Should I look at boarding school? What is boarding like?
These are common questions we are often asked. For years I have answered, “boarding school is hard, if your daughter or son is not excited by challenge and you are not willing to let them work hard and hit their head on an occasional pipe, do not apply.” I also enthusiastically encourage them to visit a campus, learn more, and become an educated consumer. But I always come back to the idea that it is hard. While not punitive, it is challenging.
This video from President Kennedy’s Rice University speech gets it right.
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” In addition to being old school this gets at the concepts of growth and challenge, failure and success, races won and lost.
NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE EASY – Easy has a great press agent, it even has a street named after it. When I think easy, I think “all hat and no saddle.” Rest is one thing…easy is another. A great school or teacher or coach or friend cannot be easy. Easy is the well traveled road. It makes no difference.
BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE HARD – Hard is the less traveled road. It makes all the difference. Swords are forged, records are broken, habits are built, and character is constructed by effort and ambition. At its best, that is what boarding is like. That is why you should look at boarding!