Nowadays sending children to boarding school (either in other countries or in their own countries) is becoming increasingly popular. Why is it? Is it a positive development ? (18 Apr 13/AC)

Time spins and with every spin there is a change. Education and social norms are no different. Time has added new spices to education system. Boarding schools are now flourishing and it has become common to educate the wards in the residential schools.

There are many reasons for this evolution. First of all parents have now become more busy in their endeavours that it has become difficult for them to take care of their wards. Especially working parents find it convenient to shift the responsibility of upbringing to others. However it is great irony that in most of the cases to escape from their responsibility (I may sound offending by saying this but it is a ground reality), parents admit their wards to residential schools. Secondly, parents use it as tool to mend the ways of their erring children.

Besides, sometimes parents have to take this extreme step owing to lack of facilities at their place. Good educational institutions are not available at all the places and these may be situated at places far from home towns from where it may not be feasible to commute on a regular basis. To avail these facilities children need to be sent to residential schools whether they are in the other town or other nation. Further in the part of the country, I belong to that is  Punjab, it has become a style statement to send the child to boarding schools of metropolitans and other countries.

I do not consider it to be a positive development. I do not find it pretty convincing to send children away from home just because you can’t find time for them. These days almost every second day incidents like- children running from hostel due to constant ragging by seniors, suicide attempt by a child on failing to convince the parents not to re-join hostel, child undergoing depression due to difficulty in coping with the studies in hostel environment, throng the headlines of newspapers. I have observed that child gets spoiled in the absence of the eagle eye of the parents. He does not have the opportunity of sharing his day to day problems with parents but the overburdened teachers acting as mentors. The liberty available at the hostel can deviate child from the primary objective and spoil him. Hence, as far as possible child should not be sent to the residential institutes which can turn-out to be a nightmare for the parents.