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Your Monday poll #13
February 11, 2008 — RJH45 Responses to “Your Monday poll #13”
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February 11, 2008 at 4:39 am
I voted “yes” mostly to avoid potential professional hypocrisy.
I think I would only send my kids to a boarding high school and I’d prefer it to be local. Most boarding schools in England let the kids home at the weekend. Once you see the range of extra-curricular experiences offered to kids in such schools, you’d be impressed (cue nudge-nudge jokes about English boarding schools).
February 11, 2008 at 4:40 am
Of course, the Mormon downside is that things like daily family prayer etc. would suffer. What other concerns are there?
February 11, 2008 at 4:45 am
All schools are a bit Lord of the Flies — most boarding schools are handing out the big rocks at the door.
February 11, 2008 at 5:32 am
I will celebrate when the last one leaves for college or marriage or a job or whatever other glorious event propels them out the door – but I don’t want to accelerate that event in any way. The only way I would consider boarding school is if it was high school and if it provided something that my child desperately wanted and couldn’t get in any other way.
The inability to attend seminary and the loss of time with them during what still are formative years for most adolescents is a big thing for me.
Loved #3, Norbert.
February 11, 2008 at 6:54 am
no way for boardsing school. I like spending time with my kids. I don’t want to send them away.
February 11, 2008 at 6:55 am
er boarding
February 11, 2008 at 7:00 am
Ronan – although you instruct us not to consider income or cost (money) for this question, for those of us raised in rural Mormon communities in the western U.S. there is still an image of aristocracy about boarding school that I wouldn’t have wanted for my sons (it’s too late for me anyway since they’re all grown). On the other hand, the folks I’ve known that have attended boarding school (in the U.S.) are all pretty good blokes. One of my current workmates was just talking to me last week about his experience at Cornwall on Hudson, which is located up the Hudson River near West Point Military Academy. In our conversations he displays a certain snobbery but just as I’m about to accuse him of such he says something that makes me believe he’s a regular guy.
You’ll never get me to bad mouth a good public education.
February 11, 2008 at 7:44 am
Interesting points about Seminary and family life. Given the societal doors that boarding school may open, is this another thing (wealthy) Mormons must abandon? And if you knew a Mormon family who sent there kids to baording school, would you judge them for it?
February 11, 2008 at 8:40 am
An opportunity to judge another family in the ward and you are really asking whether or not we would take it?
Man, we’d be all over that like white on rice!
February 11, 2008 at 8:59 am
No cakes. Kids need their parents when they are kids.
February 11, 2008 at 9:05 am
Sending children to boarding skill is a great way for adults to flaunt their lack of parenting skills.
February 11, 2008 at 9:13 am
queuno,
Heh. Well done for proving peetie right.
Many people rarely do anything with their kids out of school anyway. Is a parent — who gets their kid a fantastic education, puts them in a school where they have a mass of extra-curricular opportunity, and sees them at the weekend and for four months of vacation — really a lousy parent? Maybe, but surely not always. This is the problem with sweeping statements such as yours.
February 11, 2008 at 9:40 am
As far as I can tell, boarding school is an East Coast and a British thing. My wife (who grew up in the East) tells me she totally would have gone to a boarding school; growing up in California, it was sometimes the subject of a book, but never an option (and especially not one I would have wanted). So, no.
February 11, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’m against boarding of any kind, be it scholastic or water-based.
Isn’t the CIA the US version of boarding school?
February 11, 2008 at 9:54 am
I object to boarding schools for the following reasons.
1. lack of control of upbringing
2. Church activities and seminary
3. Family religious activities
4. rejection issues. IE you sent me away to boarding school you must not love me.
5. I do not believe in absent parenting
For the record I have never met an LDS family with kids in boarding school. I suspect that fellow ward members would be suspect of the whole arrangement and Youth Leaders/PH/RS leaders would disapprove. There must be some somewhere maybe on the East Coast?
February 11, 2008 at 9:59 am
Not little kids, but HS students, sure. Depending on their maturity level, of course. I would hope for weekend visits; that might even be a prereq.
greenfrog, I don’t think the hazing is that bad.
February 11, 2008 at 10:01 am
We did have a family in a ward I was in who sent their daughter to boarding school from age 10. She loved it (I knew her when she was 15-16).
Age 10? Yep, I was judgmental about it. Maybe if she had been older, maybe less so. Really, her parents had little influence in her life at all.
At MMW a recent discussion brought up the fact that many Mormons won’t let their kids have sleep overs. I’m pretty sure the same reasons would apply to no boarding school.
February 11, 2008 at 10:11 am
I wouldn’t do it purely for selfish reasons. The guilt would kill me. And I don’t want to die young.
February 11, 2008 at 10:21 am
No–I wouldn’t want my kids to make rich friends.
(Along with other issues, but that is something no one has mentioned and it is real objction for me).
February 11, 2008 at 10:25 am
Why would you send your kid to boarding school?
February 11, 2008 at 10:41 am
I want to add, I would just miss them terribly. I have little people in my life in part because I like them.
February 11, 2008 at 10:53 am
While I never considered boarding school, the fact that my wife and I made our kids comfortable at home has led to having our older, adult children, and their spouses, move back in with us from time to time. Currently have our 3rd son and his wife with us, but at one time about a year ago, we had our youngest, my daughter and her husband and granddaughter, our oldest son, and our 4th son who had just returned from his mission. Seven cars at our house, and none in the garage, because all of their crap was in there.
If we’d sent them away to boarding school, maybe they’d be less likely to want to move back in. All except the granddaughter. She’s welcome anytime.
February 11, 2008 at 11:03 am
Interesting dilemma that comes up for families in the Foreign Service where some postings just don’t have adequate schools, particularly for high school. It takes the money out of the equation because Uncle Sam foots the bill. I’ve had more than one FS parent rave about the great education their kids are getting in Swiss boarding schools.
As a observed example, there is a well-regarded boarding school within our ward boundaries. Only once do I remember any LDS kids going there, a brother and sister whose parents were working in Saudi Arabia. We didn’t see much of the kids because the schedule didn’t permit them to leave campus on weeknights for mutual, seminary was out of the question and even sacrament was hit or miss. The boy ended up going to BYU, not sure about his sister. They just seemed to be caught between two worlds and it didn’t seem ideal from this outsider’s perspective.
February 11, 2008 at 11:40 am
I have this from two angles. First I went to a boarding school for my last two years of high school. The educational experience I had was rich and I learned so much it was crazy. I didn’t attend seminary much (wish I had in retrospect), and church activity fell off afterwards. I attended church again upon graduation and went on a mission, no problem. However awesome the educational experiences were, I didn’t have the self commitment needed at that age to remain faithful enough to regularly attend church. That said, if the circumstances were right, I’d be more than happy to allow my children to do the same. If I could do it all over again, I would — without question. It was one of the best 2-yr segments of my life for personal discovery.
The other front for me is that I am a member of the US Foreign Service, which has brought me here to England. I’m going somewhere else this summer. My children 7/8 are attending a private British school that costs Uncle Sugar 20/25K per kid per year. I don’t know how some Brits afford to send THREE kids there. We will be sending our kids to International Schools of high quality for some time as we continue to live overseas. If a boarding school becomes an option, we will consider it. I think that the opportunities are too vast to ignore out of hat.
February 11, 2008 at 11:47 am
Wow, what an incredible and personal question for me. I live in Saudi Arabia and the status quo here is that when kids reach 10th grade, they’re required to be sent out to boarding school (recently a 10th-12th grade option has been made available at the US Embassy though).
For the record, I know more than a dozen LDS families here who have all sent their kids to boarding school.
The company we all work for foots the bill up to $40,000 per year, per kid.
My daughter is only 8, (and my son 7), but we regularly have boarding school discussions. We’d never send her if it weren’t 100% her decision, but the opportunities to go to any boarding school in the world (that she gets accepted to), is pretty mind boggling. The education and opportunities are something we could never afford on our own.
My biggest concern, even at this early stage of the game, is the fact that we wouldn’t be there to share her last 3 years of high school, the prom, the teenage angst, etc., in addition to not being able to keep a watchful eye on her and make sure she stays active in church.
My daughter’s last pronouncement was that she’d only go to a boarding school in Europe, because it would be a close flight, and I could visit her often. She likes England.
So now the biggest question is: do Ronan and Rebecca want a boarder?
February 11, 2008 at 11:53 am
For the record, my younger sister just started boarding school, and it was absolutely the best thing for her. Two factors influenced our decision:
1) Her previous school was completely failing to meet her academic needs, to the extent that they called my parents in for conferences and complained that my sister “worked too fast and [was] getting bored. Why can’t she work at the slower pace of the class?” She was getting so bored with schoolwork that she was starting to hang out with a bad crowd, because she literally had no work to occupy her time.
2) My parents have no %$((%!( idea how to raise a teenage girl in America. And because my sister had no smart, level-headed, moral friends to hang out with at school or in the neighborhood, she had no good role models or peers (aside from me, her awesome older brother).
Boarding school not only put my sister in a highly-supervised and tough academic environment, but it also put her in a place where the other girls her age value academic achievement. And it got her away from her clueless parents–ordinarily I wouldn’t support parents “sending their kids away,” but in this situation it was the best thing possible.
I don’t think I would send my own kids to boarding school, but then again, I hope to run a Christ-centered, level-headed, well-adjusted home (none of which my parents provide). My sister honestly gets better influences at her school than she ever did at home.
February 11, 2008 at 11:54 am
I have a dear friend who has two disabled children. After struggling for years to provide them with what they needed at home (schooling, in home help, etc.) the children were admitted to a residential facility run by the Catholic church that specializes in teaching children with their particular disabilities. The plan was to bring the children home after a year or two, but they have thrived there. The school is four hours away; my friends see them almost every weekend, and the children are actually developing relationships with each other and others, something they never were able to do at home.
So even though I said no, that’s specific to my circumstances. If I were in different circumstances, the answer would most surely be yes.
February 11, 2008 at 11:58 am
After a day of particularly bad bickering amongst the angel-monkeys, I actually did a facetious search the other day looking for boarding schools that took kindergarteners and discovered that there are schools that take 1st graders. Seems like an extreme step to stop sibling quarrels, but it did cross my mind.
February 11, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Ronan -
I used the word ‘flaunt’ deliberately.
I grew up with two friends whose parents shipped them off to academies when they turned 14. And said parents were pretty open (to other parents) about the fact that they thought that it would be easier for them to pursue their careers with the children away at school.
There is a university near me offers a residential program during high school for accelerated math and science students. We have teachers approaching about our daughter — who is several years away from even being eligible — and how she would benefit. One of the reasons we hear is that “the academy can do a better job of preparing her for advanced college life than we or you can”. Which I found a bit insulting. But there are a bunch of parents in her class who think it’s great — it’ll be easier for them to travel with their children gone from the home sooner.
I know one LDS kid who attended the academy. He couldn’t participate in YM, seminary, or the like. The academy *expected* him to spend his free time with his peers.
So I’m not backing down from my statement in 11. A lot of parents use boarding schools because they acknowledge their lack of interest in parenting.
February 11, 2008 at 12:15 pm
(Not ALL parents. Some parents. I’m not accusing anyone of anything. LDS parents are the shiznit!)
February 11, 2008 at 12:46 pm
19. Why wouldn’t you want your children to make rich friends?
As one who attended college with many prep school kids and many rich kids, I observed I couldn’t tell who had money and who didn’t until they got dressed to go away for the weekend. Most of the rich were great, a few (mostly the new rich, not the old who tended to be quite inclusive and driven by noblesse oblige) were snobbish. Money doesn’t dictate character.
February 11, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I sincerely hope my kids make rich friends. Those friends could be the only rich people they ever meet.
February 11, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I voted no, but that would change if they could get into Hogwarts.
February 11, 2008 at 1:02 pm
No way, no how. I love my daughter and want to spend time with her, getting to know her, and vice versa. When she goes off to college, I’ll cry a river. I’m not against the idea of boarding schools. My roomie at BYU went to an East coast boarding school and was one of the brightest, most knowledgeable, well rounded students I’ve ever known. But I just want my kids with me.
As for meeting rich kids… What is wrong with that?? My said friend of the East coast boarding school was extremely wealthy in ways I can never imagine, but she is awesome and fascinating and cool and one of my best friends to this day.
February 11, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I said yes. Though I must admit that my daughter already graduated college and my son is a sophomore in college — but he does want to transfer to UCLA.
February 11, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I think the issue with making rich friends would be the peer pressure to have all the same expensive gadgets that the rich friend gets. That’s just a guess, as my son has no rich friends.
Our neighbor’s teenage daughter goes to boarding school. The court said she could either go to boarding school, or to juvenile detention. I’m hoping it’s a boarding school with good security and extra guards.
I wouldn’t send my kids to boarding school because I would miss them too much.
February 11, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Do LDS have the same attitudes toward non-BYU elite colleges as toward prep schools and boarding schools?
February 11, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Molly beat me to it in #31. Some of the best friends I had in college were so rich they loaned money to the Vanderbilts; some of the biggest jerks were poor kids on full needs-based scholarships (like myself).
#33 – Priceless.
February 11, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I don’t mind if they MEET rich people, I said I didn’t want them to make rich friends. I know a lot of rich kids/people and generally speaking, I don’t want my kids to adopt the consumerism, self-absorption, insensitivity, and ingratitude inherent to many rich families. Or to become Republicans.
You can see I am making an outrageous generalization that is based in my actual concern, right?
My family acted as chaufer for the LDS kids (whose parents were mostly in Saudi, I think) at a boarding school in the UK. I think the kids averaged 2 weeks a year church attendance. Hard for a lot of kids to recover from that and activate themselves after HS. That would be a major hold-back for me.
That said, Boarding School is just not a part of American culture. In my husband’s place, boarding starts at age 5, if you have the money–totally normal.
I read enough Enid Blyton books to have made boarding school my childhood fantasy, but I think I could have been placated by a school with a uniform that included a plaid skirt.
February 12, 2008 at 12:01 am
I know lots of people who went to boarding school (a pretty large percentage of my fellow students), and I put maybe. Any children I’d have are purely hypothetical at this point, but I don’t know that I wouldn’t consider it for high school, especially if it was the latter part of high school. Quite a few of my friends attended high school at home through their junior year and then did two years at an international school, and really that’s only leaving home a year earlier than usual. And queuno, I know what program you’re talking about, and I thought about it (until I realized that it would be stupid, since any university I planned on attending would not have accepted the transfer credits). I think my parents would have been fine with it.
I know what I got out of a public education (public education in my school district is not steller), and I know how overwhelming it was to be in classes my freshman year with people who went to some of the most fantastic boarding and prep schools in the country. Its just not anywhere close to the same caliber of education, and, aside from the obvious financial considerations, I definitely see the appeal of boarding schools.
Of course, there is always the option of living close to the kinds of schools that are the same caliber as boarding schools, but don’t actually have boarding students (like, Harvard-Westlake in LA or Horace Mann in NYC, or something like that), and barring financial considerations, I would defintely go for that.
February 12, 2008 at 10:28 am
re: 37 I’m not sure what the answer is, but in my experience there are too many BYU acolytes who labor under the delusion that BYU is an elite school. BYU is akin to a Mormon boarding school: a great way for Mormon parents to flaunt their lack of parenting skills. (raising spiritually insecure children who might not survive a non-LDS school with their testimonies intact or come away w/ an LDS spouse.)
As to the OP, we considered enrolling our kids in an area private school-The Hill School-until we learned students had to board for at least one year during their high school years. (many out of state students board all 4-5 years.) We’re probably too selfish, but we want to maximize our time with our kids, so we passed. But we find other ways to flaunt our lack of parenting skills.
February 12, 2008 at 11:06 am
at hate to be a grammar Nazi, but it should be “If money were no object, would you send your kids to boarding school?” It’s a subjective use of the verb which means that it has to be past conditional. I never learned this about English until I studied a foreign language. I’ve learned more about English studying Spanish than I give myself credit for learning in umpteen years of English in school.
February 12, 2008 at 11:07 am
hahaha, should have been “and hate to be” to start it out. ;-p
February 19, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Re: 29:
That’s makes it even sadder. The proper word there is flout.
February 19, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Err… That makes it even sadder–wish you could edit your own posts…