suzuki method, make the everyday interaction of the child and parent an integral part of training and education. The European Union-Canada project "Child Welfare Across Borders" (2003) , an important international venture on child development, considers boarding schools as one form of permanent displacement of the child. This view reflects a new outlook towards education and child growth in the wake of more scientific understanding of the human brain and cognitive development.
Concrete numbers have yet to be tabulated regarding the statistical data for the ratio of the boys that are sent to boarding schools, the total number of girls, the total number of children in a given population in boarding schools by country, the average age across populations when children are sent to boarding schools, and the average length of education (in years) for boarding school students.
Although boarding schools are, possibly correctly, perceived as instilling social and personal survival skills and keeping children occupied, they also exclude children from normal home-based, domestic daily life, and are liable to engender a sense of exclusiveness and superiority in students. People who have been to such schools often speak with different, learned accents than local children, play different sports and miss out on local activities.
Boarding schools in fiction
Boarding schools and their surrounding settings and situations have become almost a genre in (mostly) British literature with its own identifiable conventions. (Typically, protagonists find themselves occasionally having to break school rules for honourable reasons which the reader can identify with, and might get severely punished when caught - but usually they do not embark on a total rebellion against the school as a system.)
Notable examples of the school story include:
- Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby serialised novel (1838)
- Charlotte Brontë's novels Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853)
- Thomas Hughes's novel Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857)
- Frederic W. Farrar's Eric, or, Little by Little (1858), a particularly religious and moralistic treatment of the theme
- Talbot Baines Reed's The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (1887), written for the "Boy's Own Paper" (which also published many other boarding school stories) and distributed by the Religious Tract Society
- Most of the oeuvre of Angela Brazil (early twentieth century)
- Rudyard Kipling's novel Stalky & Co (1899)
- Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel A Little Princess (1905)
- Frank Richards's long-running series Billy Bunter (from 1908)
- Australian novelist Henry Handel Richardson's coming of age novel, The Getting of Wisdom (1910)
- Hugh Walpole's novel Jeremy at Crale (1927)
- Erich Kästner's The Flying Classroom (Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer) (1933) is a conspicuous non-British example.
- James Hilton's novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934)
- George Orwell's Such, Such Were the Joys (1946 or 1947) is an exceptionally bitter depiction of boarding school life.
- Enid Blyton's Malory Towers, St. Clare's and the Naughtiest Girl series of children's novels
- Elinor Brent-Dyer's Chalet School series of children's novels
- Antonia Forest's Marlow family stories, four of which are set at the fictional Kingscote School for Girls
- Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings series of children's stories (from 1950)
- Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
- Geoffrey Willans' Nigel Molesworth series (illustrated by Ronald Searle)
- Ronald Searle's St Trinian's series of books (1948 onwards)
- R. F. Delderfield's novel To Serve Them All My Days (1972)
- Death of Fathers by Charles Jonathan Driver (1972) (see )
- Roald Dahl's Matilda (1988)
- Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One (1989)
- Elizabeth George's Well-Schooled in Murder (1990)
- J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of novels (1997-2007), take place for the most part at Hogwarts, giving a distinct fantasy flavor while keeping many of the genre's established conventions
- Also Ursula LeGuin in "A Wizard of Earthsea" (1968) and Trudi Canavan in "The Novice" (2002) adapted the traditional boarding school themes to fantasy settings of schools teaching magic.
- Gillian Rubinstein's Under the Cats Eye: A Tale of Morph and Mystery (2000)
- Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch stories.
- Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels series.
- Tyne O'Connell's Calypso Chronicles A four-book series starting with 'Pulling Princes' (2004)
- Michelle Magorian's Back Home
The setting has also been featured in notable North American fiction:
There is also a huge boarding-school genre literature, mostly uncollected, in British comics and serials from the 1900s to the 1980s.
On the animated series Code Lyoko, Kadic Junior High School is a boarding school where the main characters live and study. In addition, most of the characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX) live in a boarding school called "Duel Academy" ("Duel Academia").
Fictional boarding schools have also been depicted on live-action television shows. Some notable names include:
- Pacific Coast Academy (PCA) from Nickelodeon's television series
Zoey 101The Eastland School from NBC's television series The Facts of LifeA boarding school on a cruise ship, in the television series Breaker High
Boarding schools have also appeared on documentary television:
Also, in the video game Bully the story revolves around the adventures of the denizens of the fictional town of Bullworth and the boarding school Bullworth Academy.
In the beginning of the Playstation 2 game, Clock Tower 3, it is revealed that protagonist Alyssa Hamilton was sent to a boarding school by her mother.
The sub-genre of books and films set in a military or naval academy has many similarities with the above.
Boarding schools in films
Scent of a WomanMädchen in Uniform (1931)Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951)St Trinians quartet (1954-66)Lost and DeliriousThe Trouble with Angels (1966)If.... (1968)A Separate Peace (1972)Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)Taps (1981)Pink Floyd The Wall (film) (1982)The World According to Garp (1982)Class (1983)Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)Dead Poets Society (1989)Flirting (1991)Toy Soldiers (1991)The Power of One (1992)School Ties (1992)The Little Princess (1995)Strike! (1998)Outside Providence (1999)Rockford (1999)Lost and Delirious (2001)The Fraternity (2001)Harry Potter series of films taking place in Hogwarts (2001-2011)The Emperor's Club (2002)Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004)Les Choristes (2004)X-Men (2000)The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002)X2 (2003)Evil (2003)Hex (2004-2005)Cry Wolf (2005)X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)She's the Man (2006)The Covenant (2006)Taare Zameen Par (2007)St. Trinian's (2007)Zuoz (2007)Wild Child (2008)
Boarding schools in video games
Harry Potter video games
See also
Selected bibliography
- Cookson, Peter W., Jr., and Caroline Hodges Persell. Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools. (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
- Fisher, S. & Hood, B. (1987). The stress of the transition to university: a longitudinal study of psychological disturbance, absent-mindedness and vulnerability to homesickness. British Journal of Psychology, 78, 425-441
- Hein, David (1986). The founding of the Boys' School of St. Paul's Parish, Baltimore. Maryland Historical Magazine, 81, 149-59.
- Hein, David (1991). The High Church origins of the American boarding school. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 42, 577-95.
- Hein, David, ed. (1988). A Student's View of the College of St. James on the Eve of the Civil War: The Letters of W. Wilkins Davis (1842-1866). Studies in American Religion. Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1988.
- Hein, David (4 January 2004). What has happened to Episcopal schools? The Living Church, 228, no. 1, 21-22.
- Hickson, A. "The Poisoned Bowl: Sex Repression and the Public School System". (London: Constable, 1995).
- Johann, Klaus: Grenze und Halt: Der Einzelne im "Haus der Regeln". Zur deutschsprachigen Internatsliteratur. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter 2003, Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, 201.), ISBN 3-8253-1599-1.
- Ladenthin, Volker; Fitzek, Herbert; Ley, Michael: Das Internat. Aufgaben, Erwartungen und Evaluationskriterien. Bonn 2006 (7. Aufl.).
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- Schaverien, J. (2004) Boarding School: The Trauma of the Privileged Child, in Journal of Analytical Psychology, vol 49, 683-705 (http://www.isana.org.au/_Upload/Files/2005112215407_Boardingschool%5B1%5D.pdf )
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