When we send our children away to boarding school believing they will get a better education, what are we setting them up for? Can an education away from the parental home be truly supportive in developing us as fully rounded human beings? School is not the only part of our education – our living environment makes a difference too.
So, how was life at boarding school? I can remember the good bits and tend to forget the bad bits, but I do recall that I was terrified of the nun who looked after us, and even more terrified of the Mother Superior. I survived by being a ‘good girl,’ always looking for acknowledgement from the teachers and nuns that I was ‘OK.’
I was born overseas in Baghdad, Iraq, and when I was 6 years old, a few months before my 7th birthday, my parents sent me to a Catholic boarding school run by nuns in the UK. There were three of us, so I was not completely alone as I had my two sisters there, but when my own daughter was seven and we were enjoying lots of hugs together, it made me wonder what had I missed by spending so many of my younger years away from my parents.
Baghdad is 3,000 miles from London and in the 1950s that meant three plane hops, so we only travelled back home for the summer holidays. I only saw my parents for 8 weeks in each year until I was 12, when they returned to England to live. After that I lived at home and attended the same school as a day student until I left at 18.
I don’t think we were ever a particularly close family but there was a great ex-pat social life in Baghdad and my parents would attend loads of parties. During the day we spent most of our time at a club that had lawns, an outdoor restaurant, a climbing frame and three swimming pools. We had some fun times, but my mother was always chatting to her friends and we played with ours. Dad was at work.
Once we were all together in our house in England, we were still distant.
As a family we would eat together but I don’t remember them as particularly momentous occasions — the radio was usually on, and then we kids would wash up together then go outside and play with our neighbourhood friends. There were times when my parents would argue and my mother was always convinced she was right. My father would give up and go outside to smoke his pipe. I used to argue with my middle sister with whom I shared a room, so our life together was not particularly harmonious.
Moreover, my parents were not really huggy people, whereas I love hugs. When I first went to the boarding school I do remember the Italian maids, who were always up for a hug and, as I was one of the youngest and probably cute at that age, I had loads of attention from them. Despite that, and because of the lack of physical affection in my own family, I grew up feeling like an alien, distant from all humanity. I felt unlovable and instead of being open and friendly with everyone, I created a hard shell of mistrust and a spikiness that stopped anyone from feeling my true vulnerability, including me.
The combination of the separation from my parents, boarding school and the Catholic upbringing, left me with a few emotional scars, such as feeling unworthy, constantly guilty that I might be doing something wrong, needing to be good and wanting to do everything right.
At school we were encouraged to compare and compete, with everyone being streamed into class groups according to academic ability. In the senior school, we were also split up into four houses that competed in sports and we’d get house-points for good behaviour, so comparison and competition was encouraged in all aspects of my schooling.
The attitude of competition stayed with me as an adult: in sport playing squash, and with friends, comparing what jobs we were doing and how much we were earning. At work I would measure myself against more experienced colleagues and put myself down for not performing as well as them. Both comparison and competition leave me feeling very tired, so it is something I have recently been learning to observe and let go of.
Thanks to the many presentations of Serge Benhayon and healing sessions with Esoteric Practitioners trained by Universal Medicine, I am also learning to let go of the hard shell of protection that I developed in my body and to let people in. I am getting lots of hugs from fellow students, which is lovely, but I still find myself being distant at times, and I find it hard to express my love in words. If someone expresses their love and appreciation of me, I often find it hard to accept, not really believing it to be true.
I now know that it is important to appreciate who I truly am, to feel how tender I can be, moving gently, being calmer inside, connecting deeply with people, making good eye contact and speaking from my heart instead of my head. These days I don’t need so many acknowledgements from anyone outside of myself. I don’t need to try to be good or right because I can enjoy simply being me.
When families do not freely express their love for one another, it does not provide a great foundation for us in the future. My experience was compounded by being separated from everything I knew and sent to a Catholic boarding school. It gave me a good education, but I have realised that what value is mental intelligence and achievement when it stops us from truly loving ourselves and our fellow human beings, and from living in harmony with each other?
It is 60 years since that first day at boarding school and the scars are only now truly beginning to heal. It is not ‘time’ that has healed me, but deliberate healing through self-care, learning to nourish and nurture myself and to appreciate that I am so much more than my education.
What I bring is more than my brain’s intelligence and what I know; I bring a warmth, love, tenderness, and caring for all humanity that was never taught at school, or even in the Catholic Church.
Schools and religions often tend to pick up on our faults and try to make us ‘better’, so we grow up thinking we are not enough and ‘need to try harder’. Instead of that approach, I am now learning to appreciate the amazing woman I truly am and, as I let go of the hardness, I am appreciating the absolute fragility and delicateness that is my natural and true way of being.
It has been a long journey that has highlighted to me the importance of loving all our children in full right from the start, spending time with them, expressing our love and appreciation to them, and encouraging them to be loving and open without fear so that no matter where they are, they can enjoy being beautiful, tender, expressive beings.
If that loving service can be offered in every family, every school, every boarding school, and in every religion, then perhaps we as a humanity can be secure in the knowledge that our children will be fully ‘educated’.
Published with permission of my family.
By Carmel Reid, Ocean Shores, Australia
Further Reading:
The true foundations of education – our future
Education, Schools & Teaching Our Kids: ‘Quality of Presence’ in the Classroom
The True Purpose of Education – One Size Fits All or Evolution?
751 Comments
“what value is mental intelligence and achievement when it stops us from truly loving ourselves and our fellow human beings, and from living in harmony with each other?” Education has failed if it stops us from being and sharing the love that we are.
It is beautiful you point out the importance of love in our upbringing and everywhere in life really. It prevents us from loathing ourselves and it supports us to know who we are and feel confident in that. It is also great to know this is never too late and any time in our lives we can start this by loving ourselves, through self-care and self-love.
We could learn a thing or two from children if we stopped and appreciated how they are naturally. Instead, we do not see the value of them and see them as having childish ways and at times an inconvenience.
The one thing I noticed was the lack of love when I grew up and doing that in a confined environment like a boarding school may be much worse.
When we are children we can feel intensely that something is not right but many of us think is it us who are wrong. There is of course nothing ‘wrong’ just parents who don’t know any better, who have perhaps not felt love themselves and so it goes on from generation to love-less generation. Thank God for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine who has shown so many of us that the love is still there inside all of us and all we have to do is reconnect and allow it to be felt.
“If someone expresses their love and appreciation of me, I often find it hard to accept, not really believing it to be true.” These situations have really had me rattled recently, not because of the appreciation but from the non accepting that I am worth appreciating. Yet my mind will claim that I am not lovely but that doesn’t make sense to the rest of me.
The boarding school experience might seem extreme but to me it’s just a clear and accurate picture of how our current education system works. We push away children from their natural warmth as if this is a necessary part of growing up – it is not. Thank you Carmel for this beautiful blog.
You make a great point Joseph, just as birds push their young out of the nest, some parents think that’s how we should be with our children to toughen them up for life. Yes they need support and encouragement to stand on their own two feet, but not before they are ready and always with love.
Yes, doing that at age 6, as some do, seems to be in most cases a bad mistake.
We certainly miss a huge gap in education when we make it all about the mental. Your experience highlights how we have a society where it has become about the best knowledge rather than supporting children to have a much more holistic form of education. It also shows up what we can support our kids with – where we can encourage them to share how they feel and not hold back and not hold on.
“Schools and religions often tend to pick up on our faults and try to make us ‘better’, so we grow up thinking we are not enough and ‘need to try harder’.” – It does not feel like a coincidence that both schools and religions have imposed a system on children based on them needing to constantly prove and ‘better’ themselves. Telling people they were born a sinner would certainly start this process off that is so similar to the modern schoil system that makes kids prove their ‘intelligence’ via constant testing without honouring what the child brings to the world naturally.
I like what you have written here, Michael, especially the words, ‘honouring what the child brings to the world naturally.’ yes we need to do that with all our children and for those of us adults who missed out, we need to do it for ourselves so that we can appreciate the natural quality of our being that underpins everything we do.
All children need to be treated with tenderness and there is no reason why this should stop – the more we treat ourselves and each other tenderly, the more loving the world will feel.
You certainly do bring warmth and tenderness, which is lovely to feel, and great that you are now claiming yourself more and more, ‘I am now learning to appreciate the amazing woman I truly am and, as I let go of the hardness, I am appreciating the absolute fragility and delicateness that is my natural and true way of being.’
It reminds you of the warmth, love and care that we all need to be treated with on a daily basis.
When our early experiences of our care becomes perfunctory, a paid job that someone has to do not because they love, cherish and adore you, it lays a foundation that takes time to undo.
The level of care at any age is important, I am currently volunteering in a residential aged care home and it is heart-warming to see the respect with which the staff treat each resident who all have different physical and mental capabilities. Any caring job cannot be done as ‘just a paid job’ because the level of care requires such deep interpersonal connection if it is going to be true care.
I remember first meeting you Carmel, about 15 years ago, and yes I understand why you said this in your blog, ‘I created a hard shell of mistrust and a spikiness that stopped anyone from feeling my true vulnerability, including me’, it is lovely to now know the vulnerable, warm hearted and loving person you truly are.
Hi Lorraine, I’m sure the same can be said for many of us, because we were brought up to believe that vulnerability was a huge weakness and we felt we simply wouldn’t survive by being vulnerable. I was teased in my early days at school but not long after I arrived it stopped so I must have developed that hard shell pretty quickly.
I can so relate to your experience of describing things are intense Otto and it is refreshing to hear another deeper perspective on this – that our relationship with life and its events and circumstances and how we are with everything that occurs is what makes a huge difference.
I grew up in a family that was not very affectionate with each other, there was no hugging or embracing of each other and I always felt jealous when I saw other families who had this closeness. Even today I still find it hard to fully open up and embrace people, I hold my body in a guardedness and protection that I am learning to let go of.
Yes I agree, Suze, it is hard to open up to love when we are not used to it in our base family
‘The combination of the separation from my parents, boarding school and the Catholic upbringing, left me with a few emotional scars..’ I would say Carmel that the 3 together must have been a bit of a whopper to have dealt with! So gorgeous therefore to know where you are at today and how far you have come, with such a very grounded lived wisdom too.
It’s amazing isn’t it that healing can occur on a deep level that dissolves the scars and protection of childhood hurts and leaves the beauty, wisdom and open heartedness of the person for all to see. This has certainly happened in your case, Carmel.
A warm welcome to true intelligence that never separates mankind. In true fact, when we have an “intelligence” that is better than another, we must urgently ask ourselves: how can we call something intelligence when it actually separates human beings from being love with each other and within themselves? As love is love no one will be less than that. So no body has more intelligence than other, and if said that there is: it can only be the bastardisation of what true intelligence is. True intelligence is love. And everyone knows love. Deeply so. Fact.
I think many of us grow up feeling like aliens regardless of how much we see our parents or what school we go to unless we are truly met for who we are. I certainly felt like I came from another planet both at home and at school!
Yes Nicola I felt the same, the way I saw life did not fit in, so I fitted into life.
The alien theme runs trues when we are met with so many ideals and beliefs of how to be in all aspects of our life. The Inquisitive, loving and open child is often left to create levels of protection just to survive.
Sending kids away to boarding school is a great example of people making decisions based on what they think is the best thing, not what is actually the best thing for the child. I know parents fall into many ideals and beliefs about what is best for their kids. Wanting to give their kids the best education and sometimes give them what they missed out on seems to be a strong one. But all the kids I have spoken to who went to boarding school found it traumatic and they lived for the holidays when they could come home again.
Some holidays I didn’t go home because it was too far a distance and our parents sent us to stay with cousins or on a farm in Hampshire. Half terms I stayed at school and that was fun because there were no lessons and not many boarders left either. Yes my parents definitely thought they were doing the best they could for us, in those days you showed love to your kids by providing them with an education. They never really knew what true love was.
In thinking about connection, you would think that a bunch of boarders living in close quarters with each other for most of the school year would develop bonds and intimate connections, but in my experience everyone was wrapped up in their own dramas or engaging on other people’s dramas and at a very shallow level in order to avoid feeling the deeper hurts.
“I now know that it is important to appreciate who I truly am, to feel how tender I can be, moving gently, being calmer inside, connecting deeply with people, making good eye contact and speaking from my heart instead of my head. ” Appreciation through our every fine movement made is not only a step in the right direction but offers us so much more in terms of learning who we are from our essence and seeing that we are always learning and exploring from our honesty to share our hearts with the world and how wonderful it is to connect in this way.
“School is not the only part of our education – our living environment makes a difference too.” Very true Carmel. And quality can make up for lack of quantity – but are/were parents and educators alike aware of this? And then one asks what ‘quality’?
There are many patterns of behaviour we learn as children that follow us into adulthood, particularly our way of relating to others – how much trust we have, how much we are prepared to be open and intimate, and that is reflected in how much people trust us – we all put up barriers and these remain until we are willing to let them drop. That willingness is what helps us to evolve because all our relationships offer such beautiful reflections of our selves, exact mirrors that we can choose to look in or not.
A great point you have shared here Carmel Reid. Our children are a clear indicator of how trust is often associated with being accepted and shared with family members only. How constricting can this be with a child who is innately open and loving and has an enormous level of natural presence that we condition to control at such an early age.
‘I felt unlovable and instead of being open and friendly with everyone, I created a hard shell of mistrust and a spikiness that stopped anyone from feeling my true vulnerability, including me.’ I cannot but wonder how many of the adults in the today’s world have grown up just as you did Carmel lacking the love that provides the solidness to our foundations that we build our lives upon.
I agree Suse and what effect does that have on our ability to be intimate with another? Massive I would say. How can we be intimate with another – and I don’t only mean in a sexual way but really open to other people in conversation, in care, in kindness, when we have a hard shell of mistrust and spikiness?
Even though much of the spikiness has gone, there is a still a residual way of being that, rather than being vulnerable and honouring what I feel, I can still go into judgement of others, projecting out rather than going within. So my work now is to allow myself to feel and to express what I feel in the smallest detail, to override the hesitation and go for it. It makes a huge difference in my relationship, because when we express what we feel it helps others to understand us more clearly.