Is American high school actually like this?

[deleted]

Last poster, what the *beep*? The only thing close to that I heard of is the girl who was lured to a "friends" house and beaten unconscious. All american high schools are NOT like this. I think the worst thing that ever happened to me was getting hit with a snowball in a snowball fight I was not involved in, or having an egg thrown at me and my friends.

But it wasn't because the people viewed me as subhuman or because I treated them bad. They were just being dicks.

I barely knew any one who was on the cheerleading team, and I knew football players, but they rarely messed with anyone on school grounds. And when they did it was some one they knew and had a mutual problem with, not a random malicious act. Most high schools have a mandated behavior/grade standard to be allowed on sports teams, so they wouldn't be a dick just to do it.

"The world will look up and shout, 'Save us!' And I'll whisper, 'Shut up world.'"

[deleted]

Um. I have to disagree with most of what has been said here, especially the person who said girls lure other girls to parties to embarrass them. That's a load of crap.

I've never seen someone actually get bullied by a group of guys, being thrown into a trash can, or given a swirly. There are kind of a lot of fights, but they are usually tough guys from different groups of people, girls who hate each other, or groups of guys that dont like each other. Generally, at my school, if a kid is weird or separated from the rest of the kids, the sports-y guys kind of take them under their wing. It's not really that they are sensitive guys with big hearts - I think it's more having fun with them but not in a rude way, if that makes any sense. That said, cliques are totally extreme in my school, but it's mostly based on race. That could just be where I live, but in general people hang with others of their race. We have a ton of diversity at my school and we all talk to each other and have no big racism problem, that's just the way it goes. Most of the fights are between separate races. It's not racism, it's just cliques that happen to be of different races. There are the stereotypical cliques within that, too, though, like the "goth" kids, the "jocks", the "hicks", the "drama kids", the "mean girls" (who are probably the worst people in the whole building). Girls are awful. They talk behind each other's backs, but theres no big plot or anything, there is just extreme two-faced-ness going on. Girls are also really quick to judge and spread rumors about someone they dont even know, and there is not a lot of confrontation that goes on with the girls in my school. People like Trevor, in my school, would most likely either be taken under someone popular's wing, embraced by the weirder, goth-y kids, or pretty much ignored altogether. There wouldnt really be any bullying going on like there is. And if he had made that video, at my school, he would be expelled immediately, without question.

I went to about 7 different high schools in California, all over the state actually, during my 3 1/2 years in highschool (I graduated early). The reason I went to so many is because my parents divorced and I was moved temporarily from family member to family member.

I can tell you with certainty that yes, many highschools are just like this. The highschool I went to in northern California (Susanville area) was a highschool that was predominately white. At this high school, kids were allowed to go off campus for lunch, and it wasn't uncommon for fights to turn into stabbings at the park, which was across the street from school, with the view blocked by a hotel. I was never a troubled student, and actually got really high grades, but became a target of people who obviously had problems at home and took out their anger on those they perceived as weaker than themselves.

I only had to defend myself once when a bully took it too far and jumped me when I was buying lunch one day. After I beat him severely, nobody picked on me anymore. In some highschools, violence is the only way to be dominate and avoid being harassed, unless you come from a wealthy family.

The second highschool I went to was in Fullerton California, by Anaheim (Disneyland). This was by far the best highschool I've ever been to. The teachers were great, there weren't any fights on campus because police officers patrolled it, and the students were allowed to leave for lunch. I thrived here and made more friends in one year than I did during my freshman and softmore years in Susanville. The cliques lines blurred in Fullerton and no one group seemed to discriminate against another. Everyone was cool with each other.

My senior year was tough because I ended up in Tulare County, where Teen pregnancies are some of the highest in the Untied States. In this area, which is predominately Mexican, I had to learn to avoid the many gangs that dominate the schools. I went to four different schools in 3 months because I couldn't stand how low the education standards are (they were teaching seniors things I had learned in 7th grade in Susanville). On top of that, I asked a teacher after class one day for help on my homework and she told me she was, "off the clock." I couldn't believe it.

Shootings off campus are common there and because of that reason, the schools have 12 foot fences that lock the students in after 8:20am. I saw so many stabbings in 3 months that I opted to take a test to apply for TAPP (Teen Age Pregnancy Program), which is a school that helps all the pregnant girls get through highschool and achieve an education. Even though I'm a male, I was accepted into the school, which I found to be a delightful experience. The classrooms were small and the teachers cared about the students.

My other family members weren't so lucky and ended up becoming gang members and victims of gang violence. One of my immediate family members had to flee the state because his life was threatened. Highschool in America can be harsh, especially in really big cities where schools are over populated or in small communities where communities are also over populated. Poverty seems to take hold of some of these communities and the students suffer.

While some of the above posters are lucky in that they've never experienced some of the harsh realities of highschool, some of us were not so lucky and had to endure ridiculous amounts of bullying, violence, and emotional/mental abuse. Sometimes the school acts and helps students, other times, the school turns a blind eye and the abuse escalates. Columbine is a perfect example of school officials not doing enough. Preventative measures probably could have saved a lot of lives if the bullying and name calling was responded to quickly and severely.

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I went to high school in Western New York, and nothing like any of this ever happened. If you were a jock picking on some socially awkward kid, people looked down on you for choosing an easy target. At my school a bunch of our star athletes were also in the musicals, and there weren't really defined cliques. I don't know of many schools where simply walking down the hall will get you beat up, as shown in this film...usually you have to be doing something or in a gang to get into a fight.

What Would Leatherface Do?