@Platax
People who loved boarding school, what was it you loved about it? Did you really not miss home and your families? Didn't you think it was a bit of a weird set-up where you were being sent off to live with a load of strangers who had considerable power over you?
I boarded from age nine, mid Eighties through to mid Nineties, and was from an overseas family. No Facetime or Skype, no email, just aerogrammes once a week and a ten minute phonecall during
exeat or half term.
At first I loved the sheer breadth of the opportunities available. It was a rural school close to two national parks so as well as the academic curriculum and the normal team sports there was a huge focus on outdoor pursuits: rock climbing, caving, mountaineering, kayaking were all normal things, available to us several times a week at no additional cost. That's before more normal things which would often still be lacking in many day schools: squash, Fives, debating society, choir, orchestra, Tiddlywinks Club, drama. It meant that we were able to move freely between several 'tribes' based on interests without real cliques forming.
And because everything is under one roof and fee-paying, they tried to make everything work for us: during the summer I used to get first choice for practice time on the organ because I also played the rather time-consuming cricket and couldn't be in both places at once. In the winter, I was happy to take what I was given because I didn't play rugby.
It built up a sense of how to live in a community. Because I couldn't leave it all behind when the bell rang at 3pm I learned to live with people I couldn't stand, as well as with those I liked. By the time I left, it wasn't the classroom or the sports or the outdoor pursuits I loved most, it was being in House, with 55 other kids ranging from 13 to 18 years old.
The older kids were able to take on tremendous amounts of responsibility if they were so inclined and capable; running swimming sessions, instructing in campcraft or survival, or more formal leaderships roles around the school or in the CCF or both. There were times when at 17 or 18 I would be walking around the campus in the dark, often with a teacher and sometimes not, on a Saturday night checking that no-one was smoking behind the bike sheds or in the Music School bogs at the same time as making sure that if anyone overdid it in the 6th Form bar then they got back to their house safely, whilst intervening in a fight between two 15 year olds over something or nothing, before going back to House to comfort a 13 year old who had just received word that his family dog had died. I loved it.
I'm still in touch with many of the kids from my House, including those both much older and much younger and view them as family. The teacher who lived in my House at the Resident Tutor when he was a young man in his twenties I'm also still in touch with. He came to my wedding 20 years after I left the school, and when he got made redundant from his last teaching post and set up his own business I helped him with it.
I wouldn't characterise it as a weird set up being sent off to live with a load of strangers who had considerable power over me. It was a whole, massive, second family that I built in the way I wanted. They did not replace my own family, rather the experience amplified the strong relationship I had with my own family. Of course I missed my family, but I appreciated them a lot more than my friends who didn't board.
Several of my schoolfriends were, indeed, 'sent away' and they knew it. For some the experience again amplified that already dysfunctional relationship with their families; for others boarding provided them with stability and affection for the first time in their lives.
The school instilled in me a sense of values that I hold dear today, and I know that I would probably trust someone who went to my school with my life, even if I hadn't met them.