Leaving home at 8

[Bored Of Education]

A programme on tonight where we follow parents fretting whether they have made the right decision sending their children to boarding school as the children seem so upset.

Mother - I miss them so much. I feel like such a wicked mother.

Father - No, you're not. No , you're not.

Yes. You are. You fucking are. You are as negligent as any parent that you probably tut at when you read about their cases in the Daily Mail. Cunts

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Leaving home at 8

I console myself with the fact that these utterly, utterly, selfish "parents" (and yes, let's not fuck about, any "parent" who sends their 8-year old off to fucking boarding school basically should never have been allowed to have kids in the first place, preferably through state-enforced sterilisation) are all going to be stabbed to death by their offspring when they return, dysfunctional, when they return from these institutions in ten years' time, having turned into bastard versions of Paris Hilton.

[Bored Of Education]

Leaving home at 8

Wow, Rogin, since doing my post, I have been to the pub and come back and I am still looking at your post with the Gary Lineker "Have a word" mime to the rest of OTF.

Have you, erm, drunk much coffee today?

[Reed John]

Leaving home at 8

What's the point of having kids if you're going to ship them off like that? I'm not even really comfortable with the idea of shipping kids off at age 14.

I'm not even sure how I feel about shipping them off at 18. I would have done better academically in college if I'd just stayed home. Wouldn't have learned as much about "the ways of the world" and my parents certainly wanted me to leave and figure out life on my own, but I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better if I'd finished all of school first. Maybe not.

The exception to all of this is, of course, if your kid would definitely be better off in some kind of er, um, "institution" or "facility." I'm told there are some kids who are so severely autistic that life for them in a normal home is just a living hell for everyone involved.

The other exception, of course, would be if your child is actually a wizard.

[Incandenza]

Leaving home at 8

Were the kids in the program sent off because of any discipline or behavioral reasons, or was it more a "life's tough, might as well start learning now" sort of thing?

[Reed John]

Leaving home at 8

Judging from this review, I think it's the latter.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-nights-televisionbrleaving-home-at-8-channel-4-brdancing-on-wheels-bbc3-1896921.html

[Incandenza]

Leaving home at 8

Ugh.

I mean, I understand that attitudes towards children and parenting philosophies have a history, that they've changed over time, and what we (or, at least, me) in the West think now is different from what parents in other parts of the world think now. But this just seems worse than the people in the early part of the 20th C. that told parents not to indulge crying babies by picking them up and soothing them, that showing too much affection towards kids was damaging, etc. This just seems bordering on cruelty.

[Bored Of Education]

Leaving home at 8

It's not even bordering on. Actually I like that pun so much I am going to change the thread title.

My parents used to threaten us with boarding school which is hilarious.Even then , we must have realised that we couldn't afford it

[Toby Gymshorts]

Leaving home at 8

My parents used to threaten my sister and I with being packed off to the Sunshine Home.

Great days.

[Reed John]

Leaving home at 8

Here, the usual threat is "we're going to sell you off to the Gypsies." A slightly more credible threat would be Military School, which is boarding school but worse.

[WOM]

Leaving home at 8

I can't imagine not having mine around 24/7. I can't even fathom the feelings of abandonment the girls must feel being shipped off like that at such an early age.

As for the Gypsies thing, my wife says that to our kids all the time. I, on the other hand, always promise "a severe beating...sorry, can't be helped" for anything from an unflushed toilet to spilled milk. They've sorted out by now that it's not imminent.

[George]

Leaving home at 8

My Nan was a firm believer in making my mother and her siblings play with Gypsy children as it strengthened there immune system.

That is all.

[Bored Of Education]

Leaving home at 8

I spent the first year of my life living in a caravan so you lot can fuck off

[Tubby Isaacs]

Leaving home at 8

I don't agree with boarding schools at 13, let alone 8 (except perhaps in ultra rural areas- France has state boarding schools, maybe we do as well). But, as for being cruel, within that class it probably isn't felt to be cruel. Certainly most of the kids that boarded at my school were happy enough with it. That's only anecdotal evidence, of course, but perhaps it can be excused given the amateur psychology and quotes from "If..."/Tom Brown's School Days usually produced as evidence against boarding.

Having said that, it is a totally incomprehensible choice to make- as well as being a sign that some people have too much money.

Just because the kids by and large turn out if not OK, then not that different to others who have that sort of privilege, doesn't mean the practice is OK.

[Reed John]

Leaving home at 8

I spent the first year of my life living in a caravan so you lot can fuck off

Fair enough. I think it's just an unfortunate phrase, because most people in the US don't know that talking about Gypsies like that is racist. I think most people here believe Gypsies are fictitious, like elves or hobbits.

[Incandenza]

Leaving home at 8

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

I spent the first year of my life living in a caravan so you lot can fuck off

Fair enough. I think it's just an unfortunate phrase, because most people in the US don't know that talking about Gypsies like that is racist. I think most people here believe Gypsies are fictitious, like elves or hobbits.

Yes, exactly. It wasn't until I came onto OTF that I learned that there were actual Gypsies around still. And my grandma would always jokingly threaten to sell us to the Gypsies if we didn't behave. The way I understood it as a kid, the Gypsies were mythical scary people. I know this sounds terribly ignorant, especially as there are Roma people in the US, but there really isn't any awareness of them here.

[evilC]

Leaving home at 8

These people just want to turn their kids into the kind of soulless, heartless, sadistic bastards who will do well in big business. ...Or, at least, what they perceive as the kind of soulless, heartless, blah blah blah...

Given that certain parents have been doing this for some time now, the errr... 'altered state of social interaction/awareness' this gives a youth can't be described as not already present in society or having not already influenced society to some extent.

I'd like to see some kind of programme or research on the grown-up boarding schooled kids and how they value life (i.e. animal/human life), community, culture, aesthetics, etc.

Put simply, these parents wanted little machines, not kids. And machines that would reinforce their life-choices and the socio-economic mechanisms which put them in their positions of relative influence/wealth/comfort.

[colchestersid]

Leaving home at 8

I went to boarding school when I was eight: it was brilliant. Sleeping in freezing dormitaries, midnight feasts, the school had peacocks in the gardens and its own river for fishing. We had a lot of freedom (certainly more than I had at home, and this was the 1970s) and everyone got along really well. Happiest five years of my life.

Then I went to the senior school and it was all pretty shit.

[adams house cat]

Leaving home at 8

I read 'Jennings' books as a kid and thought boarding school seemed great. Then, later, I met some kids who actually attended boarding schools. They changed my mind.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Leaving home at 8

Bored of Education wrote:

I spent the first year of my life living in a caravan so you lot can fuck off

Wow, you must have really pissed your parents off as a baby.

[Bored Of Education]

Leaving home at 8

I know! Who'da thunk it?

I should make clear that I wasn't an actual Gypsy, we just lived in a caravan next to the power station in Leeds my Dad was building (with some of his mates, I assume).I have noticed that my Mum has started referring to it as a mobile home whereas it was a static.

It may all explain my interest in the Roma though

Fair enough. I think it's just an unfortunate phrase, because most people in the US don't know that talking about Gypsies like that is racist. I think most people here believe Gypsies are fictitious, like elves or hobbits.

That is wholly believable and hilarious

[sw2borshch]

Leaving home at 8

A lad from Wolverhampton I used to live with when I was se5boro said that on a holiday to the US some guy asked him where he was from and flat out refused to believe he was from England as it only exists in fairy stories and that.

Which I thought was the case with boarding schools until I met lots of ex-boarders when I lived in London and they were all really lovely welcoming people, but didn’t seem to have much to do with their parents in adult life either – my perception was everyone spent an awful lot of time in different countries to each other.

[Reed John]

Leaving home at 8

That is wholly believable and hilarious

Are you calling me a liar? eh?

[Incandenza]

Leaving home at 8

No, I think he's calling us idiots.

So a caravan is a mobile home (which are usually somewhat permanent or static--I've never seen anyone moving the homes in our out of a trailer or mobile home park) or an RV? I've never really been clear on the term caravan. What would an American trailer park be called in Europe?

There is a trailer park in Malibu. It's on a hill right near PCH, about a 5 minute walk to the beach. The trailers have kitchens, washing machines; everything you would have in a normal house and I think some of them are close to 1000 sq. ft. The homes are dead cheap compared to everything else in Malibu, like $120k. But the catch: you buy the house, but not the land that it's on; there's a monthly lot rental. There's a lot of stigma towards trailer parks in the US, but if it was just me on my own, I think I could live in one with no problem. Just have to watch out for the tornadoes...

[Reed John]

Leaving home at 8

Yeah, "trailer parks" are really just developments of "manufactured" housing, which means the structure was mostly built in a factory and then moved to that spot. They aren't really trailers in the sense that anyone with a big pick-up could move it. My uncle used to work for a company that made those and we got to visit the factory when I was a kid. Some of them are very nice.

They are of varying size and quality, but as Inca says, there's a stigma attached. Partly because they always get torn up in tornadoes and partially because they're usually the lowest rung of the property ladder and often occupied with people of the lowest economic means and all of the social problems that go along with that designation. Hence the epithet "trailer trash."

Where I grew up, there were a few trailer parks and the people who lived there were not well off. A lot of "the working poor." And as Inca suggests, they don't own the land so they are often displaced when the owner sells the whole place to a developer to put in a Wal-Mart or whatever. That sucks.

On the other hand, in rural areas, a trailer is sort of equivalent of the small apartment that most of us live in at some point. A young couples/families "just starting off," as they say, will live there because there aren't any apartment buildings and they don't have enough money or need for the space of a "real house."

But I thought a "caravan" in the British usage was the same as what we would call a Winnebago or an RV. Something that really is mobile. In that episode of The Inbetweeners where they have the crap time at the Caravan Park, it seems that it's the same as what we would call an RV campground.