A Sentimental Education

 So early in September Amory, provided with "six suits summer underwear, six suits winter underwear, one sweater or T shirt, one jersey, one overcoat, winter, etc." set out for New England, the land of schools. There were Andover and Exeter with their memories of New England - dead, large, college-like democracies; St. Mark's, Groton, St. Regis' - recruited from Boston and the Knickerbocker families of New York; St. Paul's, with its great rinks; Pomfret and St. George's, prosperous and well dressed; Taft and Hotchkiss, which prepared the wealth of the Middle West for social success at Yale, Pawling, Westminster, Choate, Kent, and a hundred others all milling out their well-set-up, conventional, impressive type, year after year; their mental stimulus the college entrance exams; their vague purpose set forth in a hundred circulars as "To impart a Thorough Mental, Moral, and Physical Training as a Christian Gentleman, to fit the boy for meeting the problems of his day and generation, and to give a solid foundation in the Arts and Sciences."

 - F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

It's funny.  I never liked school before college.  High school was such a drag.  Getting up before dawn, scrambling to finish homework before 7:30 am classes, eating the same kind of sandwich day after day. Ugh.  No thank you.  Plus, ISFPs and baby English Majors HATE being herded, which is what you can expect for four years in high school.  Continual herding and mass (yet minute) migration through a single sprawling concrete building.  Lack of air and sunlight, except when we're favored with the eight-minute-mile in gym class on some snowy day in early February.


When English Majors come into their own, however, something strange happens.  They actually become attracted to the idea of Education Before University.  This is due to the wonderful Bildungsromans they now can enjoy (mainly because a 20-year-old English Major thinks he's safely grown - morally and psychologically - and feels pretty relaxed).


The coming-of-age novel is often set in boarding schools.  In America, in England, in Switzerland; often Catholic or High Church or Atheistic, the boarding school novel paints a fascinating portrait of the effects of education on the half-grown.  A few general markers of the boarding school novel are:


1.  A classical education where Latin and French are as important as math and science.

2.  Headmasters and Teachers as Opponents.  Except for the very kindly younger nun that the other nuns hate.

3.  Quidditch.

4.  Making friends who eventually become super-allies due to close quarters, a common hatred of Authority, and love for poetry/painting/reading/Latin/adventure.

5.  Getting into mischief.  This consists of: midnight visits to bombed-out cottages near school grounds; getting yelled at for praying alone in a forgotten chapel; calling a priest "Father" instead of "sir"; going from being really rich to being really poor; and getting way too involved with someone you oughtn't.*

6.  Education itself.  Education is NOT the sole product of curriculum and formal instruction.  Else why would we read the book?  The protagonist is educated from a thousand angles and interactions.  The bully, the Head Girl, the Intellectual Introvert (Thomas Parke D'Invilliers, anyone?), the Paedophile Priest, the Groundskeeper, the Best Friend Turned Worst Enemy, and the Brutal Prefect all together or singly educate  our hero/heroine.

7.  Courage and resourcefulness.  When you're faced with the general antagonism of the above Educators,  these qualities tend to grow and expand.  Or else, you end up being one of the herd.

For the main character to outsmart these noxious characters while having midnight dormitory adventures and learning Latin, ah yes, this is why English Majors have a softening toward Education.  It's about going it alone and emerging victorious.**



This clip is from Back Home, a TV movie of Michelle Magorian's book of the same name.  This is quite possibly the best (worst?) book about grownups attempting to foil childrens' growth, happiness and ambition all in the context of an English boarding school. 

* List of books in order:
Back Home - Michelle Magorian
And Both Were Young - Madeleine L'Engle
Seminary Boy - John Cornwell
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Joan Aiken
A Separate Peace - John Knowles


Other boarding school novels:
A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett (sweetly sentimental but has the necessary evil to make it interesting)
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld (baffling book; does it make me love or hate the idea of boarding school?  I certainly hate Cross Sugarman)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J. K. Rowling (the first book, for the obvious reason that it's Harry's first time at Hogwarts)
The Small Rain - Madeleine L'Engle (gawd, let the girl play her piano, already!)
The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis (not technically about boarding school but retains a lot of the above elements - courage, adventure, steadfast friendship, etc.)


**Victory is writing and publishing a best-selling book about one's harrowing experiences while being Educated.