Jim Stark, a new kid in town whose loneliness, frustration and anger mirrored those of postwar teens, is still reverberating 50 years later. Though he finds some of this in his relation with Judy, and a form of it in both Plato's adulation and Ray's concern for him, Jim must still prove himself to his peers.

A teacher in England abandons the traditional curriculum of education in dealing with a class of students rejected by other schools.