NationStates Jolt Archive

Having watched many American teen movies in my time, as well as numerous episodes of Dawson's Creek, Saved by the Bell, etc, I was wondering if American High Schools really are the way they appear on screen, for example, and this is just my impression, is life really just a popularity contest? Must you conform to one group or another? Are there really geeks and jocks and cheerleaders? Obviously I understand that a lot is exagerrated for comedy/narrative value, but being British I'm intrigued to know how accurate these portrayals are.

It's exaggerated somewhat, but it does have some basis in reality, and we don't go to highschool until we're 34.

Having watched many American teen movies in my time, as well as numerous episodes of Dawson's Creek, Saved by the Bell, etc, I was wondering if American High Schools really are the way they appear on screen, for example, and this is just my impression, is life really just a popularity contest? Must you conform to one group or another? Are there really geeks and jocks and cheerleaders? Obviously I understand that a lot is exagerrated for comedy/narrative value, but being British I'm intrigued to know how accurate these portrayals are.
They are drawn with a very thick brush. High School is not as cut and dry as all that. You can't walk the new girl through the quad and say, "Those are the burnouts, those are the dweebs, and thats Mark-the dreamiest guy in school..." But at the same time, they all exist. It's just not as 'broad.' And cross pollination is pretty common. At least from what I remember from my relatively small school.

So do you all have those lockers with combination locks?

So do you all have those lockers with combination locks?
At my junior high (7-8th grade) we had combo lockers that you could 'snap' the latches on them and they would open without the combination. I never even learned my combination. Don't know about what they got goin' on now.

At my junior high (7-8th grade) we had combo lockers that you could 'snap' the latches on them and they would open without the combination. I never even learned my combination. Don't know about what they got goin' on now.

We don't get combination locks. Feels kinda bad. If we rent a locker we have to use some crappy key.

I guess it depends on the school. In mine, you really could walk through the commons (also known as the cafeteria) and see the divisions. Not quite as cut and dried as "jocks, preps, burnouts and geeks", but pretty close. You could tell the goth kids from the prep kids easily enough, but preps and jocks were pretty much one social class. The subclasses usually had to do with how much money your parents made, and what part of town you lived in.
And then you walked into the library and saw the real nerds, like me. :)

Yes, we did have those combination locks, provided you had a locker. We were really overcrowded.

I guess it depends on the school. In mine, you really could walk through the commons (also known as the cafeteria) and see the divisions. Not quite as cut and dried as "jocks, preps, burnouts and geeks", but pretty close. You could tell the goth kids from the prep kids easily enough, but preps and jocks were pretty much one social class. The subclasses usually had to do with how much money your parents made, and what part of town you lived in.
And then you walked into the library and saw the real nerds, like me. :)

Yes, we did have those combination locks, provided you had a locker. We were really overcrowded.
Our big division was the river. On one side families that went as far back as the gold rush, on 'the other side' (called that even if you where on it) where the interloping yuppies snatching up cheap land so they could live like kings and commute to SF, up to two hours away...

Extremely short answer, based on my personal experience - No

As a high school student, this is my answer- No, not really. They exagerate it to make it more interesting. Sure, there are those people that may get labeled certain things like "nerd" (apparenetly I have the "nerd look" or something) or "jock," but there isn't really any large groups meeting the stereotypes.

I guess I'll have to agree with the person who said it depends on the high school, though. I can only answer this based on my personal high school experience, and my high school does not seem like the stereotypical US high school.

is life really just a popularity contest?

This I find to be true sometimes. However, I don't think it is as bad as television and movies depict it. Of course, I wouldn't know too much because I could care less.

We have these denominations, but they are very ill-defined, and many of the students are complete idiots.

The divisions in my highschool were formed more by racism and street gangs so it tended to resemble Oz more than Saved by the Bell.

This I find to be true sometimes. However, I don't think it is as bad as television and movies depict it. Of course, I wouldn't know too much because I could care less.
What you find is a few years later if someone asks who the popular kid or kids where, you'll have a harder time figuring it out. Even at my small ass school each group of people lived in thier own bubble, popular amongst themselves and totally unknown outside of it. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the tree looked like at my school, even when I was closer to it.

About teh "popular crowd"
-it's a farce; they're only "popular" within their pathetically small crowd

About teh "popular crowd"
-it's a farce; they're only "popular" within their pathetically small crowd

Bitterness rears his ugly head!

:D

What interests me more, are american schools really that harsh in terms of "zero tolerance", conformist behaviour and low priority on self-determination? Some of the news i read really terrify me about what a generation down the road might be like.

I've found to my experience that it's nothing like it appears.

Of course I was a loner throughout high school with no friends...
I never learned anything about my fellow students over four years...
I didn't go to a public high school...
I didn't go to high school in the USA...
In fact, I didn't go to high school at all. So forget that. :headbang:

~Czardas, Supreme Ruler of the Universe

As a senior graduating from high school next week (this is last day of finals) I think of some credibility on this topic. The lines of geekdom, jockdom, stoners...etc are not always clear cut, but you generaly know who hangs out with who and what people do. Some jocks hang around stoners, some geeks hang around with jocks, but for the most part you can tell the general character of a person from a distance.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing either. It's natural for people to hang out with people that have things in common. It's like in a city when there's a Chinatown or something. It's not that anybody is being racist, it's just that people have the natural tendency to hang out with people with the same interests.
As for if high school is like T.V, it depends what show you watch. I believe that Daria is the most realistic.

Bitterness rears his ugly head!

:D
No, he's telling the truth. There is no popular crowd, there are no clear cut groups, and it's nothing like in the movies or on TV.

and I'm writing this from Computer Science in my high school, so I have recent first hand experience.

As a current student in high school. Yes the only way to make it seem like that is find the fults in the system though..... like in the band room. all of us band fags come down here to hang out and we easly have enugh to seprate ourselfs form one annother by oh your not right to be with us or "your not worthy" sort of thing :cool: it can seem evil but lets turn the tables is it the same way in the rel world?

No, he's telling the truth. There is no popular crowd, there are no clear cut groups, and it's nothing like in the movies or on TV.

and I'm writing this from Computer Science in my high school, so I have recent first hand experience.
In our high school there was (to an extent … nothing like in tv or movies) but you could tell generally

But we had a big group of “Fuck all of you other guys” which by senior year ended up being the biggest group in the school … those of us not wanting to be bound by social mores

What interests me more, are american schools really that harsh in terms of "zero tolerance", conformist behaviour and low priority on self-determination? Some of the news i read really terrify me about what a generation down the road might be like.
It was not all that bad … I have had experiences with their dress code that I had problems with (not their normal dress code but one day a radio station decided to host a day of radio from the highschool … which was cool and all , was not my music but did not matter to me. But that day I happened to be wearing the t-shirt of a competing radio station (pure chance) they made me REMOVE or invert the shirt because the first radio station was there)

But that was an individuals actions not the policy itself

I haven't been in high school since 1978, so I can only comment on the show, "That 70's Show".

It was not all that bad …
May i ask when you left HS? It sems some of the more extremist educational measures are pretty recent.

if that´s why people go armed to school,kill themselves,or simply drop out. :sniper: Viva Carrie,original version from the 1970´s!

Having watched many American teen movies in my time, as well as numerous episodes of Dawson's Creek, Saved by the Bell, etc, I was wondering if American High Schools really are the way they appear on screen, for example, and this is just my impression, is life really just a popularity contest? Must you conform to one group or another? Are there really geeks and jocks and cheerleaders? Obviously I understand that a lot is exagerrated for comedy/narrative value, but being British I'm intrigued to know how accurate these portrayals are.

I'm not in high school until August. But middle school is terribly different. Anyway, we had a couple groups.....such as "preps" and a group that tended to be "punk". But, the thing is, nobody really stayed in their group. Everyone just kind of hung out with everybody.

What interests me more, are american schools really that harsh in terms of "zero tolerance", conformist behaviour and low priority on self-determination? Some of the news i read really terrify me about what a generation down the road might be like.
Yep. It cracks me up. The only way to be an individual without being terrorized is to act like everyone around you. I watched a south park episode about that once and about died laughing. Once I got out of school and into the real world (Never went to college, so I can't speak for there.) it all just went away. It's like that girl that everyone thought was gross and then you get out of school and you think, "Wow, she was HOT!"

Yes and no. There are social groups however u can be a popular nerd or an unpopular jock (me!)

Are American High Schools anything like on TV?

@%#$ NO! :headbang:

well, it also depends on the area you're in. If your in Montana, school will be radically different than school in California. In the school I go to in Kent, Washington, there's not much segregation between groups. Don't get me wrong, there are groups, i.e. Preps, Skaters, Drama Kids, so forth and so on, but they do take time to say hi to each other in the halls if they know each other.

We have combination lockers.

There is much depression because Washington is a dreary, depressing state and we have about 1 or 2 suicides a year in our district. but no shootings, luckily.

Schools in the US are much, MUCH easier than schools in other countries. It seems we're just trying to bring up the lowest intelligenced end of the country (usually the very poor and the very rich) and let the smartest ones fight to learn.

Like everyone said, the groups are there, but they're much closer cut. The jocks blend into the preps who blend into the fashionistas who blend into the gangstas who blend into the car lovers who blend into the rockers who blend into the goths who blend into nerds who blend into the preps..... And then the jocks are also the car lovers etc.

Me, I'm none of them. I'm the guy who can hang with any of them because they all like me.

The divisions in my highschool were formed more by racism and street gangs so it tended to resemble Oz more than Saved by the Bell.

Hollywood tends to hide the dark side of HighSchools...

if you beleive what the TV says...you would never know about kids getting their testicles smashed with poles

American shows about highschool... true? No.

First of all, no one ever has acne (unless it's part of the script where one dork has it!); walk into a US (probably any) highschool, bam! Way to wash your faces, assholes!

Second of all, if you look hard enough, you can see the divisions, but the fact is, no one ever looks that hard and really doesn't pay attention to it. Now that I think about it, I can isolate every part in the commons area and attribute it to a group of people. The gangstas, the solely Spanish-speaking Mexicans, the nerds, the goths, the preps/jocks (they sit together for the most part), the loners, the Yu-Gi-Oh dorks, and the tables that really have no label and are somewhat like little melting pots, full of nerds, preps, etc. Of course these melting pots are mostly freshmen tables.

Also, the teachers are nowhere near as strict, or I've just had some good luck, and yes, the school food is that bad.

In conclusion, while the different groups certainly do exist and can be picked out amongst the hallways, it becomes a natural occurance that no one really pays attention to (unless they have some sort of grudge) and is nowhere near as focused on as it is on TV.

im not in high school... yet already in middle school the way on the t.v. show become noticable. Yes, things can become popularity contests, yes, we get combo locks, we do a lot of stuff. Much comedy is used, but most of it is just reality stretched a bit. so yeah, the t.v. shows show a lot about our schools.

Well, here in a medium-sized school in Southern Texas the Spainish speaking Mexicans have their own group as do the kickers (a.k.a. cowboys). But everyone else pretty much co-mingles. Sure we have preps, jocks, geeks, goths etc. but every body pretty much hangs out with everybody. "Popularity" isn't very clearly defined but there are definatly those that you could atach that title to. But to anwer the question, TV greatly exagerates the social situation, as seems to be the general consensus.

Lets just put it this way: Way better than middle school and elementary.

Having watched many American teen movies in my time, as well as numerous episodes of Dawson's Creek, Saved by the Bell, etc, I was wondering if American High Schools really are the way they appear on screen, for example, and this is just my impression, is life really just a popularity contest? Must you conform to one group or another? Are there really geeks and jocks and cheerleaders? Obviously I understand that a lot is exagerrated for comedy/narrative value, but being British I'm intrigued to know how accurate these portrayals are.
not even close. there are ass holes, nice people, and people who dont like being bothered. none of these are limited to jocks, nerds, or any other stereotype

About teh "popular crowd"
-it's a farce; they're only "popular" within their pathetically small crowd
so your not popular i take it?

Hollywood tends to hide the dark side of HighSchools...

if you beleive what the TV says...you would never know about kids getting their testicles smashed with poles
ever seen The Faculty? :D

ever seen The Faculty? :D

God I love that movie.

Lets just put it this way: Way better than middle school and elementary.

I think this explains it the best. As a senior in highschool, graduating on the 10th next week, I have realized that middle school was MUCH worse(social niche wise) than highschool. In middle school, everyone was trying to figure out "who they are", and thus forced themselves to fit certain stereotypes. Upon reaching highschool, people stop really caring about the front they present, and generally are just themselves(however, like i said, this is generally, there are quite a few exceptions). Then again, I go to an IB World School(Gar-Field high), and many of the people share a unique bond that enables co-mingling among castes(Ib classes). So yeah, dont believe TV and Movies, they over exaggerate so that the average viewer can comprehend that there is such a division.

And yeah, we have combination lockers. I always thought that's how it was everywhere, interesting...

:edit:

"What interests me more, are american schools really that harsh in terms of "zero tolerance", conformist behaviour and low priority on self-determination? Some of the news i read really terrify me about what a generation down the road might be like."

I think its kind of sad the way our education system works here in the united states. If by zero tolerance, you mean "omg, he brought a 1 inch g.i. joe gun, EXPEL HIM", that is SADLY VERY true. Our government wackos are just paranoid. Your statement about there being a low priority on self-determination is again, sadly true. Everyone is force fed the same bland material and are then tested on it. No one is given a chance to excel, and it is expected that people should understand this stuff. Therefore, there are many useless exams to make sure that EVERYONE understands something. It's rediculous, just because someone doesnt know where Seattle is is no reason to prevent them from passing a class. Additionally, if one excels, they are stuck in the same old crap hole of a school.

What interests me more, are american schools really that harsh in terms of "zero tolerance", conformist behaviour and low priority on self-determination? Some of the news i read really terrify me about what a generation down the road might be like.

At least in my high school (which everybody knows as hazing high GBN) the conformatism does not seem so bad. There are social groups but its just so big that outside of the "big man on campus" (Duke recruit Jon Scheyer) there are no real social classes. You hang out with who you hang out with and live with your decisions.
The nintendo emirates is correct people just don't try to do good in school. School works one way and expects everyone to act and learn that same way but not everyone learns that way and those people who do not do that do bad. It's unfortunate

Hollywood tends to hide the dark side of HighSchools...

if you beleive what the TV says...you would never know about kids getting their testicles smashed with poles

Have there been any movies or TV shows that portray anything ressembling the massacre that happened a few years back in Colorado?

I go to school in Florida. We have castes here, but there are no popular people and everyone hates jocks and cheerleaders. We've got gamers, goths, jocks, drama people, band people, honors people, cheerleaders, idiots, peasants, and whores. Personally I'm a gamer. I'm really smart and lazy, and nobody ever messes with me because they think I am Evil Incarnate.

School is not a place of learning. It's where you go to talk amongst friends, zone out and sleep, and get pissed off by the government's stupid policies.

I go to school in Florida. We have castes here, but there are no popular people and everyone hates jocks and cheerleaders. We've got gamers, goths, jocks, drama people, band people, honors people, cheerleaders, idiots, peasants, and whores. Personally I'm a gamer. I'm really smart and lazy, and nobody ever messes with me because they think I am Evil Incarnate.

School is not a place of learning. It's where you go to talk amongst friends, zone out and sleep, and get pissed off by the government's stupid policies.


I'm familiar with most of your categories except peasant. What is a peasant and what defines a whore?

A whore (at my school and a bit from the definition) is someone that will bang anyone and dresses really sluttily.

A whore (at my school and a bit from the definition) is someone that will bang anyone and dresses really sluttily.

When I was in highschool we called those girls fun... What about peasants?

When I was in highschool we called those girls fun... What about peasants?

You beat me to it.

There were definitely cliques in high school--the cheerleaders, the jocks, the druggies (though that particular label applied to an amazingly large number of people), the band nerds (go, band nerds!), the goths, etc. But that's not to say cliques couldn't mix. They could, and they did. The band nerds also included some cheerleaders, druggies, goths. The popular set (mostly cheerleaders) also happened to be incredibly smart, and most of our valedictorians and salutatorians came from this set (with some band nerds thrown in). What I'm trying to say is, there are definitely cliques, but it's not an exact science. Some people fit squarely into a clique, while others really defied definition and sort of floated from one to another.

And, yes, we had lockers with combination locks.

There were definitely cliques in high school--the cheerleaders, the jocks, the druggies (though that particular label applied to an amazingly large number of people), the band nerds (go, band nerds!), the goths, etc. But that's not to say cliques couldn't mix. They could, and they did. The band nerds also included some cheerleaders, druggies, goths. The popular set (mostly cheerleaders) also happened to be incredibly smart, and most of our valedictorians and salutatorians came from this set (with some band nerds thrown in). What I'm trying to say is, there are definitely cliques, but it's not an exact science. Some people fit squarely into a clique, while others really defied definition and sort of floated from one to another.

And, yes, we had lockers with combination locks.

But did you have peasants?

You bring ur own lock. 5 outta 760 are non-combo.

Groups are... mostly just each group of friends...

First, only hang out with your grade, unless on the bus, or during sports, or in same classes.

Then it just turns out to who hung out with who back in grade 8 or in elementary school.

My group is 2 pseudo hippies, 3 band geeks, 1 little kid, 1 silent guy, 1 other person.

and some retards who try to hang out with us to get the couchs. yes, one class has couchs. and because one of the hippies eats various aromatic fish products at lunch, we have domination of the couches. A point of pride.

Lol.
Anyways, I have been in Chinese and American schools.
I don't like popular stuff... Never care about what others think of me.
I hate most people, although I'm on good terms with almost everyone(even with people I hate).
School is a place to meet people I like. For example, militarists. And to get something called a diploma , which will certify you for a job. Whatever... Like that makes you money.
Although the classmates in the US seemed a bit dreamy, my classmates in China are in a frenzy of appeasment, loving pop stars and being ignorant. I have a classmate, who has quite a few jobs as a student "bureaucrat" as I call them, that doesn't know the DPRK is communist! I still find it very funny. Although generally the Chinese might have more people that I can get along well with, I still dislike most of them. Fast food, pop stars, and the rest of the trash culture. And recently cartoons. BAH!
Of course, the more they learn to be junkies, the better chance of me making money off their stupidity.
School life is generally boring, you never get to do what you want to do, and you almost never meet anyone with brains. Unlike online, in some specialized forums, you find smart people who exceed you(you can find that out through a few chats, conversations)

High school is not like TV. It pisses me off for two reasons. One, because it's just a big lie. And two, because I always wanted high school to be like the ones on TV in certain ways.

In fact, general interactions between school students of any age portrayed on TV piss me off for the same reasons.