Sergey is my nodding acquaintance, as they say. But even a brief conversation with him is enough to understand that he somehow differs from various acquaintances and friends of mine. It is really difficult to express it in words - in what he is different. For example, he has a quick mind but at the same time huge gaps in his knowledge are equal to those of an ordinary schoolboy. Besides, he is as naive as a child.
I chanced to meet Sergey not long ago and during our conversation he became interested in my work. When I started to talk about my Foundation activities, he said he was brought up in a boarding school. This has sorted the things out.
He misses his boarding school, the unity he doesn’t experience any more in his everyday life. But he does not want to communicate with his former classmates. In the boarding school they used to collect cigarette buts and inhale glue; they secretly toured all the adjacent regions and what not. Their night duty Uncle Kolya, a good man by the way, always used to repeat “All of you will end up in prison anyway” when saying goodnight to the boys. Knowing the statistics about the boarding school graduates it is difficult to disagree with the statement. Two of the boys had been put into prison before they graduated from the school.
It happens Sergey misses boarding school unity and longs for those rear situations in which several people unite, live and act as a whole, even if not for long. But then he says that before he was enrolled in the army service he hadn’t seen any perspectives in life at all and had been constantly depressed.
Besides, being a victim of the social structure, he has a curious idea of a social reform: on the background of a complete alcohol ban, to issue people licenses for drinking two or three times a year on the basis of the decision of a special commission. Really, if a person cannot control his emotions and think soberly he is not able to carry weapons or drive because this will cause hazard for public. Consequences of alcoholism are disastrous.
Why am I writing this? Sergey is one of the few boarding school graduates who have been able to somehow adapt to the “life beyond its walls”. But do we know how many are those who were not able to do that? - Absolute majority. However at present from every quarter we hear talks about a necessity “to fill” empty boarding schools by children from families: those with low income or finding themselves in complicated circumstances… To my mind, doing this, the society is biting the hand that feeds it because these children become social invalids when they grow up. Supporting families and not boarding schools seems a much more important issue. We need to create conditions when boarding school staff will not be trying to preserve their working places at all costs.
