This story shows children and parents both feeling trapped by the strict expectations of a British prep school.
What is "The Happiest Days of Your Life" by Penelope Lively
This story features a family trip where the protagonist confronts cultural expectations and personal desires.
What is Close to the Water’s Edge?
– In “The Logical Song,” this band sings about becoming “logical, clinical, cynical” as they grow up.
Who is Supertramp?
This film about a strict U.S. boarding school challenges the idea of conformity through poetry.
What is Dead Poets Society?
This documentary explores the emotional impact of British boarding schools on young boys in the 1990s.
What is The Making of Them?
This story features a father who insists on climbing a dangerous mountain with his daughter, pushing her beyond her limits.
What is The Shining Mountain?
This text outlines the history and purpose of elite U.S. universities such as Princeton, Yale, and Harvard.
What is What Are Ivy League Universities??
This story uses a difficult birth and a suicide to introduce a child to suffering and mortality.
What is Indian Camp?
This story explores how pressure to act “like a man” can distort a young person’s emotional development.
What is Just Like That?
These two texts together highlight rising national concern over bullying in the early 2000s.
What are PM’s wife crusades against bullies and Together we can beat the bullies?