Recovering Boarding School Trauma Narratives

'Richly engrossing, this is a multidimensional, multidisciplinary, integrative memoir that reveals life-long, even intergenerational, impacts of traumatic elements embedded in the boarding schools' systems, leading the reader to easily surmise the author's preventive recommendations. Not only courageous in the revelations along its personal journey, but in challenging what has been considered culturally desirable standard for the societal elites.' -Yael Danieli, PhD, Director, Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children; founder, International Center for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of MultiGenerational legacies of Trauma . 'In this brave and engaging book, Christine Jack offers a witness account of the life-long psychological consequences of sending children to boarding school. In a rare combination of academic research and personal testimony, Jack chooses Christopher Robin Milne as a travelling companion. The compelling narrative offers a searing indictment of the boarding school system. This book is a significant contribution to the history of education, as well as the literature on the hazards of leaving children in boarding schools. It will interest a wide range of readers including educational theorists, ex-boarders and psychotherapists.' - Professor Joy Schaverien, PhD, Jungian psychoanalyst and author of Boarding School Syndrome: the Psychological Trauma of the Privileged Child (Routledge) 'This is a remarkable book that crosses the genres of memoir and historical and other forms of exposition. It needed to do so because its ambition was to describe and analyse the experience of children abandoned by their families to school boarding houses, from their point of view, and to understand the possible and probable impacts that the traumas involved might have on later lives. The range of theoretical reference the author brings to the work is astounding. This work marks a highly significant addition to the literature on the impact of school boarding on children and youth.' - Craig Campbell, Associate Professor History of Education (Honorary), University of Sydney; author of Jean Blackburn: Education, Feminism and Social Justice (2019), A History of Australian Schooling (2014) 'Christine Jack has presented us with a courageous, evocative and theoretically-grounded memoir of the subtleness of attachment-related trauma. Although set in the boarding school experience, this trauma can be generalized to other childhood abandonments. As Christine explored her feelings of devastation and agony, she was able to reach a level of clarity about her trauma and find, in utilizing her 'undamaged part', a sense of hope towards the notion of recovery to an 'earned secure attachment' and finally to self-acceptance. This beautifully written book will be a gift to my clients!'- Paulette Calabro (PsyD), Clinical Psychologist and relationship psychotherapist, Mindcare Centre, Sydney, Australia 'This is a first-class piece of research using a novel way to get us to think about the horrors at Pooh Corner. In other words, Christine Jack argues tightly and cogently that we should take note of the peculiar and damaging attitude to children that results in normalised neglect, which the British spread to their colonies and which is now coming back to bite them in the form of a delusion politics, based in esprit de corps rather than empathy and creativity.' - Nick Duffell, psychotherapy trainer and author of The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System (2000) and Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion - a Psychohistory (2014) 'A gripping and moving study that puts flesh on the dry bones of the terrible psychological disorder we know as attachment-related trauma . Christine Jack juxtaposes vivid personal memoir with the true story of one of literature's most famous innocents to sum up the experience of neglect and abandonment that is for so many the reality of a boarding school education. The lessons drawn are important. Firstly, that this dominant culture of parenting, the one devised for and by the most privileged people in the world, was profoundly wrong. Second, that by shining the clean light of contemporary psychological understanding on this history we can find a way forward for the many who suffered and still suffer as a result of their time in industrialised residential care systems. Most important of all, this book takes a place among the essential literature that will guide us to giving children, whatever their circumstances, the love and protection they need and deserve.' - Alex Renton, author of Stiff Upper Lip: secrets, crimes and the schooling of a ruling class (2017) 'Christine Jack has written a very thoughtful memoir documenting the traumatic effect of her own childhood boarding school experience interwoven with the story of Christopher Milne's parallel experience. It is not a memoir meant to shock the reader but to validate the survivors and to inform all those adults who influence the course of children's lives.' - Janina Fisher, PhD, international expert on the treatment of trauma, author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors (2017) and Working with the Living Legacy of Trauma 'Christine Jack brings together memoir and academic research with graceful ease as she explores the impact of boarding school on the lives of young children. The warmth and poignancy of her own experience gives powerful substance to the breadth and depth of her theoretical frameworks. It is a 'must-read' for educators, parents, and anyone who has been to boarding school.' - Patti Miller, award-winning memoirist and author of Writing True Stories: The complete guide to writing autobiography, memoir, personal essay, biography, travel and creative nonfiction (2017) 'As a young child I read British children's novels about boarding school, and fantasised about the delights of that adult-free world. Then, when my parents suggested I might like to go to a such a school, I sensibly refused to go. I suspect children know intuitively that boarding school is always the wrong choice. This book explores these issues, in parallel narratives: one addresses Christopher Robin Milne's experience of boarding school, and its profound impacts on his life, speech and personality; the second is Christine Jack's own experiences of boarding school and its effects. Though her history is thirty-plus years later than Milne's, the stories are disturbingly similar. The language used refuses despair, and the stories are told in an inquisitive, tender voice that, says Jack, comes from 'a deep pool of hope that through it we may find fellowship with our imagined community of readers'. This book combines hope with the anguish of memory, in language that never swerves away from trauma, but throughout shows vividly how one can build resilience, and craft a life worth living.' - Professor Jen Webb, co-author Creativity in Context: How to make a poet (2018); Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra 'This insightful and well-written book is a most welcome addition to a growing body of work on the trauma that is inevitable when young children make the transition from family life to the institutional life of a boarding school. The effects of this trauma can be long-term and are often carried over, as baggage, into adult life. A major strength of this book is its breadth of perspective. The author examines the trauma, and indeed the path to recovery, through an educational and historical lens, in addition to highlighting psychological and social issues. She uses a narrative approach, courageously and sensitively exploring the effects of boarding school on both her own life and that of Christopher Robin Milne, as a companion on her journey to healing. Sending young children away to board is a particularly British habit and it is helpful that the author is able to shine a light on the practice in Australia and, in doing so, also illustrates clear links between the UK and Australia. This book is relevant to educationalists, teachers, historians, sociologists, psychotherapists, psychologists, mental health workers and indeed anybody who has had the experience of living in a boarding school.' - Thurstine Basset, former Director of Boarding Concern and co-author of Trauma Abandonment and Privilege: A Guide to Therapeutic Work with Boarding School Survivors 'A theoretically-grounded, autobiography/witness account of the trauma inflicted by a boarding school experience that is an elegantly written, personal narrative of pain, resilience, and the power of literature. A tour de force!' - Professor Elizabeth Smyth, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto