This post is in the series Stories from Family Memorabilia, on researching family history, via odd objects and papers.

Today’s historical mystery is a 1938 4th Grade report card. It’s a strange report, from an odd location.

And as usual, I can’t pick up any old family paper without it stimulating my curiosity. Like Paul Harvey, the old American radio broadcaster, I want “the rest of the story.”

Despite the missing first name on this paper, I realize quickly I’m looking at my dad’s report card, since in 1938 he was 10 years old. Still, I noticed odd things about this report.

Harsh Teachers

For starters, one teacher’s comments were over-the-top insensitive. I’m not a fan of participation trophies, so mentioning he was sloppy or untidy was acceptable. But for his English teacher, H.D.H., to call him–any kid!–“lazy and unintelligent” raised my Mama hackles.

Dad as an adult was both industrious and bright, working as a creative landscape architect. So I put on my psych cap. (I formerly worked in both psychiatric and educational Occupational Therapy.) What the heck was going on with Dad at age 10?

Words from less harsh teachers described him in this report as “content with something much less than his best”, “aught to have done better”, “inclined to be erratic”, “rather mischievous”, disobedient, silly, slack, and forgetful. Ooooh, this is beginning to sound like a boy who had potential, but didn’t give a rip. But why?

Conversely, his French teacher wrote “He is keen and intelligent and well ahead for his age.” His Scripture teacher wrote “listens well and answers intelligently.” And while Dad was 10, the average age of the class was 11 years old. Hmm. I’ve worked with gifted children who misbehaved out of sheer boredom.

Children on the Move

Finally I notice the words at the top: Form: “Remove” and in the tiniest cursive imaginable at the bottom of the report, “Knowing he is leaving has unsettled him, I think.”

So Dad was leaving. To go where? And where, in the world (literally) was this school, teaching French and Latin to 4th graders?

The odds were high he had just come from another country, and soon leaving for another. You see, Dad was the son of an American foreign service officer. I have a list of dates of dates and places where Dad’s family lived.

This list below, created by one of Dad’s sisters, reveals that Dad moved four times in his first 10 years of life. Born in Winnipeg Canada, he then lived in Arlington Virginia, Trieste Italy, and Plymouth England, then later that same year to Lynchburg, VA.

Where was Ravenswood School?

The location of Ravenswood School puzzled me. In 1938 Dad lived in two places. Historical sites for Lynchburg don’t show any school by that name, yet four hours from there is the town of Ravenswood, West Virginia. Three schools there had the name Ravenswood.

I found in my ancestry app that while Dad was at Ravenswood (in January) his grandmother had died in Lynchburg.

So the Lynchburg timing was right. But wait! But why would they dump him in a school four hours away at age 10, unless it was a boarding school? They didn’t have boarding schools in WV, right?

Also unusual to me was the inclusion of Latin and French in an American 4th Grade classroom, even in 1938. The wording was weird too: “Form 4” instead of “Grade 4” with the school term was labeled “Easter.”

I called my lifeline (my brother) who said dad had been in a boarding school at some point in his life. So thinking the town of Ravenswood, WV might be a red herring, I Googled Plymouth, England. Lo and behold, there was a Ravenswood School in England, too.

Then began a deep dive for me down a dark hole for two days.

British boarding schools for 8-year olds?!

That Ravenswood was indeed a boarding school. And from the dates on the report card, I realized Dad had been there at ages 9 and 10. Possibly at even a younger age. WHAT?

Although my grandparents were American, it was particularly common for children of diplomats and others in working government service in other countries to send their children to boarding schools. The justification for it was that it would supposedly give children more stability and an excellent education.

But for some reason, I always thought this involved the teen years, not children still clutching teddy bears and wanting mom to read bedtime stories to them.

Then I found the website Boarding School Survivors: Therapeutic help for those affected by boarding, created by Nick Duffell, also author of the book The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System.

I was shocked to finally understand one of the lines in tiny print at the bottom of Dad’s report card: “too many stripes for silly behavior and disobedience.” That meant beatings with a cane. I was also distressed reading about how much bullying and even more extreme abuse took place within early boarding schools, meted out by older children.

Dad, born in February, at the time of this report card was only 10 years and 1 month old, so the report was mostly about his behavior at age 9.

Boarding school documentaries reveal harsh truths

I then watched two documentaries on YouTube showing 8 year olds being sent off to boarding school in more recent years. I was disturbed by how it distressed those particularly young children. Leaving Home At Eight | Boarding School Children follows four little girls, and The Making of Them (1994) (also connected with Nick Duffell) several 8 and 9-year-old boys.

Listening to one little boy in the latter documentary broke my heart. He had quickly learned to shut down his emotions and be a brave little man. Boys who cried for their mothers were particularly targeted for bullying.

Strangely, those two modern documentaries revealed distress in some of the mothers who felt pressured to send their kids to boarding schools. They were truly persuaded it would be good for them. Some believed it would give their children more stability, what with the family moving often with Dad’s work. Many of these women had husbands who had been in boarding schools themselves, so for the fathers that was all they knew.

I urge you to watch those documentaries, but with a tissue handy.

Raising resilient kids at on the move

This deep dive has me appreciating the permission I always had, being an American, to educate my children in a variety of ways and even when moving to new locations. As a child, I moved every three years: Dad had apparently caught the moving bug.

I feel that caused growth in me as child and helped me to learn to adapt well. My husband and I while raising our three children lived in three different U.S. states and one other country (Norway.) Of course, it was not always easy for the kids changing schools. But they all grew into adults who love to travel.

Educationally, depending on each of my own child’s individual needs, we used a variety of methods. Our children experienced a mix of public school (including in Norway) and home school–depending on each one’s individual needs at the time–growing up to be brilliant and loving adults now teaching their own children to explore.

Fresh understanding

Now I know more than I wanted to know from a single piece of paper from my vintage paper pile. But it’s got me thinking about my dad and how it may have affected him.

It also has given me more insight into my Grandmother’s writings about living in British Raj, India. She had commented with some horror on young children being sent away from India to England to boarding schools, while both parents remained in India. Once they were shipped off, some children didn’t see their parents for years. Grandma had come from an extremely tight and loving family, so this shook her.

I want to weep for all the precious moments British moms missed (as did my Dad’s American mom) with their children in boarding school. Some of you know I wrote a book called Delight in Your Child’s Design (Second Edition, Kindle) so know my passion for that. I can only hope that those moms now know there are ways to educate children well, while keeping them close.