Article 11: The Power of Boarding Schools: A Historiographical Review

Boarding schools are generally understood to significantly impact the social development of their students; for this reason, such schools have historically been used as tools for reinforcing power relationships and cultural identities. In the United States, residential schools are attended both by those with the most power—the social elite—and with the least— American Indians and Alaska Natives, the deaf, and children with behavioral disorders, for example. Thus, as a total institution (a community isolated from other social influences and reliant on an institution’s bureaucracy), a boarding school can cultivate elite status or impose assimilation. Although only a small percentage of American students attend residential schools, such institutions are deserving of increased scholarly attention because they have far-reaching social and economic effects.