No wonder Charles was so unhappy at school

Wasn't this info all out there in June?

I think I read something about it when the inquiry details were released.

www.childabuseinquiry.scot/news/scottish-child-abuse-inquiry-publishes-twelfth-case-study-findings

Many state schools could be harsh places as well, although unlike a boarding school, pupils could go home at the end of the day and prefects, if the schools used them, had very limited powers. There were prefects in my first secondary school whose main duties were to watch the dinner queues and report any misbehaviour to the heads of house. Unlike many public schools, they had no power to discipline pupils and it was reallt like a reward for hard work and toeing the line to get a prefect's badge in the fifth form.
Speaking of discipline, this school ( I transferred to another in the third form) still had some teachers who would cane or slipper for the least thing, and one hateful character had what was called a bat, a round wooden bat that he had made for hitting pupils who misbehaved. I can remember getting the slipper, which was like a big gym shoe, for saying a music teacher was playing like Les Dawson.

The old saying “ The British Empire was won on the playing fields of Eton” is only part of the story. It was the whole supremacist ideology of the upper classes. It persisted well into the 1960s and beyond, public schools were tough places, obedience to the system was thrashed into you. The regime in state schools was not that much different individuality was not encouraged it was all about the “team”.

Anniebach

You have chosen to name 2 family members from different generations and 2 people who were not royal children

And your point is???

In the 60's FIL was posted to Washington to work so OH finished off his primary education in the US and then went to the boarding school in the UK that his brother was at. He loved it although not at all sporty but his brother disliked it, they both continued at boarding school when the family returned to the UK. The food and accommodation was adequate but the education was good. His sister didn't want to go to boarding school so she went to Sidwell Friend's School where Obama, Clinton etc sent their children so she had an American education but did her "A" levels by correspondence course. SIL and BIL both sent their sons to boarding school and their daughters to a girl's day school in London, both of SIL's GC go to a school which they initially went to as day girls but now have chosen to board. The amount of money spent on these educations is frankly eye watering circa £50K+ pa for each child. Anyone who thinks that these children aren't getting an excellent education with amazing ex curricula activities clearly has little experience of modern boarding schools and what they now offer to the children of parents who can afford them. These children have a very privileged education in so many different ways.
Pedophiles will always seek out work that puts them into positions of power and authority over children so you will find them in schools (boarding or not, fee paying or state) scout and cubs, sports activities etc etc OH had one teacher who suddenly left in the middle of term!
I've got very mixed views about paying for education, I was a scholarship girl at a girls day school and chose to send my own daughters to the same school as I knew it was good, so I'd be a bit of a hypocrite to want them banned. Unfortunately, because I've worked in education I know not every child has access to a decent state school especially if their child has some additional needs, but that's the subject for a different thread!

I can’t see the point in having kids, if the parents are going to pack them off to boarding school- sorry I just don’t get it

Joseann

Yes, it happened. Yes, it was terrible.
I'd be very very surprised if it happens now.

It still goes on

DH was a boarding housemaster in the late 60s/early 70s when life was fairly primitive and definitely not comfortable. Our children were very young but I determined that there was absolutely no chance of sending them away to school as it was impossible to know what was going on all the time, and the quiet and sensitive boys had a much harder time of it. I enjoyed the boys and their misdeeds but then I wasn’t responsible for them!

True.
But they’re getting paid for it.
And they’re not emotionally involved …. 😁
Other people’s children are easier to manage in that respect I bet.

I guess they can't call prep "homework" because the kids aren't going home to do it!

We had one child who did his homework as soon as he came in the door, another one who did it at the last minute, and one who just didn't do it. All different types, which must be a nightmare multiplied by dozens at boarding school.

* teenage, not tonnage!

Must be nice as a parent to swerve some of the tonnage angst rampant hormones, slamming of bedroom doors and WW3 between siblings … “Will SHE be much longer in the bathroom/on the phone (when there was one telephone, no mobiles, in the hall) etc! Oh and the bliss it must be regarding school teenage homework - imagine it being supervised by a teacher (I think it’s called prep) instead of the constant hectoring at home!

I wouldn’t want to go back to all that for a gold clock!

But then again … a little eight year old leaving mummy and daddy? Such a small child to be ‘sent away for their own good’. I couldn’t do it, even if we’d have had money.

I don't agree with sending children to boarding school, but to call these schools "vicious", "ghastly", "awful" is a bit of an exaggeration. Unless of course people are talking about how they were many years ago.
Today's world is a very different place.

I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to spend as much time as possible with their children. Childhood is so fleeting. I treasured every moment I spent with mine. Although I do understand that there are circumstances which necessitate a child going to boarding school. I knew someone years ago who spoke very posh. His father had died and for some reason the eldest child in his family qualified for a place at a very good school. But it totally estranged him from his siblings as his life was so different to theirs. I saw some young children on a train once that were on their way to prep school and I wanted to gather them all up and take them home with me.

dalrymple23

The late Mr D decided that I was a bloody awful mother, so it would be better if the children boarded. They loved it. Prep school in Northumberland, then Oundle and St Felix, then The Leys. Mr D went to The Dragon, then Rugby. Loved it too. The current OH went to Stowe. Had a fabulous time.

I think that knocking boarding school smacks of the politics of envy. Maybe wrong, but ........................................

Sorry I don't get this - envy of what?

I could have written this myself!

They were different times and our opinions of child care have changed enormously over the years. Of course abuse was always wrong, but sending children to boarding school at 7 was considered normal for some families and the right thing to do. I worked in a small boarding school for a while in my teens and the children were very well treated - although perhaps the diet would now be considered a bit boring - and most of them had a great time, although a few found it harder to settle. Shared baths - girls nights and boys nights would also be considered inappropriate now, but not back in the 60’s.

I was an only child and always thought it would be fun to go to boarding school. Mostly on information from Elinor Brent Dyer I suspect.
There were times when I would gladly have sent my children to boarding school.

dalrymple23

The late Mr D decided that I was a bloody awful mother, so it would be better if the children boarded. They loved it. Prep school in Northumberland, then Oundle and St Felix, then The Leys. Mr D went to The Dragon, then Rugby. Loved it too. The current OH went to Stowe. Had a fabulous time.

I think that knocking boarding school smacks of the politics of envy. Maybe wrong, but ........................................

I don’t see anyone ‘knocking boarding school’. People are rightly referring to the awful emotional physical and sexual abuse many men experienced at sought after boarding schools. I have close friends who survived these horrors but not entirely unscathed.
As for the politics of envy - that seems real nonsense. What is there to envy?

I went to boarding school at 12. The youngest pupil by 7 years was a child of 5 Her parents were much older than the average who obviously couldn’t cope/didn’t want to give up their London lifestyle. I often wondered what happened to her in later years, her formative being basically left in the clutches of a load of weird nuns with some very strange ideas. Perhaps she is on Gransnet 🤔. Who knows. There was so far as I know no physical abuse, but psychological - yes. That poor child needed to be mothered, & cherished, not abandoned for weeks on end.

One of my nephews went to Ampleforth. My brother and family lived in Hull, a long way from me, so I hadn’t heard anything. Even if there were rumours, I don’t think they would have mentioned it to me.

Ampleforth was no better. The head (who I didn’t know) brought in to rescue it after an abuse scandal left after 18 months and a member of staff (who I did know)
took himself and his family away from there because he said it was unhealthy.

My late husband was sent from a broad to a British preparatory boarding school when he was about 7.. then on to a top British boarding School after that. He was lucky, in that, he was in the school rugby team.. but he later talked about the sexual abuse he witnessed and the physical abuse by prefects.. I think he was quite scarred but he seemed to think it was all par for the course..

Non sequitur after non sequitur as has been said upthread.
The abuses we have recoiled from happened years if not decades after Charles was at Gordonstoun.
There were totally different reasons why as a school it was not a good fit for him. But don't believe everything you see on The Crown.
DH was at Gordonstoun at the same time as Charles although in a different house and while it was not the "right" school for him either it nevertheless had many strengths and I can believe that a different type of child could have been very happy there (as I believe Zara Tindall was.)

The old style public schools where beatings, fagging and rugger were part of life have long gone. I know someone who attended a local one as a day boy in the early and mid eighties and he thought it would be like Tom Brown's Schooldays, but the school was actually quite liberal and corporal punishment and fagging had been stopped in the early seventies. However, until the seventies, many boarding schools could be very brutal places where masters and prefects ruled by fear, school games were treated like a religion and bullying was rife.