Do you want to go abroad when you go into boarding school? This is the Gstaad International School in the mountains of Switzerland.

The School

Everyone has watched films on which parents send their kids to any boarding school in Switzerland.

Le Rosey is the prefect example of this boarding schools on cinema.

Le Rosey was founded in 1880. The site of its campus was chosen by a lover of nature, history and the countryside: Paul Carnal.

Henri Carnal, the son of the founder, takes over. In 1917, Le Rosey boarding high school moves up to Gstaad for the winter for the first time.

In 1947, a third generation of directors assumes control of Le Rosey: Louis Johannot and Helen Schaub. In 1967, Le Rosey, until then exclusively a boys’ school, opens a girls’ campus.

Directors and owners since 1980, Anne and Philippe Gudin de la Sablonnière, are the fourth generation of directors since the founding of the school.

All Rosey students sit official external examinations: the International Baccalaureate (IB) or the French baccalauréat.

All teaching is available in two languages – and this bilingual system incorporates different cultural approaches so as to provide all students in this boarding school with keys to both English-speaking and French mindsets.

According to its website, admission process is following:

Step 1
Send the necessary documentation by mail (registration form, current school recommendation, grades and teachers’ comments from the two most recent academic years).

Step 2
You will be invited to spend a day on campus so that you can familiarize yourself with the school, get a feel for its atmosphere, meet the admissions team, be interviewed and sit an entrance exam so that we can get to know you better. If you are unable to come to Le Rosey, the admissions examination will be sent to your current school and the interview will take place if possible at the home of a former student in your locality.

Step 3
The admissions team will examine your complete dossier in order to decide whether you will be admitted. We strongly recommend that you make your application as early as possible (for example, between November and March to guarantee a timely response to your application. Le Rosey has a limit of no more than 380 places. Every year, a waiting list, which varies according to age, nationality (as we apply a quota system of no more than 10% of one particular nationality or group of nations) and gender is established; as soon as a place becomes available, an offer will be sent to the candidate at the top of the waiting list. Le Rosey accepts 80 to 90 new students per year selected from, on average, between 400 applications.

When consultants Eric Adler and Rajiv Vinnakota founded SEED School of Washington in 1997, it was the first and only urban public boarding school in the country. Much like Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone, Adler and Vinnakota saw the classroom as only one component of a college-preparatory education.

Adler an Vinnakota founded the school on the belief that children in an urban environment could benefit from a public, boarding educational program. With a 1:15 teacher-to-student ratio, students are able to develop relationships with their teachers, and teachers know well the explicit needs of every child.

“The SEED model includes academic, residential, mental health, physical health, social, and enrichment programs,” explains Laura O’Connor, director of communications for the SEED Foundation. The school provides volunteer tutoring, extracurricular programs like robotics and cooking classes, and a scholarly environment where Facebook, MySpace, and television are forbidden.

In order to help kids do better in school, the SEED School takes them away from their home environments for five days a week and gives them a host of supporting services. The results of this educational experiment have been promising so far, and SEED believes their model can be used on a broader scale.

All this school dairy life is reflected in Guggenheim’s  new documentary “Waiting for Superman” that includes the story of a DC fifth-grader named Anthony. This film has pointed attention to this school who was no so well known as other boarding schools in the area.

In this anecdote little children play the scene of going to boarding school; how their mom cried, how dad acted big and how the teachers tried to comfort them, their first day at school… They also tell you about the fun side, like being in your dorm, meeting your fellow students. You probably will recognize some things!

First day at boarding school

Many celebrities, politicians, bussines leaders and sport idols have studied at any boarding school when they were teenagers. There is not only about privacy but about pursuing academic excelence and  getting the best they can. One of the best known boarding school students is U.S  president John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

John F. Kennedy was born May 29, 19 in Brookline, Massachusetts son of ,Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald. At the age of 13 he was sent to Canterbury School, one of the Catholic boarding schools in New Milford, Connecticut and later to The Choate School, Wallingford, Connecticut, for his 9th through 12th grade years.

In 1936 he enrolled at Harvard College where here graduated in 1940. Later in 1943, when he was in the navy, his boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Once back from the war he turned a Democratic Congressman , advancing in 1953 to the Senate the same year he married Jacqueline Bouvier.

In 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy officially declared his intent to run for President of the United States and on  July 13, the Democratic convention nominated him as its candidate for President. In elections he defeated republican candidate, Richard Nixon by a narrow margin and Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President on January 20, 1961 becoming the first Roman Catholic President.

Space program , russian-american crisis, Vietnam war or civil rigths were important issues while John F. Kennedy was U.S president until he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas,  November 22, 1963 becoming in one of world-wide  best known students that have ever attend to a boarding high school.

Everyone has heard about pranks that others suffer at boarding school or even yourself were sometime a victim of this school jokes that kids play year after year. Some of them are light and others are tougher, here you have most common ones.

“Pantsing”
It is one of the names given to the acts of pulling down a person’s pants in public.

Circle Hand Game
Created by a City College of New York’s Fraternity in 1929 it has been recreated in TV Series “Malcom in the Middle”

Wet Willy
The pranker wet his/her finger with saliva and then introduces the finger in to the ear of a distracted or asleep person.

Towel snap
A very common prank in communal showers in boy boarding school . Prankers twist their wet towels and hit the victim with them, usually causing pain.

Kick me
Probably one of the oldest pranks. A note, in which is written “kick me”, is attached to the back of the victim. The note can be reading another sentence as “I’m idiot” or “My girlfriend cheats on me”

Shoe Lacing
The pranker ties victim’s shoe laces together while the victim is distracted. When the victim tries to walk, he or she usually falls down.
As teenagers  and boarding high school students have been opening and keeping their profiles on social media services many of these “old” pranks  has evolved to multimedia jokes and they have come up with many new ways of laughing at his mates but we will tell you about it another post.

As we looked how boarding schools is a recurrent topic for film makers we can’t ignore that many time films are based in books and telling about English literature boarding schools has become a genre with its own conventions.

There are some notable examples that million of people have read:

“Nicholas Nickleby” serial comic novel written by Charles Dickens and first published during 1838 and 1839. Nicholas Nickleby is a young man who must support his mother and his sister after his father’s death.
Some of the best stories happens at a boarding high school.

“Jane Eyre” famous Charlotte Brönte’s novel was published in London in 1847. It is an autobiography and is written in a first-person narrative. Jane talks about her education at Lowood School, in this girl boarding school she meets her friends but also she suffer many privations.

“Goodbye, Mr. Chips” by James Hilton was written in only four days and center the story much on the schoolteacher or a public boarding school than in the students.

J.S. Salinger’s 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye” has been listed as one of the best novels in 20th century and it has been translated into world’s major languages. Its principal character has become an icon for teenage rebellion. This novel has been related to conspiracy theories on the media and it is said that many famous killers were collectors of different editions of the novel.

Boarding school is always a experience in life, most of times a good one, and those who spend some of their youth years there can forget that time and sometimes they get inspired to write so beautiful books.

As boarding schools are always unforgettable for those who spend there some years of their childhood and they are where a lot of funny, creepy or tender stories come from film industry has look in to them to make many movies during the last decades.
From the oldest ones as 1930 “Abschied” (Farewell) to the last year ” St. Trinitian’s 2 : The Legend of Fritton’s Gold”, which is placed in catholic boarding schools,  there are hundreds of films inspired by the brotherhood spirit of boarding schools.
Ones of the best known films set in boarding schools is “Harry Potter” saga which next movie world premiere is scheduled 2011. Altough it may seem that magic and spellings are the main part of the plot in fact  it is nothing but stories around a very special boarding schools in England.

“Madeleine”,  released in 1998, is based in children’s book series and tell the story of the title character and her child years in  girl boarding school. It’s a really tender film although school conditions has nothing to do with current ones.
Another film related to this educational institutions is the famous drama “Dead poets society”. You could remember  this 1989 Disney production  in which Robin Williams starrs as an unconventional and inspiring English teacher.
Last but not least I could not miss “About Bad Education”. Opening film in 2004 Cannes Festival. Almodovar takes a look at his own adolescence in a catholic boarding school in Spain.

Weekly boarding schools are starting to become very popular in India. This is a concept where students stay at the school for 24 hours during the week but go home during the weekends in order to be with their parents. The good thing about the concept is that students receive good education while they can spend quality time with their parents during the weekends.

The parents in India believe that giving their children more space can help them develop and become more independent. But feel the need to spend quality time with their children; this is why this solution seems to work perfectly for them. Furthermore the children seem to be happy. It seems to educate them discipline and flexibility at the same time. They have the advantages of boarding schools while they still can be at home to be with their family and friends and this combination seems to work in India.

Modern times ask for modern measures and so also boarding schools are following the matter. Where it was so easy to evaluate the schools a couple of years ago, nowadays there are 52 National Minimum Standards to be taken into account when judging them. The goal of these standards is to promote welfare of the children in boarding schools.  This can be a good help when searching for a good boarding school and this is the reason why I want to share some of the rules with you.

First of all there shouldn’t be any corporal punishment. Boarding schools cannot prevent children from ringing their parents or sending them a letter. Moreover they cannot deny medical or dental attention to the children, children cannot be fined over two third of their pocket money and there is a minimum distance between the dormitory and the beds that should be taken into account. Furthermore the school should have, and follow, an appropriate policy on responding to complaints from the children and their parents, schools have to provide a good range and choice of activities for the students after teaching time and each border should have one or more staff members to turn to when he or she has a problem.

But these new rules don’t change the fact that the number of children going to an elementary boarding school is lower than ever and according to the director of the Boarding Schools’ Association this has a lot to do with the way parents remember their past in these schools. According to her, boarding schools have to be twice as good as other schools nowadays.

So the schools are trying everything to change the lack of interest, but it seems that the prejudices towards boarding schools won’t be erased this easily.