<p>I am 75% of the way through this book and not sure I like what I am reading. If I had a daughter she would be headed for an all girls school for sure…</p>
<p>But I have a son - 7th grade - won’t apply for another year - NOT a conformist kid - certainly not a tough jock and not a rich prep - He hasn’t even read the flyleaf and he already thinks that is all that he will find at most bs. </p>
<p>We live in the south and son would be 4th generation at a good, single sex boarding school here (with a pretty tough honor code and no nonsense policy about drugs, etc)- however, we really want him to have the opportunity to get outside of the south and broaden his horizons - </p>
<p>So my questions are -</p>
<p>How closely does this “study”/book track with YOUR experiences of the prep school culture? </p>
<p>Are sex, drugs and alcohol really the dominate forces of a boys life at bs??? </p>
<p>How best to read between the lines of viewbooks and websites to get a feel for what a school’s culture is really like?</p>
<p>That book had zero applicability to our son’s experience at Thacher. Drugs are virtually non-existent there. There may be the occasional tryst, but even then it’s the exception, not the rule.</p>
<p>I’m about halfway through the book and I am also alarmed, mamakiwi.
What is really startling to me are the similarities between this book and the book published last year discussing student culture at Groton. The school in “Perfectly Prep” is given a false name by the author, but her research uncovers lots of issues that I would want to ask about at any school. How honest is a school going to be? In both books, it seems like a lot goes on that is completely unknown to the adults.</p>
<p>It’s a novel for heaven sakes. I read it too, I thought it was stupid. I found it highly unlikely that anything like that would occur, it seemed to me like a wallflower’s fantasy tale. I visited Groton, my daughter applied to Groton, I wouldn’t give the book any credence whatsoever. Read “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles if you want to read a good novel about boarding school.</p>
<p>If you are referring to “Restless Virgins” - yes, it is a novel.
However, “Perfectly Prep” is NON fiction - an anthropological study - very well written - but disturbing nontheless</p>
<p>Based on the discussion here, I picked up the book. I’m only half way through it, but I haven’t really found much that differs from regular teen behavior. No surprise that popularity is big to teens and that the primary source of that popularity is based on looks for girls and sports acumen for guys. No surpise that wealthier kids, in general, have the upper hand when it coes to popularity. Perhaps the second half of the book will contain some relevations, but that’s the gist of what I’ve read. So far, despite the extreme wealth of a segment of her school’s population, my child finds her BS more tolerant and accepting than our upper middle income town. </p>
<p>The book gets into the practices of sexual intimacy, drugs, drinking, etc. among teens but, again, I find the behavior described is probably no different than that found at our local public school.</p>
<p>There are plenty of kids that don’t follow the path described in the book and who don’t value popularity over everything else but who do just fine at boarding school, including socially. I wish the author would have delved deeper into the lives of these kids. My guess is their behavior, being less sensational, would make for less dramatic reading.</p>
<p>mamakiwi - To answer your question posed when you started this thread, based on my own observations, there are definitely pockets of truth in the book when applied to certain subgroups found at the schools. But, this isn’t particular to boarding schools. In my opinion, this is teenagers as I stated in my post above. For these reasons, my husband and I have never wanted our children in the so-called “popular” group in middle school nor is it that important to us that they are in BS, because of what comes along with following the crowd. As long as they are happy, confident and have social connections and outlets and are in an environment where they can grow emotionally and intellectually, we feel they are doing well. There are plenty of kids that don’t fit into the scenarios described in the book but that takes a certain degree of character and independent thought. If your child has some confidence, is grounded and an independent thinker, boarding school can be a wonderful place for them to grow. If not, the parental guidance and supervision that can be found at home, combined with a public or private day school education, may be a better option for a few more years. However, even the best of kids in the best of settings will have stumbles along the way. It’s part of being a teen and growing up.</p>
<p>I did mean Restless Virgins…I’m sorry that I mistakely said that it was about Groton…I just went back and realized that it’s about the 2004-2005 problems at Milton.
It seems to me in both non-fiction accounts of two different schools that a lot goes on that the supervising adults don’t stop, like intense hazing.</p>
<p>My experience is limited to Deerfield, one of the more structured coed schools where we feel very comfortable, but I would encourage Mamakiwi to visit and ask questions of schools and especially of students there.</p>
<p>To keep things straight:
“Perfectly Prep” is non-fiction, published by Oxford U. Press and studies gender extremes, specifically at Bolton. Given the publisher and author, it seems likely to be fairly to very reliable.
“Restless Virgins” is non-fiction, written by Milton graduates, and centered on the 2004-2005 year. That’s the year of the recent sex scandal there. It has gotten less than stellar reviews.
“Prep” by Curtis Sittenfield, is fiction, based at the imaginary Ault School (some think it is intended to be Groton).</p>
<p>Dr. CHASE, the author of this book is my teacher. And her research is based upon the boarding school which I attend, Pomfret Prep. It is completely accurate to what goes on here everyday, and I’m sure other kids going to boarding school would have similar responses.</p>
<p>I look forward to reading this book. “Restless Virgins” was tedious to read, but very concerning at the same time. As the mother of daughters, I do hear again and again of the specific pressures that girls are under to be popular, cute, alluring, etc. My younger D will probably go to a coed boarding school, so the more I learn, the better our expectations will be. My older D goes to an all-girls boarding school, where she is blissfully happy. Although there will be drugs or alcohol at ANY boarding school, not having the daily pressures of interaction with the opposite sex does take a lot of the pressure off of, and distractions out of, the teenage boarding experience. A lot to be said for both choices, of course.</p>
<p>Bumping up this thread to see if anyone else has read “Perfectly Prep”, an anthropological study based on “Bolton” (Pomfret), or cares to comment on the accuracy of the book. Pomfretchick above, like some other students from Pomfret, insist the book is accurate. It talks about, among other things, how gender stereotypes become magnified in the ‘bubble’ of a boarding school. It makes me wonder if this behavior would not occur if the students had been at a single-sex school. See mayhew’s comment above about her older D at an all-girls school. I have a son & between these issues & all the research that has come out about how boys & girls learn differently, I wonder if an all-boys school would have real advantages here.</p>
<p>My spin on this would be that Pomfret is not trying to brush this under the rug, as certainly happens at most other schools. The author is teaching an anthropology course (even 2 courses, perhaps) based on her study AT Pomfret TO Pomfret students. Hence she is showing THEM the sterotypical behaviour she perceives there and how it impacts the culture, and allowing them to reflect with her on how these values are not only present at Pomfret but endemic to boarding school culture (and maybe even a whole socio-economic level of high school culture–wealthy day schools are certainly not excepted!) across the country. I applaud the author, the school, and its students for openly addressing what usually stays in the closet or under the rug at ALL boarding institutions. Our child will be applying.</p>
<p>Yes, Pomfret is on our list, too. I agree that it is quite laudable that the school is embracing the research & encouraging its own students to examine what it means. At this point we are looking at both coed & all-boys schools. Of course, it is really not our decision to make - our son is going to have the majority of the say because, after all, it is he who will have to live with the consequences of the choice. Still, this is all a fascinating subject.</p>