So Eton, everything I expected and more

[JoanBias]

My DS is at a private school, so I have experience of private schooling, but my word Eton was like another world.

Not just the school, but the people there.

There was one prep school being shown around, all in tweed jackets, and to a boy the spitting image of Draco Malfoy (well there was one Chinese boy, but otherwise....).

One of the mothers doing the tour was not quite right in some respect, I'm not sure how but something wasn't wired up correctly or something. She was immacuately dressed, 6-inch heels (pretty daft considering the confirmation letter warns about having a long walk), but she was just bizarre. The admissions tutor said 'we have a waiting list of 80 boys and typically 35% of these will make it through', and she asked afterwards 'so 80% of the boys from the waiting list make it through?', and it was then explained again, but you could kind of hear the cogs going round and she clearly didn't get it. She had asked several other similar questions; e.g., it was explained that some Houses are catering and others go to a central cafeteria, so she then asked 'so they all eat in the cafeteria'? She pointed at the Fives Court and asked me 'what do they play here?' I said 'Fives' 'Is it squash?', she said. 'No, Eton Fives.' 'So is it squash?' It seemed as if this woman had had the benefit of the 'Finishing School for the Terminally Dim', because she was otherwise every inch the presentable upper middle-class wife.

Another family had a son who looked the prototypical pre-Etonian, and sure enough Daddy spent the tour braying on about his House when he had been there.

The facilities were extremely impressive, although they didn't bother to show us any of the academic parts, and basically the impression was 'if your son is incredibly pushy and self-motivated, send him here and we will teach him to be entitled'. They said 'every year we reject about a third of the highest performers on the test', essentially because they aren't pushy enough. (The House Mistresses seemed quite nice though.)

Fantastic training for future managing directors and whatever, but not for us.....

Well worth it to sign up for a tour, very illuminating. They take about 100 a day from what I can see, so obligation at all....

rabbit true, I hadn't thought of that! I'm probably more sensitive at the moment re boarding as ds has started this term doing three nights boarding a week having changed schools. I know there are lots of judgey comments from parents at his old school (none to my face).

He is absolutely loving it and doesn't feel rejected at all. I'm the one telling him he can't board for more days at the moment. I don't think boarding school is for all but for the ones, like ds who are good at making friends and confident it can be a fab environment.

"I find even Xenia's carefully reasoned posts randomly let slip some gratuitously offensive remark somewhere towards the middle or end - almost like some kind of tourettic OCD."

And there's usually something deeply stupid as well. It's very odd.

mignonette - A pig might be very offended to be called pink if she was a Tamworth or a Gloucester Old Spot!
And be careful, there are lovely people on MN who will hate you for saying we're pigs...

It was an analogy of sorts ... Of course I do not think that Mners are four legged, have curly tails etc etc.....Pigs are lovely animals BTW.

I cannot help it if some folk display concrete thinking....

bisjo, it's just my view. My family have had a lot of psychiatric patients terribly scared by boarding school and not just those sent away at 6 or 7, older ones too. Even Nigella Lawson in today's papers who is my age writes that her father sent her away having asked her if she wanted to go , she said no, he said -good you are going. That didn't work out and she ended up at a London day school. It is definitely so that many chidlren are psychologically damaged by it but not all. Is that a risk parents want to take when instead they could put themselves second and move near a good day school many of which have better results than most boarding schools?

Is your influence so bad that you want your chidl removed from it from much of the year and to develop a remoteness of connection?

I have not invented that there is a Boarding School Survivor's Association.

I do not say all children cannot board and mine could board if they want to.

bisjo's son is going to boarding school because that is the only way he can persue his chorister ambitions. My son sings at a local parish church and dearly wishes that he could audition for cathedral school even if that means he was boarding. Sadly he is too old. At the age of ten he is in a far better position to make a decision on boarding than a seven year old would be.

Xenia, I think that boarding school is less damaging when children can see clear reasons for it. For example if a child is profoundly deaf they maybe forced to be weekly boarders to get a suitable education. There are not many schools that cater for deaf children with learning difficulties or deaf children who are acadenically gifted or those who want instruction in British Sign language.

It depends on why you go to boarding school. If your parents move around a lot it can be the best option. My friend was psychologically damaged by changing schools every 2 years.

This is so bizarre. We went to look at Eton with DS (who would need a scholarship and bursary to go there - which we made clear; he has a prep school bursary at the moment).

We didn't go on an official tour; we were shown round by a current pupil, the son of a friend. We also met several members of staff and were given a tour of the houses/library/concert halls etc by a dame (housemistress).

Every single person we met there was kind, thoughtful and concerned. The staff and boys whom we observed in passing treated one another with courtesy and respect. The housemistress was exemplary.

I had expected not to like it (I imagined it being much more palatial and snooty), but DH, DS and I all absolutely loved it.

We have been in email contact with the school several times since; they are warm and welcoming, and have answered all our questions quickly and honestly. DS will be applying for a scholarship - it's the only school he wants to go to now he's looked around, so we are hoping that he is lucky enough to get one.

Above all, we are reassured that he will be treated kindly and that the communication between school and home is good (we live a very long way from Windsor, so this is very important).

I don't recognise anything that the OP says. She even appears to have met a different admissions tutor.

As for the parents: there are lovely parents and complete fruitcakes at all schools, OP. Surely you know that?

Also, you have to remember that these were not ACTUAL Eton parents - they were parents of children who were looking round the school. It seems very odd to discount a school because of the other parents looking round - after all, NONE of those parents might end up having pupils at the school at all. Surely the only parents that one might worry about would be the parents of children actually attending the school??

Very best of luck to your ds, VernonSmith.

more worser ??? tut.

"My family have had a lot of psychiatric patients terribly scared by boarding school and not just those sent away at 6 or 7, older ones too.... It is definitely so that many chidlren are psychologically damaged"
Xenia it is time to move boarding has changed sigmnifcantly since Nigella Lawson went and as you have clearly stated that none of yours went to baording school restrain yourself from commeting about something you clearly know nothing about.

Crap proof reading again trying to say move on boarding has changed etc etc.
Oh and need spelling lessons to boarding not baording!

My assessment was the boy was Chinese. He was not, in my opinion, ethnically Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc.

Ahem

There is a difference between boarding because it is "what our family do" -(my very unhappy godson is the victim of this one) and boarding because it is the best option for the child concerned. Note child concerned. And that does not mean it should be the child's choice.

And, although boarding can be a fantastic experience, I have never met a boarder who wasn't a little more detached from his or her family than I like. Some people think this extra independence is a good thing. I personally don't especially for younger ones.

Seeker, I have not changed my tune.mim wondering where in the comment about Eton boys not being all the same implies that I don't think there wings are clipped. A lesson in English methinks...

Oh, and leave me alone. It's embarrassing...

I'm not mim

"I have never met a boarder who wasn't a little more detached from his or her family than I like."
Seeker you haven't met my DS who is quite clearly not "more detached from his family" than you or anyone else for that matter would like and neither are many of his boarding friends in fact most strangers frequently comment on what a close family we are and from observing as a friend but also in a professional capacity other families with children who board I would say the same thing. I work with nearly 1500 children at indepednet boarding schools and also day schools; there of course homesick children in boarding scholols and probably a handful who are detached (although there are usually other reasons for this) but in my expereince most are very much devoted to their faimilies. There also some equally miserable and detached children in day schools (both state and independnent) many who find their parents exceedingly stifling.

I have noticed that detachment and I suppose that is what I have sought to avoid. I have never said no child should board however. I am not hugely against it. I just think you often pay for worse exam results and to damage a child. Massive risk. I suppose you avoid having them under your feet in the teenage years but then they come under the influence more of their peers and that is not always a good thing.

I really don't think that the warmer duvets these days and lack of beatings changes the fundamental issues. Schools like Eton do not even let you come home every weekend and if a parent can visit it is at a distance to watch a match and what child will cry or expose its worst self or shout in an environment in front of its peers? Many children say they are fine because they know that is what their parent wants to hear. They often are not fine. I often speak to boarders. They use terms like I survived. I managed. It toughened me up. I coped. My friends became close as family. Those are terms which to me smack of psychological disturbance.

Anyway if you love a child surely want it around with you to chat in the evenings?

Leave it happygardening, she ain't worf it!!

VernonSmith Our experience of Eton is very much as you describe it, and I too was a bit at Joanbias's description, in one of her posts, of Charles Milne (the Admissions Tutor) as 'scary'.

I too wish your DS the very best of luck.

"Schools like Eton ... if a parent can visit it is at a distance to watch a match"
Xenia as anyone with a child at boarding school would agree you are very ably demonstrating how little you know about boarding even at the likes of Eton.
I know I know Indrid I shouldnt rise to it but it just drives me mad when people who clearly know absolutely nothing about boarding write such crap!

I have never and will never have any contact with Eton, but that aside I would wonder if the OP has either. All seems a little odd.....

But Xenia writes an equal amount of crap about state schools, of which she also has no direct experience. It's funny how Xenia is on the lookout for children scarred by boarding school, even those who don't think they were scarred in any way, but makes no effort to look for signs of babies scarred by their mothers going back out to work straight away and leaving nannies to scrub their bottoms .

(the babies' bottoms, that is, unless the mothers have developed strange fetishes from their own babyhood...).