<p>So I live in a medium sized city in the central US, with half-decent public schools, and a pretty good Episcopal school which covers K-8. I want the best for my kids, and ultimately, I feel like I can afford it. There’s nothing else I could spend my money on that is more important. So I’m thinking, given the alternatives, the best secondary education (9-12) for my kids may be private boarding school.</p>
<p>There’s the popular conception that boarding school is something punitive, someplace no one would go, given a choice.</p>
<p>We’re more than a few years out, but I’ve offered the possibility of sending our kids to a boarding school to my wife, and she looked at me like I was crazy. My brother’s kids are closer in age to the point where one might look closely at boarding school, and when I suggested it for his kids, he also quickly ruled it out. I think one my wife’s nieces would do well at a boarding school, but when I suggested it to my wife she said “my sister would never, ever, send Sarah to boarding school.” </p>
<p>None of us went to boarding school, for what it’s worth. And the education of my nieces and nephews isn’t my business. But I want the best for my kids.</p>
<p>Obviously I don’t want the kids to feel like they’re being punished, or that they aren’t loved. And in this household, my wife will never be on board if the kids aren’t on board.</p>
<p>So how do I get them on board? (Fortunately I have years to work on this.)</p>
<p>My suggestion would be to take your wife and kids to a couple of the boarding schools to “just look around.” When your kids see the opportunities that await, they will be absolutely blown away. We have good school systems here, private and public, but they cannot begin to compare to life at a prep boarding school. If one of your kids is into art or music, just visiting these school will make them cry that they have to go back to where they are. The facilities and staff are unmatched. Also, by the time they are of the age to attend for high school, they may be yearning for a little more independence. </p>
<p>Another point I will make is that many times when you talk to parents about their kids going to boarding school, they think only of themselves and not of the kids. It is selfish. I had that reaction from friends when they were told that our daughter was going to Hotchkiss. If you truly want the best for your kids, and of course boarding school is not for every kid, then expose them to the opportunity and see where it takes them. If they have never visited or talked to kids who have attended or currently attend, they have nothing to base their opinions on. The other thing I would recommend is that you consider having your kids attend one of the many summer programs at the boarding schools. Once they have spent some time there and experienced a little of what boarding school is like, you may be happily surprised that they are the ones clammering to apply and then there will just be your wife to convince!</p>
<p>Good luck, but I will say that it was the best decision we have ever made and she has just blossomed. I am also confident that when college rolls around, she, like all boarding school kids, will not have the woes that many college freshmen have with making new friends, homesickness, or working with a weekly class schedule that is different from the traditional public school. They are mature students who are used to being able to manage their time, do their laundry, and the list goes on.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster above. You can attend open houses. Some schools will allow you to tour without an interview in the late April to mid-May timeframe. Seeing the schools and understanding the opportunities will help in the decision. Your children may not be ready to think about boarding schools until, perhaps, 7th grade.</p>
<p>Your kids definitely have to want it though; the good schools will interview them for admission without you around! It’s nice that you want to and can give them the opportunity. Maybe leave some pretty brochures around the house as if they just coincidentally arrived in the mail.</p>
<p>I agree with the visit – I live in Colorado and family is from Kansas, so I know exactly what you are saying. According to everyone here, only bad kids are “sent away” to school.</p>
<p>Visiting days and open houses are the best way to expose your wife and kids to boarding schools. At the boarding school that is local, we have attended two visiting days and have seem kids as young as 5th and 6th grade visit – for the same purpose. To see what this boarding school thing is all about. A visiting day in the spring of 7th grade was enough to convince my son he wanted to attend BS – in fact, he was ready to sign up that day.</p>
<p>After the visits (and it can be any boarding school – just something to show them the possibilities) then you can order the viewbooks. Most viewbooks come with DVDs, which are very well done – and very convincing. Most of us parents wish we could attend the school after viewing the DVDs.</p>
<p>I’m curious as to how you came to the “boarding school would be better for my child” thinking. Obviously you don’t live in a culture that encourages it. Did you grow up elsewhere? Or perhaps, like us, your exposure to the positives of BS was through the sports culture?</p>
<p>I think in order for your family to come on board, they need more than just a dad’s (kooky) idea and a bunch of view books. That probably isn’t even enough to get them to do a tour (especially at your distance).</p>
<p>Perhaps sharing your source for this inspiration may be beneficial to the whole situation.</p>
<p>And of course you will need to have clear benefit vs. cost advantage to go anywhere with this. Is there something that your present school/city doesn’t provide that your children excel in (academic, art, sports, etc) that makes it worth losing those years with the kids? Are yours the type of kids who thrive on a new independent adventure that the beaten path of your home town doesn’t provide?</p>
<p>We don’t know your kids (or your wife for that matter). How old are they and what makes them tick?</p>
<p>No you are not crazy for wanting them to go to boarding school, but only if the reason is right will it work. In order for that reason to be right, it must be a shared understanding of what will make the best development for the children. That shared understaning comes from a shared evaluation of the same information. Your wife (and children) need to come to this experience you have to catch up to your thinking.</p>
<p>We had a somewhat similar situation in my family. My wife is from Kansas and went to public schools before coming east to college. I went to a boarding school, as did my brother.</p>
<p>When our kids were little and we talked about education, my wife’s view was: “I could never send my kids away to boarding school”. In her world view only parents who didn’t really love their kids would send them away at 14. Although I assured her that BS was one of the best things that had happened to me, I never really argued with her. I think my standard response was along the lines of “let’s see when the time comes” (even though I always saw BS as a great option for our kids). </p>
<p>Looked at two BS when my daughter was applying (although one of them was close enough that if she had ended up there she would have been a day student). After touring schools, meeting with the kids and parents of current students my wife began coming around a little bit and was at least willing to concede that BS offered some advantages over a day school- although we both agreed that for our daughter, day school was a better option.</p>
<p>When it came time for my son to apply last year, she was at least willing to contemplate BS as a serious alternative, and agreed that for him it might actually be a good fit. Looked at both day schools and b-schools. The more she saw of b-schools, the easier it became for her to actually contemplate sending our son to one. </p>
<p>Ultimately my son got into a couple of BS and a couple of day and decided he really wanted to do a BS. Although she still has occasional guilt pangs, so far our son has been really happy and it’s been a wonderful experience for him.</p>
<p>I also think that it helped that our son went to a private school where a couple of other kids also went off to BS.</p>
<p>If your wife is like mine, you have to remember that this constitutes a complete upending of her current worldview. You need to take things one step at a time and let her come to this decision on her own. A good first step might to be to start talking about what day school options you have and to get her thinking about what might be lacking in these alternatives. That’s when you can begin to introduce BS as another option.</p>
<p>Eventually what I think tipped the balance for my wife was that her top priority was to do what she thought would be best for our son, even though from her perspective it was very difficult to send him away. The fact that he really wanted to go to BS and it seemed like BS would just be a better fit for him is what won her over</p>
<p>We live in New England, so it’s not uncommon to personally know several people who go to bs. With my older son, I had always known I wanted him to have a better hs experience than I did. I attended a “typical” hs for my state and was a stellar student. I got into the elite college of my choice…then struggled incredibly. So many of my peers, including my roommate had attended bs, and after hearing of their experiences and the range and rigor of courses they had taken, I swore my children would have this opportunity.
Fast forward to the future. I spoke to my son frequently about bs during his elementary and middle school years. It was easy to do “drive-throughs” of campuses because so many are fairly local. As it ended up, my son’s best friend was planning on attending bs (everyone from his family had gone for generations back), so for him that was “normal”. The friend’s mom took my son to visit virtually every higher end prep school in NH, MA, and CT…they were looking early, in 7th grade, because they were moving out of the area. After seeing the campuses, and even being invited to interview informally at one of the schools, he was sold. He loved the idea and now he is a senior in college and plans on sending his children to bs (hopefully his alma mater) as well. My younger son fell in love with bs just after seeing it so often on visits to his brother.
So, speak of it often. Visit if you can. Get to know someone who attends/has attended.
I don’t think around here it is viewed as a punishment to send a child to bs; I think it is seen as something special (which it is). Many parents have said to me “Oh, I could never send my child away, though.” This is selfish; I feel (as do my sons) that we have given them a priceless, selfless gift.</p>
<p>Goaliedad asks “I’m curious as to how you came to the “boarding school would be better for my child” thinking. Obviously you don’t live in a culture that encourages it. Did you grow up elsewhere? Or perhaps, like us, your exposure to the positives of BS was through the sports culture?”</p>
<p>Those are good questions. It’s a long story. Oh so many years ago I was a whiz kid in public high school in small town, USA. I was valedictorian, blew the socks of the SAT, and was able to attend and graduate from Cornell University. I wasn’t nearly the success in college that I was in high school, mostly because I had no self-discipline. I had been coasting in high school. In college, I came close to flunking out. But while I was in college I met a few people who had attended prep schools, and they made an impression on me. Now flash forward to several years later, and my half sister (12 years younger than me, and raised in a different household) was running into some trouble (mostly she was easily influenced by the wrong kids) and my dad and his wife were forced to enroll her in a girl’s boarding school out of town, away from the bad influences. As you can see, this sort of falls into the stereotype of boarding school for “bad kids”. But that experience helped them become aware of what was out there, and her younger brother, my half-brother (14 years younger than me – not the same brother I mention in the posting above) wasn’t exactly thriving in high school. But he’s a brilliant guy, and they thought he could do better. He thought he could do better as well, and he <em>asked</em> if he could go away to boarding school. They applied at the last minute, way beyond application deadlines, and he was able to attend a 2nd tier boarding prep school for the 11th and 12th grades. That worked out well for him, and he eventually got into Swarthmore. Of course, these experiences made an impression on me, but they’re not shared by my wife, who really thinks that side of my family is pretty weird. She comes from a working-class family, and she was entirely educated in the public schools and state university.</p>
<p>One thing which occurred to me that might build a positive impression of boarding school for the kids would be books and movies for young kids that depict BS in a positive light. Any ideas?</p>
<p>Soccer_Dad…you’re getting loads of great information here! Much of what’s been said above resonates with me, too.</p>
<p>Culturally, here in the South, BS is seen as a defect. It is generally not admired by other parents. The choice of verb “sending” versus “going” is something I pay close attention to.</p>
<p>Exposure is the key. My parents sent me as a day student to a school that had boarders. It’s a very well-regarded day school, but when I told my mom that we were looking at BS for my son she was appalled. She tagged along for several visits to schools in the NY/NJ/CT area and it was about a half hour into the first tour (Lawrenceville) that she was sold. My wife has always been a huge proponent of public school education. One reason BS was in play for our son was because the area’s most prominent private school just wasn’t cutting it, so she had good reason to question all the boasting that private schools engage in. I had no comeback for her. My son and I did all the visits and tours last year, so she was still basically a viewbook-only consumer. The day before a revisit she said to me, “And tell me again why we’re doing this and taking time off from work and traveling when he’s going to the public school?” At that point I just thought we’d go because we had RSVP’ed. For most of the activities I was with my 8 year-old daughter, entertaining her either on campus or watching her by the hotel pool. By the end of the revisit day I was prepared to apologize to my wife and explain that, all in all, the process itself was a great experience. But when she caught up with me, she was like the PR firm for this particular boarding school. She conceded that she had had no idea how terrific it was and how it was everything she had wanted for our son’s education.</p>
<p>In the end, it’s like house shopping. You can mentally set limits and look at the listings and set firm limits on what you need and want…but once you start looking at listings above your original price range you’re doomed. Nobody has to pitch anything. No magic words are spoken. You just see what’s available and things that you once thought were unnecessary luxury items suddenly become part of your basic needs.</p>
<p>My 8 year-old who never really aspired to attend the private school her big brother attended has also been exposed to BS life. She’s been to the football games and at various events she keeps bumping into one of the admissions officers…and we joke that she’s doing some early networking. My wife is every bit as thrilled with the school as she was last April. And it had nothing, really, to do with it being marketed to her by me. Let the experience speak for itself. Don’t try to engineer it. Visit the schools…even just as part of a family road trip or afternoon drive.</p>
<p>The concern I’d have is that you wouldn’t be critical enough. When you visit schools, don’t be a cheerleader. Be a savvy consumer. If something seems wrong or out of place, it’s better for you to be the one to point it out. Help your child learn to be discriminating when it comes to looking at schools. Let your wife see that you’re approaching this realistically, not all googly-eyed and irrational. The schools will sell themselves to people who value all the opportunities that they have to offer.</p>
<p>One thing which occurred to me that might build a positive impression of boarding school for the kids would be books and movies for young kids that depict BS in a positive light. Any ideas?</p>
<p>Well, there are a ton. I think for my kids, the Harry Potter series helped make BS a part of their vocubulary.</p>
<p>Probably the classic book about BS is “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles (who I believe went to Exeter).</p>
<p>“Death Be Not Proud” is a book about a Deerfield student with terminal cancer. Later made into a TV movie that I believe was filmed on the Deerfield campus.</p>
<p>“A World of Our Own” is a book about Choate circa 1969-70 written by an alumni. Probably not a good one for her to read though because that was a time of heavy drug use at Choate.</p>
<p>“The Rector of Justin” by Louis Auchincloss is an older book whose main character is supposedly based on headmaster of Groton.</p>
<p>“The World According to Garp” by John Irving has large sections devoted to prep school Garp attended as a day student. This part of book is partially based on Irving’s own life, as he was a day student at I believe Exeter.</p>
<p>Ned Hallowell - one of the foremost experts on ADD has written at least one non-fictoin book about the benefits of private school. I think he went to Andover or Exeter.</p>
<p>“Goodbye Mr. Chips” is also set in an English BS, although this book is pretty dated.</p>
<p>“Catcher in the Rye” - not really set in BS, but Holden goes to one.</p>
<p>Also a ton of movies about BS. I’ll let someone else do this, although the most positive one I can think of is a recent movie with Kevin Kline whose title escapes me. And one to avoid “If” a 60 cult classic that ends with an uprising by the borders in which they go on a rampage and kill the faculty.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most significant thing to be gotten out of this is how many talented authors BS has produced and the profound effect their BS seemed to have on many of them.</p>
<p>The Kevin Kline movie prpdd is thinking of is The Emperor’s Club. It’s a great movie. My son got very interested in prep schools after seeing it.</p>
<p>Ok, I can see that you have negative hurdles to overcome with the “wierd” side of the family reference from your wife. So not only is BS an unknown thing, but one with wierd people associated with it.</p>
<p>You also mentioned that you have a few years to go - a definite advantage considering what you may have to overcome.</p>
<p>One thought as to what to do with those years to change the impression is perhaps to try one of the summer camps available at some of these schools. While it isn’t the same thing as BS, it can accomplish a couple things necessary for your objectives: First, it can serve to desensitize you wife and kids to the boarding school atmosphere making it seem more safe and comfortable. Second, it can get your wife and children used to being apart for weeks (these summer camps are typically extended periods of time) at a time. And third, after a successful camp, you can often talk to some of the full time admissions people about the school that happens to run at the same facility as that great summer camp. If you can get the frog in the pot of water…</p>
<p>Several schools have great camps. I think Jonathan1 has attended Andover’s camp. Closer to home (I believe your are midwestern), Culver Academy (Indiana) has a terrific extended summer program as well. Since they are on a lake, they have sailing and they have an equestrian facility and an airstrip and several planes (if you have a budding pilot). Culver on the boys side is a military academy (girls side being traditional boarding school). It does a great job of the things you are looking for from a boarding school - discipline and leadership. There is a thread about Culver active in the past couple of weeks with a couple of members who have some affiliation with the school, if you want direct references.</p>