Boarding schools are mini-prisons
The schools indoctrinate us into being abusers or accepting abuse, later translated into how we lead our lives. GRAPHIC | NATION
What you need to know:
- They’re the place bullying is accepted as a way to “toughen” newcomers by older students and teachers.
- It is the prime ground where young people are taught how to weaponise their seniority against others.
- Learners are silenced by rubbishing their sentiments and denying them audience.
A majority of boarding schools in Kenya are like mini prisons.
They’re the place bullying is accepted as a way to “toughen” newcomers by older students and teachers. At boarding school, girls are castigated when they speak up about discomfort, sickness or unfair treatment while boys are chided for not being tough when they are abused.
SILENCED
It is the prime ground where young people are taught how to weaponise their seniority against others. It is where young people are shown how to misuse power to advance individual gains.
Learners are silenced by rubbishing their sentiments and denying them audience. More often, learners are gaslit into thinking that they are constantly at fault, eventually destroying their self-esteem.
This culture of boarding schools is the reason many of us accept violence as part of life. The schools indoctrinate us into being abusers or accepting abuse, later translated into how we lead our lives.
It’s how we end up with adults who keep their heads down while being treated unfairly or those who only know how to dominate others. The culture of subjecting learners to violence as though seeking education is a punishment of some sort should stop.
CANDID CONVERSATIONS
The Education CS needs to start having candid conversations about the horrid experiences in boarding schools.
We need better teacher-parent relations that enable the wellbeing of learners and allow parents to be part of their children’s lives even while in school.
The view that parents who want to be involved are meddlers should be examined. It is possible to find a balance between care and learning that involves everyone.
The goings-on within boarding schools need not be kept secret. Cases of students being tortured should no longer be an acceptable part of learning. A boarding school ought to be a place learners get both book and life-smart.
It’s supposed to guide young people into knowing how to take care of themselves and others.
SOUND DECISIONS
It should foster collective thinking, strengthen the capacity to make sound decisions, practice kindness, nurture voices and shape the ideals of right and wrong. The fact that this is not happening, despite cases of bullying and torture that we agree exist whenever we discuss boarding schools, is a sign of grave failure.
Boarding schools can’t keep being the place we send our children to be broken then we sit back and say: “It’s what we went through”.
Many people going through something bad doesn’t make it right. We must make the boarding school culture right for our children.
The writer is a policy analyst. [email protected]
