Boarding School of Horrors: Difference between revisions

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* A variation of this appears in ''[[Disturbing Behavior]]'', where it's done with an entire ''town''. Parents move to Cradle Bay with their troubled teens so that they will be "[[Brainwashed|made]]" into model students and citizens.

* The Korean Horror Movie ''Destination Hell'' takes place in one of these.

* And the Korean drama ''[[The Crucible (film)|The Crucible]]'', based on the true story of a sex abuse scandal at a school for the hearing-impaired, which was suffered by both resident and non-resident students.

* And the Korean drama ''[[The Crucible (2011 Korean film)||The Crucible]]'', based on the true story of a sex abuse scandal at a school for the hearing-impaired, which was suffered by both resident and non-resident students.

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** It was reported that Dickens had created a minor backlash against Boarding Schools and a demand for quality assurance from his readers because of that gruesome description.

** Squeers was based on a man named William Shaw, headmaster of the Bowes Academy in northern England. Dickens made no effort to disguise this; the novel ruined Shaw and led to the closure of Bowes. However, there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that Dickens unfairly maligned Shaw—the incident with the blinded boys, for example, has been attributed by some historians to an illness which arrived in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and Shaw is recorded as having employed an eye specialist (at great expense) to try and cure them. Whatever the truth about him, quite a few people weren't happy with Dickens' treatment of him and apparently installed a window to him in the local church after his death.

* Let's not forget David's boarding school in ''[[David Copperfield]]''. Had it not been for people like [[Handsome Devil|Steerforth]], Mr. Bell or Tommy Traddles, it would've been even worse. And it ''was'' pretty bad, thanks to [[Sadist Teacher|Mr.]] [[Fat Bastard|Creakle]].

* Let's not forget David's boarding school in ''[[David Copperfield (novel)|David Copperfield]]''. Had it not been for people like [[Handsome Devil|Steerforth]], Mr. Bell or Tommy Traddles, it would've been even worse. And it ''was'' pretty bad, thanks to [[Sadist Teacher|Mr.]] [[Fat Bastard|Creakle]].

* The Stjärnberg boarding school in the Swedish novel ''Ondskan'' by journalist and action-novel author Jan Guillou, recently turned into a film. It was based on Mr Guillou's own boarding school experience in the 1950s. When he became a journalist in the 1960's, he managed to shut down that school by exposing its horrors to the general public.

** Funny story, he actually decided to become a journalist because it turned out to be the most effective way to shut down the school. Then he spent twenty years practicing his writing in journalism and in lesser novels like the Carl Hamilton series before he felt confident enough to write the book. We might call that dedication.

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* In [[Lois Duncan]]'s ''[[Down a Dark Hall]]'', the headmistress is forcing her trapped students to channel the ghosts of dead geniuses...which causes enough mental damage to drive them to insanity or suicide.

* The school in Cinda Williams Chima's ''The Wizard Heir'' is mainly a way for its wizard headmaster to locate young wizards to bind to him; the non-magical students are tormented—and sometimes killed—by the others, and when the protagonist refuses to go along, he's subjected to months of constant mental torture.

* In ''[[Otherland]]'', Felix Jongleur, evil mastermind of the Grail Brotherhood, grew up in the [[World War ~~One~~]] era and was sent to Cranleigh, a British boarding school that he remembers as a place of abject misery and torture, not the least of which because he is French. Even nearly two hundred years later (yes, he is that old), these memories give him [[Bad Dreams]]. Interestingly, they also cause him to pick Paul Jonas as his [[Opposite ~~Sex~~ Clone]] "daughter's" tutor, because he went to the same school, and this forms a minor plot point late in the story.

* In ''[[Otherland]]'', Felix Jongleur, evil mastermind of the Grail Brotherhood, grew up in the [[World War I]] era and was sent to Cranleigh, a British boarding school that he remembers as a place of abject misery and torture, not the least of which because he is French. Even nearly two hundred years later (yes, he is that old), these memories give him [[Bad Dreams]]. Interestingly, they also cause him to pick Paul Jonas as his [[Opposite Gender Clone]] "daughter's" tutor, because he went to the same school, and this forms a minor plot point late in the story.

* The 19th century Austro-Hungarian military academy portrayed in ''[[The Confusions of Young ~~Torless~~]] '' is one of these. While we never see much of the rest of the student body, the plot centers on the sadistic torment of one of its students, observed dispassionately by the title character.

* The 19th century Austro-Hungarian military academy portrayed in ''[[The Confusions of Young Törless]] '' is one of these. While we never see much of the rest of the student body, the plot centers on the sadistic torment of one of its students, observed dispassionately by the title character.

* ''[[Ella Enchanted]]'': Ella attends one which she eventually escapes. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for Hattie ordering her about and the punishment of meals being taken away if you talked back to a teacher.

* Coates Academy from ''[[Gone (novel)]]'' might count. It starts out as a boarding school for "difficult" kids, which basically translates into sadists, sociopaths, juvenile delinquents, bullies, and a few decent kids who talked back too often, or whose parents just wanted to get rid of them. It is described as a cold, foreboding place where the bullies rule. Then, things only get worse (for the few decent kids) after some of the kids develop super powers, the adults all vanish, and the bullies ''really'' rule. Eventually, it gets to be unbearable for every character except Drake.