The Grounding of Group 6 is a teen novel from 1983 (when GenX was aged 1-22), written by Julian F. Thompson. It was his second teen novel of nineteen.

There’s a lot that can be said about the book, but let’s stick to the premise: five basically normal kids are sent away to a boarding school. Secretly, their parents have paid the school to murder them, because they’re getting in the way of the parents’ big plans in one way or another.

The dean says this about the kids, when discussing this unusual service offered by his school: “You’ve got the dregs, of course, the ultimate bad seeds, […] Guys like Hitler, for example–they were that same type, I bet. Others of them we can teach up here. They learn. A Six-er never would. Grounding is the only way.”

So yeah.

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The Grounding of Group 6 (Julian F. Thompson). Avon Books, 1983.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/scholarly-magazines/thompson-julian-francis-1927