The phenomenon of child abuse attracts extensive coverage
in the media. Whether the abuse is sexual, physical or emotional,
all serious attempts to prevent the harming of the most vulnerable
members of our society are to be applauded. Why is it, then, that a
practice that 'offends no fewer than 11 articles of the UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child, which Britain signed in 1991,' continues
with barely a 'murmur of concern'?
1
Britain's most overt form of child abuse is mysteriously ignored.
The practice in question is the peculiarly British tradition
of sending young children away to boarding schools at ages when
they are still in the process of establishing their sense of
connection and attachment to their families and environment.
One of the reasons why it attracts barely a murmur of concern
is that a boarding education has conventionally been seen –
primarily by those who send their children away – as a
privilege and an opportunity to be grateful for. To quote
the title of psychotherapist Nick Duffell's book, it is seen
as 'the making of them'.
2
Another reason why boarding school
seems to attract little attention in the public media could
be to do with the association that public schools have with
the upper classes, the privileged few, with 'the establishment'.
Although this association is perhaps weaker now than in the
past, there is a commonly held view that public schools provide
a better start in life, a firmer foundation for a successful
future, and that anyone who has been through the system and
dares to criticise it is a 'whinger' or a 'spoilt rich kid'.
Recently I attended a two-weekend workshop for ex-boarding-school
survivors run specifically for gay men. Led by two London-based
therapists, Marcus Gottlieb and Richard Nickols,
both ex-boarding
school pupils themselves, the group was 10 strong. The experience
as a moving one for all of us; all had painful stories to tell and
difficult experiences to relate.
[see
coming home
].
Primarily the pain was centred on the
abandonment that happened to each of us at the time...
Primarily the pain was centred on the
abandonment that happened to each of us at the time, and the struggle
that we have had since to move on from the survival strategies that
enabled us to cope with boarding school but which left us unprepared for
emotional contact with others afterwards. There was, for many, the added
reality of physical or sexual abuse, which had remained hidden for years.
For all of us there was some experience of a double self-alienation –
initially from our sense of pain and rejection at being sent away to
school, but later also from our own sexuality. What could be more ironic
and confusing than on the one hand a growing realisation that I am gay,
surrounded by other boys to whom I am attracted, but on the other a total
inability to express this for fear of the hostility that it would elicit
from the peers whom I need in order to survive?
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