Is American Highschool really like in the Movies?

[Geeza]

for effing no reason. yea it's pretty much like this. who'd doubt it?

and the teenage girls natural want to have S** with their 66 year old bold teacher for that extra special a*.

[Rocketsurgeon]

My experiences sync up pretty well with various movie stereotypes. The football team and their girlfriends had absolute immunity and always got the primary positions in any special events. All the other cliques were present. Tension between them turned into fights often enough. People had sex in classrooms when teachers weren't around or got high behind buildings. Fights weren't uncommon. Most teachers and most students were oblivious to anything that didnt happen in front of them, yet all kinds of gossip flies everywhere.

Been a little while since I was in high school, but what I've seen and heard doesn't tell me much has changed.


As for discrimination, racism wasn't too bad even though there wasn't too much mingling at the time. Homophobia was raging though. I had a gay friend in high school commit suicide as a result of what he had to deal with at home and in school on account of his liking boys. I can still see his face

[Collegeguy]

Racism and homophobia is also a problem. A lot of racial slurs get thrown around and there is some racial tension, but any kind of racial tension is coming from the bad eggs and majority of the population is very tolerant of other races. However, there is a lot gay bashing at my high school, I remember a gay kid being hospitalized from being beat up from wearing a Tshirt supporting LGBT rights. Also a transgenders boy/girl (i have no idea what to call him, he had boy parts but he referred to himself as girl named Samantha) committed suicide in my junior year.

I don't remember high school being very cliquey, I remember people sitting together with their friends at lunch. i don't remember any kind of cool kids. Although I didn't pay much attention, and I mostly kept to myself.

Racism in America is over-hyped and this stands true in high school. U.S. is a country full of different races that function properly. If anyone thinks America is more racist than rest of the world, then they havnt seen the rest of the world. China, Japan, Mexico, and all of europe comes to mind immediately if you know anything about the subject. Honestly, you should be proud of how small racism is in the U.S.

[luccadeo]

Racism in America is over-hyped and this stands true in high school. U.S. is a country full of different races that function properly. If anyone thinks America is more racist than rest of the world, then they havnt seen the rest of the world. China, Japan, Mexico, and all of europe comes to mind immediately if you know anything about the subject. Honestly, you should be proud of how small racism is in the U.S.

Racism in America is used mainly as an excuse on why people don't succeed now a days.

[Deleted]

OMG High School Music 4 ROCKS!

If you're gay, sure.

I really don't understand ppl who like that and hanah montana. The only reason to like it so be a 10-16 yo girl or you're just gay. Not that is anything wrong with being gay, it's just that if you judge the ratings of that movie and how many gay ppl are out there, humanity is in danger of going extinct.

Infracted.

[I stand in fire]

Racism in America is over-hyped and this stands true in high school. U.S. is a country full of different races that function properly. If anyone thinks America is more racist than rest of the world, then they havnt seen the rest of the world. China, Japan, Mexico, and all of europe comes to mind immediately if you know anything about the subject. Honestly, you should be proud of how small racism is in the U.S.

I wasn't referring to the US as a whole. I was talking about the high school I went to. Most of my class mates are indeed tolerant of other races, but there are some bad eggs for whatever reason doesn't like another race, mostly it was hate towards the Latino community (no, I am not from Arizona).

[dwarven]

The Breakfast Club was a pretty accurate description of American High School.

[Saverem]

No they aren't.

Despite what some movies/shows may lead you to believe, schools typically aren't that drama-filled.

Yes, there are different 'cliques' but no where near as segregated as the movies depict them. I honestly don't know what group I fell in in HS, I had jock, gamer, nerds, goths, music friends and hung out with them all. People are no where near as cruel as depicted in movies. Yes, I had moments of being bullied (and also being the bully) but it was never anything serious.

American HSs are just like the HSs of any other place, bunch of harmone driven ignorant teens who think they're god amongst men doing stupid things they may or may not regret later.

I

[Silenti]

I call BS. You expect us to believe in Europe adolescents are just loving on each other and being friendly all the time and to everybody. Absurd.

Here's some actual statistics to illustrate just how wonderful high school is in Europe:

Teen suicide rates (per 100,000)
USA = 9.9
Europe = 13
Per the World Health Organization

Maybe all the bullying in US high schools makes us tougher emotionally so we don't eat as many bullets as European teens? Maybe it also explains why we run around the world bitch slapping people all the time. I donno, but I don't believe for a second that teens in Europe are as friendly and accepting as you would like to believe they are. THAT would be something you see in an American movie (=bullshit)

I don't think people were asking about this, Europeans simply have quite different high school experience from what you see in almost any US movie. Not regarding the age, hotness of both genders or something Glee related but the whole thing.

You seem to have a lot of "castes" as in social way - at least according to all movies and series. Nerds, jocks, poor, rich, fugly, hot etc - often some combinations. And it continues with having both male and female fraternities/sororities in college. You have a place in that small student world where you kidna belong. Not in a good way sometimes.

In Europe it just seems to me that vast majority, something like 90+ out of every hundred are just random, around average, +/-. And even those who are "abnormal", let it be to hot, too fat or too smart really dont get any shit/credit because of it. They don't group up because of it. And people don't care so much about status, as in being part of a cool group, belonging to certain sorority in college (once again, not a concept at all used here) etc.

Infracted because of the bolded section

[Rocketsurgeon]

On Racism,
So my first high school was inner city and predominantly black with a strong korean community. Racism ran rampant. Koreans threw bricks at a white kid. White kid gets suspended. "You hurt my ancestors, I'ma hurt you" was a common excuse for violence. There was a school event dedicated to the "black nation" where a "black national anthem" was recited while all students were required to stand. The hallways were eggshells.

My second high school had no open racial issues. Minorities did have a tendency to form their own cliques, though. I remember being 15 and seeing a girl as dark as night that I thought was gorgeous, and she was top of her class with razor sharp wit. Intimidation aside, I just couldn't figure out how to get over the invisible wall to talk to her and see if I had a chance. Shame.

The grown up world seems more like the latter. The world is wide open and accepting, but racial cliques still exist for anyone who wants to live their lives that way. The wall still exists, but its about the height of a curb. Not much of a hindrance, but still well able to trip people up.

[Gothicshark]

Since I was in HS during the eighties, and I was in the San Fernando Valley My HS was just like the Typical High School in several films and a few TV shows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_H...Los_Angeles%29

[jaimelannister]

About partying in a big house, why do everyone use those red cups? I mean, in every damn movie, it's red cups! Sup with the red cups!?

That's probably the most realistic part of any HS movie. Those red cups are made by Solo, and are an icon at parties through HS and in college as well. It's the most popular brand of disposable cup by a HUGE margin, and that red color is their classic design.

[mizeri]

depends on the high school you go to, in cities like washington DC its mostly gangs but then in nice suburbs the school are more like in those in american pie

[Pud'n]

Hmmm the only non-difference between fiction and non-fiction would be the large amount of students having sex in school/buses, teen pregnancy, potheads, and jocks being favored (If they're team brings alot of money to the school).

[fartbox]

It is both overdone and underdone at times. We have seen the extremes such as Columbine and other violence in high schools. We have seen underage pregnancies, drug use, separation of economic and social groups, teachers fornicating with students. We have seen and experienced a lot of what is portrayed in films and tv, otherwise what would film and tv have to base their stories on. We have also seen normalcy....its a freeking crapshoot in todays world.

[Dasani]

I'll tell you how my highschool experience was.

I would drive up and park out front. Go into the courtyard and buy a chic-fil-a chicken biscuit because one of the staff would be like a shit ton of them and sell them on the courtyard every morning. Then me and my friends would sit around chatting till classes started. There was this guy named Jamie who, well he wasn't exactly retarded, but he wasn't really "all there" either, kind of a just above the line kind of guy I guess. He liked to think he was our friend so we kind of humored him and let him talk to us because we didn't want to hurt his feelings. It was tiresome at times though because he didn't understand a lot of the time what we were talking about.

Classes were... Like any school I imagine, just boring knowledge being crammed down your throat when you're really too tired to care in the morning and would rather be asleep.

During lunch, I usually played chess with one of the police officers assigned to the school as security because we both liked chess and didn't have anything better to do. I never ate lunch because I hated waiting in line for it. I always preferred to just sit and chat the entire time then eat whatever I wanted on the way home every day.

During my 2 years at that particular highschool, I only witnessed one fight and the police officers quickly broke that up so it's not like anything really happened or anyone really won. Of course people talked about it the rest of the day because it was like "news" or something but by the next day no one cared.

There were of course little social cliques but not as depicted in movies. The athletes hung out together because they spent a lot of time together anyway, working out or playing football. There was also the drama club who hung out together, the goth kids, and then basically everyone else. But they weren't like exclusive of snotty groups, just groups of people with similar interests, its not like they went around harassing each other or starting fights or whatever other nonsense you see on TV. Only victims of bullying were the goth kids because lets face it, they acted like freaks just to get attention, and bullying is attention. Fact is they were a bunch of rich kids who thought they knew something about life or misery or pain when the kids haven't even graduated highschool yet, how pathetic is that. It's like a 5th grader who is started to learn the basics of adding and subtracting fractions and thinking he suddenly should be compared to a physicist or engineer. No one likes emo people, especially if the shit they are crying about is trivial nonsense and they have no actual real life experience. Have your whole family die in a plane crash then you can cry about how much life sucks, but not just because your mom gives you a bed time when you're 17 or won't buy you a new car. God I hate children. Moving on.

The school was so big, I think I only knew one person who was actually in multiple classes with me, usually every class had an entirely different set of people and because of my advanced placement, I was usually with the seniors in most of my classes.

There was a fine little redhead that was in the drama club that had like a big crush on me and she would come sit with me during lunch every day. I found out she played Everquest, which I did too, keep in mind this was many, many years ago when everquest and ultima online were the only MMOs in existence. I thought that was awesome and we started hanging out, going out, and more

Anyway I never saw any spontaneous song and dance, no daily bullying, or anything like that. Everyone was too concerned with their own little lives and activities to really worry about such things. I only had one friend at the school, and it's only because we made it a point to see each other and hang out, otherwise I didn't know anyone else well enough because as I said every single class was an entirely different set of students. There were people i'd talk to prettymuch on a daily basis, but no real friends per se except the one, plus my everquest girlfriend.

Now for my first 2 years in highschool, I lived out in the country and went to a very small one and basically had the same group of kids in every single class with me and I think as a result of that we all got to know each other better and interact more. In that school, there weren't even the little cliques for like band kids vs athletes, etc. All the groups of friends were friends just because they liked each other, not dependent on their after school activities or whatever.

My friends consisted of a nerdy kid with glasses who I enjoyed nerdy computer and gaming related conversations, a black kid who seemed to literally be related to every single other black person in the school (and im not kidding or exaggerating) and his father owned a watermelon farm (also not kidding), and a boy who was like a military/gun fanatic whose father was a marine and raised him to love that sort of lifestyle. Basically everyone there knew and liked each other, the only exception was this boy named Joseph who had a facial deformity who was kind of like a wanna-be bully. I guess he had issues because of his face, but he tried to go around picking fights with people and trying to assert his dominance, but his problem was he only had one friend, who was actually a decent kid, so he couldn't really do anything to anyone because he was always the outnumbered one.

Forgot to mention, another one of my friends was the star football player. Half the team were christian athletes (like i said, living in the country) so they were all pretty good guys and I even went to their locker room to workout with them sometimes during PE class.

I only hated school because I hated, and still hate, waking up early in the morning. The worst part of it was sitting through boring classes you had absolutely no interest in and writing papers because they took so long and I have no real writing talent, the rest was a breeze and the people were always either friendly or neutral.

Most of the teachers were pretty cool too, I was on pretty friendly terms with most of them. Matter of fact I can't even remember a teacher that I had an issue with. Even the more strict ones were pretty cool after class if you got to talking to them.

The movies would have you believe groups are extremely polarized, elitist, exclusive, and mock and bully other groups, which may or may not happen in some places, but certain not in either of the schools I went to. One was too large, one was too small, maybe medium sized schools have more issues? I dunno.

[tyrkern]

Same stuff happens here to be completely fair, in good old blighty. I'm currently at a school 6th form college which is attached to the secondary school bit, and we've all known each other for 6 years. Yeah, we occasionally burst into song in massive crowds. Bout 30 of us broke into singing "Forget You" to this small fat kid in first year (year 7) who looks like Cee Lo Green. Another 20 of us sung out "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" to our school Chaplain when he walked past holding a picture of a swastika for some small-children class he had to cover a history lesson on the Nazis. Yeah, I'm part of the "cool" kids.

Either way - it happens. I remember about a year ago when we were all 16 and a drunken mistake happened at a party, when we saw her walking through this massive square area at our school (Library Square) and we were all dispersed around the edge, and she went through the middle alone, 50+ people went silent and started clapping, much to her embarrassment.

The TV is of course exaggerated but going by all the previous comments from yanks, its not all that different from what we have over here too.

EDIT: Same things happen outside the school too. Some chinese girl got at a party, rolled in the flowerbeds screamign "I want to go to Narnia" before vomiting all over the windscreen of her dads car.

^THIS!
Well same system:P