The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System

This thought-provoking book reveals the bewildering dilemmas confronting the boarding school child, and discovers a dark secret at the heart of the British psyche. The author, a psychotherapist and former boarder, draws on over a decade of working with ex-boarders to describe the process towards living beyond 'strategic survival', and offers pointers towards a philosophy of education which honours the needs and the intelligence of the natural child. Topics covered include: why do the British still send their children away to boarding school? What are the attitudes underpinning this practice which mystifies foreigners? What does it mean for the child to be sent away and immediately have to survive in an unfamiliar world, without love, family or privacy? Will it be 'the making of him', or a trauma from which the child may never fully recover? 318 pages.