cap_ironman | Question About Tony's Schooling...

In the film, he wears an MIT class ring and I know someone took screencaps once to try and read the year. I only recall this because I took it to people who went to MIT to be all "Is this legit?" and they were like "Looks pretty legit!" Apparently there are beavers on MIT class rings (called the brass rat). Allow an MIT grad to explain it better than me: http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/pulse/notable_alumni/iron_man_mit_87.shtml

Thanks... Interesting link! Though, I was actually wondering about movie!Tony's high school (pre-university) education, actually... :)

Ah, sorry. I don't remember if they talked about that. But they may have to, because they sort of shifted Rhodey from being an MIT grad to being a West Point grad. So perhaps they met in high school? Who knows.

I did not know that! I thought it was still MIT... Thanks for that! Though imagining Tony commuting from home as a normal high school student is... really strange... o_O

It's just an issue of Rhodey's career, really, and how possible that is (or rather isn't) without a background at the Academy. So I think if it's fudged around, it's to try and lessen that.

There are plenty of elite, pre-Academy-styled boarding schools out there, so it's not hard to imagine that, if for instance Tony was problematic, well... Yes, I am suggesting his parents might send him to military school XD

I-I think that sounds even more horrifying! Imagine some teacher trying to wake up Movie!Tony at 5:30-6 in the morning for drill! He'd probably find Tony guarding his room with Dummy-style bots within the first month! ;D

Though, I have no idea how strict military schools are in the US of A... Could the terribly irreverant and screw-the-rules mentality Tony has, been maintained/developed even under miliary school envirnment, do you think?

... My personal experience with people says that, yes, it could have. I think having more rules just makes people find better and more interesting ways to get around them and makes them better at not getting in trouble for breaking them. I also think it's also possible he's had other experiences—I mean, whose personality is wholy shaped by high school? That would be kind of sad, actually—but perhaps a more restrictive childhood would cause him to be more rebelious once he'd left it as an adult. Plus a psuedo-military background would explain his own devotion to the military industrial complex that continues even after his traumatic experience. IDK. He could have gone to public school and if someone justified it to me, I'd believe it.

In general, though, I'd say the US military is able to be pretty irreverent, even at the academy level. Yeah, there are a lot of ideas about discipline and respect, but it's not like they've banned fun and shenanigans.

Interesting! My experience with military school kids has been rather limited (in my experience, military schools are either insanely competitive or exclusive to 'army brats') and of the 'straight kids' variety, so I wondered... :)

Thanks for the insightful comments!

I had a relative who joined the Navy and would've been shipped off to Okinawa if he had better impulse control. Great guy, but similar to Tony in all the wrong ways--clever and quick-witted and utterly unrepentant about what came out of his mouth, and the only reason he gets out of a third of the trouble he deserves is that he's too charming by half.

Tony could theoretically hack it for a long while in a military setting because, like my relative, he could understand the rules and the mentality even as he stomped all over it and set it afire, so he'd take his punishment without more than a token complaint. But after a while, it'd bore him. He'd be back out on his ass eventually.

I'm not American, but I do teach at a "rich kids' boarding school". The most expensive and most exclusive one in my own small part of the world. I honestly don't think the "education" part is that much different, truly (though the facilities may well be a lot better). What you're paying for is networking. The whole Old Boy thing. And of course the fact the school is usually much smaller than a typical public school, so much more personal. I know 75% of the students by name, and there are kids I've taught all five years, and their brothers before them so I know the families really well. I just had dinner tonight with a set of parents who I taught all three of their sons, and when I was in the States last year they sent me to stay with the grandparents in Colorado.

Of course, an obvious difference in America will be the fact that you're likely looking at a single-sex environment. That's not unusual here, where even public schools are overwhelmingly single-sex, but I get the impression it's more so over yonder.

If Valedictorian is basically Dux, which I think it is, there's no criterion other than academics for selection. It's a top of class thing, end of story. You'll want an all-rounder for Head Boy, but the two are nowhere near the same. The fact a private school is so well funded means you'll have a really wide range of sports, music, culture etc offered (from fencing to shooting to sailing to riding, and I know one local school, not mine, gives flying lessons). Because we're of Scottish extraction we also have a Pipe Band, highly successful in competition, and Pipe Major and Drum Major are both pretty sought after positions.

The awesome thing is definitely the Boarding House, and the shenanigans the boys get up to there. Imagine heading off to college for the dorm experience, but at ten or twelve instead of eighteen. Our guys have regular midnight feasts, and clamber across the roof to climb the bell tower in dead of night, and one cohort (before my time, but it lives in legend) actually tunnelled from the house to the Headmaster's office. And they strung the damn thing with electic lightbulbs! There's also the potentially negative side, though we have it fairly well in check, where the juniors are basically slaves to the seniors and there are all manner of hazing and initiation rituals, and various night raids and so on.

TL;DR

I'd say there really are not as many single-sex schools in America anymore. The ones I know of are all-female. BUT when Tony Stark would have been in school, some of the schools that have gone co-ed would have still been all-male.

But American boarding schools are pretty much as you describe boarding schools overseas. The dorm life can be pretty insane, but I wouldn't say the education level is that much higher than at, say, magnet public schools and that sort of thing. There may be SOME opportunities and, for instance, there are technology levels available there because of funding and some schools have special stuff in terms of like science classes. As well as the sports/music/culture things.

All of the ones I know anything, have a senior student who is sort of a dorm head aside from teachers and etc. who are the adult supervision. The teachers and school people tend to live on campus. So that is part of what contributes to the madness and also how they try to temper it.

I hope that teaching at this kind of school is good! I didn't enjoy teaching, but that was at any socio-economic level and I didn't really like going to school--again, at any socio-economic level. So my bias is just clearly anti-high schoolers on any level.

Sounds awesome... :D

Though, I have another question? Since Tony would have been about 2-3 years younger than the rest of his classmates how would this have affected the dorm behaviour towards him, honestly?

I mean, I had a roomie who graduated at 15 (when we were all 17-18) but we were girls and she was a) high octane levels of adorably cute and b) really not smarter, just had insanely competitive parents... So she was possibly the most coddled kid in school... I have a feeling it would be different for an actual trufax genius BOY... Amirite?

Honestly, I think that depends 95% on Tony (or the prodigy in question) and how much of an ass they make of themselves. (I leave the other 5% for the natural bullying instinct that pops up from time to time despite the best of precautions and intentions.)

Couple years back back we had a kid, who did wind up Dux unsurprisingly, who was three years younger than the rest of the cohort and no one ever said boo. He wasn't particularly popular, didn't get invited to or included in things, but he couldn't have cared less, he was always studying. Everyone left him entirely to his own devices and that was the way he liked it. There was a very real demarcation in terms of privileges though; there was a firm understanding from the very beginning that he would never be a prefect, or considered for Head Boy or House Captain or anything like that. He was a classmate but not a peer, and certainly not a leader.

By extreme contrast, where troubles kick in is when you overstep your bounds. The next two anecdotes aren't about accelerated kids but I think they demonstrate an applicable point. First: if you trespass in restricted areas. Juniors who enter senior studies or lounges or god forbid bedrooms will get their comeuppance pretty savagely. Not in the form of a beating, but usually they get stuffed into a fridge or a locker or whatever and left there till someone else takes pity. There's a 'sport' where the bravest juniors try to run across the senior deck -- it shaves a lot of time off walking around the building and through the quad, but it's the most heinous crime. If they make it across they're safe, you can't chase them, but if the kid gets caught he gets couched, which means stuffed into the bowels of one of the couches in the lounge, cushions replaced, seniors sit back down and keep watching tv or whatever. Length of sentence depends on repeat offending/general popularity etc.

Then there's flipping. Flipping basically involves a couple of seniors grabbing the mattress in the middle of the night while the junior is asleep and flipping it over so the kid winds up trapped between the mattress and bed base, still swaddled in sheets and blankets. They then have to somehow extricate themselves, after the seniors have gone back to bed, without waking Matron, or one of the duty prefects. It's a time honoured ritual, and it's just understood that you put in your time, and one day you get to pass it on. Last year, in a day to live in infamy, a fifth (ie 15) in a fit of the most insane bravado of all time, flipped the Head Boarder, ie king of the B House. It was pandemonium. The HB wound up dragging the miscreant out into the hallway and beating his ass with a hockey stick till he begged for mercy. The duty prefects just stood around and watched and even the House Master somehow 'slept through it'. By the end of it the whole house was standing around singing the school song, and even the juniors agreed that the natural order had been restored.

I can imagine Tony making a real ass of himself and getting on various people's bad sides. I can also imagine him inventing increasingly devious ways to commit crimes and escape detection. But if he takes his licks he'll be okay. And if he's nice to people and his tormentors are dicks, then natural justice eventually prevails, like the year an out gay kid got sick of the razzing he was getting from one jackass, and egg, flour and plastic wrapped his sportscar and left it to bake in the sun. When the Neanderthal came for vengeance the entire house called I am Spartacus on it. Reaction from the Dean: 'Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy'. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that I teach at a school where the queers punk the homophobes and not the other way round.

Your school sounds rather fun and awesome... Though that kid who flipped a senior REALLY had some guts, whoa! (Oh well, atleast he has an interesting tale to his kids a few decades down the line! ;)

And yeah, I can see movie!Tony making an ass out of himself and pranking and all that, it's just that I can't really see him taking his licks... Thus the whole 'I wonder how he survived'... (comics!Tony I mostly see as not taking his licks either, but not really doing much of the pranking either... Much more talented than his classmates, yes... but not doing much else to aggravate them either... And of course, he'd have Tiberius 'protecting' him/ taking him under his wings, too...)

I think it depends on both age and the culture of the school; ie it's more likely to be a problem with middle-school-aged classmates than with elementary age or high school age. I skipped a grade and then went to a public middle school for sixth grade, where I became pretty much the 'designated target' for the entire grade. I didn't intentionally irritate anyone, I think it was just the combination of being both younger and smarter than most of my classmates (who were, for the most part... not that smart). The next year I went to a private school with more flexible grade levels (all the classes were mixed age), and it wasn't that big a deal (for the kids, anyway). But there's so much nonsense about ages and who's bigger or smaller or more mature or more interested in dating or whatever at that age that any difference can make you stand out and become a target.

Also, in the comics at least, the school Tony went to was pretty harsh, discipline-wise. They told him he couldn't have toys and took away his erector set iron man. He was seven. Who tells a seven year old they can't play with toys? But I digress...

I think as far as elementary school goes, the early grades (k-2) would be most problematic in terms of social developement.
High school, he's likely to run into the 'adoption' thing, especially at a co-ed school, but it's still possible at an all boys school. I've lost count of the number of kids my brother has 'adopted' in our theatre group.
Sixth and seventh grade will be problematic.

In Iron Man 2, Tony says to Nick Fury: "you're talking about a man who's happiest day of his life was shipping me off to boarding school."

So, yes to boarding school, for at least part of his education.

I also had the impression that Tony was shipped to boarding at a very young age (the youngest for most boarding schools would be around seven or eight years old). Tony doesn't strike me of someone who went to military school though nor does Howard seem the sort who would choose such a school for his son and would instead go for an elite school that is connected to the Old Boys network and/or he went to himself.

I too wonder what school and university was like for him. He would still have been quite a child compared with the other university students but he probably did well coasting on his intellect (helping people with their work) and his looks (many female students would be quick to take the 'cute little boy' under their wing).

THANK YOU!!!! Concrete proof, yes! (or nooooo! actually... there goes my slowly gestating, first ever semi-coherent plot bunny... watch it hop down the draaaaain.... ;_;)

Thanks for confirming the trufax canon, though! d^_^b

Aw! Come back little bunny! That's what AU's are for! :D

ps. I love your icons. This one (http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/107323061/26513741) made me go: 0.0 >.0 and then XD

D: Let's hope for the best...

And thanks...^///^ I swear icon makers are more addicting than crack... :D

I attended and taught at a co-ed boarding school in the states, and I agree with the post above that it's mostly about networking. Of course the education was top-notch, but the real difference was that the vast majority of students a) cared about how well they did, b) wanted to be there at that particular school, and c) were super competitive. We had the occasional student who hated the experience because their parents dumped them there, but a lot of them at least made friends and didn't hate it completely.

We also had a large number of international students, mostly from Korea, Thailand, and Japan. European international kids were usually just on a year-long exchange program, but the ones from Asia tended to come for at least the junior and senior years in an effort to establish the networking needed to get into a good college in the states.

There were cliques, but a lot of movement between them. You had kids who were football players in the fall who would sing in the musical in the spring, and students who played in the jazz band who were also on the debate team. A large number of students played a musical instrument, though not all of them played in the orchestra or ensembles. Random students would practice on the piano in the back of the dining hall at odd hours. There was intense pressure to be good at EVERYTHING, to take a full load of classes even if you didn't need (or do well in) them.

Most teachers lived in campus housing, some in separate houses and some in apartments attached to the dormitories. Their residential duties were on a rotating schedule, so you had a different teacher monitoring dorm-wide study hall every day of the week. We had student leaders (RAs or prefects) whose responsibilities were mostly just to keep everyone from doing blatantly stupid things. They'd write up infractions and the duty teacher would mete out the punishment, if appropriate. There were also student representatives on the discipline committee and the honor council (which was a HUGE deal...you had to write out the honor pledge and sign it on every assignment you turned in, and cheating or lying to cover up something made it ten thousand times worse).

There's tons more, but long comment is long! Hope some of that helps. Also, I should point out that the schools were I went or taught were in the southern US, so the culture and networking is within a different area than, say, the boarding schools in New England.

Thank you! Very intersting! Though I wonder what kind of extra activities, movie!Tony took... I actually can't see him do anything other than tech shenanigans... o_0

Question About Tony's Schooling...

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