schools are degenerate cesspools of drugs and sexual abuse.”
This canard is fostered by the media’s dictum that the only news is bad news; boarding schools and prep schools in general rarely appear in the news unless something negative happens. News of misbehavior and criminal activity, especially sexual abuse, is widely reported. Despite this, statistics indicate that misbehavior at these schools is neither frequent nor widespread.
“Boarding schools are hopelessly archaic and out of step with today’s world.”
Historically, the leading boarding schools have been and are still at the cutting edge of modern educational techniques; they participated in the creation of Advanced Placement and SAT tests and the conference style of teaching, also known as the Harkness Method. Prep schools in general and boarding schools in particular have been quick to adopt proven pedagogical and technological advances.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOLS
The development of American boarding schools centers on two fundamental questions: how to prepare the next generation of American leadership, and from where should those young leaders come? In tandem with this ongoing concern is a through line of cultural assumptions and expectations that stretches back to the earliest days of American boarding schools and continues on to this day.
Early Days - 1760s – 1840s
In colonial times, the education of the young was a matter exclusively for the highest classes. Tutors were employed to teach both boys and girls to read and write. Formal education, which consisted of Greek, Latin, rhetoric, logic, and mathematics, was given to the boys, or at minimum the eldest boy of a family. Girls’ education combined academics with social skills and the arts.
Only a handful of boarding schools, known as “academies” operated in colonial times. The term “academy” harkens back to ancient Greece and Plato’s original school and has had very different meanings in different eras and cultures. In early America, an academy was understood to mean private tuition boarding secondary schools situated in towns or cities or immediately bordering them; they were not isolated or secluded. Virtually all were single sex, primarily boys’ schools, though schools for girls also arose. Students boarded in private homes; gradually schools began to provide dormitory housing. Maryland’s West Nottingham Academy was founded in 1744; Linden Hall, a school for girls in Pennsylvania, was founded in 1746; the Governor’s Academy in Massachusetts, was founded in 1763, and North Carolina’s Salem Academy, also a girl’s school, began in 1772. All four flourish today. Other academies followed in the Revolutionary and post Revolutionary eras – Phillips Academy (Andover, MA), Phillips Exeter (NH), Deerfield (MA), Fryeburg (ME), Washington (ME), Cheshire (CT), Blair (NJ), Lawrence (MA), Milton (MA), Suffield (CT), Lincoln (ME) and Western Reserve (OH).
The academies promoted – and continue to promote – ideals of academic excellence, civic idealism, and social inclusivity. Andover’s first African American student, Richard T. Greener, class of 1865, was also Harvard College’s first black graduate. The Maidenhead Academy, later reorganized as the Lawrenceville School (NJ), enrolled students from Cuba and the Cherokee Nation as early as the 1830s. Catholic boarding schools in the United States began with the founding of the Georgetown Preparatory School (MD) in 1789. This era also saw the rise of girls’ schools, including the Emma Willard School (NY) in 1814, and Miss Porter’s School (CT) in 1843. Initially, the girls’ schools featured social graces and less rigorous academics, but the advent of women’s colleges turned the girls’ schools’ focus to college preparation. Military boarding schools also began in this period with Carson Long Military Academy (PA) in 1837. Virginia’s Episcopal High School, the state’s first high school, was founded in 1839.
The Classic Era (1850s -1950s)
The classic era of American boarding schools began with the founding of such schools as the Gunnery (CT) in 1850, the Hill School (PA) in1851, and St. Paul’s School (NH) in 1856. The post Civil War era ushered in another phase of industrial expansion and massive wealth accumulation by industrialists. The families of numerous entrepreneurs suddenly became the New Rich, who sought to emulate the lifestyles of the British aristocracy. This led to the founding of several schools modeled after the classic British “public schools” - Eton, Harrow, and Rugby. Many new American boarding schools were up and running by 1899, including many of the famed schools of today – Tabor Academy (MA), Groton School (MA), Westminster School (CT), Saint George’s School (RI), Saint Mark’s School (MA), Thacher School (CA), Choate School (CT), Taft School (CT), Hotchkiss School (CT), Pomfret School (CT), Woodberry Forest School (VA) – sixty two in all. The next decade saw the founding of Berkshire School (MA), Cate School (CA), Kent School (CT), Mercersburg Academy (PA), Middlesex School (MA), and Trinity-Pawling School (NY), along with many others nationwide.
The schools of this era were characterized by single sex enrollment, secluded gated campuses apart from an urban center, a Protestant religious affiliation (usually Episcopalian), elite admissions which focused on upper class white Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), an emphasis on British sports and British terms (e.g., using the term “forms” instead of “grades’), and the promotion of “character building”. Daily chapel meetings and weekly full church services were mandatory.
The great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, an Andover graduate, designed several classic prep school campuses during this era, all defined by their central circles around which the student houses/dorms and academic building were grouped. The circles gave a central focus to the community as a place for meeting, for study and for sport.
The intent of these schools was elitist – to educate the sons of the WASP upper class. They were also exclusionary, in some cases incidentally, in others by design – denying or strictly limiting admission to other groups, including Jews, Catholics, Asians, blacks, and other groups. The schools emphasized rigor and physical and mental toughness, with spare dorms, strict rules, and little free time. Sports were considered mock battle, a prelude to military service, another nod to the ideology of the British schools (Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, purportedly remarked that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”). At the boys’ schools, conflict – in the form of competition for student leadership positions, team rivalries, informal contests, and roughhousing in the dorms – was encouraged. Their cultures insisted on personal sacrifice for and submission to the group: the team, the dorm, the school.
Boarding school academics readied students for college study at a socially acceptable college: girls to the “seven sisters” – Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley; boys to Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth, Williams, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Princeton, Haverford, Middlebury, and others (the Ivy League, founded as an athletic conference in 1954, was not a point of obsession as it is now).
The elite families had long established histories with “their” colleges, and admission of their children was a foregone conclusion. The schools’ prime objective was to shape up the children of the elite to make sure they could handle college academics. Several were “feeder schools” for specific colleges. In 1900, Exeter was Harvard’s leading feeder school and Groton sent 19 to Harvard out of a graduating class of 23 (including Franklin Roosevelt). Between 1906 and 1932, Harvard accepted 405 Grotonians, rejecting a total of 3. Choate, Andover, and Hotchkiss regularly sent their students to Yale. Deerfield supplied Dartmouth, Williams, and Amherst. The Mercersburg class of 1928 sent 54 of its 104 graduating seniors to Princeton, (including actor Jimmy Stewart). In 1934, Hill and Lawrenceville sent more students to Princeton than all US public high schools put together.
The early 1900s saw the founding of more traditional schools as well as “progressive” schools such as Putney (VT) and Buxton (MA), which turned away from the British
