Boarding Schools - what are they like?

I went to a school reunion this school though was not the usual sort that most people are familiar with it was a public boarding school after a longish drive-through ridiculously lush southern England one comes to this Georgian market town and just outside it is this entrance to the school well not the school exactly but to the long drive to the school through a world of green a lot had changed since I was there it had come into heaps of money and loads of new buildings had been put up new accommodation bongos there in the new music school they had an equestrian center yah yes not just a few horses in the whom made jump no an equestrian centre my contemporaries had all grown up of course so I was knee-deep in other people's blonde children I was sent here for a two-year stretch the reason being that my father got the job in America and so it seemed a reasonable solution to the problem of what to do with me and until I came here I just been to an ordinary state-run day school comprehensive just down the road just like everybody else I you know took the bus wore a blazer and you know had one of those bags didn't actually say a deed ass on it but you know the sort yeah I had one of those and then I came here and found myself in a completely different world and it was like two years in a foreign country this was the main building a converted stately home I have no idea why any family would want to live in something so gargantuan this is the central corridor on the ground floor which apparently the Portman family used as their sitting room if you want to imagine the smell floor polish lots and lots of floor polish I'm just going to mow the lawn there I'll be back in June my unheated dormitory and Hardy house was there and then later there I got about so the facilities here are quite stupendous I mean they were pretty amazing when I was here but now they are just holy count anyway I want to get across to you the degree of culture shock that I experienced when I first came here people started talking to me in ways that meant that I really didn't understand what the heck they were saying half the time I remember being asked for instance where did you go to school and I'm ever thinking well we had question to ask how could they possibly expect to recognize the school when I tell him so I would tell them and they were drowned in it because they were expecting to have heard of the school that I mentioned here's another thing the school book it's a book which contains the names addresses and telephone numbers of all the parents of all the children in the school and everyone got a copy all right she was quite shocked I mean at the school I just come from I was really glad that the other kids at the school didn't know where I lived and they're quite some personal details in here mean you can tell for instance where the parents are married or divorced a lot of the time by the fact that they may have different surnames and different addresses but it was considered just a convenient thing and actually once I got used to the idea it was just a convenient thing I never heard of its ever being abused by anyone and it often came in pretty handy so the school book that was a bit of culture shock but perhaps perhaps the biggest part of the culture shock was time management you see you may look at - all the luxurious stuff they've got here and think oh wow wouldn't that be wonderful but I wanted to imagine this at a particular time every day you have to go to bed in a particular place with load of particular people in your dormitory you don't get to pick those people they're just the people you have to sleep next to and you then you have to fall asleep no talking often lights out you understand and all right there was some but you weren't supposed to and then you were supposed to stay in bed until it was time to get up you weren't allowed to wander around in the night night wandering yes that's what it was called was strictly forbidden and the punishments for it were quite harsh then at a particular time you got up got dressed in the school uniform and then you have to go to a particular place to eat a particular breakfast with a particular sitting and perhaps even on a particular table and then you would have to do various duties like emptying bins and so forth and then you would have your first lesson of the day then the second lesson of the day then the third and then we break time which was again pretty regimented and you probably had a few things to do during that break time and then more lessons then lunch and then you would have assignment periods where you were supposed to go to a particular place and work on a particular thing with particular people and then you would have games games was at least three times a week which I suppose if you're really sporty is good but for the less sporty was less good and they love PE as well which is on top of that the people here was certainly very fit and then they'll be supper and then in the evening that you would have homework and of course you weren't at home you're at school so instead there were just assignment periods which were a bit like more school more classes only they happen to be in the evening and you weren't being taught you just have to sit down and get on with your work because there was a lot of the equivalent of homework of course you had no home to go to and then you would go to bed and then you would get up the next day and there it was every single minute of your day you had to be in a particular place doing a particular thing with particular people and that loss of freedom is a hell of a thing to swap for some you know quite nice playing fields and yes they are they're very nice playing fields but do you do you really want to spend a large proportion of your life being so controlled the school Church yes it had its own church there are probably Americans watching or a little confused about the term public school let me explain in America the term public school refers to a school that anyone you know the general public can go to and it's free paid for out of taxes but no we call those state schools because they're funded by the state from money it collects in taxes in other words our state school is like an American public school but in Britain a public school is funded by the public voluntarily the people here pay for their kids to come here most of them there are various grants and bursaries so some kids here are being taught for free or not for very much but most people are paying for their children to come here and quite substantial sums as well and why shouldn't they be allowed to do that I mean they're paying their taxes which fund the education system and then not sending their kids to the schools sitter funded by that education system and so they're actually freeing up places in schools and contributing tax money to schools and not getting anything back for it meanwhile they're on top of that paying for places like this to exist so they're not actually taking any education away from anyone else but what I'm actually happy here no not really at least when I was 16 in the Loess at the former I was pretty unhappy but maybe that was just the life stage I was going through and perhaps I would have been miserable near enough anywhere I was because that's what sixteen year olds can be like being in a place like this doesn't make you happy being a place like this should even be able to out some people say some people show you this it shouldn't there some people say that these public schools should be banned and closed down others say that they should have their charitable status removed personally I know I'm not in favor of that I rather in favor of people being free to do what they flippin won't want and some people choose to pay for schools like this but you may argue that there are privileges to coming from a school like this and that people shouldn't be allowed to have these privileges well what privileges exactly I mean there's the privilege of perhaps better sporting facilities and so forth but if someone's willing to pay for something nice for their kids like better for sporting facilities or trip to Disney World or whatever it is should they not be allowed to do that should other people who don't go to public schools be forbidden from sending their kids to Disneyland but I'm not a product of the boarding school system I just had what amounted to two years in a foreign country people who spent their entire childhood in such school might be far more affected there are charities and support groups set up to help people mentally screwed up by having been sent away aged seven by they're supposedly loving parents to live amongst a load of nasty bullying children meanwhile some people today seem to think that it will all be like Hogwarts the demands [Music]

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 1,297,511

Rating: 4.8902373 out of 5

Keywords: boarding, school, public, british, schoolboy, schoolchild, schoolchildren, education, tradition, english, stately home, privilege

Id: sBOlVTSiOEs

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Aries37]

For reference fees here are £11,882 per term. That's £35,646 a year or $43,438

[u/IslandicFreedom]

I went to one, the freedom he speaks about is the most tangible negative I can think of. For the average adult it would be like hell on earth.

I had the misfortune of getting sent to one when I was in the first year of high school. Being in that standard meant you were assigned what was known as a "Fag Master". The "Fag Master" was basically a student in his last year, and you were his personal slave. This meant ironing his shirts, keeping his cupboard tidy, making his bed, washing his socks, carrying his bag to class for him, and what not. Besides this you also had to take care of your own shit.

It was run like the military. Everything had to be perfect. The way you folded your clothes, measured with a ruler. If it wasn't perfect, the prefect would rip all your shit out the cupboard and you had to do it, regardless of how late you went to bed. Failure to get it right 3 times meant all kinds of shit duties, like cleaning toilets, etc.

But if you failed to get it right for your fag master that was pretty shit, many kids got physically assaulted by their fag masters. On the other hand if you did a good job for your fag master, and if you had one with some influence, you might get some slack from prefects.

At night, you got to spend it with about 8 other guys. One guy in our room got targeted and the others were always giving him shit. I remember jerking off on those lonely nights, making no sound at all, and it took long, since you couldn't just jerk off fast but had to go really slow to make no noise, and the most intense orgasms. That was the highlight of my stay there.

Fucking sucked when at times you had a glimpse of freedom, like 30 minutes after school playing with the day boarders, who got to go home, and being invited to their houses, and having to say "No" and then the reminder that soon you had to report to your fag master or risk personal injury.

Then there were these TV nights when you got to watch some TV -> One short show and that was it, and directly after this -> Study period, and all you could think about was how fucking shit this place was.

No thanks an experience I would rather not relive.

[u/watisdezetings]

I went to a boarding school in from 8th-12th grade. While it was not quite like this as it was in the U.S. it was definitely quite similar. I was not placed there by my parents because they didn't love me or didn't like me or anything like that. They gave me the option to go if I wanted to. I can understand why this guy did not like it, but unlike him I quite liked it.

We had very strict schedules just like this school does and I really did not have a lot of free time during the day to whatever I wanted. Breakfast was a a certain time then assembly then classes all day with a break for lunch. At the end of the day we had sports(you had to be on a team every season, which I did not mind as I like sports). At night you were expected to do your work and teachers would come around to your rooms to make sure you were doing it. The education standards of the teaching and what was expected of the students were very high. When I went to college I think those standards actually went down a bit in my opinion.

While this does not sound very appealing I liked how there was a structure to the day and it was organized. When I started college it was not difficult. I had a lot more free time, even as an athlete, and I had the freedom to do what I wanted to. Many of the problems my friends had freshman year at college I did not have as a result of boarding school for five years. Many of them had no discipline for doing work, since there was no one making them do it like their parents. They did not manage their time well at all and had no structure or plans to theirs days whatsoever. However, now as seniors they are a 100 fold better.

Also, many of then missed home which is completely understandable as this was their first time away for long periods of time. I did not miss home at all really since I had already been away for five years since I was 12. I had grown very accustomed to being independent of my parents and actually liked it a bit.

Overall I enjoyed the experience and I would not change that.

edit: words

[u/kingofeggsandwiches]

I think it becomes a bit more sinister when you realise why the boarding schools were so regimented, which is basically because they were preparing children for a life in one of the great British institutions, be it the government, the military, the civil service etc.

[u/ICameHereToDrinkMilk]

This school is in the same town as where I work and spend quite a bit of time.

The kids there are incredibly snobby, and you always feel as if they're looking down their nose at you, and judging massively. Regardless, the times I've visited the school itself its been pretty incredible. The facilities they have are brilliant, and they also work as a sort of charity hub to state schools. They allow conferences, sports events, open days etc. all to be undertaken there.

[u/Aucto]

This place isn't too far from where I live. This is a specific type of boarding school, not all are so lavish. Obviously, this video serves a certain stereotype though.

[u/jurassicsloth]

Military boarding school in the USA for most of my childhood.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I am doing particularly well now at 24 (own and operate a successful business, stable personal life, etc) and I attribute it almost entirely to boarding school (and a bit of luck).

Prior to being sent to boarding school I was failing all my classes, hanging out with the wrong crowd, being shitty to my parents, just being a shit in general.

Boarding school provided me an environment in which I could suffer through the years of shitty teenageriness without causing too many problems or getting in too much trouble. It gave me enough freedom (from my parents) that I didn't feel the need to rebel aggressively and it provided me just enough structure that I couldn't damage my life. Most or all of the instructors understood what I was going through (without us ever having the discussion) and gave me slack (a big deal at military boarding school) when I needed it, guidance when I was open to it, and this strange sort of compassion and support that still allowed me to feel like the big strong grown up teenager I thought I was. I have not seen or spoken to any of my instructors since I left but a few of them will always be incredibly important to me.

The primary thing, though, was that I started 'growing up' independently of my parents when I was ten. They ofcourse spent incredible amounts of money to support that image and I wasn't truly independent but the illusion was enough. When I turned 18 I bought a sailboat off craigslist for cheap and moved out on my own, had a job, put myself through college, etc. Boarding school prepared me for that.

My (not yet existent) kids will most likely be going to the same school I went to.

Admiral Farragut Academy for anyone wondering.

[u/vindatissue]

In China, public boarding schools are actually very common.. for junior/senior high at least.. they only get to go home on weekends

[u/[deleted]]

What I get from most people posting on here is that it either sucked major, or it was great for their personal improvement.

I just can't imagine being stuck with a bully 24/7. That would be suicidal.