Pros and cons of sending your kid to Boarding Schools
What is a boarding school?
A kind of formal & educational institution where individuals are supposed to live within the schooling premises or hostel in a restrained area. It is much different than a day school. In normal schools, children are tutored for a fixed period, and they return home soon after it. Boarding schools admit children as early as seven years old while the age limit drops to 18.
Boarding schools in Delhi are often a favorable choice for nuclear families. Parents in such households deem it a laborious task to raise children. So they end up sending their kids to hostels as they find themselves deeply indulged in their daily chores.
However, daunting decisions like these shouldn’t be taken abruptly. One should properly evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of admitting their children to hostels. In this article, we will briefly discuss the pros and cons of sending your kid to boarding schools.
Superior Education
Boarding schools are renowned for their high academic standards. For most families, this is the main reason they send their child to a prep school. Most boarding schools grant you higher learning than recognized boards. That is to make you’re your child suits the optimum requirements for top positions in the industry. The curriculum is vast, and it helps students get into eminent universities and ivy league colleges.
Extracurricular activities
Every youngster has a different hobby that ignites a spark in them. The majority of the day schools don’t pay attention to sports or extracurricular activities. That leads the youth to join a bunch of other sports centers or art academies. Boarding schools have a whole separate department for physical and creative activity. They acknowledge games like swimming, archery, horse riding, cricket, football, basketball, chess, baseball, and rugby. They even have special instructors to guide the students through their sporting journeys. Cooking, music, and dance classes are also hosted by boarding schools which in turn helps children showcase their inner talent.
Deep-rooted friendships
Parents aren’t present to nurture their children in a dormitory. Who do they have?
They have their brothers beside them to take care of things. Kids form friendships with like-minded friends, get in trouble together, and find a resolution.
They have lots of fun and pass through tons of experiences. Children bond with their roommates and build lifelong relationships supporting each other throughout their hostel phase. That is another bright side of a boarding school.
Cultural diversification
Cultural diversity is much more prevalent in a boarding school than in a day school. Mainly because the demographics of a school are scattered over a limited location. The students live nearby and attend school daily. While people travel across states to gain admittance to a reputed boarding school. International boarding schools in Delhi are the melting pot of multiculturalism. One can encounter vibrant ethnicities and learn new languages from the opposing tribe. That helps children gain knowledge about cross cultures and build tolerance for different communities.
Homesickness
Homesickness is the emotional trauma or stresses individual experiences when he’s away from home. This symptom is often observed in children living in hostels. Boarding schools barely permit holidays for their students. Vacations are granted once or maybe twice in a whole year. That leads to the kids feeling groggy, anxious, and insecure. Other awful symptoms include feelings of isolation, lack of appetite, insomnia, and younger children may even feel suicidal.
Exorbitant expenses
Boarding schools are exorbitantly priced. They charge much more than they should. For an average family to send their child to a boarding school it might turn out quite heavy on the pocket. Plus the additional expenses of traveling, trips, and other commodities.
Bullying
Bullying is quite common in daily schools. But it can turn out to be quite a serious issue for children living in boarding institutions. Since children lack the shelter and warmth of their safe place (home) they don’t have a stable connection to fall back on or revert upon. Because children in such institutions spend most of their time on campus it can be a dreadful task to escape the bully. Thus it may cause mental issues and even depression in children.
Lack of exposure
An individual who has depleted his pubertal years engaged in a boarding institution might lack several character development traits. One who has been touch deprived of the opposite gender during one’s development years might turn out quite shy when it comes to bonding. Children end up lacking a sense of emotion and feeling towards the opposite sex. This is a matter of concern and adolescents may require therapy and psychological conditioning to change such behavioral patterns.
Editors opinion
“Unless you have been to boarding school when you are very young, it is impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home” –Roald Dahl
“At boarding school, there wasn’t much time for much of anything except education” –Henry Cavil
Another survey done by International Schools in Delhi shows that feel boarding schools set up severe drawbacks in an individual’s life and character development. I rather prefer the traditional way of raising a child under the masculine guidance of a father and the feminine nurture of a mother. Kids are vulnerable creatures and should be parented exactly how nature has supposed it to be. Boarding schools are artificial and evil and don’t provide any considerable advantage over day schools. There are a plethora of studies on the internet that show “how disastrous single parenting is”. Now imagine the absence of both parents.