Black Mountain College

    Black Mountain College was one the most non-conformist educational institutions that has ever existed. It was in  North Carolina, and lasted for 24 years from 1933 to 1957. The school was designed to be experimental, open, and fully interdisciplinary.

It had a tremendous effect on the creative arts in the United States and the world. 

Great avant-garde practitioners of literature, music, dance, and the visual arts both taught and studied at Black Mountain, in an atmosphere of mutual support and honest criticism.

In my opinion, more schools of this kind should exist nowadays, because being based on grades doesn't really show what the students are capable of. 

Non-Conformism

 The Beat Generation     

   The Beat Generation was a group of American post-World War II writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. 

The origins of the Beat Generation can be traced to Columbia University and the meeting of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Hal Chase and others. The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

Central elements of "Beat" culture included rejection of received standards, innovations in style, experimentation with drugs, alternative sexualities, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of materialism, and explicit portrayals of the human condition.

Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.

Here's the trailer of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, which was one of the most influential examples of Beat literature:

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation