Bruised Backs and a Golden Future

1011 Words5 Pages
Boarding schools are seen by most of the parents as the gateway to success, a privilege that not many could afford for their children. It is a major transition in a child’s life, which is instrumented by the parents with the express desire of ensuring their child’s bright future. This transition from the family life to a boarding school life is sometimes not a smooth process and it could inflict a set of psychological scars on a child’s personality and, on other occasions, it could enhance the child’s potential for success. Joy Sceverien, in his essay “Boarding School: The Trauma of a ‘privileged child’ identifies the problem of ‘double bind’ in which the child is forced to inculcate the parental view regarding the boarding schools, which eventually leads to other psychological damages. On the other hand, Nick Duffel in his ‘Surviving the Privilege of Boarding School’ points out how this transition could force the child into reinventing himself. While these findings provide a negative view of boarding schools, there are other researches which suggest that the students there are better prepared in terms of academic and leadership qualities, resulting in their greater chances of success. Although the boarding schools provide quality education and instill habits which ensure the success of the child in his/her future endeavors, they also inflict much psychological damages which would surface later in life or reflect in the child’s behaviour even during the schooling days. The boarding school students often show symptoms of homesickness, eating disorders, constructing a strategic survival personality (SSP), being caught in ‘double bind’, developing a lack of intimacy and, if such relations develop, the anxiety of being exiled. When a child is sent away from the family, a place where he used to get personal love and care, the transition is more like an exile. It can
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