Education and the Good Life by Bertrand Russell

Whether a boy or girl should be sent to a boarding school or a day school is, to my mind, a question which must be decided in each case according to circumstances and temperament. Each system has its own advantages; in some cases the advantages of one system are greater, in others those of the other. I propose, in this chapter, to set forth the kind of arguments which would weigh with me in deciding about my own children, and which, I imagine, would be likely to weigh with other conscientious parents.

There are first of all considerations of health. Whatever may be true of actual schools, it is clear that schools are capable of being made more scientifically careful in this respect than most homes, because they can employ doctors and dentists and matrons with the latest knowledge, whereas busy parents are likely to be comparatively uninformed medically. Moreover, schools can be put in healthy neighbourhoods. In the case of people who live in big towns, this argument alone is very powerful in favour of boarding schools. It is obviously better for young people to spend most of their life in the country, so that if their parents have to live in towns it may be desirable to send the children away for their schooling. This argument may perhaps cease, before long, to have much validity: the health of London, for example, is steadily improving, and might be brought up to the standard of the country by the artificial use of ultra-violet light.