Am quite sure almost all parents have at some stage in their parenting lives given this some thought. Should we put our little one in a Hostel? Will it make him / her better? (From this point on, for the sake of brevity, I’ll use the word ‘him’ to denote children of either sex). Of course, the word ‘better’ is rarely defined in an exacting manner. There is no obvious set definition but ask a prospective parent and it’ll probably go something like this; ‘my child will become more confident, independent, better able to take on the ups and downs of life’ and so on. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it. However, the crucial point to note here is whether any of these assertions are based on actual facts or data or research or is it just our gut feeling, perhaps the result of some clever marketing by the Education industry. Now, having spent many hours digging for information, I find that there is a shocking lack of research done on the benefits or otherwise of Hostel stays. To quote A. Mishra, Lecturer and PhD supervisor at Kurukshetra University, “The survey of related literature gives a clear inkling that no research at the PhD level has been conducted, so far, in India on Hostel or Hostel-life” [1].
