The irony that the boarding school system — the institution that had been designed to take something from Thorpe and children like him — provided the arena in which his most celebrated achievements were possible is not an argument for the system.

It is an argument about the specific kind of person that survived the system’s attempts, and about the way that institutional contexts designed for one purpose can produce outcomes their designers did not anticipate.

Thorpe was not made by Carlisle.

He survived Carlisle, took from it what he needed, and became himself in spite of what it was designed to do.

The People Who Kept The Campaign Alive — Grace Thorpe And Others