Residential Schools better known by some as Boarding Schools are certainly a way of life living in an intrinsic creation. They through a powerful synergy pull all students and facilitators within one campus that frames its own character and its own foundation.
After all children imbibe from their immediate environment which is the infrastructure – campus and more importantly the diverse nature of teachers and facilitators who live on the campus.
Most teachers make it their homes. I have seen many such teachers from making residential school as their first job, a livelihood, a way of life, educating their own children from the institution and then retiring from the same campus. Many teachers from the School I graduated from have served there for more than 35 years. I sat in their class, played soccer with them, shared many treats, cried on their shoulders, went on to moderate to difficult excursions and laughed at their jokes. And then…..one day when I decided to go back to my Alma mater to be a teacher myself, I found them to be my helping colleagues. Hats off! to such dedication.
A good boarding school is a home away from home that prepares one to be independent of parents. Here one cares and shares the beauty of this universe with friends. One learns to take care of one’s self physically and mentally. You fall many times and pick yourself up only to be stronger each time.
Boarding Schools build a strong foundation for life and personal friendships that last forever. Providing a boarding school education is one of the greatest gift a parent can give to a child. It is a gift the children begin to cherish after leaving School.
The essential question on how boarding schools develop our children, does appear several times, especially in today’s day and age of us so called the “Helicopter parents” who wish to know even before the child sneezes. A Parent must know that even grass does not grow under the shade of a tree, so we must let the children be, too think independently and to build them up independently. Just the awareness that our support is with them is sufficient for their growth.
Of course many good Day- schools have also emerged in the vicinity that makes us ponder against boarding many a times. Occasionally the boarding schools remind us of the ‘Oliver Twist who asked for more’. That is certainly not the case in this modern era. Good Boarding schools are far better equipped and offer children much more than even what a home environment can. I remember, a student on a pretext of doing some research work once came and asked me, if he could stay back in the boarding house and not go home for summer vacation. On provoking him for the real excuse, I discovered that his hometown did not provide electricity or water for over eight to ten hours a day and on the school campus, thanks to solar powered and fuel generators not a minute of electricity was deprived.
“I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialised training in school appear possible […] The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost.”
― Albert Einstein
By providing in depth all round education, boarding schools have an outstanding tradition of academic excellence. Children who are physically fit, spiritually stable and mentally engaged in a routine and a structure delivered in a diverse curriculum, excel not only in getting the best positions, but are successful in building good relationships and accomplishing the best out of what they encounter. Good hobbies and sports for life, good taste and culture breeds in them, and that is what keeps them moving and ahead of the crowd.