The mental trauma caused by boarding

I’m not missing the point at all. The post quoted, with approval, someone who said that people who send their kids to boarding school are paying for an experience comparable to their forcible removal. That’s what it said. You clearly find that indefensible (correctly) so for reasons best known to yourself you’re trying to pretend it didn’t.

You didn't address my question.

It appears you were using untruthful hyperbole (aka blatant lies) to shut down the posters who were speaking up about their own lived experiences.

So your last sentence is mere projection.

You favour the status quo. We get that. Your opinion doesn't trump others' negative experiences.

The discussion can move on I hope.

It appears you were using untruthful hyperbole (aka blatant lies) to shut down the posters who were speaking up about their own lived experiences.

how so?

Moving which goal posts?

Some of those speaking out in books and documentaries about their lived experiences have specifically likened boarding schools to foster care for the wealthy.

You can find published research that investigates the effects on children living in institutions like boarding schools, care homes, asylum centres and prisons.

Psychologists specialising in childhood development have written papers concluding that neither boarding schools nor children's homes are suitable places to raise emotionally healthy children.

Many ex-pupils have described themselves or others returning from an exeat at the school gates and physically clinging to the car door or their own mother until they were literally "forcibly removed" from their homelife again.

No one is "weaponising" anything in this debate, or saying anything objectively disgusting. I think you need to get past that fact and face the actual issues if you want to contribute anything useful to this thread.

Or you can just call me stupid again, and we'll leave it there.

Click "Show quote history" and all will be revealed.

there are people who have had bad experiences at boarding school. There are those sent too young, those sent who were not fitted for it, those sent to places where abuse was tolerated (and abuse happened and happens at day schools too and no, parents do not necessarily realise it when their children come home at the end of the day). That emphatically does not establish that as a general rule sending your children to boarding school is comparable to their forcible removal by social services for either parent or child and it is absurd and insulting to those who have had that experience to suggest it does.

even more absurd to suggest that a normal boarding school environment is comparable to prison. I’ve been in both, and I can’t tell you how ridiculous and hysterical a statement that us.

Oh dear

you’ve got my posts mixed up with someone else’s, haven’t you. And then launched into me in a bit of mistaken identity and now instead of backing down and answering my question, we get this vague post

cringing for you

I know a wonderful man an amazing father, in his 40’s now, he loved his time at Harrow it gave him a fully rounded education and if possible he would have sent his children there.

His brother on the other hand, absolutely hated it and couldn’t wait to leave but he intends to send his boys there! The logic of this defies me.

We are all different and for some children boarding school will bring out the best in them.

I am not quite sure why you think this addresses the point I made about the absurdity of comparing boarding school to prison. But if we are on the question of how history will judge us, it seems to me at least as likely that it will take a very dim view of the far more widespread practice of placing non verbal infants in daycare, given what we know about the importance of attachment in infancy, and the fact that such children can’t tell us about abuse or unhappiness.

True but you can’t be sure which children until it’s too late

Little substance?

I boarded from the age of 11. I have given my view - and counterpoint - to some of your dogma. I have shared my experience.

If that makes you cringe, then maybe this thread isn’t the discussion you tried to pretend it was in your initial posts
Speaks volumes about you, I’m afraid

It’s ironic @GodessOfThunder that while wanting to have a robust conversation about how boarding schools are awful in large part because of bullying, you are marching around this thread being a bigger bully than anything I ever encountered at school.

Not sure whether it’s insecurities or wanting to stamp other posters/opinions into submission, but your posting history on this thread is coming across as pretty unpleasant tbh

If you’re hoping to be a poster girl
for the soft, loving parenting who children want to be around 24/7, I’m not buying it

I don’t understand boarding school for children under 13ish. Except maybe where it is the best option out of other very difficult options (eg care not possible safely at home etc). I just can’t imagine not seeing my 8-9 year old for weeks on end and not having oversight of their well-being.

I can understand possibly for older children, especially those with specific skills they might want to attend a specific school to develop/nurture.

So you haven’t actually read any of my posts then?

Or you think those links are something new to me?

you’re making yourself like a prize tool with some of these posts as Pp said

Been on the ciders tonight?

But you’re not having a robust discussion. You’re being a bully

The same sort of bully you chastise boarding schools for harbouring

Anyway, taking a quick skim of your posting history, you are just anti private schools
You don’t give a shiny shit about the kids (hence being so fucking rude to posters here who once were those kids), you just have an ideology objection to private schools and are using any angle you can to attack them

It’s just a shame that so many other posters have come here in good faith to share their experiences when you’re not actually interested in any of them, beyond gathering ammunition for your political stance

The mistreatment of children is a serious matter which prompts robust discussion

The mistreatment of children absolutely deserves robust discussion.

However, the problem here is that, for you, "boarding school" = "mistreatment of children". But this is demonstrably not the case, however much you try to argue otherwise.

There can never be any sensible or nuanced discussion with someone who can't see beyond their own firm conviction/prejudice.

I think the thread is over at this point, isn’t it?

Nothing left to say? No-one thinks any differently than when they joined the thread?

I agree with the OP, in theory - but your posting style is really off-putting.

I’ve been more persuaded by others on this thread (definitely not all, especially the ridiculously defensive ones).