So funny. 100% choate was jail to ivanka because she couldn’t drink and party like she could at home. (Wait so the BS actually prevented teenage drinking???)
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I am not conflating anything with historic abuse, the examples I posted the links to are recent ones.
And again, if your kid is in BS and wants to be there and is happy fine. But if you are a parent who sent or coerced the child to go, knowing they didn’t want to or that they weren’t happy there, then I would like to know why you would do such a thing? Unless the child suggested it themselves and was demanding to go it is abhorrent that any loving parent would send them. And my question is why would you do that? How could you justify that to yourself?
I go to a boarding school with 800 students. There are very few, if any, such students. It takes so much effort on a student’s part to get into such a school that they weed out those types pretty quickly. Additionally, we have at least a few students who leave each year—so yes, boarding school isn’t for everyone—but why criticize parents of people who it does work for?
It seems like you’re assuming most boarding school students end up here because their parents force them. I can assure you, as a junior in my third year at my school, that this is not, at all, the case.
Tell your son that he’s not alone 
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Did you go when you were 14?
I was 16, but most of my friends went at 14. Why do you ask?
Ivanka Trump is not statistically representative of the student body at Choate. Or at any US BS. As an example, I can tell you how many times my father, or any parent, landed in a helicopter in my 4 years - zero. Ivanka can’t say the same.
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I’m curious, OP, do you personally, in real life, know any families who send their children to boarding school? It seems that many of the examples you discuss come from the media—and thus may be deliberately sensationalized based off the most controversial examples.
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I did, FWIW
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This is a little off-topic, but the rumors surrounding Ivanka’s experience at Choate also don’t make her sound like she experienced much of a “prison” here.
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My last contribution to this thread: here’s some statistics from Andover’s latest State of the Academy survey:
For context, Andover has around 1200 students.
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No one on this board endorses coercive pressure to get kids to go to boarding school, so that’s a straw man.
But you are asserting that boarding schools subject students to more bullying, drinking and abuse compared to other high school settings, so how would that exempt the families of “non-coerced” boarding students from damaging their children? As you frame the issues, it can’t.
One could ask why is it legal to send kids to public school…. Different strokes for different folks!
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You’re asking this in the wrong place. I’m sure there are still some parents out there who coerce or force their kids to go to boarding school, but they’re not getting their support or finding their fellows on this board. You’re seeing defensiveness because everyone here finds the idea of doing that repugnant, and it’s offensive to be accused of that.
I had to literally beg my parents to even consider letting me go to boarding school. I did hours upon hours of research to put together a proposal and did chores for neighbors to earn money for the first few application fees before my parents got on board with even applying. And once I made my way across the country to my perfect-fit school I found myself surrounded by other kids who felt the same way I did. In other families parents bring up the idea as one option if local schools aren’t better fits, but that doesn’t equal coercion any more than asking “What do you want for dinner? Italian? Mexican? Or there’s that pizza place that just opened?” is coercing my spouse to eat enchiladas. In the modern boarding school admissions landscape quality prep schools are actively looking to weed out students who don’t really, truly want to be there for themselves. And the importance of emotional learning and of developing strong relationships with both adults and peers in the teen years is strongly emphasized in both formal boarding school curriculums and their pastoral care systems.
Indigenous residential schools are undeniably different. Military and theraputic schools that commonly take troubled or rebelling children are different. Past generations were different. Research from those settings is not useful unless you first examine those significant differences.
Anecdotes are not research studies - they make good magazine fodder because they depict the extreme and the outrageous. And the woman who coined the term boarding-school syndrome was a UK therapist (and Jungian disciple) who saw some common issues in adult patients of prior generations who had gone to boarding school at very young ages. In a plot point almost too on the nose she became focused on this patient population because it reminded her of her emotionally damaged father who had been sent away to a UK boarding school at age 6 in 1916. I have no doubt that her patients’ suffering was real, but when your “research” is based in a population seeking out therapy for social-emotional problems then it’s rather unsurprising that you find a lot of the former boarders you work with just happen to have social-emotional problems.
This board is focused on junior and senior high schools, not the primary grades. Teenagers are in a wholly different stage of cognitive and social development than children. Teenagers have the capacity to fully engage in the school application and decision-making process and need very different things from their relationships with parents, peers, and other adults than young children do. Our sense of agency (or lack there-of), our individual needs, and our interpretation of events determine how experiences affect each individual in addition to many other intrinsic and extrinsic factors. I’m sure this is not news to anyone with enough of a psychology background to be writing a thesis on boarding school syndrome, but I haven’t seen you really acknowledge it in any of your posts.
If you want to better understand boarding schools and families who choose them then I suggest you really listen, read, and believe the many people here with lived experience of them. Get curious why some people look back on them negatively and others positively, and why some former students thrive and others do not. If, on the other hand, you are interested only in supporting those for whom the experience was negative (a valid desire) then go seek them out on whatever discussion forum they’re in. It isn’t this one.
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Exactly. This whole thread reminded me of the episode in season two of “the Crown” when Philip forced Charles to go to Gordonstoun. ‘The Crown’ Recap, Season 2, Episode 9: Paterfamilias | Decider
And really, the issue was sending Charles to that BS. Betty was advocating for Eton, but educational decisions were Philip’s domain.
And Charles sent William and Harry merrily along to BS, albeit Eton, not Gordonstoun.
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Yes, it’s the same problem in the opposite direction. Philip’s character looked back on his own time at Gordonstoun as incredibly beneficial in his life so he was totally sure it would be the same for Charles. He was unable or unwilling to understand that his son was a different person with different needs and in different circumstances, so the best school experience for one was a terrible experience for the other.
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I watched this video. It starts by her saying how awesome boarding school is, and how her siblings thrived there. But it didn’t work for her. Her parents moved her to a local private school as a result. 
Not getting how it supports your opinion.
I am also not clear on how a dozen or so voices saying your premise is mistaken counts as defensiveness. I seriously doubt there is anything anyone can say to shake your belief. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but when folks with first hand experience tell you that it doesn’t mesh with the reality they know, labeling them as defensive is, well, defensive in spades.
Most people don’t choose boarding school for their children. They keep their kids at home because that is what they think is best for them. Give people some credit that those who do have children at boarding school are doing it because they believe it is in their particular child’s best interests. And that they make that personal sacrifice out of fierce parental love. I don’t know why you expect someone to say that they made their child do something because they didn’t love their child. No one makes decisions like that, even if bs ends up being a mistake, it is still a decision made out of love.
One could flip around your position- that for some kids, keeping a child home is selfish and abusive, eg when the environment is unhealthy or the child would knowingly thrive in a boarding school environment and wants to be there. I will go out on a limb and say vastly more kids are damaged by that kind of decision-making than are harmed by going to boarding school. If we are going to be championing children’s well-being, let’s start with that issue.
ETA: I am maybe feeling this more strongly today than normal, as I just dropped my senior off at the shuttle bus back to boarding school after his spring break (for the last time). Man, I would love to keep him home. He is my most favorite person on the planet and my world is so much better when he is around. But it isn’t about me. School is where he wants to be, and the best place for him to thrive. Been that way since we dropped him off at 14.
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Little life hack for reading subscription news, just copy and paste the URL into a website - pdf conversion site like printfriendly 
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Deleted.
Can somebody please explain to me why anybody could believe that parents could “force” their kid to attend a boarding school which requires the kids to work really hard in order to stay at the school? Unless somebody has a billionaire father who will pay the school to keep their kid no matter what they did, they don’t have to work hard to get out. In fact, they don’t have to work at all - they simply stop doing their school work, and voila, they’re out of there.
PS. I attended boarding school, well I attended three of them, but that was in a different country, in a different community. We didn’t have any phones in the dorm, though. If you wanted to call home and it wasn’t an emergency, you walked to the closest public phone and called. Yes, rules for staying on campus grounds were practically nonexistent.
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