The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Benefits of a Boarding School Education

I'm glad Dayo commented about public boarding programs. I once had a particular affection for the Baraka School, a now-defunct boarding program, sponsored in part by the Baltimore Public School System that boarded at-risk 7^th and 8^th grade boys at a school in Kenya. Baraka eventually closed in 2003 because of political instability in the host country but, while it existed, it had a good record of graduating students to academic and personal success. Baltimore was sufficiently impressed with the results to encourage the D.C. SEED School to open a campus in the harbor city.  I agree with E.J. that the boarding school model has strong historic traditions and want to add another argument in favor of distant education: the great opportunity for personal development. For a certain personality, the time away from home is a wake up call for maturity, at least as effective as outward bound. 

Our 1-year experience with boarding school when my daughter was a teenager had the salutary effects of reform school with fewer of the negative influences. I married when she was 12 and there was a period of "acting out" that was particularly disruptive at her private 7-12 school. I have mercifully forgotten every detail of the many trips to the stern but genuinely concerned school head mistress's office before my daughter was invited not to come back for 10^th grade.  It was 1987 and the D.C. public school system was not a good fit for a girl who naturally gravitated to the least challenging environment. We hired an "educational consultant" who steered us to a friendly, low admission threshold, residential school in upstate New York. It was a tough year. I missed my daughter insanely, and the tuition was twice as much as we were paying at the day school. Despite a dip in her academic performance, the year away did a world of good for her however, and, incidentally, for the family. So good for the family, in fact, that during the nine months of her sophomore year of high school away, I incubated and delivered a new member to it. My 16-year-old came back in the spring to a new brother and her parents in the last steps of moving into our new home.

Life moves on, with or without you in it.  To my great joy, she wanted to be in it.  She contacted the headmistress of her former school and asked politely, could she come back for 11^th grade? To my surprise and deep relief, the formidable educator unblinkingly enrolled my newly respectful headstrong teenager in with her old classmates. I never asked but I think what persuaded the director was that my daughter went on her own to ask the favor.  In that year away, she had learned to be both self-sufficient and deeply appreciative of the support of loved ones. The coda is when she graduated with her class in 1990, the faculty honored my girl with a "Phoenix Award," named for the mythical creature that emerges from her own ashes. They created the tribute just for her, but kept the tradition alive for future self-reinvention cases.