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The Paradox of the Academic Boarding School

The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) opened in 1980 as a first of its kind "elite" state boarding school for high school students in grades 11 and 12, contending that greater contact with instructors in a supportive environment that avoids commuting hassles would enhance student performance for the state's best and brightest.  I transitioned from the small, rural Bunker Hill High School (BHHS) to NCSSM in 1982 and graduated in 1984.  The transition from the comforts of home to the rigors of boarding school can overwhelm the unprepared student with stressors such as unfamiliar surroundings, unusually challenging classes, and hundreds of diverse new relationships formed around the clock.  These conditions coupled with the wild hormonal surges of adolescence can shake even the most "gifted" student to the core.  This article will contrast typical BHHS and NCSSM schedules to analyze the claims of boarding school benefits against their realities.

This analysis will assume a curriculum of full-year courses.  It will also assume typical and identically consuming time blocks for basic needs such as self-maintenance (orange), mandatory school work (maroon), and mandatory operations (blue).  It will also assume comparable course loads amounting to a total of seven classes, either as a mix of live and online classes at BHHS or all live classes at NCSSM.  To show fairness between the two demands a rigorous standard.  The book How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport, normally aimed at college students, applies equally well to boarding school students and, by extension, to students in normal schools considering a transition to boarding school.  Newport interviewed large numbers of high-performing students and learned that they normally used a tactic called "erase your question marks," meaning that they would survey the materials, write whatever questions they could not answer themselves, then visit tutors to get those questions answered.  Applying this principle to both schools yields the following strategy:

1. Begin the day's assignments to generate a set of questions to ask the tutors.
2. "Erase your question marks" with tutors in the relevant disciplines.

The remainder of this article will build around this core principle to compare the merits of each school.  Figures 1 and 2 show respective BHHS and NCSSM schedules with this principle in mind.  Notice that the BHHS schedule emulates the NCSSM schedule wherever possible to keep the two on an "apples to apples" basis.  This includes the amount of study time recommended in the NCSSM Student Handbook, which in this case amounts to 34 study hours for 28 class hours.

Figure 1 – Sample BHHS Second Semester Schedule for Junior

Notes

Lectures and Labs: 28 hours (15 hours live plus 13 hours online)
Study Time Blocked: 15 hours (teacher) + 15 hours (self) = 30 hours
Remaining Study Time Needed: 34 - 30 + 13 = 17 hours
Total Live Instructor Contact Time: 15 + 15 = 30 hours
Time-Robbing Operations: 5 + 2 = 7 hours
 

Figure 2 – Sample NCSSM Second Trimester Schedule for Junior

Notes

Lectures and Labs: 28 hours (all live)
Study Time Blocked: 8 hours (teacher) + 7 hours (self) = 15 hours
Remaining Study Time Needed: 34 - 15 = 19 hours
Total Live Instructor Contact Time: 28 + 8 = 36 hours
Time-Robbing Operations: 3 + 2 = 5 hours

Before jumping into the academic contrasts of each schedule, peripheral issues warrant a brief discussion.

Note that NCSSM students chose to attend NCSSM after considerable competition for admission.  By contrast, state law compels BHHS students to attend by default, with consequent lack of motivation and an "anti-intellectual" atmosphere all too obvious.  This condition strengthens the argument favoring a state boarding school because of "a supportive cultural atmosphere conducive to learning."

Note that the typical NCSSM student develops intense relationships because of the small, close, residential setting, with cultures from around the globe represented.  These new social challenges to the adolescent's coping abilities can have mixed results when compared to the familiarities of BHHS.  This condition both strengthens and weakens the argument favoring a state boarding school because clearly different individuals have different emotional needs that may favor either "day" school or "boarding" school as a living condition most suitable for their unique personalities.

Note that BHHS burns time on the operations of commuting and household chores.  By contrast, NCSSM burns almost the same amount of time on work service and hall meeting and housekeeping chores, with neither school's "operations" impacting student knowledge in a productive fashion.  This condition weakens the argument favoring a state boarding school because of "less time squandered on operations."

With the peripherals of each school examined, the academic time consumption of each now warrants attention with a special focus on the Newport strategy.

A typical high school like BHHS on a semester schedule offers four classes per day, five days per week with each class running 90 minutes in length.  For each class block, the teacher lectures for the first half and then grants the students "Tutored Study" during the second half to commence the day's homework assignment.  This gives the students time to commence struggling with the assignment and so question the teacher about key concepts before class ends. By contrast, the "staggered" schedule of NCSSM removes "Tutored Study" time from class blocks altogether in favor of strictly lecture time, shortening class times and allowing more time for a full complement of "live" classes throughout the week during normal working hours.

Note that NCSSM teachers normally offer tutorials 4:30-8:00 PM Mondays through Thursdays, with e-mail available around the clock for those who cannot make those hours.  After accounting for the time required for the student to start assignments, generate questions, and eat dinner, the "effective" tutorial time becomes cut to 6:00-8:00 PM.  In a boarding school environment, though, students and teachers can work together to create additional hours of interaction beyond these. I concede that the dedicated NCSSM student who understands the importance of that "interaction" time will manage to make all this happen. In fairness to my main point, though, the BHHS schedule has 15 hours of "Tutored Study" time built into normal class hours with no additional student or teacher effort required for mutual accessibility.  Moreover, the NCSSM student has to make an "extra effort" at NCSSM for "Tutored Study" that the BHHS student does not have to make.   Conversely, I will concede that generally (but not universally) NCSSM teachers will know the subject matter more deeply and lucidly than BHHS teachers and so be able to convey it more effectively in a given block of time.  This condition both strengthens and weakens the argument favoring a state boarding school because clearly different individuals have different intellectual needs that may favor either "day" school or "boarding" school as an academic time consumption most suitable for their unique personalities.

Under the given schedule constraints, each school's after-class activities come as follows:

• 4:30-5:30 PM Begin the day's assignments to generate a set of questions to ask the tutors.
• 5:30-6:00 PM Chew your dinner and "chew" your ideas generated over the last hour of study.
• 6:00-8:00 PM "Erase your question marks" with tutors (self or others) in the relevant disciplines.
• 8:00-8:30 PM Perform household chores (BHHS) or hall meeting and housekeeping chores (NCSSM).
• 8:30-10:00 PM Perform "Supervised Study" by parents (BHHS) or "in loco parentis" adults (NCSSM).

Integrating these observations together represents the paradox of the academic boarding school.  Its justification for existence can become obliterated in the face of the actual loads and stresses placed upon its students as well as the opportunities now available at normal "day" school.  The touted benefits of a state academic boarding school can come at a cost of total student enslavement to a schedule not of the student's own choice.  Whether your future actually needs the "excellent" or will do quite nicely with the "adequate" remains ultimately your own difficult call.  Whichever path you choose, listen intensely to your own soul and follow your own heart within the bounds of reason.

Epilogue

We had a long discussion on the Facebook NCSSM Alumni Association page about my original draft of this article. The bottom line is that many people attend NCSSM to test the limits of their own abilities, much as people climb Mount Everest to test the limits of their own abilities. Unlike Mount Everest, NCSSM does not kill people, but to quote my dad about Mount Everest, "Now that they have proven it can be done, what exactly have they proven?" The parties in question who conquered either NCSSM or Mount Everest would say, "I have proven that I could do it and that has permanently elevated my self-concept in a positive way." For many NCSSM graduates, they value this "intangible" benefit far more highly than any "tangible" college credit they might earn at NCSSM.

I am not one of those people.

Tangibles have always motivated me. Tangibles will always motivate me. I always look for "biggest tangible payoff per unit of effort." When I can start paying bills with intangibles, I will re-think my position.

With that disclaimer made, you will have to decide for yourself what motivates you to attend NCSSM. Obviously different applicants have different standards of value, and that is fine. It reinforces my point. Applicants need to think about their standards of value and what they consider "success" to be. A time management book says: "Success is the progressive, timely achievement of a worthy ideal." But what constitutes a "worthy ideal"? By what standard would you measure its worth? Only the applicant can determine his or her own "worthy ideal" self to become. Having seen a broad range of such proposed "ideals" over my lifetime, I can only suggest that one should think for oneself and not be swayed by hype or pressure. As long as applicants have full awareness of this nature of NCSSM and embrace it, fine. If not, their NCSSM motto will become "BOHICA – Bend Over, Here It Comes Again."

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 8/05, 6:22am)

Leaving College Confidential – Final Thoughts

I intend this to be my final post to College Confidential (CC).  Due to the excessively restrictive posting policies here, I cannot communicate in a way that does not become excessively laborious for me.  Fortunately, my posting history combined with good search engines outside CC should tell what I want aspiring engineering and NCSSM students to know provided they bother themselves with the search.  My user name is my real name and I use it wherever I go.  If you need to contact me, you can find me easily enough.

Before I post my final thoughts about NCSSM, I want to share an extensive analysis of the CC forum itself.  It holds the promise of a clearinghouse of useful information for students seeking the best possible educational fit for themselves.  However, it also aims to make a profit through advertising.  Other social media sites earn advertising revenues through creative methods that still allow posters much leeway in how they communicate.  By that, I mean that posters can share links, recommend useful books, products, and other services, and generally speak their minds freely.  The best ones exercise very light moderation to remove obvious off-topic spammers and other trolls.  Unfortunately, CC long ago embraced a completely different business model and has essentially become enslaved to that model for better or for worse.  I learned this the hard way when my sharing of such information netted me a slap in the face with a one-month "timeout" inflicted by an aggressive moderator who sniped privately, "CC does not offer free advertising."

As you can imagine, I felt quite miffed at this insult, so I attempted to contact the site owners directly.  After completing the CC Web site feedback form and receiving no response, I resorted to calling directly the site owners at Hobsons, Inc., based in Cincinnati, Ohio, only to find myself on perpetual hold or cut entirely before even able to leave a voice mail.  I next visited the Better Business Bureau (BBB) site and noted that the company had recently become a member of the BBB.  To get their attention, I filed a complaint.

To its credit, Hobsons actually made good on its BBB membership promise and responded very politely to my complaint.  The company product manager was very courteous.  We arranged a teleconference lasting 30 minutes with one of the co-founders of CC who has since sold CC to Hobsons.  He carefully explained the business model to me in a way understandable to the lay person.  At the end of the call, the product manager lifted my posting ban nearly a week early.

Users of the CC forum need to understand one aspect of CC they may find too onerous to warrant continued participation.  The forum format does not allow the use of graphics or videos, thus forcing participants to say in a thousand words what they could say in a single picture.  It does not allow linking to "non-authoritative" sources even though such sources frequently offer insight that "authoritative" sources do not.  It forbids not only the linking to books, products, or services, but even their mention by name since such mentioning qualifies as "promoting" and "free advertising" of such materials.  In short, CC wants users to expend precious time and energy creating content original to CC so that CC can make advertising dollars through the unpaid efforts of its users.  Not only does CC want this, but it wants to do all it can to encourage traffic to its site while discouraging traffic from its site.  While it has no qualms whatsoever with others linking to CC, it objects in harsh ways to the converse.

Did everyone get that?  The company wants to make money by creating a set of rules that force anyone participating to work essentially for free creating content for the CC forum site.  Hobsons wants CC to become a "one stop shopping experience" by creating posting rules so onerous that any poster desiring to participate must expend a large margin of additional effort to say in many cumbersome words what the poster could say with a simple reference to a "non-authoritative" source or a "promotion" of a book or video.

What effects will these rules actually have on the CC forum experience?  For starters, posters will find themselves caught off-guard by moderators who evidently get a rush from the sense of power and control they enjoy as moderators.  Moreover, posters who have a life outside CC will not bother to share useful information inside CC since the posting rules demand, in the name of "creating profitable original content," the writing of many more words than needed to convey answers to questions.  Ironically, those who do post useful information compliant with CC rules most likely will qualify as "non-authoritative" sources themselves.  This means:

That which CC despises, CC becomes.

The bottom line is that students seeking answers need to look far beyond CC using standard search engine practices to locate answers to their questions.  Although CC can make a good start, current conditions guarantee that it has no hope of becoming the "one stop shopping" clearinghouse of information it envisions for itself.  Users will necessarily receive highly truncated and severely incomplete answers to their questions, mostly from non-authoritative sources, because of restrictive CC policies.  This motivates me to discontinue my support of CC.  While I understand that CC needs to make money in some fashion just to operate the site, I consider its heavy-handed moderation approach personally unacceptable and unworthy of further participation, especially when other social media sites have shown it unnecessary.  If CC wants "original content" for advertising dollars so badly, they should forego forums altogether in favor of traditional "articles with comments" instead.  Since self-actualization represents the only "payment" forum users get, and since the policies restrict even that payment beyond the bounds of reason, I see no point in exerting the effort.

***

Students seeking attendance at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) have numerous motives to apply.  Many of these stem from the terrible conditions at their current high schools filled with dysfunctional students and even from homes filled with dysfunctional families, not to mention small towns filled with small minds.  Indeed, as poster "Shanidar" has noted elsewhere on the CC forum, NCSSM has some "hurting" students seeking escape from psychologically toxic environments.  Applicants should search the CC forum for posts by "Shanidar" for worst case scenarios at NCSSM.

As for my own experiences, readers can also search through my posts to get my two cents' worth.  The bottom line is that NCSSM taught me the hard way that it is better to work smarter than to work harder.  By working smarter, I mean weighing the total benefits and detriments of all alternatives to get the best mix of them.  I find it difficult to convey just how hard the NCSSM residential program can be.  The main benefit is the other students, not the academics, though both raise the bar orders of magnitude above any "normal" high school.  Many alumni will cheerfully tell you that NCSSM was the hardest yet most rewarding two years of their lives.  They will further share that they did not experience that level of challenge either academically or socially until graduate school.  I have heard some say they found Ivy League colleges easier than NCSSM.

In any case, I have yet to see a convincing argument that an NCSSM high school diploma has any more market value than a community college associate diploma of comparable core classes.  Applicants to NCSSM need to understand they are embarking to climb the Mount Everest of North Carolina high schools.  Like Mount Everest, NCSSM leaves a trail of bodies to the peak and back of participants who hoped to conquer the peak only to have the peak conquer them.  I will even go so far as to argue that the chances of getting a "full ride" scholarship to a university are greater in a "normal" high school than at NCSSM, though I would have a hard time proving that statement conclusively.  I can definitely say that earning college credit through other "normal" programs like Advanced Placement or North Carolina Career and College Promise is far easier than at NCSSM.

Download and study the NCSSM Student Handbook carefully and decide if your parents are really the controlling louts you think they are compared to the impersonal "in loco parentis" administration at a state boarding school.  Decide if you want personal degradation from those who have power and enjoy inflicting it on others.  Decide if you want to spend evenings slaving to complete heavy workloads that earn you less college credit than you could earn where you are now.

I could point to an article that shows graphically a schedule comparison between a "normal" high school and an NCSSM schedule.  But that would constitute "promotion" and "free advertising."  So I will not do that.  You will have to suffer in ignorance as a result.

I could share the name of the novel set at NCSSM and encourage applicants to purchase and read it. But that would constitute "promotion" and "free advertising."  So I will not do that.  You will have to suffer in ignorance as a result.

I could share the name of a sure-fire study guide that has helped many students to achieve success in a challenging academic environment like NCSSM.  But that would constitute "promotion" and "free advertising."  So I will not do that.  You will have to suffer in ignorance as a result.

I could share the name of a book that helps students new to boarding school to deal with difficult roommates.  But that would constitute "promotion" and "free advertising."  So I will not do that.  You will have to suffer in ignorance as a result.

I could share the name of a video that shows how to measure total benefits and detriments of NCSSM versus its alternatives, or a sequel video that shows how to slash tens of thousands of dollars from college using NCSSM resources, or yet another video to show how to make the most of engineering school.  But that would constitute "promotion" and "free advertising."  So I will not do that.  You will have to suffer in ignorance as a result.

Do not blame me for these omissions.  Blame CC.  Their policies enforce these "crimes of omission" and the consequent sufferings through ignorance that result.

Whether this post will remain untouched or find itself censored remains to see.  I will replicate it elsewhere to one or more sites more under my control to assure that search engines locate my comments for evaluation.  Regardless, the Cincinnati BBB complaint remains a matter of public record.  Anyone who wishes to locate and contact them to read the complaint and its resolution may do so.

Whatever happens, know that my motives were always to help people in ways that I wished others had helped me.  Any "self-promotion" that happened occurred purely as a byproduct.  But I will not play Atlas carrying a burden that grows heavier and still heavier for no good cause.  The time has come to shrug.

To those I left behind, good luck in your endeavors.

(NOTE: As expected, moderators immediately deleted this post from CC, banned me for life, blocked my IP address, and deleted 90% of my entire CC posting history!)

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 10/23, 1:17am)