Is it always like a bad teen-movie? Highschool around the world, tell us of your experiences.

[The Funslinger]

My highschool was pretty much one of those "battlegrounds" from the movies and newspaper. It was littered with bullies and mean people. To me it wasn't a place for learning, and I deeply regret not being homeschooled.

My school had a system, where everyone in the higher grades bullied the lower grades mostly, and when the lower grades moved up, they started bullying the younger people, because they were stupid...is the only way I know how to put it right now.

I was bullied a lot. I have grown an unhealthy dislike for males because of the last 5 years of my life. Even when I left school, everywhere I go there are mean people waiting to bring you down.

If I ever adopt a child they are being homeschooled.

I went to school in Canada, south Ontario, near Toronto. Which is probably the most american part of Canada, so I am not sure if USA is to blame. We had Jocks, we had an American Football team. We had sluts.

I think bullies are everywhere is this world, I don't think Canada is much more different then USA.

It just strikes me as an overly American thing, and heavily dramatized as well. My school, as I mentioned, had neither. No jocks (no school-team of any sport, whatsoever), no bullies (none that I was aware of) or classic "nerds".
Then again, I went to a school with 80% girls who all studied aesthetics and/or photography. In Sweden, you can pretty much pick a "major" already in Highschool, and thus different schools will focus on different majors, and gather different sort of people.

Ok so your school kinda sounds like heaven. Sounds like Sweden is many years ahead of North America in the school situation. I did Fashion, Cooking, Art, Photography, Drama and such in my school but they were only a few out of MANY classes. They were also mostly females, which I found much more comforting. Females tend to be nicer and more mature then Males by leaps. Plus if you truly say no bullies, which is hard for me to imagine *maybe YOU were just not bullied, people find it hard to see the gritty picture if they aren't in the middle of it?*. But if it is as you say, then another point for your school, especially if there is a lack of boys, I can almost believe it.

I wish I had gone to school in England.

No...

No, you don't. British secondary school is the chavs and alternative/geek people, who despite being more diverse than the chavs usually total to around 30-45%. The chavs pretty much get everywhere with their smoking and fight picking and irritating mannerisms. You actually feel more dirty just by being in close proximity to them. I swear to God, there is actually a common chav scent. And the chav women are dirty whores with superiority complexes out the arse.

A Level college is much better though, and the only major chav I've encountered there is going to prison!

 

[hydroblitz]

American High school student here.

My school has an open campus and a variable schedule. I've never seen a fight, never even seen people bad mouth each other. I'm in drama club, which is about as respected as Athletics. I am friends with pretty much everyone. while there aren't any cliques, there are groups that are totally cool with each other. I'm friends with people in band, football, swim team, anime club, drama club, choir, wrestling, track, cheerleaders,the hipsters, and the stoners. I have never seen bullying, or heard of it. Most students adore the principal (who sadly retired after nearly 30 years at the school) and the school is named after a tribe of native americans that visits every other year to renew the relationship, which the students have a great respect for.

My High School is great...

 

[Darren716]

Basically in my school there are two main groups; The people who actually want to try and succeed, and the people who only show up because they are forced to and will leave as soon as possible to begin their life of mooching off welfare. The first group is divided into quite a few cliques and basically everyone is in at least 2 or 3 of them.

 

[Darren716]

American High school student here.

My school has an open campus and a variable schedule. I've never seen a fight, never even seen people bad mouth each other. I'm in drama club, which is about as respected as Athletics. I am friends with pretty much everyone. while there aren't any cliques, there are groups that are totally cool with each other. I'm friends with people in band, football, swim team, anime club, drama club, choir, wrestling, track, cheerleaders,the hipsters, and the stoners. I have never seen bullying, or heard of it. Most students adore the principal (who sadly retired after nearly 30 years at the school) and the school is named after a tribe of native americans that visits every other year to renew the relationship, which the students have a great respect for.

My High School is great...

A few questions
1. How many people go to this school?
2. What type of area is the school located in(rural, suburban, or inner city)?
I'm just a bit curious how a school like this can exist since at my school everyone either hates each other or is planning to stab their closest "friends" in the back at any convenient time.

 

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

I just graduated.

There was no hostility as cliques or groups just the odd a-hole but they were a minority. There were normal people and honors people and mostly a mix depending on what you were good at. The only separation I saw was that it was rare that someone in an AP class was not Asian, Indian, or White. Weird how the stereotype can end up as truth, in certain instances.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

First of all, props for the Firo avatar. Baccano is the tops :3

Secondly, though I graduated from High School in 2009, I can see the lines getting blurred. When I was in school, video games were still unusual and played mostly by "gamers," and spending most of the evening on the Internet was still pretty "weird." But now with casual games, multiplayer shooters, Facebook, and Twitter pretty much everybody is versed in games and the Internet to some degree or another. Hell, even memes are going mainstream now. Though I would never in a million years opt to go through it again, I think it would be interesting to see what exactly constitutes a "nerd" these days in gradeschools.

Thanks for your props

And, uh, yeah. It might only be several years later, but I've noticed that there's all sorts of people I can talk about games with, even if they're just casual games or shooters that I don't like to play much. It doesn't seem to matter what group they happen to belong to.

I wear "gaming" shirts all the time and no one berates or makes fun of me for it. In fact, most people are usually curious about it. Always a good opportunity to tell someone about a game.

 

[him over there]

My school is fucking awesome. Everybody has at least a few people who they get along with. We all chill out the place is pretty nice. I just go in, see my friends, talk about what we're doing and then hang out some more. No "popular clique or any of that bullshit exists. In my opinion the whole idea of "oppressed nerds" and "jerk jocks" is simply a delusion of people who aren't by any means social who are rocking a major persecution complex. The kind of people who are like "everybody except me is having a good time therefore they aren't trying and they'll drop out and be a failure I'm so much better than the- oh god I wish somebody would hang with me."

 

[Vault101]

private all girls catholic school

my god the amount of pretentious wank at times (from the establishment, not the girls themselves) then again its not a bad thing I guess

my highschool experience was neither great nor terrible, and I'm a much happyer person now than when I was in there

I think my worst experience was in the first few days...see you got a locker and with it a combination lock...I mean to me at that point the thing was like ancient alien code....I had no Idea

so like a few people I left it on my locker unhinged/unlocked which was all good

in the mean time I was having a hard time rapping my ead around this new scary and place....and when I came to my locker one morning to find it had been "locked" I freaked right out anf had a kind of panic attack/breakdown....and that was not fun

 

[saintdane05]

My school is very strict, not lax like most media portrays it to be. A running joke is "You get refereals for looking funny." Cliques are usually formed and destroyed in a semester. The biggest one that we have is the band and JROTC. And you do NOT fuck with the JROTC.

 

[DkLnBr]

There was some cliquiness, but most people could be put broadly into one of three categories:
-Drug dealers
-Drug users
-Not involved with drugs at all

I was going to post, but this about sums it up ....not much else I can contribute really

 

[Johnny Reb]

My school of about 3,000 is basically divided into these groups:

Sports
Drama kids
NJROTC
Skaters
Metal heads
Hipsters (dub-step listening, van sneaker & v-neck shirt wearing, internet meme quoting folk)

I was a rarity in being the gay metal-head NJROTC cadet lolz.

 

[Johnny Reb]

My school is very strict, not lax like most media portrays it to be. A running joke is "You get refereals for looking funny." Cliques are usually formed and destroyed in a semester. The biggest one that we have is the band and JROTC. And you do NOT fuck with the JROTC.

what's the JROTC like in your school? mines fairly small and not very intimidating. most of cadets in my unit don't even enjoy being in it and don't care if they mess up their uniform.

 

[saintdane05]

My school is very strict, not lax like most media portrays it to be. A running joke is "You get refereals for looking funny." Cliques are usually formed and destroyed in a semester. The biggest one that we have is the band and JROTC. And you do NOT fuck with the JROTC.

what's the JROTC like in your school? mines fairly small and not very intimidating. most of cadets in my unit don't even enjoy being in it and don't care if they mess up their uniform.

We were first in the nation two years ago. Now we are second.

 

[hydroblitz]

American High school student here.

My school has an open campus and a variable schedule. I've never seen a fight, never even seen people bad mouth each other. I'm in drama club, which is about as respected as Athletics. I am friends with pretty much everyone. while there aren't any cliques, there are groups that are totally cool with each other. I'm friends with people in band, football, swim team, anime club, drama club, choir, wrestling, track, cheerleaders,the hipsters, and the stoners. I have never seen bullying, or heard of it. Most students adore the principal (who sadly retired after nearly 30 years at the school) and the school is named after a tribe of native americans that visits every other year to renew the relationship, which the students have a great respect for.

My High School is great...

A few questions
1. How many people go to this school?
2. What type of area is the school located in(rural, suburban, or inner city)?
I'm just a bit curious how a school like this can exist since at my school everyone either hates each other or is planning to stab their closest "friends" in the back at any convenient time.

1. About 2,000 or so people.
2. Upper middle class suburbs.

I think the biggest factor is the sense of community and respect for the native american connection. the school has it's own culture, pretty much.

 

[DocBalance]

I've been Home-Schooled all my life. A lot of people think that means you duck out on all the stereo-typical High School craziness. Hell, I thought that way until I was actually in High School. Turns out you don't.

The major difference is that the Jocks, the Nerds, and the Drama geeks are for the most part one and the same. Since our schedules aren't really regimented, it's not uncommon for someone to show up to a rehearsal or practice tournament straight away from basketball/football/soccer practice. For the people who were part of only one or two things(for instance, I was more into debate and theater because of my growing physical limitations), the popularity curve is the opposite of what you would expect. Most of the people involved exclusively in sports are the kind of straight-laced, shy, boring lot,whereas the speech and debate was where the more wild people hung out. In speech and debate there was basically every type of person you could think of in a regular high-school, from the popular cheerleader types to the stoners. I rather enjoyed it for the most part, except for a some unfortunate drama in my sophomore and junior years that everyone involved, myself included, made a way bigger deal about than was necessary.

 

[Distance_warrior]

My schools count be further from the movies. There are still groups technically but no one notices them because people only go near people they enjoy hanging around but this is decided on purely an individual basis rather than the other people they talk to. the acceptance level is also insane with Friday being one of the prime examples because the it teachers set up a counter-strike server and just out side we have about 40 people doing Zumba with our ridiculously flamboyant professional instructor who is currently in year 12 with us all. The is also no bulling or stigmas because of any activity its (difficult to get our D&D games off the ground because of too many people wanting to play and the presence of one DM that makes the rest seem dull). In short everyone has a place and that place is wherever the fuck they want to be weather its halfway between the screechy center of attention drama students and the introverted IT students.

 

[Nouw]

I'm in my second year and honestly I haven't really seen a divide into social groups. Maybe it changes when I go into my senior year but for now it's just groups of friends on a gradient scale that measures 'good' behaviour.

 

[Nexxis]

The high school I attended in North Carolina was like one of those depicted in the media, except it wasn't just split by group interest. It was split by race as well, unfortunately. If you didn't fall into a specific "slot" then you were ignored, avoided, or mis-treated in some way. I was part of the "ignored" circle since I didn't match the behavior of my race and any of their assigned groups. It was quite depressing to live through. I even had a friend who joined a group and broke off all contact with me since I didn't fit in.

On the whole, though, I think that the experience varies depending on multiple factors, so not all school with have the stereotypical high school feel. This is just my opinion, but I think that high schools in the US are like this because society has accepted it as the norm, including bullying. I haven't seen a really strong fight against bullying until recently. Before then, it was just a thing that happened and kids and they would just deal and grow out of it. I've heard some people say that it just helps kids develop more, seeing it as an ok thing. I remember seeing more cartoon messages on how to deal with bullies rather than just telling kids not to be a bully. And even the messages relied on clear cut situations which don't happen often. "What do you do if you tell a grownup doesn't help?" and the like weren't really explored.

Long story short, yes, there are high schools similar to the ones portrayed in media, though the events that happen are probably exaggerated to bring focus to it and to entertain. The culture could be the reason why high schools are the way they are.

 

[DarthSka]

Ah, high school in southern Mississippi. It was, well, not that bad actually. Sure there were the bitches, dicks, etc., but you'll find that almost everywhere you go. I was in Marching Band all those years and I never got any of that, "band kids are losers," treatment from the so called popular kids, of which I'm not sure there was even a group of. I was also one of the smartest but again, no stereotypical nerd treatment. I maintained most of my friendships from my previous grades and made a couple more with a few above and below my grade levels, and we're still friends to this day. Formed a ska band which is still together, so there's that. Finally, never did the relationship thing officially. Sure I had the occasional crush and some girls liked me, but I never asked anyone out until the day after I graduated. So all in all, I had a pretty good run.