How really is high school life in the US?

High school movies tend to be pretty accurate, aside from elements that are dramatized for the sake of storytelling.

yes.

Euphoria getting the depression right, but there is less sex and drugs than before.

It was bad enough my parents concluded I was better off in private school and paid out the nose to get me there.

Growing up gay in the 90s, my high school experience drove me to want to die and I missed 35-40 days a year with my mom’s blessing. I went to a relatively tame suburban school, but it was extremely hostile to me as a gay kid. It was far worse than how Kurt was treated in Glee, but I didn’t have any real friends and so it wasn’t like Mean Girls. The closest feeling I’ve ever gotten to my high school experience is Carrie, to be honest. Subtract the telekinesis and the happy ending, and that was my high school experience. I was not abused at home as she was; home was my refuge. School was a place to be battered and told every single day by other kids that I am a monster and shouldn’t be alive, and in all those years from seventh grade through 12th-grade graduation, not a single adult teacher or administrator ever intervened on my behalf.

I can only speak for myself, but my psyche will never recover from my HS experience.

I really do see this as a happy ending.

That's awful, R5. I'm sorry you had to go through that.

Were there no there gay kids there R5 or people like you?

[quote] I was not abused at home as she was; home was my refuge.

Imagine if it was a boarding school.

Sounds like a very toxic environment. I feel for you. High school years are very different in other parts of the planet.

The cheerleader sterortype is not real. Some cheerleaders in my HS were pretty normal, nice and outgoing. The mean girls thing, is for sure real. But they don't dress like in the movies.

I went to high school in the early 80s, so Freaks and Geeks rings pretty true for me.

There's always a thing about their lockers, isn't there?

I think things may have changed the past 10-15 years, but yes - jocks were privileged, pretty girls and cheerleaders dressed up everyday with a lot of makeup.

It's not that different than adult society really. Good looking athletic guys always have privileges. Good looking women dress up and use their beauty as an asset.

I can't think that it is THAT different across the world. Yes - the HS system is different, but not who gets looked down on or praised. Teenagers are immature and mean - it really isn't that different globally.

R5 Wow, didn't expected that!

I'm from Spain and I was in a very Catholic High School, the worst thing I remember were the moral superiority all the preps and teachers in my school feel just because they were Christian. That is what really made me feel a freak.

The mean girls was mean gays, with social media and stuff.

R8 There was one other kid who was (in my mind) even more overly gay than I was, and he was likewise bullied into silence and trying to appear invisible. We didn’t socialize. That would have made us even more conspicuous. I was afraid to go anywhere near him and I am sure he felt similarly.

We did have identical twin sisters in my graduating class and one of them sued the school after graduation because she wore pants instead of a dress under her cap and gown and they wouldn’t let her walk in the graduation ceremony. She came out as gay after that, very publicly, and her sister supported her.

This was in 1996 in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

R13 I can assure you that if movies are accurate, HS in Spain is far from the US experience. Jocks didn't have any privilege, no cheerleaders, only one race (no black people, asian or latino) and very religious.

I wonder how Elite and Sex Education are true to their own environment or are more shaped by Hollywood ideals of high school?

R15 - how have you found making friends SINCE you left school?

I went to a boarding school nr London. We wore straw hats to class and tailcoats on Sundays and don't ask me about the "fagging system".

You gurls don't know how lucky you are/were.

I was never shoved into a locker. I was flicked (ears), kicked and laughed at when walking down the hallway, pinched (hard) in the lockerroom by guys who did that to watch new bruises appear days later—that was all year and I did all I could to get out of PE class—pushed and shoved, etc. Called fag, fairy, bitch, etc. One new kid who moved from California started all of it, and he had a bad home life and I suspect he was transferring abuse to me, but he really ruined my life. The only time I ever fought back, he pinned me down and was hitting me, and I grabbed a piece of bark mulch and threatened to stab him with it. He laughed and I jabbed it in his back and told him if he ever hit me again I would cut his throat if that’s what it took to make him stop, and he stopped the physical shit (which other boys continued) but then began a rumor that I was going to grow up to be a serial killer. There was no way to win and no way out until school was over.

But the cheerleader thing from movies was not a thing in my school. All the cheerleaders were husky serious athletes, definitely not the skinny pretty girls.

[italic]Glee[/italic] is a lie from start to finish, [italic]Mean Girls[/italic] substantially less so.

[quote] High school movies tend to be pretty accurate, aside from elements that are dramatized for the sake of storytelling.

Because most people in Hollywood haven't progressed beyond those years mentally.

Holy. Fucking. Wow:

"The senior, sometimes called the fag-master, was the protector of his fags and responsible for their happiness and good conduct."

Why do people seem to forget that Mean Girls is based on a serious sociological study?

R18 Generally speaking, people like me a lot at work and liked me at school. I am asocial, though, and so while I have a lot of very close coworker-friends and friends from grad school, I don’t socialize much on my own time. I am 41 years old and I am still a bit afraid of people, to be honest, and I don’t trust many people. I can’t say whether my school experiences are to blame for this part of my personality but I do suspect it’s a huge part of it.

Romantically—there is no romance. I’ve never had a serious romantic relationship and I am freaked out by intimacy with gay men. Again, I can’t say whether that is rooted in my adolescent school experiences but I do think it is. My best friend from first grade through sixth grade, who was close enough to be kind of a brother type and also someone I probably had a pre-sexual crush on, turned against me with all the neighborhood kids when I was in seventh grade. After I got off the school bus, he would call me faggot, chase me home on his bike with other boys and try to run into me, knock me over, throw small rocks and wood chips, etc.

I’m not trying to be too dramatic about it. It is what happened in my life and I’ll never emotionally recover, not fully.

But that said, I have never had a single homophobic incident of note in my entire adult life since high school.

[quote]My best friend from first grade through sixth grade, who was close enough to be kind of a brother type and also someone I probably had a pre-sexual crush on, turned against me with all the neighborhood kids

OMG. That was the WORST!! (at any school). Good friends who became your arch enemy. UGH!

[quote][R18] Generally speaking, people like me a lot at work and liked me at school.

I thought you said you had no friends at school.

r25 that's heartbreaking, first because that was your experience, and also because it's a source of everlasting regret to me that I didn't do something to help the kid in my class who was just like you, I'll never forget him and hopefully also will never forget that I sat and watched while he was tormented, even if I never joined in, I formed part of that cold anonymous crowd of spectators that made it all that much worse for him. Really hope he's OK. He was pretty irrepressible, so I imagine he probably is.

R13 I'm French and high school was nothing like American movies. There were no "jocks" as nobody cared if you were good at sports, and of course no cheerleaders. There were cliques but no hostility between them. There were still some "weirdos", but they were more socially isolated than bullied. This was over 15 years ago, in a relatively privileged high school, mostly populated by stoner/artsy kids.

[quote]that's heartbreaking, first because that was your experience

[bold]Don't go breaking your heart too quickly. He's a TROLL.[/bold]

see here >>

[quote]It was far worse than how Kurt was treated in Glee, but I didn’t have any real friends and so it wasn’t like Mean Girls. The closest feeling I’ve ever gotten to my high school experience is Carrie, to be honest. Subtract the telekinesis and the happy ending, and that was my high school experience. I was not abused at home as she was; home was my refuge. School was a place to be battered and told every single day by other kids that I am a monster and shouldn’t be alive,

and then he wrote:

[quote]R18 Generally speaking, people like me a lot at work and liked me at school.

Fucking IDIOT.

R27 I meant in college and at grad school. I am a nerd. I’ve always been a nerd, and that of course contributed to school abuses on top of the obvious gay stuff. But in college, I had more friends and was more social than ever before in my life and it was uplifting and healing—and exhausting. After college, I lost touch with many of my friends because I am asocial, as I said. Part of the reason I went to grad school was to connect with people again because I need motivation to socialize, and I did make some of the best friends of my life there. I remain close with a few of them. Otherwise, my friends are mostly my coworkers, and I am one of the only people at my workplace who probably could call myself friends with almost everyone else there. People genuinely like me but I avoid getting very close with a lot of people even though I want to. It’s a complexity of my life that I have dealt with since I survived high school. I’ve seen a therapist for 10 years and I don’t feel depressed any longer and I don’t even have social anxiety any longer, but I have made almost no progress on my avoidance of becoming casually close with people. And my shrink has even gone as far as to tell me she can’t understand what holds me back from that and that “I should not say this...I shouldn’t say this as a psychiatrist but of all my patients I’ve ever had, you are the one I would want to be friends with if we weren’t doctor and patient.” I assume that is part of the building my self-esteem, even though it does probably cross a line clinically, but I just can’t seem to become genuinely close to people in the way most people do. I’ll go somewhere and hang out in public sometimes, for example, but I am reluctant to go to people’s houses who are not family and I have only let three of my friends into my apartment. Getting that close just really makes me feel unsettled.

Let me clarify - not all high schools are like that, but it more resembles co-ed schools in wealthier areas or areas with mixed wealth - with rich kids and those with less.

Lower or middle income co-ed high schools are more fair, but there is still the immature teasing, cliques, and mean girls stuff in almost every school.

But these are PUBLIC, co-ed schools. You will have a different experience at an all boys school, religious school, boarding school, private school, Catholic school, etc.

That's what is portrayed on TV and movies - co-ed public high schools. And I contend that teenagers in a public, co-educational environment still act in various degrees the same way around the world. It may be less obvious, but it's the same.

Right R28 - so you went to a school populated with 'artsy' kids - that's not a usual environment.

So many of the contrarians on this thread are comparing single-sex high schools, private schools, religious schools, etc. to the US. The HS experience at a Performing Arts High School in the US is also different than the average high school - jocks are not given privileges and pretty girls don't rule the school because what counts is your talent.

I was far from a cool kid but I remember all the pretty girls being super nice and chill. They didn't have a reason to be cunts, they already had it all.

High school was cliques. Kids you were friends with all your life suddenly stopped being your friends because of he clique they were in.

I’m not a troll. Just relaying my experiences as I lived them and saw them from my point of view. Even my sister wouldn’t let me sit next to her on the school bus sometimes and I had to squat in the aisle while boys flicked my ears from behind. Sometimes when I had a seat on the inside, someone would slam my head into the window from behind and everyone around would laugh. It was inhumane.

But, you know, it’s just been my life. I graduated in 1996 and life changed for me then. But Columbine happened three years later and when I heard that the boys who did it were outcasts, I understood their rage. I was as sad and disturbed for them as I was for the people they killed. I had my mom at home who told me that high school is not real life and that when I graduate, high school life will evaporate and none of the rules of that society would apply again and she was right. So I hung in there. On days when I told her I didn’t feel up to going to school, she let me stay home and I know she knew she was doing what she could to save my life. I did pretty well academically despite a lot of absence and so that wasn’t a big problem.

In the long run, I am empathetic as a result of the experience. I am not good at relationships with people, but I spent years and years of my life absolutely silent and observing how people behave and interact and that gave me the sensibility to be a writer, which is what I went on to study. I am sad for my younger self. I am. But I also just accept that this is what happened in my life, and life went on. Lots of people are abused in different ways, and many go on to abuse others. I am a bit of a hermit and that’s not the worst outcome. C’eat la vie. Life is weird.

Way less sex. Jocks are worshipped. Intelligence was not the priority - almost encouraged to hide the fact that you did well in school. I didn’t see or experience such extreme bullying as some did here. Suburban Northeast school.

R23 Sounds hot

This is the thing about American high school. All the people who you thought had it together and who were having the time of their lives, were just as confused and uncertain of things as everyone else. The key about high school is finding your lane or in other words finding people like you, once you find your group then it's not bad at all.

My thing in high school was, I was a fat kid. This was the late 80s, so body positivity and loving your body wasn't a thing and fat kids were few and far between. But I was smart and nice, so people liked me, and so I hung out with the popular, smart kids and joined all the popular, smart kid clubs.

But I was also gay and closeted, so being fat sort of solved my dating issues, because none of the girls wanted to date the fat kid. So being fat sort of saved me from having to navigate high school dating because that just wasn't an option. Except for a pity date to both my junior and senior proms. I didn't witness or experience any bullying or teasing. I was called fat a few times, but it was nothing earth shattering. The girls were having a lot of sex in my school, because in those days it wasn't a problem for someone in their early 20s to be dating someone in high school. And that is the way it was, all the best looking girls were dating guys much older.

Hollywood school is usually upper middle class suburban schools, that's only a specific slice of America. It really doesn't capture the masses of people who go to poor and lower middle class schools.

R17 In Sex Education, it was a conscious decision by Netflix to make it look like an American high school.

Correct r41. Sex Education is an American highschool set in Britain, it is nothing like a British highschool. There aren't even uniforms!

I went to an UES private school, so our world was pretty different from your regular high school (and no, nothing at all like Gossip Girl, lol)

Overall, like everything else in America, class differences in high school experience have sharpened considerably over the past 20 years or so.

In upper middle class schools, public or private, there's a huge emphasis on getting into a good college and kids spend much of their time burnishing their resumes. Getting onto a sports team isn't so much a "jock" thing as it is a "looks good on the college resume" thing. Ditto music, debate, acting--and you're not supposed to limit yourself to just one, so if you're the star center on the basketball team, you probably also want to continue with the violin and start your own string quartet that plays at nursing homes and VA hospitals...

Outside of that, mean girls gonna mean, only they mostly do it on social media and all of my friends with younger siblings/cousins have stories about sexting-gone-bad and the inevitable fallout from that. And since cheerleading is not considered something that is going to get you into Duke, it's lost most of its luster. (Ditto football, because head injuries)

But unlike the high school of DLEG's childhoods, where they were mostly unsupervised, upper middle class Gen Z has little free time--if they're not in school at some sort of practice, they are home working with the tutor or doing the hours of homework their AP classes require.

To the point where I've had recent college grads I work with say they found college (even Ivy and similar) to be a lot easier than high school with a lot less pressure.

Also, OP, if you want to know what the "cool" American high school girls are dressing like right now, google "VSCO girl" and watch a couple of the more popular TikToks and the like.

Sksksksksksksksksk

I assume girls and gays in high school model adopt one of these as a model for their behaviors:

—Taylor Swift (the Tracy Flicks)

—Billie Eilish (happy art freaks)

—Lana Del Rey (hypersexual drama goths)

—Beyoncé (driven, ambitious, athletic high-performers)

—Ariana Grande (spectrum of classic mean girls)

[quote]Also, OP, if you want to know what the "cool" American high school girls are dressing like right now, google "VSCO girl" and watch a couple of the more popular TikToks and the like.

Why would a grown man want to look at THIS? >

Social media drives a lot of depression and suicidal thoughts.

Right r3. Because it is a TV the sex and partying is amped way up, but in reality highschoolers are more boring than that. And the rate of sex and partying is down, not increasing.

r15, did she win the court case?

So the movies are accurate except there’s way less sex?

R49 I think so. I can’t find a record online, but I *think* it went all the way to the Virginia supreme court and they ruled that girls can wear pants under their caps and gowns, and the school or the county had to change its policies. I think. This would have been in 1996 or 1997.

R33 That's not such an unusual environment. High schools attract different kind of students according to which optional classes are available. There were two high schools in my city, I went to the one that had optional art classes. I checked, and 44% of high schools have art classes, so almost half the students might have a similar experience.

51% of public school students in America come from families that qualify for free and reduced lunch. That's not the world you see in most highschool shows.

[quote]51% of public school students in America come from families that qualify for free and reduced lunch. That's not the world you see in most highschool shows.

On British shows it's ALL you see.

Hell

Sorry, r19.

Now we have to know what in the hell a “fagging system is.

R43 I really can relate (in some parts) with you experience. I don't know if that's because we are both millenials, and the bullying or, in your case, the jock and cheerleader thing was a bit old fashioned.

Of course I can't relate with expending the whole HS trying to make a good resume to go to a good university. In Spain you just have to pay if you want to go to a private university (yes I know that is awful). I didn't know thar you have to really work to be accepted, I guess that really starts to prepare you for real life. But do you have time to party and stuff?

R44 loved the VSCO girl thing, definitely much more different than in my country. But it feels to be what any random girl is dressing right now. But the posh ones? Or the tomboys?

I guess VSCO boy are the current american cool boys. For me it is less impressive, not very different from what it was when I was in HS. It appears like boys dress all the same even in different countries and ten years later. But some of them are hot.

R57 OP

I don't think I could have survived in most American High Schools. I grew up with '80s US movies and television show ideals, and I think most kids where I lived did. I grew up in Australia, where we had no reason to question much of what we saw.

I did go to high school in England for a while. I thought this would resemble some proper BBC period drama. But it was rough - terrible food, awful kids, parents and teachers the worst! I remember being shell shocked when I heard a teacher at his desk yell at a pupil to "FUCK OFF!!!". The kids could be incredibly two-faced, sweet around adults but incredibly evil behind their backs. Interestingly, when I visited years later I found some of those screwed up kids actually turned out okay.

I finished off High School back in Oz, in a very loving and social environment. A small, solidly upper-middle-class, inner-city school where the kids and teachers were absolutely lovely. That was great and lots of fun. I felt like I had passed some kind of karmic test when I got to go to that school.

There are some sad truths to some of those movie stereotypes, particularly how children of privilege control faculty. As a middle class white gayling of divorced parents, I endured Jr. High and High School in the 80's, attending a variety of schools in different parts of the US. In the southeast, in public schools that were half white, half black, part blue collar, part redneck (grits), part middle class, I had tons of friends and felt accepted by jocks, grits, cheerleaders, nerds, punks, brains, etc. In the midwest, in public schools that were majority white and middle to upper-middle class, I was bullied mercilessly (not physically) and openly in classes, in front of teachers and administration who never said a word. (And I'm going to call you out, Northview Middle School in Indianapolis, IN.) The same can be said for a private school I attended in Virginia, where the entitled white children ran the school and tortured those they considered lesser, with no repercussion. (And don't even get me started on all-boys boarding school) There's always "The Nerd, The Princess, The Jock, The Basket Case, and The Criminal" in every school. Just without the awesome soundtrack.

[quote]I was bullied mercilessly (not physically) and openly in classes, in front of teachers and administration who never said a word.

What you just wrote reminded me of this (see link).

In fact this link is relevant to the whole thread.

I went to a high school in an upper middle class suburb. As R43 said so well, the focus was about getting into good colleges, so the “in” kids were the smart kids.

Football and cheerleading existed but we’re not worshipped as they can be in middle America. There were no mean girls or bullying jocks.

In my HS, charming guys were at the top of the heap if they were good looking and could play sports. Bullies were sorted down the pecking order starting in Jr HS. The most popular girls were pretty and nice, too. I guess this was superficial bourgeois NYC suburb typical.

I went to a coed public high school in a California town. Graduated early 90’s. It wasn’t much like movies. There were cliques and the one with the upper middle class girls who had better hair and clothes than everyone probably thought of themselves as “popular” but they weren’t popular with anyone but the jocks. Most of them were ugly. They weren’t the cheerleaders or homecoming queens. Those were the overachievers, and they were nice. The jocks were Dumb, loud and obnoxious. They were made fun of and laughed at by most except the aforementioned group of snobby girls. The three or four super beautiful girls in my grade were shunned, had little to no friends and were appallingly sexually harassed. My closest friend was a dead ringer for Stephanie Seymour with a better nose and ten more pounds. No guy could talk to her or treat her in a normal way. It was all leering, sexual comments and general grossness. I was pretty, had my ass grabbed so much I was immune to it and not bullied although I had rumors spread about me that weren’t true. My friend and I had sex with hot college guys. I had a boyfriend at another school. Some of my friends had lots of sex and some we’re abstinent until they were adults. Oh, and NOBODY ate lunch in the fucking cafeteria outside of special ed students. I have worked in three high schools in the last 20 years and this is the case at all of them. There aren’t “designated tables” according to social status or whatever that shit is they show in movies.

The high schools depicted in media are from upper-class suburbs, so they're accurate to those areas. I'm from a small town, and we didn't have clearly defined "roles" like I'm assuming people from big, anonymous suburbs did. Lots of people were related to each other and we were also majority Mexican.

I personally was a loner in high school. I am surprised I didn't get bullied a lot more than I did because I would have been an easy target. But for the most part people left me alone. Though I can remember about 4 people who invited me to sit with them at lunch over the years. However I didn't do it because I was more comfortable sitting alone. I was just way too shy and people made me uncomfortable so I avoided them as much as possible.

I was aware of what was going on enough to know that football was a huge deal, though. I remember people complaining that they could afford to put money into building a brand new football stadium but couldn't afford to replace the computers which were slow as could be if they even worked at all. As for cliques, I lived in a college town so the popular kids were people whose parents worked at the college and therefore had a little more money. Many moved in from out of town just for the college. The "townies" (people who lived there their entire lives and whose parents didn't work at the college) were mostly poor kind of white trash types, many of whose lives based around who was going to fight who on which day. And there were quite a lot of hippies as well. An interesting variety of people. And any of them could be popular if they played the right sport.

Thanks R62, appreciate the back-up

R65 -- Gossip Girl and Clueless aside, I find the opposite to be true--most high school dramas are about middle America

Even BH90210 sounded more like someone's middle American high school (only with better cars) than actual Beverly Hills High School (which is all Persian these days and the rich West Side kids go to places like H-W, Brentwood, Crossroads and Windward)

OP, no. High school sucks but the average high school student is pretty apathetic and just goes with the flow. If you want hell, let's discuss American middle school. It's the fucking worst. EVERYONE is terrible with the exception of a small minority of students (these are usually the ones who are so academically advanced that they don't fit in with the other kids). And everyone is starting puberty around this time, so hormones are flaring, people turn vicious, people smell bad, etc. Middle school is pure hell. Source: A brown male who hit puberty at 11 in the late 90s.

Rural, southern school...I could get along with any group and hung out with different cliques. There was the lunch table thing.

I now teach. In a hs I did not see much bulling with the upper class-men. I now teach middle school, and nearly EVERYTHING those kids say to each other could be considered bullying. You really have to guess whether they are joking, which most of it is. Students also need to realize that teachers cannot / do not hear everything said, even if they are right beside you. There is a cacophony in the classroom and one must learn to tune it out.

I got out of high school 2 years ago lol, and everyone just goes about their days at school. Going to high school during the social media era was interesting because there's a lot of bitchiness that takes place online, but not necessarily bullying. More like it gives ppl another reason to shit talk behind your back, but that's really it.

I will say though a lot of the time in movies kids in student council, student govt, etc are the losers. In real life it's the popular kids that take these roles because it's set up as a popularity contest, and voting is a huge aspect.

I went to high school in the 90s, like a few others here. I LOVED it. But I was weird. I would do crazy things like stealing a plastic fetus from the bio lab and making it into a necklace. I said it was my pro life protest. I am the most pro choice person ever. I'd buy thrift store shirts that were cheesy as hell (I still have one! It's says: I'm Henry's Girl with a big red heart on the chest) and then convert them into something so un PC and rude. But always with humor. My counselor loved me and would make me turn the shirt inside out. So I started writing the un PC things on the inside! Admittedly, I have a very easy going personality, so everyone knew I was just having a laugh. I was prom king. I like to make everyone laugh, or die trying. My high school friends all these years later are still great friends. So, long winded answer? It was great. College was also great. Everything else? We need another thread.

Agree that Junior high/middle school are the absolute worst. Scarring, actually.

The shit isn't true. I teach and students do nothing but have their head in their phone all day long. Even when it's supposed to be out and out of sight. After the bell all phones come out and no one really gives a shit about anything except those on sports teams. The jocks deserve to be treated specially because everyone else just walks around like zombies. All the girls care about are likes and followers and the guys playing games on their computers.

[quote] I'm from Europe and i grew up with films an series like Mean Girls or Glee. Are these accurate?

Totally. These were actually gritty real-life documentaries.

Election was far more realistic than either of your examples, OP.

I had three weird bullies in high school. The first one I brought on myself. I was 15. The school swish was the only gay guy I had heard of and one night I called him up and asked him if we could meet. He said the only reason people call him is for pills or sex. I told him it was the second option. I went to his house, he fucked me, and I begged him not to tell anyone at school. Then there was the football star who would push me up against the lockers in front of my friends and say I looked like a fag in front of my friends. The last guy was the lead in a local production of high school musical. He kicked me off the stage into the orchestra pit during dress. I asked him why and he said I wasn't singing loud enough. Backstage he grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me off the ground, screaming at me. My dad came to pick up on his motorcycle after the show and this guy came out and laid himself down in front of the bike while my Dad gunned it. (I was hoping he'd release the clutch.) Anyway . . . the first guy who tried to ruin my rep over sex told the whole school but failed somehow. A girl told me what he'd done but nobody confronted me. A couple years later I would see me in gay bars in NYC and he would walk by again and again waiting for me to acknowledge him. I ignored him. The next year the Football player walked into another gay bar I was in apologized and asked me to slow dance with him (I did). The third guy (the lead actor) went on to do small parts on TV and was in LA when I moved there. I went to see a play on the Paramount lot and he was the lead. I sat in the front row. He saw me. He had to strip in the show and he looked like hell. I actually felt bad for him cuz it turned out his Dad was dying of cancer when he abused me at that long ago hometown musical and was jealous because I had the cool dad on the motorcycle. I understood and forgave him but didn't go backstage.

Your experience of high school greatly varies depending on the socioeconomic level of the area around you. Definitely an upper-middle-class private school is going to be very different from a public high school in the suburbs or inner city. However, middle school, in my experience, was the worst and the movie "Welcome to the Dollhouse" was pretty accurate about that.

Op, this is Datalounge. Posters’ knowledge of high school ended in the era of sock hops

Interested how it’s different now that the 80s and 90s - when most DLers were in high school. The phone thing and social media must be huge. Is Euphoria in any way accurate? Seems like a lot more depressives and pill poppers. Also has the progress on gay rights, trans, etc resulted in less homophobia and bullying? Seems like kids are much less judgmental about sexual identity now.

It's true. Kids are way cooler about things like that now. Unless they're gay themselves and hiding in the closet. They're the worst.

It depends on who you are. Cliques are very much a thing, although they aren't like rules set in stone that say you HAVE to hang out with these people. We do congregate in cliques, but jocks will still be friends with nerds, nerds will still be friends with goths, goths will still be friends with band geeks, etc etc.

Bullying doesn't really exist anymore, or at least it was gone by the time I got to high school, which was the early 2010's.

Your high school experience differs on who you are. I wasn't really cool, and although I did have a lot of friends, I wasn't the biggest party monster, so my high school experience was nothing like the movies. I'm sure it was different for others though.

R79 Euphoria is accurate in some ways, not accurate in others. There's a lot more depression, there's a more casual attitude towards the easier drugs (pot and pills), and there's more acceptance of gay and trans and whatever. But it's high school, not requiem for a dream. Not everybody is a drug addict but I'm guessing every school has at least one, but that one wouldn't be popular like Rue is, people tend to keep their distance from kids like that.

A lot of parents of high school kids today had friends and relatives die of AIDS in the 80s/90s. It broke their hearts and they will not put up with any kind of harassment or homophobia in their kids.

I always hated school but I am glad I was forced to go. What a chore but I tried to enjoy any part of it I could. Just being young was wonderful and I knew that.

I went to a large, middle to upper middle class, suburban high school in the PNW during the mid 2000s and it was not like the movies at all. It wasn't cliquey like they like to portray in movies, people just had their own groups of friends that they hung around with. I didn't witness or experience any real bullying that I remember, people were generally nice. Pretty liberal as a whole. Academics were a big focus. Smoking cannabis was really big. Glee always seemed so ridiculous to me, no one would have been looked down upon for something like singing. Being in choir or a musical would never be social suicide. Some of the football players were "popular", but being a football player didn't automatically make you popular. Our school was decent at sports but jocks weren't worshipped.

Glee was never meant to be realistic, it was designed to be a tongue-in-cheek that takes aim at high school stereotypes with dark comedy but because Murphy is a pussy who bends to the will of Fox, it devolved into Degrassi with singing.

Vapid. Unchallenging and boring. Daycare for teenagers.

Youngsters today have atrocious penmanship, and all the girls are WHORES and all the boys are TOO FAT.

Glee was a vaguely accurate depiction of the theater geeks in my high school in the 90s. They were definitely a different breed. Wholly separate from the jocks - who were gods. Gay kids, nerdy girls - singing was definitely not cool.

The thread on 911 Lone Star reminded me... The series Friday Night Lights was a very realistic portrayal of high school in suburban Texas. I think it was meant to be a more rural location, but it felt and looked very suburban.

I graduated in '92 and I thought My So-called Life was fairly realistic. But I went to a pretty big school with hundreds of students, and we didn't all know each other like students on TV shows and in movies seem to. It was a rather impersonal experience, especially for an introvert like me. I had a few friends but I never did any of the school activities like going to dances, football games, etc.

My HS experience was like Pretty In Pink and Some Kind Of Wonderful.

The new streaming shows on Netflix, "Sex Education" and "Elite," make it seem like high school life in UK and Spain is every bit as scandalous and dramatic as the teen shows in the US.

Anyone who is openly gay in High School is asking for trouble. I don't see how anyone could come out there or even want to.

R94, my gay nephew was out in his high school and had a boyfriend in small town Kansas, and according to him, didn't receive much flak for it. Things aren't perfect, but I think they've definitely improved..

What decade is R94 posting from?

People who are openly gay in High School do still get shit today, but it depends on where you are. They aren't like beat to a pulp but they word fag still gets hurled. It's probably easier to be openly gay in a northern High School than a southern one.

No one has answered if American high school kids have as much sex as in the movies.

Yes they have.

What I don't understand is that by this point we have had many movies and TV shows that demonstrate mean girls and bullying behaviour and how shitty it is and how usually those people turn out to be the real losers so you would have thought high schools would have evolved past all of that by now. Don't they look at their behaviour and think, I don't want to be the villain?

If the way it's portrayed is accurate then I definitely think it's more brutal than UK schools.

“Don't they look at their behaviour and think, I don't want to be the villain?“

No! One of the things that makes Trump so adolescent is his giddiness at his own evildoing. Teens want to stand out among their peers. They want attention. They want an identity so that they know how to behave according to their character sketch, because they’re not kids and don’t know how to be adults. So they vie and jostle to establish a role within their social systems. Heroes and villains are at the top of the social caste, and that is reflected in fictional stories set in schools. All actors prefer to play villains, and most teens are professional actors while in their schools. Villains get the most attention, the most glory, are best remembered, are the most talked about. If you don’t believe it, turn on the news, open any news website, scroll through the threads on this site, look at any social media platform. Villains command attention. People love to hate them and some people love them.

I hated high school. We quit right after Christmas.

High school can be tough. Those who liked it seem to remain a part of it, maintaining friendships etc. I see them on Facebook, little groups from my school, class, etc.

Those of us who didn’t like it or just did it to get out, less so. We have new lives, friends, cities.

[quote]No one has answered if American high school kids have as much sex as in the movies.

How exactly is someone supposed to answer that? Movies aren’t real and they vary in how things are depicted. Different people have different experiences, and this is reflected in both movies and real life. A racy sex comedy is going to depict things differently than a tender romance with a female lead. All of this changes over generations; some of the movies people are referencing are decades old, and the people posting, [italic]well[/italic], high school isn’t exactly fresh in their minds after all those decades. This is Datalounge. The average age is about 56. There’s no way to answer your question to your satisfaction, anyway.

R98, I did answer that in in R3. No, teen sex, pregnancy and STDs are lower than they have been in many generations. It’s all about hook-up culture, some of which barely classifies as sex.

It's high school and it sucks. It sucks so much.

“No one has answered if American high school kids have as much sex as in the movies.”

Who could say?

I can tell you that about 15 years ago, Utah (or at least SLC) had mandatory abstinence-only education and as a direct result, high school kids decided that buttsex is not real sex, and there was a significant spike in STDs transmitted via anal sex. Because if there’s no risk of pregnancy, there’s no need for condoms! And if it’s not vaginal sex, it’s not sex at all, and therefore it’s a free for all! I used to edit a health education journal and researchers were horrified. The Mormon sex loophole resulted in widespread STDs and so, in response to your question, at least among Mormons, yes, buttfucking is even more prevalent in real life than is reflected in movies!

R107 Is that why it became a training ground for so many gay porn stars, they tried the butt sex and just kept going?

R108 Who knows?

All the Mormons I’ve known have been so friendly. And yet I know of several Mormons who were cast out and shut off to their families for breaking rules. Or, more honestly, for getting caught.

Butt fucking may be common among Mormon teens because most STDs can be kept private but pregnancy cannot. I know a girl from a huge Mormon family (15 or so siblings) who was holier than thou, who went to Brigham Young and then was kicked out of Brigham Young for being pregnant. She didn’t even drink soft drinks or coffee, as per Mormon rules, but she broke that one and no one from her huge family ever spoke to her again. She ended up living in a trailer with her baby, deeply ashamed of herself with no Mormon friends to support her.

I suspect that sort of culture is a more likely reason some Mormons end up taking loads on camera for money.

R100 For what it's worth, from what I have seen from shows or movies set in the UK, and stories I've heard about bullying, the UK comes of far more brutal than my experience of US high school. So it goes both ways.

R110 when I was in England, I got bullied. They thought I was one of their English blokes until I turned around and they were shocked. I told them I was fucking off back to America. It is not Harry Potter Princess Diana land!

The kids that were having a lot of sex in high school were either in relationships or hot as fuck. Some people chose not to have sex. Some guys wished they were having a lot of sex but we’re incels. I would imagine they girls have mostly have more opportunities for sex than most boys,

Yeah, my boss went to a British prep school for one year, one of two American boys there, he said, and he has spoken about it in a kind of overly proud way for years. Recently he started talking about it and for the first time he mentioned how bullied (battered and berated) he was, and his voice got shaky and his eyes welled up. It was clear he has some kind of PTSD about it, even now in his 60s. I’m the person who went on and on above about how tormented I was because of being gay and acne-riddled etc., but I got the sense his experience may not have been much better, if at all. At least I went to a coed school where some girls clearly had some pity for me and would occasionally try to make small talk or compliment my art or something. I didn’t engage much though because I really did try to be invisible as much as I could so as not to attract more abuse.

School sucks and adolescence sucks and human beings suck. That’s all.

“I would imagine they girls have mostly have more opportunities for sex than most boys.”

One of my sister’s good friends was one of those girls who became known as a total slut, with rumors that just could not have been real. To my point about teens needing to adopt an identity, she embraced the rumors almost like in the movie EASY A, going as far as putting “FORNICATOR” (a spelling variant of it) on her license plate. The rumors were really over the top, like that she was gang banged under the rental house by every guy who went to beach week, etc. Her home life wasn’t ideal and I always felt kind of bad for her but her in-your-face attitude did diminish that feeling a little.

Most American high school and middle teachers, along with school administrators, are essentially teenagers in terms of mental development so they tolerate a lot. They are usually less interested in education and learning than buddying up to the cool kids.

Like this, R115?

R116 Yes. It they're not trying to fuck their students they are trying to be best friends with the popular ones. Aside from a few decent teachers of course.

No, high school kids don't have as much sex as in the movies. Most tend to be awkward and embarrassed. They have sex, they just aren't fucking like rabbits every day.

American education is a disgrace. At every level, I saw them cut the arts for sports.

Yeah - high school kids do not have anywhere near the sex implied in movies. Average age for first sex is creeping up. Kids are less likely to have sex than they were. The social skills require to have sex don’t exist until late in adolescence at best. High school sex is a myth.

[quote]They are usually less interested in education and learning than buddying up to the cool kids.

Indeed.

My high school in the 1970s was very cliquish. You naturally fell into a clique of people who were just like you. Or, if not, you were just on your own.

One of the main reasons high schoolers are having less and less sex is because of the environment they're growing up in. Most were in middle school, just starting the upward slope of puberty, when #MeToo broke. The majority of these kids have spent the later years of their adolescence growing up in a world where if you don't get a signed contract expressing consent before so much as looking at a girl you could be in danger. Sex is starting to be labeled as "dangerous".

Is this typical of English schools?

I get it now. So very few high school students having "lots of sex", are doing it with the same person (girlfriend/boyfriend). And given highschoolers tendency to hype and exaggerate the banalest of things, those that get a chance to stray even just one from the relationship are just asking to labelled sluts and have rumors about fucking the whole football team started about them? Come to think of it, that's exactly how it was back in my high school.

I was in junior high and high school in the 1980s in the US. The jocks and pretty girls definitely had all the advantages. Most the guys were ok, but we had this little shit with a Napoleon complex who was THE most popular kid in high school. Everyone bowed down to his whims. I never understood it. He was not particularly attractive, and short, but he always got the best looking girls. He was a prick but everyone wanted to be his friend. He was a decent athlete who overachieved. He achieved the ultimate in high school of being the starting quarterback at a football-crazy school and led the team to the state championships. I give him credit because he was a hard worker and really focused. But God, what an asshole he was. He delighted in calling me faggot until in 8th grade gym we did wrestling and I kicked his ass over and over. The next time he threatened to beat me up (always surrounded by his gang of taller, bigger friends), I called his bluff. He backed out and after that was cordial to me. Typical bully I guess.

The girls, though. Yeesh! They were a nasty, nasty lot. There was always a Queen Bee who was nasty and led the assault against various targets. Some people were terribly traumatized. Even the boys would line up to do the Queen Bee's bidding. It seemed the title shifted. Lucky for me, though, the Queen Bee (or consort in years she wasn't the Queen) liked me from 8th grade on, so I remained relatively unscathed, but she hated me in 7th grade and it made that year miserable. I remember once I asked her what had been up in 7th grade and she said I had turned down dating a friend of hers, so she set out to get revenge for her. The funny part is the friend and I became best friends and she never harbored any resentment that I turned her down.

Fast Time at Ridgemont High was pretty accurate of my high school in that era.

The problem with getting an accurate depiction of high school nowadays in film and television is that most people making those movies and tv shows are people who went to high school in the 80's, which makes them compelled to include shit like cliques and stereotypical bullying when neither of those things really exist in a high school environment anymore.

The movie reboot of 21 Jump Street did a great job of showcasing how all those 80s cliches of highschool culture are not very accurate now r128.

R90 is right that Friday Night Lights is pretty accurate.

You do have to get over the premise that not only the school but the whole town is invested in a high school football team. I guess you have to include some element like that to make drama, but other than that, it felt real.

R130, there's no exaggeration in Friday Night Lights premise about the zealots of small-town football in Texas. That's really how it is.

R131, I do find it hard to believe. Maybe a few decades ago, there was greater interest than today (with more media options for consuming professional sports), but in the show, team members are treated like celebrities and are well-known even to people completely unconnected to the school.

Well then, you'd just be wrong, R132. I happen to live here in Texas and have traveled extensively through small-towns in Texas and the rest of the Midwest. High School football really is a way of life there.

Link for R132.

Fun fact: DLfave Aaron Rodgers went to high school in my home town. I went to the other high school and was a few years older, so no stories unfortunately

R123, I haven’t seen this but from the trailer that appears a fairly accurate depiction. You wouldn’t have the kids fawning over a teacher though and any fights always seemed to happen outside. The film Beautiful Thing shows and English comprehensive fairly well as does the series Ackley Bridge. Obviously there is extra drama added but being sporty or academic doesn’t gain you much credit. Kids would have their circle of friends and mostly stick to that group but the group wouldn’t be of any particular sort of person. There wouldn’t be many pupils who stood out in any way. I suppose the ubiquitous uniform made sure of that to an extent. You just kind of kept your head down and got on with it.

If I knew I had to relive high school, I would kill myself, literally.

My husband the shrink things boys & girls should be separated during middle school & I think he’s right. Middle school was a horror for me & there really is no reason for boys & girls to be together at that age. I went to catholic HS & some of the kids came from Catholic grammar schools where boys & girls were separated from 5th-8th grade & weren't in coed classes until high school. They were the sanest kids around and all of them used to sit together - boys & girls - at lunch & be totally chill & friendly with each other. No sex jokes or misogyny. It was as if they’d gotten all of that out of their systems and were ready to be equals.

The jocks were the only pains in the ass along with the snooty cheerleaders who were all upper middle class. No matter how pretty or athletic a working class girl was, she was *not* going to be a cheerleader, as my sister found out.

"shit like cliques and stereotypical bullying when neither of those things really exist in a high school environment anymore."

Oh my sides. These are worse than ever as the US in general has become more classist.

R139 When was the last time you set foot in a high school?

R138 is right about Catholic school. And sorry, that bit about his sister gave me an idea about a comic movie script.

Went to high school in the late 90s in the Midwest and was an outsider with friends from different groups, and played soccer and got along well with the more popular girls on the team. As an alternative-dressing “, overweight girl at the time, I was never bullied, just left alone. I was also painfully shy, but the more popular girls weren’t mean girls to me, they were nice but kept their distance (they enjoyed my sarcasm though). We had band geeks, jocks, cheerleaders, preps, theater geeks, stoners/skaters, and the god squad (ultra Christian kids). Girls did not wear heels and skirts in my school, but jeans and fitted tops.

I never once saw physical bullying or even intense verbal bullying. Junior high, though, was hell because I was called names sometimes by jerk boys. High school was 1,000x better by far.

When I see movies in which high school was horrible, I’m confused at how dramatic and over-the-top they are because my high school was very tame in comparison. However, I was closeted after the time so I think I’d have had a very different experience had I been out back then.

The sexuality, drug use, independence from parents is much exaggerated in media. I think kids are much more docile and wholesome now than media depicts

As someone who grew up in the 70s, high schoolers today are Puritans.

[quote] I think kids are much more docile and wholesome now than media depicts

NOT. They are fucking little savages.

What R5 said and yes, Athletic types get away with murder.

Only in America is athletic ability valued more than academics. The whole school, including teachers, worship these jocks and help in creating a cult around them.

I don’t think foreign countries have competitive sports teams involved in schools, do they? Do high school level sports teams play against each other? Is there even such a thing as competitive college sports outside of rowing?

Sports have no place in universities.

My catholic high school opened in 1969 & tried not to have inter school competitive team sports but donations were too low until they did allow competitive sports. When they did, parents start donating as well as paying tuition. Those who played sports donated after they graduated. It’s a racket.

Cheerleaders really are sluts in training, aren’t they? I don’t know how parents allow their daughters to be one then beam with pride as they dance in their skimpy outfits. Another uniquely American thing, by the way. No other country has cheerleaders.

R148, in the U.K. at least it is quite usual to play teams from other schools but you wouldn’t get spectators turning out to watch except for the odd parent who is probably just there to collect their son or daughter as mostly the matches happen after school. Kids would join clubs outside of school at the weekends if they are particularly sporty. Also the teams would be made up of children who want to play not just those who are very good at a sport.

R150 that is interesting. In the US, it is seen as the most critical parental duty to attend a child’s sports games. My siblings spend every free minute after work and on weekends at athletic games for their kids. It’s insane. And kids talk about how important it is for parents to come to games.

Lots of trans FTM kids.

For US jocks, their girlfriends must always be there to watch them play sports. Not important in other countries where many never see their sporty boyfriends play anything. Again, academic pursuits always placed above sports.

The kids I unfortunately went to middle school with were so nasty to me that if a nuclear bomb fell on the town and killed every single last one of them--even today, two decades later--I would smile from ear to ear. I truly wish horrible things on them.

My high school was basically like the movie, "Mean Girls." You had your mean and bitchy Queen Bee, she had her followers who were all "lesser" versions of her, the jocks were loved, the geeks were tolerated and the "freaks" were avoided but had their own little groups. The "angry black hotties" (a group from Mean Girls that existed at my school) were great and I just loved them. They were all fun girls. If I am ever back home & I run into one they always jump up on me and give me a hug. There were also the "Super Christians!"

I always saw myself as a loner during high school. However, I floated between all of the groups while being considered a part of every group because I was so hell bent on escaping high school that I didn't really try to fit in after a while. I was just cool with everybody.

I got bullied the first year or so but then about halfway through people started being nicer to me. Finally one of my friends turned to me senior year and said, "You know you got really cute these past few years!" Puberty was kind to me which I guess made it easier even if I didn't see it that way. I was featured as "Bachelor of the Month" 5 times over 3 years in our school paper. I was Prom King & I had five girls ask me to go with them and I .... went with my best friend (female) because what's the point if we can't critique the outfits together?

I also hated every second of it and just wanted OUT.

I could get invited to the rich kids' party, go wander around town with the freaks at night, go to a "jammy jam" at the black kids' houses, then practice for History Bowl with the nerds. I'd go to Bible Study with the Xtian kids. The jocks thought I was a funny and the Queen Bee of the Mean Girls was always competing with or flirting with me. I also had openly gay friends and no one cared.

The only thing I get sad about looking back on it was when my best friend told me that he was in love with me and I rejected him because I wasn't ready yet. He was a really lovely guy who is not married to a woman.

Why does Hollywood try to make it seem there’s so much sex in high school?

R156 Because sex sells.

I went to boarding school, which is a whole different ball game. Back in the 80s there was probably more faculty/student sex than any other kind.

[quote] Are jocks treated with privilege?

Yes, by the coaches, the other students, and (sometimes) the administrators. The teachers who are not coaches usually do not treat them specially.

[quote] Are they awful type Nate in Euphoria?

I have no idea what this means.

[quote] Do you really fuck that much in HS?

Among Gen Xers and millennials, high schoolers had lots of sex; Gen Zers are apparently having quite a bit less.

[quote] Is that huge bullying real?

Yes, but there's bullying in high schools all over the world.

[quote] Mean girls dress like that? Heels, mini skirts and full make up?

Not like in the movies--they usually cannot afford to dress that nicely. They do tend to wear too much makeup, but they usually do not wear heels to school.

[quote] Are all cheerleaders bitches?

No. Some are nasty but some are nice.

I went to an all-boys, Jesuit high school. It was a great experience, and I've maintained lifelong friendships with may of the guys from the school. Was there teasing and the usual teenage rivalry? Yes, but I was not bullied, nor do I believe that others were. As for girls, we hung out with girls from all-girls schools nearby.

I witnessed more cliquish behavior in college.

R16 What was the homosex scene like, Bonnie?

Do you expect to watch movies and TV shows of people watching Netflix and doing homework r156?

It's the entertainment industry, you gotta make it entertaining.