[问题] For Discussion: Do You Think We Should Send Kids To Boarding School in China?

Bobcat

There are quite a bit of discussion in the local parent community, which I posted in here. What do you think?

First an article from a current Princeton student on her experience.

National Merit Essay
“I’m not going back to America with you. I’m staying in China. I want to go to Limai School, for the whole year,” I announced to my mother after seeing Limai School in Beijing, China, for the first time. I was eleven years old. It was a boarding school. I had never been away from home for more than three weeks, and this time, Mama and Baba would be thousands of miles away. Yet I was sure Limai was the place I wanted to be.
I could go on and on about my experiences at Limai—sharing a room, but not a culture, with five other girls, sleeping on a wooden board with a thin layer of bedding, waking up each morning to a shrill bell at 5:30, learning the cafeteria rule that we couldn’t waste any food, not even a grain of rice. . . .
But one experience has stayed with me all these years, becoming family lore: my first biology class. I remember it was fifth period, after lunch and the afternoon rest, after struggling through math, two periods of Chinese, and geography. I listened attentively throughout class, expecting to be confused. It wasn’t until the bell sounded, however, that I realized: I comprehended nothing Teacher Bai said, nothing at all except the meaningless (at the time) English acronym, DNA.
Why has this particular experience stuck in my mind? I coped through thousands of minutes of class in China, but this one class period stuck out. Perhaps it was the novelty of being clueless on my first day of class. Perhaps it was the progress that I was amazed to have made, managing a “B” on my midterm exam. Most of all it was the passion that I discovered—the fascination that I’ve had ever since with how the world works. For example, how does the push-pull movement of myosin and actin allow my fingers to move to type this up? How do almost unimaginably small neurons work together so I can recall the “first day of biology” memory? What’s in my DNA (or not in my DNA at all, but my environment) that makes me who I am?
From the girl who didn’t know how to ask her Chinese biology teacher for help emerged the girl who often “hangs out” with teachers, trying to absorb their knowledge. From the girl who worked for hours learning hundreds of Chinese characters (from “cell” to “root hair”) came the one who frequents the University of Georgia library to work for hours learning the intricacies of primate evolution. And from the girl who just started to appreciate the wonders of the natural world arose the me of today: the proud nerd who has opened her eyes to the joy of discovery and the complexity of the world around.