Updated September 30, 2004

Education

	Leaving for school Photo: Comstock

Schools seem to hold a special place in the Canadian literary imagination. Some of our most popular novels, plays, films and television series have been set among the blackboards and desks of Canadian educational institutions.

In 1902, Charles Gordon, under the pseudonym Ralph Connor, wrote the best-selling Glengarry School Days, based on his experiences in a small Ontario schoolhouse in the 1860s. Following the success of Anne of Green Gables in 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote a series of novels in which the loquacious redhead becomes a teacher. W. O. Mitchell's classic 1947 novel, Who Has Seen the Wind, follows a young boy growing up in Saskatchewan and sets several key scenes in a prairie schoolhouse.

Since the 1980s, Canadian television audiences have followed The Kids of Degrassi Street episode by episode through Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High and Degrassi Next Generation.

And for the past few years, French audiences have been observing the ups and downs of a dynamic young high school teacher on the television series Virginie.