Everything I needed to know about boarding school I learned on Wikipedia

I was just poking around on Wikipedia and found the article in ‘boarding schools”. Learned a lot! For example:

“The distinct and hierarchical nature of socialization in boarding school culture becomes very obvious in the manner students sit together and form cliques, especially in the refectory, or dining hall. This leads to pervasive form of explicit and implicit bullying, and excessive competition between cliques and between individuals. The rigid gender stratification and role control is displayed in the boys forming cliques on the basis of wealth and social background, and the girls overtly accepting that they would marry only for money, while choosing only rich or affluent males as boyfriends. Students are not able to display much sensitivity and emotional response and are unable to have closer relationships except on a superficial and politically correct level, engaging in social behaviour that would make them seem appropriate and rank high in social hierarchy. This affects their perceptions of gender and social roles later in life.“ (Citations omitted). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school

And that’s just for starters!

I mean, wow. Is that any kid’s boarding school experience in a modern age? It may not be a common choice for families, but a thesis on why all boarding schools are horrible dressed up as neutral analysis is bizarre!

Didn’t the author at least watch a Harry Potter movie? Harry loved boarding school!

Sounds like someone needed to vent. Where’s the LOL button?

My favorite:

“The rigid gender stratification and role control is displayed in the boys forming cliques on the basis of wealth and social background, and the girls overtly accepting that they would marry only for money, while choosing only rich or affluent males as boyfriends.“

Did we learn nothing from Hermione?

Seriously, though, you’d think someone who actually knows something about boarding schools post-1960 would edit the article.

Wikipedia’s USP is that it is a site in which anyone can write/modify/edit. So unsurprisingly, it’s not always the best, or most balanced, source of information. As I often say, just because it’s on the internet does not make it true.

Hmmm…?I think there is an episode of Family Guy that depicts this boarding school (Morning Wood Academy) scenario (described above) where Chris is excluded (“No Chris left behind” is the episode. Sorry, I don’t have the link, but it’s interesting also because Seth McFarlane went to Kent.

This info you posted above sounds out of date…Maybe this article was referring to boarding schools in Europe? If you watch any of the movies from 1970’s-1990’s that depict (often set historically in an earlier decade) the boarding school experience, it may seem like the description above. FWIW, we spent part of the summer with students from UK boarding schools. They shared their personal impressions of our US boarding schools (they had spent a semester here) as being far less rigid academically & socially. FWIW they had “THE BEST time ever” (their words) at boarding school in the US.

I definitely think some of it was about British boarding schools. But the cites are not that old and someone seems to curating it regularly.

I found the whole thing hilarious. Someone is clearly working out their issues through Wikipedia. But why wouldn’t TSAO’s pr arm or someone in the British system edit that article?

I have heard of, but haven’t seen that Family Guy episode. McFarlane has been known to insult Choate a time or two, I think, too.