Posted by: @fantasia

Because there certainly wouldn't be an Experiment House post 1970s (Silver Chair movie) right?

Is there something specific about Experiment House that might make you think that?

There's always bad schools and there's always mean teachers.

Sadly, there are horror stories about schools, public and private, that emerge to this day.

Posted by: @fantasia

is it possible Ms. Gerwig has pulled the concept of the Experiment House to this movie?

Sounds like Aunt Gertrude from the Lefay fragment.  (I hope they do not try to incorporate the Lefay fragment into the movie.)

Posted by: @icarus

Is there something specific about Experiment House that might make you think that?

Yeah, the fact that The Head was a woman.

Posted by: @starlit

Sadly, there are horror stories about schools, public and private, that emerge to this day.

Certainly. But since it's been mentioned on other threads that Ms. Gerwig likes to pull from author's other works for either inspiration or small details, I had wondered if Lewis's Experiment House in SC might be pulled into MN due to the timeline shift. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that in my opening.

Also, I think I may have been confused for somebody else in the OP. I'm pretty sure I haven't discussed this subject before.

Posted by: @starlit

Also, I think I may have been confused for somebody else in the OP. I'm pretty sure I haven't discussed this subject before.

Oh, you're right starlit, I went back and checked and I do have the wrong person (they also had "star" as part of their username). I will edit. Thanks for the correction. 

For what its worth, i do think there is a good chance Greta Gerwig will be pulling on thematic threads from across the entire Chronicles of Narnia ("breaking the arc" so to say) even if not necessarily reusing specific plot points.

As many others have noted, other than one line at the start of LWW about World War Two, the Narnia books are very much stories of the 1950s, and i have to believe that its that sort of vibe that Greta Gerwig is seeking to lean into with her time-jump for the story.

I don't think she's necessarily going to repeat the same "author meta-narrative" element she did with Little Women, but i do expect there to be at least some connective tissue with her previous films from an artistic perspective, so its a realistic possibility that the 1950s will come into play there as well.

In terms of Experiment House itself... yeah, i think if you are going to do a school scene in MN, then drawing on Lewis' critique of Experiment House isn't a bad place to start - but at the same time i still think you could portray that same critique in almost any decade of the last 80 years or so, and it wouldn't be anachronistic. 

Posted by: @icarus

Posted by: @icarus

Is there something specific about Experiment House that might make you think that?

Yeah, the fact that The Head was a woman.

Were female heads of schools uncommon in the 70s? I don't feel like they're that uncommon now in my country (I'm American) but maybe they are or were uncommon in England. 

Er, well, I actually grew up in the 1950's you know. Are you telling me that it is as if the books are coming alive at the age I was when I first got to read them? Now that might be an interesting point of view. I'd better make sure I dress right to view the film, in an old school uniform, just like the ones in Pauline Baynes' illustrations, just to get the mood right.  

@icarus In terms of Experiment House itself... yeah, i think if you are going to do a school scene in MN, then drawing on Lewis' critique of Experiment House isn't a bad place to start - but at the same time i still think you could portray that same critique in almost any decade of the last 80 years or so, and it wouldn't be anachronistic

From my point of view, the world has changed quite significantly since I went to school, especially the first school I attended, where I had to obey the rules, which were more about "crowd control", where boarding school food, though plentiful, was the same for everyone regardless of likes and dislikes, and we had to finish our plate, regardless. As well as being housed on opposite sides of the Administration Building, including the school hall, Boys & girls ate in separate dining rooms and only saw each other in class at the boarding school where I was an inmate. Fortunately, when I left that place to go to an ordinary public school, I found that primary school girls were educated in a separate building from the boys, & both were educated separately from the Infants' section.  The school library was in the boys' section, along with the sports equipment & that they got all the prizes, scholarships & bursaries to enable them to get university educations after secondary school finished. In 1960, when I went to High School, myself, the government had decided to cut costs by educating boys and girls together, given the growth in population at that time because of us baby boomers. 

Lewis' critique of Experiment House, itself, along with his oblique references to how the Pevensie children were specifically educated at boarding school, suggests that whilst Experiment House could equally have been a day school, it could feasibly have been a boarding school. And most definitely, when Jill & Eustace were able to meet at all, it must have been co-educational. 

 @col-klink Were female heads of schools uncommon in the 70s? I don't feel like they're that uncommon now in my country (I'm American) but maybe they are or were uncommon in England. 

In the 1950's, there would be female Principals for the girls' sections of schools and in either private or public schools entirely for girls, in Australia, like in UK. Male Principals were similarly the rule at boys' schools, and in co-educational schools as well. By the 1970's it was beginning to loosen up a bit, when married women in 1973 were able to get maternity leave and for teachers, in particular, they were also no longer forced to leave work once the babies started arriving. So yes, female teachers & Principals (as we call Headmasters and Headmistresses now) did become more common after that. Before these small changes, in the 1950's Headmistresses were often either single ladies, or else had been able to return to work once their children started school as well. 

I remember that there were bullies even in the private schools like the one I attended.  The principal couldn’t do much to stop the bullying.  I think it was  worse in the high school than in elementary school,  where it was much like Jill and Eustace had to confront in The Silver Chair.  The parents of the students had a lot of money and their children acted like snobs. And often the children would get away with the harassment, which was something that was common even in a Christian high school. I don’t think the teachers or the principal were always to blame for it.  In some cases there wasn’t that much they could do to stop it.  But I don’t think the argument that “kids will always be kids” can be used as an excuse.