Boarding School of Horrors: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"I never went to boarding school, because my parents quite liked me."''|'''Jeremy Hardy''', ''[[The News Quiz]]''}}

 

 

 

Had (has?) some elements of truth in television. Boarding schools were not a Victorian innovation, but the institution was embraced as a means of counteracting the softening, emasculating influence of mothers and preparing young men for the harsh rigours of the world of business and Empire. The move to purposefully harsh institutions as a solution to parental mollycoddling took place in the context of the early-mid Victorian love of childhood and doting parenthood, which it was later feared would render the new generation of the better sort of people - i.e. the middle and upper classes - too soft to maintain Anglo supremacy. Thus, boarding schools were intended to instil discipline and self-discipline, deference to authority, strict morals, a vague sense of the Christian religion, and teamwork. This was of course in addition to all the usual things one expects a public school (a school open to the paying public as opposed to a private school, which was more exclusive) to do.

== Comic Books ==

* In the adult comic ''[[Viz]]'', the character "Spoilt Bastard" briefly attended one.

* Greytowers School in the British comic ''[[The Dandy]]'', attended by popular character Winker Watson.

* ''[[The Dreaming]]'s'' Greenwich Private College barely makes it into this trope. While the teachers, though strict, are not sadistic, and the students are friendly, you run the risk of being snatched by a Quinkan whenever you go to sleep.

* Was a staple of the comic strips in old-style British magazines for young teenage girls, like ''Bunty'', ''Jackie'' and ''Pony School''.

* Dotheboys Hall in [[Charles Dickens]]' ''[[Nicholas Nickleby]]'' makes this [[Older Than Radio]]. The villainous Wackford Squeers is said to be based on a real headmaster, who was so cruel that he [[Multiple Reference Pun|blinded some of his pupils]].

** 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.

* 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]].

* 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.

* The school in [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s ''[[Heralds of Valdemar|Brightly Burning]]'' isn't a boarding school, but otherwise matches this trope. An elite group of "sixth form" students can get away with just about anything, including severely beating a younger boy for not stealing on their behalf.

* [[George Orwell]]'s essay "Such, Such Were the Joys" is about his experiences in such a school.

** In the [[Real Life]], the teachers of the school considered young Eric Blair as one of the truly rising stars in achievement and predicted him a bright future in the literature.

** Hogwarts is also noteworthy because, being a positive example of a boarding school in a very popular series, it has single-handedly caused the modern decline of this trope (especially in British literature).

* The Prufrock Preparatory school in ''The Austere Academy'', Book The Fifth of ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]''. The buildings are even shaped like ''gravestones''. The school is run by Vice Principal Nero. When the Baudelaire siblings first arrive he informs them about the fine dormitories they have, but that unless students have parental permission, they must sleep on hay in a tin shack (known as the Orphan's Shack). He considers himself to be a genius and thinks that he plays the violin well, but in fact he is unworthy, stupid, mean, arrogant, obnoxious, annoying and cannot play the violin well at all. Nonetheless, students must attend his lengthy violin recitals every day, or else they must buy him a large bag of candy and watch him eat it. The Baudelaires are forced to live in the Orphan's Shack which is infested with crabs, fungus drips from the ceiling, the tin walls are covered in horrible wallpaper (green with pink hearts). They are also regularly bullied by a rude, violent girl named Carmelita Spats and Sunny (a baby) is made to be a secretary for Nero. There's also a rule that if students are late to class (or Sunny is late to work) their hands will be tied behind their backs during meals and they'll have to "lean down at eat their food like a dog". Sunny has her silverware taken away because she's gonna work in the administrative building where students are not allowed. Also if students are late to mealtime their glasses are taken away and beverages will be served in large puddles on the trays.

* St Custards in the [[Molesworth]] books, and St. Trinian's, both drawn by cartoonist Ronald Searle.

* In the Inspector Linley detective novel ''Well Schooled In Murder'', a murder is covered up by the staff and all 600 pupils of a Boarding School of Horrors.

* Happens in a ''[[Goosebumps]]'' short story, "The Perfect School"

* The Afrikaaner boarding school in ''The Power of One'' fits this trope, though Peekay's experience is worse than most because he's English.

* The horribly built school in ''The War Between The Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids'' is not only a dumping ground for "bad" students (the main POV character is actually very intelligent but infuriated his teacher by making up words ("inkwart- that blister that develops when you write too many stupid English assignments") and sticking to them; another is a very smart [[Cloudcuckoolander]]; another was [[Raised by Wolves|raised by hyenas]]) but also for ''bad teachers'' like the self-absorbed art teacher who jousted as The Rococo Knight.

* Crunchem Hall in [[Roald Dahl]]'s ''[[Matilda (novel)|Matilda]]'' fits the trope to a T, despite being a day school. The headmistress delights in, among other things, locking students in an iron maiden-style closet full of broken glass and nails, forcing students to eat chocolate cake until they either vomit or explode, and picking students up by their hair and hammer-throwing them across the school grounds.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

** "I was seventeen miles from Graybridge before I was caught by the school leopard."

* Francis spends the first few seasons of ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'' in military school.

* ''[[Poltergeist: The Legacy]]'''s tenth episode "The Substitute" was a classic example of this trope.

* Farringham School For Boys in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' adventure "[[Doctor Who/Recap/NS/S3/E08 Human Nature|Human Nature]]", more so in the [[Expanded Universe|novel]] the episodes were based on. And that was before The Doctor turned up, Cosmic Horror-Show in tow.

 

== Real Life ==

** The worst part: for four-fifths of the year the victim is stuck in the same building as their tormenters, longer if they come from overseas. In a lot of boarding houses there is literally ''no place to hide'', often intentionally.

* After attending a real-life version as a youth, [[Roald Dahl]] often used the trope in his fiction, including the Matilda example above.

** Speaking of WWASP, here's a story of one of the [http://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/comments/hk0xy/a_gay_teen_describes_her_experience_at_a_utah/ survivors of the program.]

** This sort of thing was also quite disturbingly glamorised by the british television series ''Brat Camp''

** A portion of Leslie Marmon Silko's ''Gardens in the Dunes'' is set in such a school, although the protagonists escape rather quickly.

** In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology to the residential schools former students for the federal government's part in the residential school system. About time, dude...