Boarding School – Have You Considered It For Your Child?

It is a commonly held belief that a person’s mental make-up is fashioned in the formative years. Sure, we continue to grow and learn throughout our lives, but an integral part of our essential personalities is harnessed during our school tenures. The importance of schooling being settled, a pressing question arises. Is a regular day school the correct answer, or is boarding/residential school worth the expense and heartache? Being a boarding school product myself, I’d blindly argue for the latter. But there is concrete reasoning as well, and it is as follows:

Going Beyond The Word…

Perhaps the single strongest argument in favor of sending one’s child to boarding school, is the opportunities the experience presents. At any good residential school, a student’s day sure begins like it would at any other day-school. Post lunchtime though (having attended the classes for the day), the kinds don’t retire to aimless occupations like television. They rest briefly, and then indulge (compulsorily) in a plethora of activities. These range from social work such as teaching the underprivileged, afforestation; to innovative and creative pursuits like aero-modelling, carpentry, metal works and so on.

Not just that, further on in the evening, the students get a chance to strive for sporting excellence as well. At most boarding schools, certain team sports such as Cricket, Soccer and Hockey are mandatory (since they culminate in an inter-house tournament). Aside from these, there is a feast of individual and more specialized sports that students can pursue. Squash, Tennis, Swimming, Badminton – its all there for the taking.

You might of course argue here that similar recreation can be provided with the child remaining in his/her home town, attending day school. While that might be true, the logistics, infrastructure and costs that it would entail would be foolhardy to ignore. That aside, the team spirit and conviction, pursuing these activities at boarding school (away from the shelter of parental guidance) instills in a child, is far more than attending an organized camp in the city.

At day school, things like music & art can only be practiced in a limited fashion (since school ends at lunch). And post school, you’d again have to, in all likelihood, select one or the other since organizing a variety of activities will be just impossible (time-wise as well as economically)! At residential school however, these needn’t be one at the cost of another. For 8 months of the year, your ward is living in a school that has everything right on campus. Besides, most of these activities are mandatory built into the curriculum, making it a gold-mine of opportunities for a student craving to explore, experiment, and discover himself/herself.

Finally, you may contend that the bottom line is the questionable relevance of all this ‘extra-curricular’ activity later in life. Well, you’d be partly right, but partly wrong. Its true that few pupils of a boarding school will graduate to any level of professional engagement with a sport or performing art. Having said that, they will make for much more diverse, interesting and multi-faceted individuals, with an albeit limited, but genuine understanding and appreciation for so much more than their respective vocation. A far cry from the myopic world view that a lot of the typical day school products embody!

Become Your Own Person…

I realize that my article till now must sound like I am trying to hard-sell the boarding school experience essentially listing the recreational opportunities as if it were a holiday resort. Fact is, these opportunities form the bed-rock and basis of a boarding school’s primary advantage – strong individual character & confidence.

In the protected confines of a day school and one’s own home, sure there are possibilities for growth and development. Often times though, they are restricted and governed by forces like parental pressure. Let me explain. At home, a day school child will most probably be made to pursue one or two ‘hobbies’. However, this selection will be made more by the parents, than by the ward himself/herself. Likewise, even in terms of academics, from an early age itself, a student is likely to fashion his/her thinking & choices in accordance with direct or indirect opinions of the parents. In fact, not just in terms of academic and non-academic leanings, but on a much broader macro level, the overall mental make-up of a ward at home (and at day school), will be prone to influences from various factors besides his own views. In the midst of parents and their opinions, society and its expectations, and day schools and their ideological compulsions (which often stem from the dire need of overtly focusing on academic excellence alone); the chances that a student develops any kind of ‘independent world view’ based on his own experiences, will remain bleak.

On the other hand, boarding school does the diametric opposite. Far from the shelter and the constant interference of external ideology & opinion, students are encouraged to first experience a bevy of activities, subjects and pursuits – and then come come to their own realizations. Realizations about what all they are doing, and about themselves. Their likes & dislikes, preferences in academics, sport and the arts, are based purely on their own experiences. That is not to say that they are left stranded as if on deserted islands. There are always people (the teaching staff) to guide pupils at a boarding school. The difference though critically, is that these teachers neither propagate, nor impose any solitary stream of thinking. There is no spoon feeding. There is no force feeding. The student is there largely by himself, to undertake small and big experiences and learn from them, as an individual.

The freewheeling debates, the interaction with other students that belong to diverse and even conflicting philosophies, ethnicities, religions and socio-economic climates; its all a most enriching and broadening time for a young, impressionable and passionate mind. Sure there are mistakes, but then who doesn’t make them. Sure there are risks, but those are just as impending even if you sit locked up in your home.

What’s enviable is that you have the freedom to experience your primal and legitimate freedom. Your child can run endlessly down the fields, sing as he cycles down a mountain, foolishly pursue that silly girl in his senior years, have his heart broken and be miserable; but after all of this, emerge a whole, complete, engaging and thoroughly charming person. His own, well defined, rounded, and individual person!

Grow Up To Its Merits

Unfortunately, the education system in our country has made the emphasis on academics obsessive. Almost always now, a student may secure that essential 90% at the end of his school tenure; but what he’s missed out on, are the joys of growing up and self-discovery. I can only urge that we arrest this problem now, look beyond the 90%, and aid our children in realizing themselves, entirely…

[Kartik Bajoria, a regular contributor, runs his own creative agency called BOLD & is also involved in Films & Music as a force of habit!]

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