How bad is american high school?

[Kerze]

The way I understand it, american high school is the equivilant of years 11, 12 & 13 in england, which is the last year of high school and 6th form/college for us. Now based on tv shows/movies it seems like a living hell in america where as from my experience, 6th form isn't bad at all.

From what I have seen (I may have completely the wrong idea so tell me if I do), everyone joins into cliques who then set out to make every down the social scale from them feel like shit and won't talk to people outside their cliques, if you don't do sport then you get bullied, if you're smart you get bullied, if you have spots you're bullied, if you wear the wrong clothes you're bullied. (long-short; if you're not in the football team or a cheerleader, you get bullied) (side note, maybe this is why I don't get glee, if you can sing like that at my school you're a bloody hero, not an outcast)

My 6th form is actually lovely. Nobody gets bullied and if they did it would get stopped pretty damn quick (not by the teachers, by other 6th formers) We don't have 'cliques' or anything and there isn't really a social scale or 'popular kids'. People just talk to each other, get along, mess around, do work.

Is american high school is really as bad as it seems on tv, I guess is the point of this slightly pointless thread...

[castle walls]

No it is not as bad as it seems on TV. At my old high school, no one cared who was a cheerleader. They couldn't even find enough girls to do it. Our valedictorian was one of the most popular people there.

I was never really in a clique at all. I had different groups of friends and I just bounced back and forth between them all. I was never bullied at all in high school

I'm sure some high schools are like this but it is not at every school. To my knowledge, it is not even at most schools

People even left the gays alone at my school. Well. . . for the most part anyway

I'm glad you asked about American high schools instead of just assuming though.

[Gerry]

No it's definitely not as bad as TV makes it seem. There are cliques and groups, yeah, but there are a lot of people who talk to anyone too. People don't just stick in their groups and only talk to fellow members. Sure there's bullying, but I don't think it's anywhere near the extent that TV shows. I guess a lot also depends on the school you go to. But TV really does over exaggerate it.

[Lexington]

Well, there's the reality and the perception.

In reality, people tend to form groups. Not to be exclusive or for sheer joy of shutting people out, but because "like attracts like". Jocks have their sports in common, and smart kids tend to like to discuss their studies more. And as such, they tend to congregate. In a general way, I don't think people actively seek to snub others, but they tend to take solace in the familiar, and be wary (or at least less interested) in the unfamiliar.

But then there's the perception. High schoolers are between the ages of 14-18. And that's prime adolescent time. When a stray look from a stranger can make you feel worthless for the entire week. And seeing four students sharing their commonalities can feel like an exclusive clique laughing at your outside status. Toss in a few thoughtless comments, and even just a very light sprinkling of bullying or cruelty, and you can easily picture high school quickly becoming an existential hell for some students.

Lex

[Fugs]

Well from my experience high school isn't too bad. Though I find that people have a hard time sticking up for victims of bullying. I make it a point to step in whenever I see it but it's still there.

If anything does happen schools (at least the ones I've been in) are very quick to put a stop to it. If it's verbal though they usually won't go out of their way unless you bring it up.

I don't really know the right way to describe school, I remember always feeling forced to be masculine or have a thick skin. I remember some kids being absolutely horrible creatures. I don't have many good memories of school before I was a freshman, but I've yet to see anybody get stuffed into a locker. High school generally feels slightly more mature.

[U N Owen]

High School for me was quite different than how it is portrayed on T.V. While there were groups of kids that stuck together there were so many groups that anyone could find one that they liked. Even still almost all the groups were really open and talked to anyone. No one group appeared to be the "popular" one as most people in my school did not no everyone in my class in order to make that distinction. Everyone seemed rather carefree about the whole High School experience and I did not notice any cutthroat competition as seen in the movies.

Also I never actually witnessed any bullying, now that's not to say it didn't happen, however it was not particularly noticeable. My school was rather ethnically diverse but everyone appeared to get along just fine. There were openly gay people walking the halls as well as other minorities but nobody really seemed to care at all. Most people appeared to care less what anyone else did as long as it didn't effect them. Now my school had 1,600 people so I can't keep track of everything that happened but for the most part High school was quite different that how it was portrayed in the movies, well for my school at least.

[Nazo]

My school was really small, and everybody knew everybody. There were cliques, but they also mingled and blurred together. There was very little bullying, and in fact, all the bullying that did occur happened in the "bad" cliques. The groups of kids who were known to do drugs and be generally mischievous. They only bullied within their circle of friends, so everybody else was pretty content.

[Raeil]

With my own high school experience (which occurs entirely before uni starts, if I'm remembering my UK school systems correctly), there wasn't a lot of bullying at all. Our "popular" clique was one of the largest groups in our school, but they never really persecuted anyone. My group (the "nerd" group) tended to be rather vicious while in our own circle, but was never outwardly hateful or upsetting. Actually, the entire school got along pretty well, probably because we were large enough that everyone had a group, but small enough that everyone still knew each other. It also helps that academics and the arts were prioritized slightly higher than sports on the school totem pole, so those of us who were excelling in academics and arts made the school announcements just as often as the teams that were excelling in sports.

All in all, I loved high school. I can understand why the potential for bullying and harassment is there, but I've never actually seen it in a school.

[Just Passing]

I severely doubt high school in America is that bad, it's probably designed to be that way to provoke a reaction out of the general audience and make it look more interesting than just mere perfection.

Though as someone who is British and was always at British schools, I hated my entire high school experience (I left after the GCSEs, because I knew anything was better than that). The majority of the people were douchebags, some of the teachers were really awful at their job, some of the lessons sucked and I didn't feel comfortable there at all. The best time I had was with the GCSEs and that's sad thinking about it. At least I'm pleased to know that karma hit them hard and they failed elements of their OFSTED report.

Thankfully, I chose to leave as soon as I could, passed my GCSEs and went to college, been there for three years, approaching four (thus beating my high school years by one year ) and then hopefully do a top-up degree at university (although my current course is university level).

So I don't think it really matters what school you go to. It all depends on the person and their experiences.

[thecat06]

I've seen kids get stuffed in lockers and lots of fight... but that being said I did not go to the "best" high school.

At my high school, If you hung out with the good kids you were fine, but if you hung out with the bad kids then you had problems. Then there was me that was stuck in the middle..

We had groups, but nothing like what is on tv. Really they were just groups of people that hung out. Sometimes there was some bulling involved, but most of the time people just talked behind people's backs.

The main reason that there were fights at my school was because there were gangs...

[Dominoflare]

I'v actually always wondered this as well, i'm also from England and we definitely don't have any sort of cliques here, the whole idea of it is actually quite weird. it's funny how high school over there in the US is so different from how things work over here

[Just Passing]

Originally Posted by Dominoflare

I'v actually always wondered this as well, i'm also from England and we definitely don't have any sort of cliques here, the whole idea of it is actually quite weird. it's funny how high school over there in the US is so different from how things work over here

I think cliques exist everywhere, but America definitely likes to highlight this in media portrayals of certain people. Any school anywhere will have its geeks/nerds, sports people/jocks, etc, etc, but still.

[Dominoflare]

Originally Posted by Just Passing

I think cliques exist everywhere, but America definitely likes to highlight this in media portrayals of certain people. Any school anywhere will have its geeks/nerds, sports people/jocks, etc, etc, but still.

I'm not exaggerating, we don't have cliques at all in england.

[Just Passing]

Originally Posted by Dominoflare

I'm not exaggerating, we don't have cliques at all in england.

Oh I agree, living in England myself, but they are there, just not to the point of ridiculousness.

[Dominoflare]

Originally Posted by Just Passing

Oh I agree, living in England myself, but they are there, just not to the point of ridiculousness.

What part of england do you live in?

[Kidd]

I went to a high school in the midwest and it was pretty bad in general but not for myself personally. I enjoyed it. My high school was pretty cliquey. My school had maybe 1,500 students in it and there was a different fist fight every other week at least. I knew kids in my class that sold cocaine and pot between classes out of their lockers and in the bathrooms. The LD kids were abused and pushed around, it was a very hateful place.

I can't link to it because of the guidelines on EC, but my high school made national news a few years ago and you can still find articles about it online. Two of the football players, one of them was the quarterback, put a fake deer in the middle of a country road at night and almost killed two other students that were on their way home when they swerved to avoid it. They flipped their car six times and one of them was ejected through the sunroof. One of them has permanent brain damage and the other is partially paralyzed. We made national news because a local judge commuted their sentences until after the football season was over so that they could finish playing. It was a total outrage.

Plus, America's schools are critically underfunded. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that we had to put buckets in the hallways because the roof would leak when it rained. We had no air conditioning and in some of the rooms the heaters were broken and next to impossible to shut off--we would be sweltering in 100+ degree temperatures sometimes in some rooms.

[DefineNormal]

^woah, that's awful :O

I know I shouldn't really post on this thread as I'm English but ah well...

There are really distinct groups at my school and very few poeple mix outside them. We also tend to go out of our way to avoid some of them- being nerdy as we are Bullying-wise it's normally pretty good, but one of my friends gets a lot of shit because people call him gay- which ironically he isn't. We spend a lot of time fending of people trying to pick on him, but it's slowly improving. We have the druggys to, but everyone tends to steer clear of them- or insult them behind their backs. No major scandles either until yesterday when someone posted a naked picture of a girl in my year on Facebook. She had taken the picture and sent it to someone herself though so she did sort of have it coming...

[Flyers2011]

My high school was okay at first. People seemed to get along pretty well, and I had never seen anyone get shoved into a garbage can or anything.

However, my high school was very underfunded. We also had leaky roofs and broken furnaces. Yet, they somehow came up with the money to fix it.

My biggest issue with my high school is the treatment of gays. My freshman year a group of seniors put on an assembly to celebrate Homecoming. In this, they made several explicitly sexual homophobic jokes and nothing was ever done. I know there were at least five (including myself) LGBT individuals watching it. There were no warnings from the administration, or stricter guidelines put on what can be done during an assembly.

The school also banned a gay couple from appearing as a contestant in a 'cutest couple' contest we put on when I was on the newspaper staff. Their reasoning? The one girl's mother was uncomfortable with their relationship. Which wasn't true because the girl told us that. We were told if we were to run that newspaper we would all be in trouble, including our adviser.

My senior year I was getting stalked, harassed, and threatened by my ex-girlfriend. The administration ACTUALLY wanted to do something (surprise, right?), but they couldn't do anything because her threats had taken place outside of school. They could threaten her with suspension over the stalking because that had happened on school grounds. My principal called the 'resource officer' (read as: worthless f*ck). He called her into the office and 'talked' to her. If my ex had been a guy I have no doubt that she would've been suspended or expelled. But I can't prove it.

In short, high school isn't that bad if you get good teachers, make good friends, and keep your nose clean. However, these things can be hard to find in high school in a rural community. Lots of Christians who will talk until they are blue in the face that gays are going to Hell.

[IsItSo]

I find it incredibly hard to believe that "there are no cliques in England." I am doubtful that everyone at every English school is good friends with every other kid in their school.

[Shevanel]

Originally Posted by IsItSo

I find it incredibly hard to believe that "there are no cliques in England." I am doubtful that everyone at every English school is good friends with every other kid in their school.

+ YouTube Video

Yeah, there's a reason why Kidulthood was made =/

And, High School wasn't bad for me at all.