Is there such a thing as ‘Boarding School Syndrome’? No, says Rachel Johnson
A few months back, I gave a speech in Leeds to the Boarding Schools Association, in the course of which I spoke of the time I was sent to an all-boys prep school in another country days after my tenth birthday. ‘I was cold and hungry all the time: rations were so short that I would huddle under my pink candlewick bedspread, sucking on a toothpaste tube to curb hunger pangs,’ I preached to the choir. ‘I once found a live maggot wriggling in my shepherd’s pie, and showed the headmaster, who advised me to eat it.’ Despite all this, I burbled on, ‘I was happier there — shaggy, plump, and entirely the wrong sex — than I’d ever been.’
The headmasters of our finest public schools wiped away tears, my speech was reprinted (thank you Daily Telegraph), the paper even managing to find a peg for my paean to prep school: a report in the British Journal of Psychotherapy by a Jungian analyst called Professor Joy Schaverien on something worrying called ‘Boarding School Syndrome’.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in