Far from being idyllic, happy communities, high schools (including the one in question) are hellish social pressure cookers. High school society is strictly regimented into rigid hierarchies; at the top there are the athletes, the cheerleaders and the kids with rich parents; the alpha primates. At the very bottom of the food chain are those who do not fit in. The environment is a closed system; there is only one hierarchy, and nowhere to run. And failure to conform is relentlessly punished, not by the indifferent authorities but by the system itself...
Yeah, I think I remember being rather sympathetic to certain characters in Brave New World when I read it in English class senior year...
The Media Finally Gets It...
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Why Kids Kill
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· Score: 1
Yes, after reading the diary of one of the killers, the media is finally getting at the high-school-is-hell causes for the massacre...
From Personal Experience...
on
Why Kids Kill
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· Score: 1
...and a few months back I went out and bought a black trenchcoat. I don't think it means anything, really. I just always thought they looked cool.:)
From Personal Experience...
on
Why Kids Kill
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· Score: 1
It's kind of scary reading through all these comments and realizing how close I might have been to buying some guns and taking out my high school on a suicide mission. I was one of those smart kids (top 5% of the class, would have been higher if I actually gave a damn during my last year) that never quite fit in. Looking back, my parents never really seemed to care that I was depressed and had no friends and they never taught me a damn thing about life. I know I shouldn't blame my parents for all my problems, but it's hard not to. In fact I'll admit my being raised Catholic and having a deep respect for human life was probably the only thing that kept me from carrying out my occasional suicidal tendencies to any serious conclusion. I seem to agree with most of what the (higher rated) posts have had to say. Specifically that the media/advertising/entertainment industry is as much to blame as anything for this for deluding kids with the perception of life that sells the most stuff. The "haves" are popular, the "have nots" are outcasts. It's the popular people that ridicule and try to better themselves at the expense of the unpopular that are maladjusted, and not vice versa. Somone said that high school is a prison for anyone that doesn't fit in. I can agree with that. Someone else said that the hope of getting to college and getting a degree and getting a decent job while the football players pump gas may be the only thing that keeps someone going through high school. I can agree with that. High school was, so far, the worst years of my life. My first eight months in college have only convinced me of this. Although for the first few months I continued being antisocial and took out my pent-up anger by being addicted to Quake... Eventually I came to realize that this was not high school. Intelligence is valued. People are interested in my opinion. People want to hear me talk. People want to be around me. I enjoy talking with and being around people. Well, that may be stretching the truth slightly since I am still a bit of a freak, but in general it's true. After four years of hell, I think I can honestly say I am, for the time being, happy. I'm still not sure what I want to do with my life, but I'm sure that will come. And I know college isn't the real world yet, but I'll deal with that when the time comes. This is getting a bit long, so I might as well try and figure out what the point was. I guess that it's that if you're some suicidal, depressed, hopeless loser in high school only because you have some intelligence and refuse to buy clothes that make you a walking billboard - survive high school in whatever way you can, because life sure as hell can't get worse.
Slashdot Mirror
uhh... beavis?
Far from being idyllic, happy communities, high schools (including the one in question) are hellish social pressure cookers. High school society is strictly regimented into rigid hierarchies; at the top there are the athletes, the cheerleaders and the kids with rich parents; the alpha primates. At the very bottom of the food chain are those who do not fit in. The environment is a closed system; there is only one hierarchy, and nowhere to run. And failure to conform is relentlessly punished, not by the indifferent authorities but by the system itself...
Yeah, I think I remember being rather sympathetic to certain characters in Brave New World when I read it in English class senior year...
Yes, after reading the diary of one of the killers, the media is finally getting at the high-school-is-hell causes for the massacre...
.
An article
...and a few months back I went out and bought a black trenchcoat. :)
I don't think it means anything, really. I just always thought they looked cool.
It's kind of scary reading through all these comments and realizing how close I might have been to buying some guns and taking out my high school on a suicide mission. I was one of those smart kids (top 5% of the class, would have been higher if I actually gave a damn during my last year) that never quite fit in. Looking back, my parents never really seemed to care that I was depressed and had no friends and they never taught me a damn thing about life. I know I shouldn't blame my parents for all my problems, but it's hard not to. In fact I'll admit my being raised Catholic and having a deep respect for human life was probably the only thing that kept me from carrying out my occasional suicidal tendencies to any serious conclusion.
I seem to agree with most of what the (higher rated) posts have had to say. Specifically that the media/advertising/entertainment industry is as much to blame as anything for this for deluding kids with the perception of life that sells the most stuff. The "haves" are popular, the "have nots" are outcasts. It's the popular people that ridicule and try to better themselves at the expense of the unpopular that are maladjusted, and not vice versa. Somone said that high school is a prison for anyone that doesn't fit in. I can agree with that. Someone else said that the hope of getting to college and getting a degree and getting a decent job while the football players pump gas may be the only thing that keeps someone going through high school. I can agree with that.
High school was, so far, the worst years of my life. My first eight months in college have only convinced me of this. Although for the first few months I continued being antisocial and took out my pent-up anger by being addicted to Quake... Eventually I came to realize that this was not high school. Intelligence is valued. People are interested in my opinion. People want to hear me talk. People want to be around me. I enjoy talking with and being around people. Well, that may be stretching the truth slightly since I am still a bit of a freak, but in general it's true. After four years of hell, I think I can honestly say I am, for the time being, happy. I'm still not sure what I want to do with my life, but I'm sure that will come. And I know college isn't the real world yet, but I'll deal with that when the time comes.
This is getting a bit long, so I might as well try and figure out what the point was. I guess that it's that if you're some suicidal, depressed, hopeless loser in high school only because you have some intelligence and refuse to buy clothes that make you a walking billboard - survive high school in whatever way you can, because life sure as hell can't get worse.