Congratulations to Freddie deBoer for the headline of the year:
Perhaps High School is Not Always a Relentlessly Brutal Nietzschean Hellscape
The rest of his post is here, and it's about high school in real life vs. how it's portrayed in movies. I agree with Freddie completely except that I don't care about movie portrayals, which I expect to be over the top for dramatic and comedic reasons.
However, the problem he addresses is actually worse on the internet. Virtually every essay about high school portrays it as, um, something of a relentlessly brutal hellscape of depression, bullying, social media torment, and endless angst about not fitting in. Why? I assume it's for two reasons. First, sensitive writer types—i.e., the kind who are likely to write essays about their high school experience—are also likely to have had bad experiences in high school. Second, people who have bad experiences about anything are far more likely to write about it than people who had good experiences. How much of an audience is there for "I Went to an Urban High School and It Was Fine"?
There may be no area with a greater chasm between myth and reality than modern high school. I'm willing to bet that at least 95% of all students have a fairly normal high school experience: they take classes; they play sports; they get good grades and bad; they break up with various boyfriends and girlfriends; and they experience teen angst just like teens have forever. Then they graduate and either get jobs or go on to college.
The other 5% have terrible experiences, just about as you'd expect. But that's all. Mostly it's just an ordinary part of growing up.
Now middle school is a whole different story. I've always wondered how school districts are able to attract anyone to teach middle school. Does anyone know?
POSTSCRIPT: Just for the record, I'm talking here about regular old high school as experienced by Millennials and younger generations, not high school during the COVID era. That's obviously a whole different subject.
I have a sensitive, non-sporty middle schooler and he seems to like his urban school just fine, even with the current covid precautions (masks and assigned seats).
I think many middle schools have figured out how to be okay places these days. And middle school teachers usually have slightly immature senses of humor.
I experienced some series issues as a freshman (a swirly from some jocks and some moderate bullying) but was fortunate in that in my class the jocks and brains got along well. My last two years of HS were a lot of fun, but I can understand how it can be torture for some.
"...I'm talking here about regular old high school as experienced by Millennials and younger generations"
Noted current high-schooler, Kevin Drum =)
Poor family. No father or older brother. Almost constantly changing schools. Straight A’s. …… so, yeah. Almost constant beatings. …. That socioeconomic stuff may be a factor.
Sheesh, I exaggerate. Change all references to “almost constantly” to “frequent”.
Great job liberals. I got a bad case of the flu. 100 degree temp, aches, chills, no sore throat or cough. But upset digestive system. No appetite. Now my oldest son(20) has it and is sicker than me. My 2 little kids aren't well either. My mother and Aunt gave us a bunch of leftovers.
Let's just focus on covid..........populism needs to return to the Democratic party.
You should have worn a condom.
Whole lotta anecotin' going on here.
....anecDotin'
High school was great. Best time of my life. As an out gay teen in high school in the mid-70s, I suppose I should have been a total victim. I was miserable and lonely, but it wasn't because of the bullies. It was just because it was hard to hook up with other guys my age in high school like straight kids could with girls. But I had great friends that, I dare-say, were defensive on my behalf. And frankly, the kids that might have otherwise been my bullies were kind of freaked out that I was out at age 17. I was smarter than them, and they knew it, but I was a boring, middle-of-the-road, white boy by birth and breeding, and not otherwise interesting, and not very different from the jocks or whoever that would have been reported now as my oppressors. I was lucky that I was probably a harder-ass as a gay boy than the other hard-ass-wannabes that are portrayed in movies and on TV now as the bad-guy bullies. Honestly, they were kind of hot, and underneath kind of sweet, when I got chances to talk to them, they always seemed friendly enough. I think they admired me, in a way. No doubt they voted for me when I ran for student council. Anyway, as you can tell, best time of my life. College was awful by comparison.
So, agreed. It's hard to believe high school is as bad as it's been portrayed in movies and on tv over the past 20 years. Lots of cute, touching, and humorously pathetic moments, but I don't think popular culture captures the reality of late teen "high school" life well. Likely the trend is at an end.
Well, you know, Freddie is nuts. But the whole of social media / news media have a financial incentive to hype craziness. I have no idea what school is like these days. Aside from the occasional shootings and gang activity among certain groups, I’m sure it’s fine.
I get this, and agree. But, seriously, I am hard pressed to think of a single institution in our society that doesn’t get misrepresented and outright caricatured by pop culture and social media. Military? Police? Hospitals? Romance? I work in museums, and this may come as a shock to you but in 30 years of my professional life there has not been one single magic artifact stored away secretly, no ancient codes on the back of documents, or cursed Indian artifacts. Not one. Nor are we brilliant doofuses (Ross on Friends) elegant fashionista trophy girl friends (Ocean’s 11) or any other stereotype portrayed in pop culture. Like most jobs it’s a tedious parade of meetings, paperwork, and sucking up to rich people.
I think High School and teenage life is probably an extreme example, because our pop culture has been obsessed with teens and high school since at least the 50’s when high school became more universal. But it is hardly alone in its being a institutional milieu misrepresented to accentuate conflict and drama in pop culture.
Well also a person's emotions are at their peak in highschool and strong emotions lead to both overreaction snd vivid memories. So even if it's less intense objectively it feels far more.
As an ex middle school teacher, getting someone to teach at that level is hard to say the least. The kids are a quagmire unless you have a sense of humor and delight in the contradictions.
I did. I actually enjoyed it.
The worst part of high school is that is where it seems most peoples' social development stops.
I have worked tech startups for most of my career, and competitive engineers are not, generally, deep reservoirs of emotional intelligence, so I'm used to it.
But via a buyout, I'm now working at a large, old, household-name company. Management still acts like a bunch of teenagers, they just do in bland corporatespeak.
I'm convinced the average mental age in the US is approximately 15.
Kevin supposedly likes data. What does he suppose the increase in teen suicides is about? Is this supposed to contradict the recent news that mental health issues are pandemic among teens?
It is nice to be told, over and over, on various fronts, that nothing has changed and that everything is OK, but there is a fine line between encouragement and gaslighting.
Try this one on:
https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/gun-violence/16-facts-about-gun-violence-and-school-shootings/
That's quite a straw man to knock down. High schools are not Relentlessly Brutal Nietzschean Hellscapes? STOP THE PRESSES, INTERWEB!
More seriously, as someone who has taught in high schools for the last two-and-a-half decades, I can tell you that high schools reflect our society like a well-made mirror. So if you think our society is messed up, you will probably think that as an institution, an American high school is, too.
I'm reading The Tyranny of Merit right now, so I think high schools kinda suck because they have been turned into places where EVERY gd thing is a competition and every kid has to be equipped for college (can't be done).
Thank you! I went to a somewhat tony Catholic Prep school in the 1980s and it was miserable, the church was shifting to it's open embrace wingnut Catholicism. I was mostly miserable as there were no resources for my now obvious Dysgraphia and other issues. But I did eventually find my pack in HS and learned to cope by plotting out getting into my dream school 5 hours away from home.
There was some terrible, terrible stuff that happened to me in high school that I wouldn't really wish on anyone.
AND, I still remember high school as a net positive.
However, I would resist the urge to be black and white about this. Let's not be all-or-nothing.
There are things about high school that suck, and could probably suck less. Some parts of it are going to suck, because thats just part of growing up. Other parts don't really need to be there.
I definitely think bullying is easier and so much more widespread thanks to technology. L
Pingback: Fact of the day: School bullying has decreased over the past 20 years – Kevin Drum
High school was an utterly miserable experience for me, but I have no idea whether that was due to high school itself, or because I spent all of it in a near suicidal level of depression, traumatized by a middle school experience that really was a dystopian nightmare.
But, my high school actually was a relentless brutal Nietzschean hellscape.
Interesting...
I seems my previous comment didn't show up...but I can't re-post it because it's a duplicate....hmmmm....
maybe I'll try later without links if it doesn't show...
still didn't like it.....maybe both will show up later...
"Perhaps High School is Not Always a Relentlessly Brutal Nietzschean Hellscape"
I have absolutely no idea who Freddie de Boer is. (Kevin's post seems to assume I do. Any relation to Nicole de Boer, who was a regular on the seventh and final season of Deep Space Nine?) But Freddie obviously didn't attend Sunnydale High, where the Hellmouth (AKA the gate to Hell) was literally in the school library. (The library was ground zero for the explosion which destroyed the school (along with a giant demon snake) in the Season 3 finale of Buffy the Vampire. The school was rebuilt in Season 7; the Hellmouth was now in the basement.)
The end of the penultimate sentence should, of course, read Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There appears to be no edit function here. Why does Kevin persist in using this utterly horrid commenting system?
Former middle school teacher here! I actually really liked teaching there (7th and 8th grade history). The kids are old enough that you can have interesting conversations with them, and young enough that they can still get excited about learning and projects. If your classroom management is good, middle school's a great environment to teach.
George Orwell wrote "Such, Such Were the Joys" about how miserable he was at boarding school as a lonely scholarship boy picked on by rich bullies. His friend and fellow writer Cyril Connolly, who wae a classmate, recalled Orwell as happy, quite popular and something of a teacher's pet. He basically shrugged and said "You write what sells."
"Virtually every essay about high school portrays it as, um, something of a relentlessly brutal hellscape of depression, bullying, social media torment, and endless angst about not fitting in. Why?"
Because the writers went to high school in the 80's?
Write what you know!