Boarding Schools Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Boarding Schools - Essay Example Sometimes referred to as "intentional communities", the faculty and staff strive to create a secure environment for students that is academically challenging, active, and fun. Boarding schools are also well-known for academic excellence, with small class sizes, diverse curricula, and individual attention from teachers and advisors making the boarding school experience affords students numerous significant advantages as students acquire the abilities that help ensure success in college and in life (TABS, 2004). It was proposed that during the academic year, boarding schools become extended families where teachers and students live and learn together. It is a functional 24-hour community of close-knit environment allowing the faculty to seize every teachable moment, whether in the classroom, on the playing field or court, or in the dormitory (TABS, 2004). In a historical and gender-specific perspective, Rogers (1995) provided a view on how boarding schools of the nineteenth century France imparted knowledge and values that were considered necessary for specific role such as motherhood. Levy (1985) explored the prescriptive literature on education while specific institutions also examined rule-books, conditions of admission, the social clientele and ideology behind educational reforms (Nobecourt, 1981). Rogers (1995) considered the very structured nature of school life and linked it with boarding school rules controlling the student's behaviour on a daily basis. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the setting clearly indicated teachers worked with monitors within the boarding schools to instil a shared sense of value: virtues of obedience, selflessness, and interdependence. Strategic responses of students were also considered illustrating among others how students adapted to an environment of constant surveillance. Rogers (1995) noted that students elaborated a sense of identity within the schoolgirl culture that challenged both the implicit and explicit messages within schools. While the study (Rogers, 1995) was based on a diary of a girl in a boarding school, it provided insights that emphasise the enforcement of institutional regulations constraining the appearance, movement and thoughts of the learner while there is also the importance on the view for dynamic relationship between individuals and social/institutional structures (Foucault, 1975) that are clearly indicated in Kahane's (1988) proposal. The study (Rogers, 1995) found that based on the diary of a French girl, the learner was forced to rely almost entirely on her teachers and school friends for emotional support representing not only academic subjects but home, family and community as well . As earlier established, the French boarding school during the nineteenth century was outwardly austere where warmth lorded it over to discipline as rules and regulations dominate. The boarding schools for both male and female adopted rule-books that prescribed how each moment of the day was spent including