Posted on 12/20/2004 8:07:57 AM PST by Jimmyclyde
Why boarding's such a riot Mike Jackson (Filed: 02/12/2004)
Boarding school pupils get into all sorts of trouble, from binge drinking to pornography, says Mike Jackson
Parents pay fortunes for the privileges of a top public school education, yet the antics that can go on in them can be just as outrageous as anything at the local comprehensive. All the more so when large numbers of teenagers are gathered together in hotel-style boarding houses and left to their own devices.
Indeed, today's boarding schools are now so full of happy, high-spirited children and fantastic facilities that all sorts of high jinks can happen. Bullying and homesickness may be on the wane, but there are still plenty of problems to furrow staff brows. And as most boarders are now in cosy, single-bed studies, rather than spartan "dorms", age-old problems such as alcohol, smoking and sex have become much harder to police.
Most decent boarding schools are doing their best to educate pupils about alcohol abuse: that's why they now have supervised and highly civilised sixth-form bars, where pupils can legitimately drink several pints of beer. But some teenagers have a seemingly unquenchable thirst. If only a small proportion in any boarding house want to binge drink, it will take more than one or two well-intentioned adults to stop them.
All sorts of devices can be used to hide alcohol. The most difficult to detect is vodka, favourite tipple of girls, diluted in Ribena or decanted into squash bottles.
Recent legislation has made searching for hidden alcohol much trickier. The constraints of the Children Act and new boarding standards regulations severely limit the ability of house staff to take action. These days, you need to be pretty sure of your ground – even when searching a study for suspected drugs.
In the bad old days before regular "exeats" (a mere five years ago), the problems with drink that schools had to contend with on a Saturday night were horrendous.
My experiences as a housemaster were typical. As a matter of routine, I had to clear up vomit from individual rooms and bathrooms on most Saturday nights and, on several occasions, had girls collapse after excessive drinking - in two cases, having to be taken to hospital.
Pupils would get tanked up early in the evening in their studies or in the grounds, then go along to the school bar to sink a few more "official" pints.
If they were lucky, parents of boys in the rugby XV would even take them off to the pub after watching Saturday's match. So there was no point in house staff accusing anyone of smelling of alcohol, because they'd been legitimately drinking in the school bar, or in the company of a friend's father.
Now, with most boarders going home on a Saturday night, these problems have been shunted somewhere else. It doesn't mean pupils have stopped drinking. They simply let off steam in less safe and less supervised environments - having wild parties, for example, in friends' houses when parents are away.
Then, take tobacco. Research has shown that nearly a third of 16-year-olds smoke regularly, and boarders are no exception. In any house of 60 or 70, there will be around 20 smokers, with all sorts of obvious fire risks. Any trace of smoking inside has to be stamped out instantly.
Yet, in practice, it can be hard to eradicate. At one school a 16-year-old girl smoked every night in the lavatory. I knew this because I could smell it along the corridor. Yet to catch her smoking necessarily involved me, a middle-aged male, hanging around outside a girls' loo. It would take only an accusation of harassment to put me out of a job.
Then there is the thorny issue of sex, especially at co-educational boarding schools. Pupils know they will be kicked out if caught "in flagrante", but the young are sexually active and all those single studies and well-wooded grounds make this kind of contact tempting. Younger pupils can always be stationed down the corridor to keep watch and engage "Sir" in innocent talk if he comes along at an inconvenient moment.
And the fact is that teenage boarders are left largely unattended overnight. Most parents have enough problems persuading two or three teenagers to get to bed on time. Imagine what it's like persuading 70 or 80. House staff need their sleep too, especially in the midst of a busy term, and though all pupils will be carefully checked in at 10pm or 11pm, they are in effect free to do what they like thereafter.
Most pupils do, of course, sleep peacefully, but there will always be others up to mischief. A house parent (the user-friendly new term for housemaster) can't spend every second patrolling the house. Yet when there is a crisis, they may need to, as I discovered one awful day when the butt-ends of cannabis joints were discovered in the showers by a cleaner. I spent the next few nights patrolling the moonlit corridors, but to no avail.
Another problem is hard-core pornography. Look round any study today and you'll be amazed by how many pupils have laptops. In networked school computers, any internet site that is suspect will, of course, be blocked off. But laptops are less easy to monitor.
It's easy for pupils to have porn on their screen without the teacher knowing. It only takes the click of a mouse to make it disappear as the door opens, especially as protocol (rightly) decrees that staff knock on study doors before entering.
Running today's boarding schools has become an exercise in the art of the possible. Yes, the kids have a great time, and that's why they like boarding so much. But spare a thought for the staff in charge of them.
The author has been a housemaster at two boarding schools
bump
Hope that the author didn't get paid much for these revelations.
This attempted hit piece on private schools is more a self-indictment and warning to the management at ANY school (or business) public or private.
I'm glad my parents pulled me out of public school. The pot at the public school sucked, and at the "Academy", we had access to some really good Thai weed.
The piece is on private schools in England. (Of course, private schools in England are called "public" schools.)
"This attempted hit piece on private schools is more a self-indictment and warning to the management at ANY school (or business) public or private. "
Such behavior at boarding schools (and worse) has been going on for as long as there have been boarding schools. Over-indulged rich kids all plopped together in dorms run by a single individual will always find ways to do mischief.
Parents should think long and hard before sending their kids off to these schools. Single-sex boarding schools are hotbeds of homosexual initiation. Coed boarding schools are hotbeds of heterosexual intitiation. Drinking, drugs, and who knows what else are a matter of fact at all such schools, secular and religious.
Didn't Dickens' Oliver Twist attend such a school? Just because it's costly and/or private doesn't mean it's good. And some public schools are good (aack! heresy! spit! spit!)
And do they have condom dispensers in co-ed "barracks" for these pampered children?
"And do they have condom dispensers in co-ed "barracks" for these pampered children?
"
Nah. The school nurse's office doubles as an abortion clinic on weekends.
At least at a private schools, they don't invite in groups like Glaad & GLSN to teach fisting, etc, like some public schools do.
My experience is that even with greater freedom and access to the stuff, the same percentage will try drugs & alcohol, and most will outgrow any yearnings before college. Of course some will push the limits and get into trouble, but I highly doubt any more so than kids educated at public schools.
There is a lot of pressure to perform in class and at sports with a typically much smaller class size and it's a hell of a lot harder to fly under the radar.
I graduated with 76 kids and our teachers were our coaches and dorm parents. They knew who was a stoner, boozer or loser or just a suckup, etc.
If Mike, UK "housemaster" has that much experience, WHY doesn't he provide some info on what percentage of these
kids are placed in private school by parents who have
abandoned their responsibilities re the offspring's upbringing?
One has to assume (!) that the schools are charging
a good buck for "educating" the children. What are
the parents getting for their money? For this guy
to admit there is a total lack of guidance/discipline
in the dorms is a pretty crass attitude.
Rather than parent, it became easier it appears to send these kids away to boarding schools in seperate states. That way they could sweep the issue under the rug and add to their "pedigree" by stating that they "went away to school".
2 flunk outs later for one, and an expulsion due to alcohol for the other lead to a (assuredly embarrassing for the families) re-introduction to the local public school system.
Oh, BTW, one discovered the joys of LSD and cocaine at the advanced age of 15 while away. An issue still struggled with today.
Yeah, it was an easy decision for the family. Can't have the tasks of actually parenting get in the way of having the right guests at the right parties...
Funny they start "critizing" the schoold after the little "prince" and baby brother graduate....
"Funny they start "critizing" the schoold after the little "prince" and baby brother graduate...."
Not really. In England, stories about boarding schools go back a long, long way. There are many novels that take place in them, and such misbehavior has always gone on. It's the nature of the surroundings and the students.
Most kids who attend boarding schools are from the privileged class, have too much money, and parents who are shuffling them off there after they're too old to have nannies and governesses.
Same situation here in the US. Trust me, you don't want a private boarding school in your neighborhood. If there is one, lock your daughters away.
As for the "rich kids" (I was not one of them for I was accepted on an acedemic scholarship), they too had to meet "educational" requirements and belive me we didn't have rich stupid slackers attending MY school. Too many families and students wanted to attend, and the school didn't need to fill the roster with academic deadbeats.
Did we have party hounds in attendance, why of course....but tell me WHERE that doesn't happen???
Where ever there is an institution (boarding school, college, hospital etc.) you will have RULES and we all know rules are made to be broken.
I consider it an HONOR to be among a chosen few to have attended an elite boarding school AND with a scholarship.
Thanks for your opinion it is an interesting one, and Merry Christmas!
Am I the only one who sees it as an unintended indictment of taking power away from the general public to control what goes on in their own establishments? All through the piece I kept reading about how no action could be taken against a student caught breaking the rules because no one was allowed to take action of any kind.
"Am I the only one who sees it as an unintended indictment of taking power away from the general public to control what goes on in their own establishments"
EXCELLENT POINT. The battle for the Alamo was about private property rights. So is the battle for private guns and property today...among other battles of course.
Modern smoking clubs and the Prohibition era "speakeasies" also beg the same question. The context of the Constitution is that we abide by the moral laws implicit in the endowing by our Creator of our inalienable rights....in that context some behavior is simply personally unacceptable and when I choose not to behave as, for example a murder and pedophile--there is no need for a law against it. Living above the law is not being shielded from prosecution but rather not doing things which are evil. "An examined life."
At least at boarding school they aren't drinking and then driving. It's a pretty safe place to experiment, if one has the tendency to do so.
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