Are american high schools like how they are on TV and films?
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  Are american high schools like how they are on TV and films?
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Author Topic: Are american high schools like how they are on TV and films?  (Read 1098 times)
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CrabCake
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« on: February 19, 2017, 07:16:37 AM »

Like, are there jocks and cheerleaders walking round hallways in full gear? Do you attend big rallys when the school football team are having their big game? Etc
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« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2017, 08:24:36 AM »

My high school was a small, private one. We had no cheerleaders, and the "jocks", as opposed to forming a distinct group, were part of a male continuum overlapping with the stoners.
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Sprouts Farmers Market ✘
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« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2017, 10:16:20 AM »

Of course! Gotta get the people out for The Big Game in a way they won't forget

[Basketball is dress shirt and tie though. We're not animals.]
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« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2017, 10:25:54 AM »

Well, my experience isn't quite accurate, since I go to a magnet school that doesn't have a football team to my knowledge, but that description does not sound accurate. The only people who are jocks/cheerleaders are complete dumbasses
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« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2017, 10:55:54 AM »

Like, are there jocks and cheerleaders walking round hallways in full gear? Do you attend big rallys when the school football team are having their big game? Etc

No and sort of.

We had pep rallies, but not for any specific teams (primarily because our football team was terrible) but I think I only rarely saw cheerleaders walking around in their full uniforms.
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omegascarlet
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« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2017, 11:30:20 AM »

I think I've seen people in cheerleader outfits on game days, and we are forced to go to BS pep rallies(and they go out of their way to prevent just leaving early), but the image you're conjuring doesn't seem to be the reality anymore.


But I go to a fancy #smartsPeoples school, though I doubt the other high school on campus is much different.
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dead0man
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« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2017, 11:37:33 AM »

Like, are there jocks and cheerleaders walking round hallways in full gear? Do you attend big rallys when the school football team are having their big game? Etc
I've been dropping kids off at an upper class public high school in the Midwest for.....geez, 6 out of the last 7 years now.  Football isn't HUGE, but it's kind of important.  On game days during the season most players wear their jersey (my son did).  Some of the girls wore their cheerleader gear, but not the ....ummmm....oh boy, how do I word this.....errrr, the typical "sexy" cheerleader outfit you are picturing in your head.  I think there is a "rally" for the Homecoming game, but not 100% sure on that.


"jock" culture, in my experience at least, doesn't exist like it does in TV and film, but most of the high schools I have experience with haven't been that big into sports either.
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« Reply #7 on: February 19, 2017, 12:53:51 PM »

Cheerleaders didn't walk around like that all the time at my HS, but some days they would if they were practicing after school (or there was a game later on). A number of the jocks wore their jackets more often than not. I don't remember how many pep rallies we had a year though - at least a few. I didn't always go to them.

Knowing which films/tv shows you are thinking of would help because some overdo it or are straight up parodies while others may be based off of memories of a HS not representative of most.
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Green Line
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« Reply #8 on: February 19, 2017, 01:16:03 PM »

We had to wear a shirt and tie (normal) but on game days yes it was like that.
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Crumpets
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« Reply #9 on: February 19, 2017, 02:04:11 PM »
« Edited: February 20, 2017, 06:49:49 PM by Crumpets »

My high school (small private school) didn't have cheerleaders, and football wasn't really all that big for us, although people definitely still went to some games. Homecoming was a big thing, with a pep rally earlier in the week, a girls' soccer match followed by the football game with a dance in the evening. Nobody really wore their sports uniforms around school, but if you earned a letterman's jacket in any sport, not just football, you would wear that as part of your regular wardrobe.

And generally the cliques broke down something like this: Jocks, popular/sporty girls (would probably be the equivalent of cheerleaders elsewhere), introverted girls who like art and horses and stuff, drama nerds/hipsters, and computer/engineering nerds. I kind of jumped between the last two groups.

Honestly, the portrayal of high school that most matched my experience was History Boys except with girls and without the British accents and school uniforms. I'm guessing the way American high school is portrayed on TV and films is basically how we in turn imagine schools in California and Texas (see Beverly Hills: 90210 and Friday Night Lights).
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Crumpets
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« Reply #10 on: February 19, 2017, 02:11:46 PM »
« Edited: February 19, 2017, 02:18:59 PM by Crumpets »

Also, CrabCake, how do British schools compare to what we see of them on TV? Would you say your experience was more Inbetweeners or Harry Potter? Smiley
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« Reply #11 on: February 19, 2017, 02:17:56 PM »

I have no doubt that the sort of hyperprivileged SoCal high school depicted in Clueless is closer to reality than would make me comfortable.
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« Reply #12 on: February 19, 2017, 02:21:08 PM »

My high school was a small, private one. We had no cheerleaders, and the "jocks", as opposed to forming a distinct group, were part of a male continuum overlapping with the stoners.
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« Reply #13 on: February 19, 2017, 03:02:37 PM »

Also, CrabCake, how do British schools compare to what we see of them on TV? Would you say your experience was more Inbetweeners or Harry Potter? Smiley

Well I went to a selective school that was established during the early 1600's (iirc), so it had a thing for the sort of "ancient traditions" that were really codified in the Late Victoyan era that you see a lot in the famous public schools that produced Britain's elite, and, yes, Hogwarts. (Of course, nowadays, it's all the rage for all comprehensive schools to ape the traditions of public schools, forming Houses and updating the uniforms in a bizare sort of cargo cult manner.) School uniforms, fwiw, are basically garbage. All they convinced me was that kids have no idea how to dress, even if it is literally prescribed to them what to wear. (I certainly was, err, not great sartorially - I don't think I wore a tie at an appropriate length till I was fifteen)

I made a concerted effort to never take part in sports though. Although that was because I never realised that I was short-sighted until I was fourteen, so my initial experiences with all sports was owlishly squinting across the field or pitch before being let down by various other physical deficiencies (little hand eye coordination, slow reaction times, boredom).
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« Reply #14 on: February 19, 2017, 06:11:49 PM »

Kinda a mix. On game days, there may be pep rallies and uniforms, but there's also not people just hanging out randomly in halls or people saying "Oh god this home economics test is gonna make me miss the talent show."  I don't even think those last two have been a thing for like 6 years now. There ARE definitive cliques, but they are a lot more porus than years past or how they are portrayed.
Teachers usually keep to themselves unless approached. They're not all, "I will SEND YOU TO THE OFFICE if they catch you running in the halls."
Honestly, my school was a lot like a hospital. There were places with lots of tables and chairs that people would just hang out in when nothing major was going on.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #15 on: February 19, 2017, 06:22:13 PM »

I went to a high school with 4,000+ people and with enough buildings that it could be mistaken for a community college [didn't help that it even had mini-schools within to make for essentially University Jr].

So while there were YUGE rallies and people doing all those things, there were just as many other things going on that one had to really seek these things out.

And if there's a protest going on [one YUGE one was the Marines Office shutdown, last year, it was a walkout based on some message left on a library computer...I imagine Trump's going to cause a lot these as well], that precious Pep Rally ain't goin' nowhere.


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« Reply #16 on: February 19, 2017, 07:04:38 PM »

At least for my large New England All Boys Prep School, no, because wearing jerseys goes against dress code. I know in the public schools, on game days they wear uniforms.
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BuckeyeNut
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« Reply #17 on: February 19, 2017, 09:23:52 PM »

Theater kids wore their letter jackets more often than the athletes at my high school.

I wonder where that thing is...
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« Reply #18 on: February 19, 2017, 10:14:28 PM »

My high school had pep rallies and you'd definitely know who the cheerleaders and football players were.
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« Reply #19 on: February 20, 2017, 02:40:59 PM »

Like, are there jocks and cheerleaders walking round hallways in full gear? Do you attend big rallys when the school football team are having their big game? Etc
No, except during ninth period (last period) at my school, sometimes baseball players would be in their gear because the bus left for away games right after school.
Yes
Athletes (particularly football/basketball/volleyball) and cheerleaders are typically the popular kids, particularly if they like to party, and sports is the dominant focus. Academic pursuits are a sideshow, even to some teachers.

Pep rallies are only for whenever a sports team makes it unusually far into the postseason, not for just any "big game". My school was known for the "curse of the pep rally" where any team that got a pep rally would lose the next game, and that got so bad that they stopped having them at one point.

Bullying and cliques are still big problems, and because the people who become teachers tend to be people who liked school as students, teachers are pretty ambivalent toward them.

The "Super Bowl" of American high school is the big standardized test that you take as a junior, usually near the end of the spring semester. Depending on what state you live in, it is either the American College Test (ACT) or the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). In many states, teacher pay and school funding has to do with how well kids do on these tests (in addition to them having a huge effect on where an individual student will get accepted into college and how much financial aid he will receive), so teachers and schools push those tests hard, with preparation sessions during the school day in the weeks leading up to the test being very common.

Full disclosure: I went to a public high school in Illinois. I also taught and substitute taught at one before becoming an actuary.
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« Reply #20 on: February 20, 2017, 04:41:15 PM »

Not my high school at least
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« Reply #21 on: February 20, 2017, 06:28:26 PM »

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I've been dropping kids off at an upper class public high school in the Midwest for.....geez, 6 out of the last 7 years now.  Football isn't HUGE, but it's kind of important.  On game days during the season most players wear their jersey (my son did).  Some of the girls wore their cheerleader gear, but not the ....ummmm....oh boy, how do I word this.....errrr, the typical "sexy" cheerleader outfit you are picturing in your head.  I think there is a "rally" for the Homecoming game, but not 100% sure on that.


"jock" culture, in my experience at least, doesn't exist like it does in TV and film, but most of the high schools I have experience with haven't been that big into sports either.
Honestly this is the most accurate one from my experience, though to add my own words, it was us varsity swimmers that wore lettermen jackets and jock culture didn't really exist and there wasn't really a real social split as people simply stuck with their friend groups. This was at one of the largest public high schools in my area too.
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Kingpoleon
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« Reply #22 on: February 20, 2017, 06:34:13 PM »

There's less drama and fighting, and shockingly no singing. It's not so much preps v. jocks; it's more cool/lots of friends v. not cool/few to no friends. Definitely cliqueish.
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« Reply #23 on: February 20, 2017, 07:03:48 PM »

There's less drama and fighting, and shockingly no singing. It's not so much preps v. jocks; it's more cool/lots of friends v. not cool/few to no friends. Definitely cliqueish.

My school it was the cool kids versus the Goths/Anime fans/Techies, etc., also Black and White kids kind of separated from each other.
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« Reply #24 on: February 21, 2017, 09:45:24 PM »

At my public high school in Vermont, I was on the varsity baseball team, and we used to wear our jackets around school all the time in early spring.
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