Is boarding school bad for you? Stefanie Marsh, in a trenchant and fairly one-sided article, looks at the work of psychotherapist Joy Schaverien. In her paper ‘Boarding School: The Trauma of the Privileged Child’, Schaverien claims to identify something called Boarding School Syndrome, an emotional dysfunction stemming primarily from the trauma of early separation from one’s parents, that manifests itself in intimacy problems in later life.
Eton College
In Schaverien’s words:
Parents bankrupt themselves to send their children to school when they are just babies really. This is a terrible burden for the child. But it is like sending a child into care. Nowadays there are duvets on the beds and they are allowed teddy bears but it doesn’t make up for the fact that children leave their mothers, their primary attachment figures, when they are essentially still babies.
Stefanie Marsh fills in some of the psychological details:
‘Attachment theory’, a core tenet of contemporary psychology, was formulated by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who, in the Second World War, observed the effects on children who had lost parents or been evacuated. During the 1980s, his theories were extrapolated and applied to adults – separation anxiety and grief in childhood, it is now commonly held, can create different ‘attachment styles’ in adult romantic relationship: secure-avoidant, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant.
Boarding school ‘survivors’, as they have been collectively termed by the psychotherapist Nick Duffell, are said to most frequently exhibit avoidant styles, viewing themselves as self-sufficient, invulnerable to attachment feelings and not needing close relationships. Often they suppress their feelings, cope with rejection by distancing themselves from partners or feel uncomfortable with emotional or physical closeness.
So this isn’t about identifying particular problems that can develop in the culture of a boarding school, it’s about the very fact of being separated from one’s parents at an ‘early’ age. I think the focus is more on those who board at ‘prep’ school, i.e. those who leave home not at 13, but sometime between the ages of 7 and 13. (David Cameron went to board at prep school at age 7; Stephen Fry at 7; Boris Johnson at 9; Price William at 8; Sienna Miller at 8…)
What do you think? What’s your own experience? Is there another side to this story?
[Times, Modern section, 23 June, pp. 4-5; subscription only]
I agree with Stephanie Marsh.
I am a new wife to a very damaged ex boarder and we are now going to therapy for his difficulty in bonding and being emotional.
Father,
she doesn’t seem to deal with children sent to State boarding schools – a useful control group at the very least, I would have thought – and seems to impose a single model of mother-son relationship as being “right”. She doesn’t compare children of that class who didn’t go to boarding school either.
I work with quite a few men (and a very few women) who went to public or private school as boarders and apart from a certain self-confdence which is common to most, there seems to be little to distinguish them from the rest of us.
Having worked with abused and neglected children, with the accompanying training as well as hands on experience, the important time is from birth to four years old. If a child has a loving mother/ family and is held, cared for and loved, then that child can handle and accept so many things in life. If that child has never known being held and loved then that is where the attachment disorder has its roots.
That being said, I did not go to boarding school, but know some fine people who did. I think that a strong and loving home sets a child up for success, and the child who is not held close and loved from birth has a long road alone.
It is the rare individual who can rise up from adversity, but those who are loved can travel many paths.
It is interesting that the wealth that God wanted for Jesus was the wealth of two parents who loved one another and who were essentially very present to him throughout his childhood; Mary was a housewife and Joseph was a (self employed?) carpenter. Jesus’ later heroic, generous and self-sacrificing love was founded on the security of knowing himself profoundly loved; including the congruence of Mary and Joseph’s teaching on the loving nature of God and Jesus’ experience of the loving nature of his parents.
The other day I saw a little boy (aged about 7 and a boarder), his eyes filled with tears, essentially being told to ‘pull himself together’ for the important business of Mass. A god who requires little boys to be separated from the tender embrace of their mothers and, to boot, to suppress those natural tears in order that he may be worshipped is not the Father I know, but a monster and an adult projection.
Having been both a boarder and a day pupil at different stages of my schooling, I would never send a child of mine to boarding school unless there really was no other option. I don’t think there is necessarily a problem with boarding per se, it depends upon the age and temperament of the child, the ethos of the school itself and also the reasons why the child is being required to board, but I don’t think parents always stop to think about how dangerous it can be to hand over control of their child’s upbringing to a third party (I may be a control freak, but I wouldn’t trust anyone to care as much about my children’s welfare as I do!) With the best will in the world, if a child develops emotional problems these may not be picked up in an institutional environment in the same way they would at home (I found this to be particularly true of conditions such as self-harm and eating disorders which can easily slip under the radar). In the end, it seems to me quite obvious that a happy family is the best environment in which to nurture a child but in the world we live in boarding school may represent the best possible alternative in some cases.
I have some friends that have gone to boarding schools. Many of them loved them! You have to see for yourself. A site that has some good information on boarding schools in the US is Teen Boarding Schools
B
I boarded from age 6 in the early 60′s, no teddies, no weekends at home just days out very occasionally; the memories haunt me still. For me there really was no love and I do recognize that sudden moment of knowing that I was alone – terrible emotions to try to cope with. And that you have swapped a parent for the company of other children pretty much all the time, so that it becomes almost impossible to be alone and feel secure. Small children trying to manage and survive emotionally in an institution where adults can become the ‘other’ as opposed to a consistent and loving presence.
:O( x
I boarded from 8 to 18 in the 1970s. I was not bullied or abused, and at the time would have told you I was perfectly happy living at school. But the long-term consequences of those 10 years have been brutal, particularly in the area of intimacy.
I can still, at the age of 49, induce a knot in my stomach by remembering the feeling of awakening in a dormitory room with 10 or 11 other boys, a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and realizing that I was not in the safe realm of my dreams. Those were some of the most joltingly lonely moments of my entire life.
Reading Duffel’s “The Making of Them” a couple of year’s ago was such a huge relief – allowing me to see that I was not a freak or losing my mind.
I still struggle to maintain my relationship with my American wife. I would never dream of sending my children away, and nor would my brothers.
I am returning to psychotherapy soon in the fervent hope that I can figure out a way to live the rest of my life without alienating those closest to me – and they do not include my family of birth for they were lost long ago
Andy thank you for sharing your experiences, my first husband experienced exactly those same struggles. He sadly could not manage to overcome the institutional way of life that made it difficult to maintain relationships.
However he has learnt to live in his separation with a kindness towards others, whereby he can retreat if it all gets to much, and this works for him. And his children love him in his kindness regardless. Big Hug x
P.S It is sadly ironic, and you hear it again and again, that the very same things hated as a child about living as a boarder, are the very same ways that many of those children as adults end up living by.
I boarded from the age of 8. Look closely at a kid aged 8, ask yourself why you would desire to leave the child with strangers. Utterly appalling idea and not something I would ever consider with my own kids – ever.
The fact that Cameron and Johnson went to boarding school under the age of ten makes the case AGAINST boarding schools an undeniable conviction.
The men are like spoilt brats with no empathy for anyone outside of their class and ultra-elitist circles. They have no moral centre whatsoever. Also their educational knowledge of other cultures and history outside of ruling elite interests is zero. They have no People’s History empathy for the world at all.
So even in academic terms putting outside moral and political considerations they fail and the schools they attended fail too. Then there is Cameron’s idea and education of economics where in his regime is currently draining the British economy with austerity as his primary mechanism for growth. Of course it is not working other than to make all the social problems even more severe. So much for the value of the world’s most elite education. His hypocritical verbal attacks on Syria’s President Assad may well have little to do with the slaughter of the Syrian people and far more to do with the chances of Assad having bullied Cameron at Eton.
I read the comments here with great interest, and I particular emphasised with those from Andy Forbes. I was a boarding school in the 1970s (from the age of 7) and there was a culture of control and abuse. I continue to pay the price through lack of ability to form strong intimate relationships, lack of self esteem and so on. Andy’s comments on how he felt on seeing where he was on waking each day in that dorm brought tears to my eyes as I felt the same sense of utter aloneness. I have sought therapy several times over the last few years and I am now seeing someone with my wife to try and save my marriage. Both my brothers were at the same school, and the burden of the loneliness, abuse and pressure was tragically too much for my eldest brother to bear and he is no longer with us.
I find great comfort in your words. I too spent more than 10 years in boarding school in the 70s. I at a girls school and my two brothers at a boys school. My younger brother the most gifted and academic of the three of us ended up deadicating his life to state education. He as your brother could not manage his burden and committed suicide in his twenties. I have a difficult time communicating with my remaining family. The words utter lonliness ring so true to me. I felt that bad people were sent away as a child.
My parents told me I was going to be snt away and to this day…..i’m nearly fifty I feel it was because I was essentially bad. Hearing that others feel this desperate is of great comfort. Thankyou.
P