Editorial: Boarding School’s Demise?

by Jim Reapsome

This morning’s paper carried a picture of a weather-beaten, dilapidated one-room school near here. It looked like it belonged in the Smithsonian. For years, no children have etched their names in the desks. For years, no teacher has cracked knuckles with a ruler. I know about such things, I started out in one of those schools.

This morning’s paper carried a picture of a weather-beaten, dilapidated one-room school near here. It looked like it belonged in the Smithsonian. For years, no children have etched their names in the desks. For years, no teacher has cracked knuckles with a ruler. I know about such things, I started out in one of those schools.

Anyway, the old place stands on the cusp of destruction, but it doesn’t lak for stout defenders. Preserve it, they say, as an historical monument. I’d guess its days are numbered. Developers and bulldozers usually win.

I think the days of boarding schools for missionaries’ children are also numbered. Not because they have been replaced by consolidated school districts. Not because they’ve lost out to multimillion dollar educational plants with the latest technological aids to education.

Missionaries and boarding schools, of course, have been as close as apple pie and cheese for more than a century. You couldn’t have one without the other. But, prevailing social and cultural winds not threaten to break up this almost mystical partnership. This is what I seen happening:

Many new missionaries don’t want to send their children to boarding schools, partly because they have gotten a bad press. They hear a lot of stories about how some children have been scarred for life by an unfortunate experience in a boarding school. They fear that a boarding school won’t adequately prepare their children for higher education in the States. They’re afraid they won’t fit socially when they grow up. Looming like an alien space invader on the horizon is the specter of child abuse, one of the hottest media subjects in the States.

They tink being an absentee parent violates their God-given duty to their children. It used to be assumed that part of the price of being a missionary was sending your children to boarding school, but some of the family values gurus have said, in effect, it’s sinful to do that. Listening to that advice, candidates stipulate ahead of time that they won’t send their kids to boarding school.

At the same time, more missionary parents are figuring out alternatives to a boarding school education. Home schooling has swept across the scene like a tornado. Interest in local schools is growing, and in many places quality education is available down the street or across town. In some cases, missionaries scrape up enough money to pay the bills at international schools.

Mix these ingredients and you have a recipe for the demise of the boarding school. But the process will be hastened by another crucial fact: Teachers for boarding schools are as difficult to find as a pearl in a snow bank. Many schools limp along with overworked teachers and administrators, kind but untrained houseparents, and tight budgets. Many schools try to make due with peoeple who come for only a year. Used to be teachers had to commit for at least two years, but no more. You have to wonder about the quality of education under those circumstances.

Of course, several schools thrive despite the environment. They have served and will continue to serve children and parents with quality education and sound spiritual nourishment. New ones go up in remote corners of the globe. Christian day schools serve new mission fields such as Russia and Ukraine. We continue to hear appeals for teachers, principals, houseparents and money.

Some missionary parents will discover that home schooling takes much more starch than they anticipated. Others will learn that being a godly parent does not necessarily preclude sending children to boarding school. Some will find local schools either unavailable or unacceptable, and international schools unaffordable. But my guess is that, considering all the factors, the number of children in boarding schools will gradually decline.

The crucial question is, Which way will the mission agencies and our sending churches move on this one? I sense that some of them tire of scrounging for teachers and money. The old fire for boarding schools has long since flickered out in agency headquarters and in church missions committees. Boarding schools have become a first-class pain on the agenda, not nearly as exciting as sending a busload of people to Kiev. Supporting churches look for unreached people to adopt, not for struggling boarding schools that need CPR.

This diminishing commitment by mission agency leaders and by sending churches for maintaining boarding schools could be the signature on the death warrant. Don’t be surprised to look up one day and discover that boarding schools for missionaries’ children have gone the way of the one-room school.

This will, of course, require some strategic adjustments in our church planting strategies and other ministries in remote areas. It’s not too soon to start the search for alternatives.

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