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Evevate Unit 3A

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177 views

Evevate Unit 3A

Uploaded by

sabina
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF or read online on Scribd
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Cambridge IGCSE First Language English CST CSSA IS Text 3A | remember vivily that cold, dark Sunday evening 60 ‘years ago when my parents fist drove me to my new ‘school, whera the head receved us in his study. Having only a few weeks earfer travelled by ship from East ‘Arica, East Yorkshire in January was a shock, After pleasantries over a cup of tea, my parents lft to make ‘the long journey back to Dar es Selaam. | shall never forget that feting of boing lf utterly alone. | remember tears weling up and the head teting me that | would brave to grow up. He and | were never to get on, The following tem, for no reason I could ever discern, he confiscated my favourite riniature car, which | kept in my locker. | never gotit back. For a chid who had spent al his previous tie in tropical ‘open spaces, the north of England was an awful place. ‘Where I came from, the Sun shone, there were palm trees, white sandy beaches, mangoes, houses with big gardens. | never saw a mango in Yorkshire; houses were Joined to each other in terraces, and it was eternally dark and cold. Short trousers were a tral for an 11-year ld with hypothermia. | worked my way along corridors. pressing my knees to radiators to restore circulation. Ute improved in some ways, but the long separation from the land that was home to me was something I never came to terms with. Like many others of my ‘generation sent away to school in England, there was to bbe only one trip home a year, which was forthe eummer holiday, At Christmas and Easter | was parked with Various relatives in unfamiliar towns. They took good A boarding school student's view cere of me but they were strangers, albett of a diferent kind, The school, wih its long-established traditions lmued with an ethos fresh from the 19th century, was a place | never came to terms with. Ifyou were ‘academically able or good at cricket - or better sti, both ~it served you wel Ifnot, that was your problem, rot the school’. Boarding school certainly makes one sett-raiant, which ‘comes in handy later in ife. After that experience | had no problem surviving miltary academy. It was noticeable how much better the ex-boarders tended to fare in training than those who had been at day schools. But It can impair the parental connection - I never forgave ‘mine for sencing me away. For some reason | held ‘my father to blame, which created a nt which was never properly mendad, despite his very best eforts. | understand now, of course, that from my parents’ perspective it would have seemed the most sensible ‘course of action at the time, [My own experionce and that of my wie Geraldine {who was sent to a convent boartiig schoo) turned Us against boarding for our own three children (even ‘assuming we could have afforded i). But the world has ‘changed markedly or the better. Ihave no doubt that these days boarding schoo's are far kinder places then. ‘once they were, And by the way, if anyone finds a coin ‘under the floor of the dormitory on the top floor, it's ‘ming; it foled across the floor and cropped between the floorboards in February 1958, ‘Adapted from ‘A boarders view’, in The Alternative Old Pocklington Bulletin, by Donald McGregor, Scanned with CamScanner Cambridge IGCSE First Language English Ceo CU CHE Te Mea MME IN) 20 Text 3B Sending children away to boarding school has often been a controversial dea, Many cultures view this as at best incomprehensible and at worst tantamount to child abuse ~ the latter image encouraged by a number of notorious fictional representations. It is true that, in ‘the past, boarding,school education was often rather spartan in nature, and even cruel at times. In several «countries such schools were asociated with preparing zilitary oficers and civil servants for the hardships they would endure in their careers of public service. Althis has changed. Anybody who visits a ‘modem boarding school today comes away with an overwhelming impression of a happy, busy, ‘motivated community of well-adjated young people ‘who are cared for and who live in comfortable, personalised living spaces, The era of huge, impersonal

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