My mother was sent up from West Limerick to South Dublin for boarding school when she was 11 or 12 until she did her Leaving. She absolutely hated it. I think her aunt in Dublin would meet her on some Sundays but other than that I think it was only Christmas, Easter and summer she would go home.
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I can’t figure it out at all. £40k a year it was and all the father kept saying was he wanted his daughter just to be kind and mannerly, as if she couldn’t be either of them things if she went to the local school. To me it seems like a very selfish act by the parents, subcontracting the raising of their daughter out to some institution.
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I would imagine parents sending their children to Clongowes or wherever think they are doing right by the children.
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Reads like a thinly veiled “I did it myself”
Not at all. I was a Mount Sion CBS boy all the way through. My mother often threatened to send me to Newtown if my behavior didn’t improve. She was a rural lady (from the Nire) and she despaired of the townie corner boys I was hanging around with in Mount Sion. As it happened she was not wrong as I spent a load of time in school smoking and hanging around corners with corner boys.
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They would typically go home at weekends though wouldn’t they?
No idea.
It depends.
No. Family we know (2 kids same age as ours) sent their eldest to clongowes. Its less than an hour away. They’ll see him at halloween then christmas. The dad went so its his dream. The girls wont be sent boarding but will be at loreto on the green. The eldest even spent some of covid there, living on the grounds doing school remotely!
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There’d be no way I’d send my young lad away to a school with like that,no wonder they’re all fucked up when they get out.
In Flannan’s back in the day I’m pretty sure they went home every second weekend.
It’s a fucking absolute cod in this day and age.
It may have made some sense 70 years ago for a variety of reasons, but now, unless you’re sending your child overseas for an immersion experience, it’s just a load of status symbol social climbing bollocks.
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Well herself facetimed hoppy last night asking what dates she could book the flights home for Halloween. Long pause. “Well, I might not come home, there’s a few people going out”
I was pleased. She was too in a way, but still had a good cry.
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There’s very few schools left with boarders in ireland really. Its not a huge thing anymore at all.
There is a very strange sense of loyalty that men in their 40’s have towards the school where their parents would have paid to have them educated.
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Ah savage. Would herself not book ye both a trip to galway to see him? Weekend in the galmont. Massages and trips to see your folks and the new manor. Take hopper out for a decent meal once or twice. Take her to a fight outside supermacs and out to Kinvorra for a few oysters.
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She’s ahead of you and I both
She’s booking me a weekend to galway?!? Sensational
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I attended St Peter’s College when boarding was still a thing but I was one of those townie “day pupils”. A lesser sort altogether. The school finished boarding after our Junior Cert year but most of the boarders stayed on to do the Leaving Cert there. It meant their families had to actually see them from time to time. It was usually rich horsey/landowner/farmery types that boarded. Most of them stayed in the school at weekends & it always struck me as sad & lonesome that kids would be sent to board there, while the folks arsed around their very big house in the country. Often only 10/15 miles from Wexford town.
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