Boarding Schools

[rachelmanija]

This week iknowcommawrite, osprey-archer, and littlerhymes all posted on Malory Towers, one of Enid Blyton's boarding school series. (scioscribe also posted on Enid Blyton and naked tennis.)

Poll #21998

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 72

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The best part of boarding school is...

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Midnight feasts
33 (47.8%)

Sports
2 (2.9%)

An ocean swimming pool
18 (26.1%)

Pranks
7 (10.1%)

Spanking and caning
4 (5.8%)

Getting a good education
8 (11.6%)

Everyone is a girl
28 (40.6%)

Everyone is a boy
9 (13.0%)

Magic
25 (36.2%)

Something else which I will explain in comments
6 (8.7%)

My favorite non-magical boarding school is...

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Malory Towers
17 (32.7%)

St. Clare's
6 (11.5%)

The Chalet School
12 (23.1%)

Rugby School
0 (0.0%)

Kingscote
8 (15.4%)

Another which I will name in comments
14 (26.9%)

My favorite magical boarding school is...

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Hogwarts
34 (57.6%)

Roke
11 (18.6%)

Brakebills
10 (16.9%)

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children
6 (10.2%)

Vampire Academy
1 (1.7%)

Some other which I will name in comments
10 (16.9%)

The Worst Ever Boarding School is...

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The one in Jane Eyre
40 (70.2%)

The one in Skin Hunger
5 (8.8%)

The one in Prep
4 (7.0%)

Some other which I will name in comments
8 (14.0%)

Comments

[rachelmanija]

What is the Fulcrum? I'm not planning on reading it so I don't care about spoilers.

[julian]

I don't really think of it as a boarding school, though I suppose if one is counting Ender's school, then the Fulcrum counts.

Anyway: Basically, identified orogenes (earthquake makers, in brief) get brought to a training school in the capital. They train together, and are, basically, emotionally bonsai'd so their trainers have control over them. There's ranks (signified by rings), and competition, and so on.

[flamebyrd]

But also the curriculum, as it were, was created by someone who would definitely have ticked "spanking and caning" in your poll.

[conuly]

And breaking people's hands omg.

[conuly]

The kids are emotionally neglected and sometimes killed which, really, is a mercy, all so that when they're grown they'll be broken and subdued and not rebel against what is, for all practical purposes, their enslavement.

[tibicina]

Actually, in a much 'prettier', but at base no less awful way - the school in Never Let Me Go.

[out_there]

Oh, good point. I'd forgotten about that.

TW: all the child abuse

[liv]

As my husband put it: it's magical boarding school as an allegory for chattel slavery.

So apart from the bit where they kidnap magical children and imprison them in a horrible school full of torture (physical and magical) and unreasonable competitions to train them into using their powers for the benefit of the authorities rather than to overthrow their torturers, they also force breed them as soon as they reach their teens in order to make more magical children. And if the magical children fail the horrible ordeals, either because their magic isn't strong enough or they are not compliant enough, the school arranges for them to have brain surgery that leaves them completely paralysed, and then hooks them up to machines that make use of their magic in a way that involves the kids being conscious and in excrutiating agony at least some of the time. I suppose technically that last bit doesn't happen *at* the Fulcrum, but it's a direct result of the Fulcrum's policy on handling failure.

There is actually some boarding-school-story stuff going on amongst all this horrifying torture, but it's admittedly a fairly minor part of the plot.

Re: TW: all the child abuse

[rachelmanija]

HOLY SHIT NIGHTMARE FUEL.

Re: TW: all the child abuse

[conuly]

That's why sometimes the teachers just let the students die, because they know what happens to failures.

And if they're really not strong enough, then they're brainwashed from childhood to become the captors of those people, who are equally enslaved in their own way.