Awful boarding school environment

I was just reading my newspaper about the accident some years back when a dragon boat with 13 students from Lundby Efterskole capsized and a teacher downed. They sailed in icy waters and the boat was not suited to the weather.

Right now a trial against the school in ongoing and that is why I don't make a statement whether they should be found guilty or not. The management of the school is doing a blaming-job where they put all the responsibility on the deceased school teacher. It was not his boat. It was a boat belonging to the school. The principal in charge saw them leaving with the boat and didn't interfere, but as I stated before; It is up to the court to decide whether the management are to blame.

But I want to state something being a parent to a child living in a boarding school. If you look back on previous posts on this blog you will find that I had to send my son to a boarding school. It was not a choice I made. I was so to say forced due to the actions of my son. I don't know whether it was intended as a punishment or a chance to start over but it became a punishment.

To this very day it has marked his life. He grew apart from the rest of the family and lives a rather isolated life minding his own business. He had good grades but did choose to serve in a low paid job. I guess that I as a parent should be happy that he has an ordinary job and is not involved in crime, but as a parent you always dream that your child does it a little better. What was wrong about the boarding school was that they at all occasions tried to push the kids of their comfort zone. They tried to make the kids something they weren't born to according their social heritage.

What I like about Denmark is the security. When you are born into a working class family like I was you can make it only so far. In Denmark you don't break the social heritage on just one generation. You work quietly serving faithfully in your job so your children can start on a higher level but not that high compared to your situation.

This approach creates a society where everyone is calm because they know that if they mind their own business their children are rewarded. Only if you come to Denmark trying to work yourself to the top, you will get into trouble. We can read about it every day. It ends with crime being committed. At the boarding school they were punished if they didn't want to participate in extracurricular activities. Yes, you read it correctly. It was not the school work which could result in punishment. It was not the behavior in general which could result in punishment. It was possible dangerous activities like wilderness hiking and canoeing. My son had not been on the water for just one single day before he got to the school and swimming was about 50 meters. We live in a town far from the water, so why bother?

Basically the boarding school broke him down leaving him as a shadow of his former self. While I am happy that he has a regular job, I wanted him to do something like the work I do and make it just a little further than I did. It is not possible and I guess that a relationship is out of the question.

Sometime I think that we should have the police jail him. It would properly have damaged him less and still taught him a lesson. Instead we led a paramilitary unit educate him for almost a year. I failed my son back then and he is paying the price for the rest of his life. I feel like a bad parent.

I would have been cheated

Years back my son was at a boarding school. Tobacco was the every week subject. Due to strict legislation he wasn't able to buy it on his own and the particular boarding school had a smoking ban. (It wasn't my choice. Otherwise I would have kept him at hime where he could enjoy basic levels of freedom and smoke when he like outside on my property. We don't allow smoking inside, but allows it outside.

Now our parliament has banned smoking on the boarding schools which have allowed it in the past. I would have felt cheated if I as a parent had agreed on a contract with a boarding school allowing smoking for my son and the smoking was banned. I would have pulled my son at once despite the fact that he then could have wasted time at school

The new law is bad for us parents and it removes the possibilities for your children to learn how to decide what they find best in their lives. How will they be able to live in a democracy if they are not raise to decide what is best for them.

Sometime I fear for my son

Years back I was forced to accept that my child had to live at a boarding school, where he couldn't drink alcohol or smoke tobacco as every teenager has to right to do.

Now he is doing well. He returned home. He got good grades. He has a fine job.

But the past sometime seem to haunt him.

If you allow your children to leave your home before they are 18 you risk emtional scars. In fact a killer named Hemy Neuman claims that he still suffers from his past when his parents arranged for him to go to Israel and live at an unnamed boarding school at age 13.

I don't know the name of this boarding school, but I recognize the potential for damage.

That's why I often find myself fearful that my son sometime in the future explodes and react as response of his past.

I guess you never stop being a parent.

Reliving the worst time as a parent

When I read the newspaper of today it is impossible not to be reminded about the worst period of my career as a parent:

Danish Dragon boat capsized by wave, Politiken, 14 Feb. 2011

My son was at one of these schools. I remember that fear that you feel when you know that your child is isolated from the warm and love in your family unit. I remember how difficult the logistic was. He smoked tobacco which is a human right and they had to stand out in the cold long before it became law for the rest of the population.

Such hardship proved to be an awful test for him. It was certainly not something I as a responsible parent ever would have allowed my child to be exposed to.

Back then I feared for his life as he was forced to eat some different food than we as family was used to. They also had some wilderness expedition where he was exposed to the harshness of the elements.

In the end he survived although marked by the difficult period away from us.

I understand that the level of danger for the students involved in the capsizing in the ocean of course was higher. I pray that all the students will survive and return safe to their families. I hope that this episode will serve as a warning for other families considering allowing their children to study away from their home at such boarding schools.

You cannot be that lucky twice.

Sharing public cuts

In Denmark we have some boarding schools called "Efterskoler". They are not as strict as boarding schools abroad or at least so I am told.

But they do offer a some alternative lifestyle suited for those in our society who wants Danes to forget their social heritage and position themselves to a more globalized world where traditions and social standings in every of our small communities are forgotten and erased.

But do we not have a thousand year old culture which we need to deliver knowledge about to our children before they go out and make their impact on the world. How can we give them good tradition Danish values when we back out of the parenting role before time and leave it to some closed boarding school environment to give our children our values and learn our firm standards of character?

I fear that they are left without essential parts of their social heritage if they leave the family unit too soon. Denmark is a society where social heritage matters even up to the royal family. The result is peace and low crime when people in general know what they can make of life and how important it is to act properly because you know that your children will not be born equal with the rest of the children but they will start out from the level in our society you have achieved.

The youth culture of a country must never been equal with being confined in a boarding school where their individual character is shaved off so they can fit in the enclosed group at all cost. We need people who have a social heritage which stand out, so they can be leaders rather than just anonymous followers. You cannot create a peer group leader; you can only find the individual.

Some Danish firms use a lot of money trying to build the careers of their employees. It is a fatal mistake. Team-building based on sharing a single glass of wine or a beer Friday afternoon is the only thing which works. Luckily most firms realize that.

The families can learn from the firms. They can keep their children in the local schools. They can improve the social status of their child by hosting parties at home instead letting the children hang around in the cities. They can cooperate with volunteers in biker clubs who host parties for the local youth now where most of the parties hosted by schools or the authorizes has been targeted against minorities in the society which practice a more restricted form of partying.

The government has realized that the numbers of teenagers attending the boarding schools are too high and it has proven to be too costly for our society. They have introduced cuts and of course the boarding schools are protesting. It is a shameful form of marketing because the reason for the cuts is not ideology. It is necessary because Denmark almost singlehanded has decided to pay the debts of countries like Greece for no reason. We in Denmark all have to bear our burden. The boarding schools should take responsibility instead. It would certainly suit them.

They are complaining about risk of losing clients. They should not fear. The authorities in a lot of towns have troubled teenagers which they can ship to the boarding schools instead of the juvenile halls. There are parents who originally wanted to ship their children off to some third world country where they could be teach into submission by the use of corporal punishment which is forbidden in Denmark and therefore under watch by the social services. They can use the boarding schools instead. So where is the possible lack of students?

I had a son in one of these boarding schools, which you can read something about if you two years back. It was a terrible ordeal for both him and me as parent, which I wish for no other parent to relive.

Therefore consider me biased, but I truly believe that we all have to bear the burden our politicians have put upon us - also the boarding schools.

I did only believe it could happen in the Middle East or Africa

I recently saw this page about schools in Somalia:

Domestic prisoners of conscience's blog

Here in my town our social services are involved in trying to get children back home to Denmark from various countries in the Middle East or Africa. I didn't believe it could happen inside the United States too.

Rather shocking.

Just imaging how to be the child who find him or her-self cut totally off from what they have known so far.

Awful!!

It has become more difficult to raise a child

I remember when I had a fight with a boarding school years back. My son did smoke and at the time our so-called parliament suggested to raise the agelimit for tobacco to 18, which would have meant that I should had driven to the boarding school which was rather remotely located a lot of times.

I was lucky to have him back before the politicians decided to remove this freedom from our teenagers.

However they didn't stop there. Now they are looking at the alcohol our children consume. What is their point? Do they want us to integrate and become real Danes or is it just another excuse to toughend up against immigrants. The only way we can get native Danes to open up is to drink beer or wine with them. The same goes for our children. They will forever be known as the foreigners if they don't drink with their peers.

In many towns groups of parents arrange bag-parties for teenagers. It is a secure party-environment where the teens can enjoy themselves with alcohol but without any greater risk.

Those parent groups are under fire right now. The police wants more money from our politicians and it demands crimes committed. By disallowing the parties and suggesting that the teenagers might party with various youth gangs it is certain that a raise in juvenile crime is waiting just around the corner.

Why it is hard to adjust being an immigrant

I moved to this country, now best known for their cartoons 10 years ago.

I learned their language. I allowed my family to adjust to their strange costums.

Now I feel beaten somehow.

First example:

I have a lot of kids - alot. It have never been a problem before, but suddenly new seatbeltsrules came into action. The government demanded that every child in the car should have their own seat belt.

I need three cars to transport my children!

I know that ethnic Danes only have about 2 children. I regards this new law as a racist invention to target the mobility of us immigrants.

Second example:

I choosed Denmark because of their high standard of education. First of all danish students have a team spirit like I have never seen anywhere before and I have travelled the world.

They use a term called "hygge" where they sit together and drink a few beer - even children down to 12-13 year of age as I have seen them sitting in parks and along beaches. In fact it is an old tradition for the parents to introduce their child to alcohol at an age of 14 when the child is confirmed. (With Gods approval so to say).

So the youth drink and socialize. They start to care for each other. In a drunken state they confide to each other, so when they put a team together they know what both the strength and weakness are for each team-member, but the boss also know what the employees think about him and it doesn't need to be positive. Even a negative view can be useful because then there are not time wasted on cover-ups and lies.

So I allowed my son to socialize with the Danish youth and he showed good results. So good in fact that I gave up a job offer in the States, because they couldn't offer schools with similar standard.

The the disaster happened. My son "borrowed" my car and the social worker decided (due to my status as a foreigner) that my son should attend a school in the other end of the country. (Denmark have very few juvenile facilities. The authorities use the so-called "continuation school" for punishment instead of jail and it works because Danes regards everyone being born more than 20 kilometers away as "strangers", which all the community should be looking for. Some of the parents of my colleagues have moved to another part of Denmark and even their children are regarded as strangers (It is for some reason worse if you move from East to West. Sealand is called the "Devil Island" by people in Jutland.)

So my son ended up in Jutland and he suffered, but as I told him "Do the crime, do the time". I don't know if 10 months away from home for driving without licence is a harsh punishment in other countries, but all I would have gotten as adult was a fine.

All that brought our familiy closer together. He is very lonely because our lawyer recommended that he sould avoid as much contact as possible because in criminal enviroment they exchange knowledge, which can result in a life of crime. Now a new problem has arised. He is a smoker and it is legal because Denmark have a 16 year limit on tobacco purchase.

But the government are thinking of changing this to 18 years and the school don't want to have tobacco on their property, he is suffering. We have been meeting with the authorities about a pardon, so he can return home where we can buy him tobacco and our hopes are up. But somehow I feel betrayed.

Legal access to alcohol and tobacco for my kids was something I moved to Denmark for. They had so much success with this approach.

In fact in Denmark it is normal that the kids committing crimes are the kids, who don't drink.

I thought that I had found a free country. Now I am in doubt.