> For me a lot of the stress came from the hostility and bullying that the kids who did not want to be there inflicted on anyone who dared to show interest in class
Are american schools really that shitty? I thought it was a movie trope.
Are american schools really that shitty? I thought it was a movie trope.
This is precisely why most people are happier at university than high school, imo
My high school was really toned-down and chill. Everyone sort of got along (or at least it seemed like it to me, I could've been blind to some of it), we weren't all friends but there wasn't any fighting / violence. There was drama, sports, relationships, there were the jocks / nerds / weird kids, but nothing like the movies. This was in the early 2010s, and my town was suburban not rich and not poor.
I wondered though that maybe if your aren't being the bully or the bullied, you might just not notice the hell that some of the kids are going through.
The issue, I think, comes from a lack of agency, you are told where to be and what to do all day every day. Every minute is scheduled and that wears on people and leads to stress and abnormal social interactions where kids pick at each other.
I do think school plays an important role in social development and learning to interact and get along with others, but I think the environment sucks and isn’t even a great parallel to the real world in most cases. It is more like prison than anything. If you find yourself in a work place and think, “jeez, this place is like high school,” you should probably run.
For people wondering about police, this was around 1986 so no police got involved. Things did not work that way back then.
Every single problem America has, the kids end up paying for. This grew out of our sue-happy 80s/90s culture. School administrators basically opted out of their job because they were afraid of lawsuits.
1) teachers are not respected by parents, administrators and politicians, 2) so very few of the people that would make great teachers go into teaching
And in some states like California, it's very easy to become a teacher on an emergency credential. In the mid to late 90s when I was in school, most of our teachers were like 23 or 24 and were on emergency credentials. They were not the good ones.
Can you see the order these are in?
And people who think they're fighting back usually don't do the minimum to defend themselves. They very quickly turn into just brawling themselves as much as the other person was.
Your right to defend yourself means doing the bare minimum to stop the threat against you or others. It doesn't mean 'standing your ground' and 'fighting back' like they think it does. You can see how when a teacher comes around the corner someone who's decided to fight back looks just as bad as the person who started it in many cases.
Do you have any data on that? I rarely see people become excessive in defending themself.
"Your right to defend yourself means doing the bare minimum to stop the threat against you or others. It doesn't mean 'standing your ground' and 'fighting back' like they think it does."
It does mean doing the bare minimum. Who decides that? Usually great deference is given to the individual in the situation because it's not possible to cover the nearly infinite factors under legislation. There are states where you can 'stand your ground' in that you do not have to prove that you tried to run from a place you were legally allowed to be before defending yourself. Just because the words are in order does not mean that you have the option to do the first two. Things happen fast. You can skip levels in the force continuum if the lower levels are no longer an option.
With all the cameras in schools, I would think a review of the tapes should give a pretty idea of who struck first. Depending on the location, if neither party can be confirmed to be the aggressor, then both parties can be charged with a lesser grading or offense. So it would seem that treating both students under the harsh no tolerance policy would be inconsistent with the laws of the real world and society's views.
But this bit is exactly it - you can have not struck first and still be in the wrong by fighting.
Kinda makes you question other things people that age claim as absolutely true like "true love" or "worst day ever" or "my biology is wrong"
Teens will do impulsive things sometimes, that doesn't mean they get a blank cheque to hurt and assualt those around them.
In all of those cases, the best thing to do for a teen's mental/emotional wellbeing is to take it seriously and treat them with respect. Everyone has to gain lived experience by living it, and you shouldn't try to invalidate their feelings just because they've experienced fewer of them.
In slovenia, you first go to elementary/grade school (used to be 1+8, now 9 years) until you're ~15yo, then you apply for high schools, and depending on your grades and other stuff, you get accepted to your chosen school (either "gymansium" - basically 'everything', or some kind of specific/trades school (mechanics, electricians, construction,...)).
Usually if you're good in school, you get to a good high school and also have good classmates (atleast on your level)... but even in shitty, no-limit school (eg. 3year construction school), discipline is not really a major issue, and really shitty students either fail or get expelled very soon.
- you are assigned a school and changing schools varies from moderately difficult to impossible
- kids under 16 cannot get to any high school other than their assigned one because they can’t drive (and at 16 they’d need a car, which not everyone can afford)
- everyone HAS to be in school all day. It’s day care so parents can work.
What you described in Slovenia sounds much better. It sounds like college in the US: people are there because they want to be there. High School in the US is just… a mess. There are people who think the point is to perform in the school band, or on the sports team, or in cheerleading etc. There are people who think the point is to hang out and have friends. There are people who think there is no point. And there are a few who think the point is to learn.
Schools very a lot and in a place this big you can find all kinds of schools, but from everyone I’ve known the typical experience is academically a waste of time, and people’s feelings about High School are almost entirely determined by how many friends they had and thus how much fun they thought it was.
Is the density of high schools _that_ low and availability of transport _that_ bad? Not from the US, but I had a choice of 3 local public + one local private and like 5 or 6 that I'd considered on the train line and a few more that were further away by bus.
Where I live now, a very rural area, there are only two high schools in a 100 mile radius.
Most places in the US have very limited occupational training. Which is nuts.. my employer pays entry programmers and IT people less than a mason.
I'm sure there was some bullying going on, but based upon my observations it didn't seem widespread. Of course I was a teenager and probably not the most observant person and may have had a skewed view of the average person's experience there.
This is also true in Europe: the schools in the poorer city districs in my very high HDI European country are probably quite shocking to upper middle class American suburbians. (Firearms are rare, but kids armed with knives are not uncommon.)
But yeah, the movie tropes were really a thing.
I attended it as an exchange student, (From Albania), from my senior year. I took mostly AP classes, and they were pretty good, as the average student was very/well motivated. They were smart and most went to good colleges after it. I got the chance to advance many of my skills, computer wise, and even took programming, which was great as it cemented my desire to pursue CS. (Pascal was the language being taught in 99). Things like AP physics and biology/chemistry were way behind my Albanian education. I can't image what Gen Ed physics would look like. (probably comparable to middle school level in former commie Europe). AP Calc, was challenging and on par with former communist country education (but very few people take those classes).
Gen. Ed classes, (the ones where average people take) were a mixed bag, as they had plenty of students that clearly didn't want to be there, and just wanted a pass grade and move on.
I also got to join the soccer team and I loved it. Made lots of friends, never got into a fight (perhaps because I was the only foreign student, and people were super friendly), went to the prom, and all that. Became friends with the popular/'in' group of girls, had a gf., etc... It was something like out of the movies.
For me it was a great experience, and it really really depends on how you use it. If you take mostly AP classes, or participate in sports, it is a great thing. If you take the gen. ed classes, you will end up in classes that are designed more to just teach the bare minimum, as most students there don't have any interest in being there to begin with.
The trend of reducing AP classes in the name of 'equity' is very troubling, as it remove the chances of smart students to have a stimulating environment, and let them learn at their faster pace.
The arguments have shifted away from improving outcomes for troubled students to closing gaps. It’s easier to do that by fucking over AP kids than solving the unsolvable.
Our high school was brand new my frsshman year, and they only started with 9th and 10th, in a socio-economically affluent area. They also had multiple magnet programs and mandated racial demographic requirements (which forced the system to bus kids in from less affluent areas). These policies negatively impacted the social climate fairly significantly....
so I am really excited there are so many ways to skin the h.s. cat now. Your positive stories are reassuring me about my reluctance to engage my children as they get to school age in that same system.