I need some help from my readers - those in an American high school or recent graduates of one

[Robert B. Marks]

Hi all!

I'm working on an installment of the next block of Garwulf's Corner right now that deals with American high schools, and I have a bit of a problem. I have never been directly exposed to the American public high school system (my education was entirely in Canada), and the information I've got on what it's like to be an American high school student of the geekier set is mainly from Jon Katz' Voices from the Hellmouth series (https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/04/25/1438249/voices-from-the-hellmouth), which doesn't go past around 2004.

So, what I need to know is whether things have changed since then. Is American high school still hell? Are there still study halls and hall monitors? Are high school students still being treated like children to be monitored and controlled? Are the cliques still in open war with one another? Are administrators still failing to be reasonable authority figures?

Many thanks to anybody who might be able to shed some insight on this. As everybody can image, I'd rather not publish an installment with a damning indictment of the American public high school system only to find out that the things I'm talking about were addressed years ago...

(And, my apologies to anybody for whom thinking about this opens up old wounds.)

 

[Saelune]

Yes, school is still hell. I doubt that will ever change. And I extend that to even those not dealing with the more personal issues I dealt with.

No study halls or Spongebob-esque Hall Monitors in my school. You'd have to be pretty suspicious or seen by someone who knows you're not where you're supposed to be. I spent alot of free time just wandering the halls with no fuss while others had class.

Treated like children to be monitored and controlled? Perhaps on a faculty member by faculty member basis. I think schools as a whole might, but not on the more individual level.

Cliques is probably another school by school issue. My school did not have as 80's defined cliques, but there certainly were more popular students, geekier ones, etc. The most notably clique like group in my specific high-school were the drama kids. We apparently had a notable drama program.

Cant really say on the last question. But bullying still happens, so I suppose yes.

There were 3 highschools in my local district. From my understanding, I was in the better of the 3. The other two from what I heard were less reputable, but that could have just been biased rumors. My only experiences with them were summer school, but thats not regular school.

I dont think Highschool is, atleast in my area, 80's movie level bad, but I still think we are far from good.

 

[Avnger]

Is American high school still hell? Are there still study halls and hall monitors? Are high school students still being treated like children to be monitored and controlled? Are the cliques still in open war with one another? Are administrators still failing to be reasonable authority figures?

Going down the list:

1. Yes/No. It's only really "hell" because of our age going through it.
2. I had study halls (as in an open period where we were assigned a room to do whatever at our desks. We had to be quiet though.) but no hall monitors.
3. Yes/No. It mainly depended on the teacher. Most were pretty good at the whole "young adult" thing.
4. Nope.
5. Eh they're overall pretty decent.

As a note, I went to a private school and graduated in 2010. My friends in the local public schools had pretty much similar experiences though.