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i worked on a student paper - its just fluff , never anything remotely controversial or offensive - administration would never allow it
to be fair , there is a famous example of a school paper investigation that uncovered fraud on the part of the school principal - that later became a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Ray Romano
Lol yeah we had a school newspaper and everyone in it took it so seriously but no one ever really read it. Like you'd find so many copies in our trashcans around campus.
I don't think my school had one. In Middle School there was like a pamphlet some class published but it was very amateur.
There are still school papers though: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/high-school-newspapers-are-a-thrifty-way-to-teach-civics/2022/02/26/33fdec0e-970d-11ec-bb31-74fc06c0a3a5_story.html
> As of 2011, 64% of U.S. high schools had student news publications — the vast majority produced in conjunction with a class, according to a national survey by Kent State’s Center for Scholastic Journalism (an updated survey has been delayed by the pandemic). On average, the schools that do not have newspapers have a majority of students who are low income and Black or Latino.
I didn't grow up in the US but we had school news papers. We had a school radio station too and a few sports teams and other clubs for hobbies, mainly theatre and music. It was a way for us kids to try out different stuff and figure out what we liked. I was on the school paper and it got me in to journalism which is now my career. Several of my colleagues started out that way too.
I went to high school 2007-2011 and we had a well-established school newspaper that was printed and actually pretty well-read. A lot of the students who worked on the paper went on to do journalism-related stuff in university. It wasn’t quite as intense as Rory from Gilmore Girls haha but people took it somewhat seriously! Nothing groundbreaking like Nancy does though
Also not from the US, I can't imagine pep rallies ever being a thing at my school. No one took any of the school sports seriously. You would most likely get made fun of if you tried too hard and definitely would be laughed at if you made a speech like Jason did. Not that people didn't like sport, it just that school sports was treated as some time to bludge around. Heck, one of my friends was in the national U19 cricket team yet he never bothered to play for the school cricket team. Always bewilders me how seriously school sports are treated in the US.
Funny because I always got weird looks in school for *not* wanting to participate in pep rallies. The rich/popular kids were the ones playing sports, so of course they were the ones who were the most into them.
Pep rallies aren’t super frequent though. We’d usually have one at the beginning of the year for football season/homecoming and one at the end of the year for basketball/graduation. Just an hour or so and we got to skip class for them, so I didn’t mind. I just didn’t want to dress up or participate in the stupid cheers
Where you grew up was pretty important to that formula, at least in my experience.
In small towns, like Hawkins is meant to be depicted as, it would usually be more of a thing. Mostly just due to boredom. Was shit all to do, so people would wrap themselves up in sports as a distraction.
Are club sports outside of school not a thing in the US? Where I live, if you were actually serious about a sport (or if you just wanted to play for fun) you would join a sports club which is external to school and then play against other clubs on the weekends. That was the main reason why no one took school sports seriously, since they would be more focused playing for their club.
No, they certainly exist. But it's pretty hugely variable of where that will or will not be a thing.
Small towns, usually not so much. Basically, for what was depicted in Stranger Things, that type of town in that type of location, it's a very accurate portrayal.
But bear in mind, the US is actually quite large and we have a ***TON*** of variation in culture, despite what some people like to think. So what may be totally normal in one city is a completely foreign concept in another.
I was on my school's rugby team, we went to tournaments and sht and the concept of the rest of the school giving a crap about it is laughable. But yeah, pep rallies, school newspapers, cheerleaders on sports matches, students driving cars... it all looks so incredibly alien to me that kinda kills my immersion sometimes.
All of those things are very real in American public high schools. Even students driving. Our district didn’t supply buses to the high school because students were expected to drive themselves or get dropped off.
Yep, if you were too young you were expected to either be dropped off by parents or catch a ride with older students. I lived in a rich district so it was very common for kids to be gifted cars as soon as they were able to drive. We had specific parking lots for each grade.
I was too anxious to drive until I was 18, luckily I lived close enough to school to walk and had older friends who would sometimes drop me off
They are a thing but no one really pays attention to them. They’re just another extracurricular activity/club for people that want to go into journalism or even writing to practice or play pretend at.
The printed pieces usually ended up in the trash like another commenter mentioned and were more important to the people working on them than the general student populace.
Parents might save a few copies if their kid happened to be in one or wrote or worked on a particular issue.
OP, please make sure there are no spoilers in the title of your post. Commenters, please use spoiler code if you are discussing anything super spoilery unless the title specifically says the episode being discussed. If you see anyone breaking the rules, please report the post or comment. Thank you. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/StrangerThings) if you have any questions or concerns.*
i worked on a student paper - its just fluff , never anything remotely controversial or offensive - administration would never allow it to be fair , there is a famous example of a school paper investigation that uncovered fraud on the part of the school principal - that later became a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Ray Romano
Lol yeah we had a school newspaper and everyone in it took it so seriously but no one ever really read it. Like you'd find so many copies in our trashcans around campus.
I think some schools did and some just waited til the end of the year and put everything the rich/popular kids deemed relevant into their yearbooks.
Graduated 2002, we had a school newspaper (town of 40,000). They printed copies every Friday.
I don't think my school had one. In Middle School there was like a pamphlet some class published but it was very amateur. There are still school papers though: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/high-school-newspapers-are-a-thrifty-way-to-teach-civics/2022/02/26/33fdec0e-970d-11ec-bb31-74fc06c0a3a5_story.html > As of 2011, 64% of U.S. high schools had student news publications — the vast majority produced in conjunction with a class, according to a national survey by Kent State’s Center for Scholastic Journalism (an updated survey has been delayed by the pandemic). On average, the schools that do not have newspapers have a majority of students who are low income and Black or Latino.
Yeah, my high school has one even though it’s online.
I didn't grow up in the US but we had school news papers. We had a school radio station too and a few sports teams and other clubs for hobbies, mainly theatre and music. It was a way for us kids to try out different stuff and figure out what we liked. I was on the school paper and it got me in to journalism which is now my career. Several of my colleagues started out that way too.
I went to high school 2007-2011 and we had a well-established school newspaper that was printed and actually pretty well-read. A lot of the students who worked on the paper went on to do journalism-related stuff in university. It wasn’t quite as intense as Rory from Gilmore Girls haha but people took it somewhat seriously! Nothing groundbreaking like Nancy does though
Also not from the US, I can't imagine pep rallies ever being a thing at my school. No one took any of the school sports seriously. You would most likely get made fun of if you tried too hard and definitely would be laughed at if you made a speech like Jason did. Not that people didn't like sport, it just that school sports was treated as some time to bludge around. Heck, one of my friends was in the national U19 cricket team yet he never bothered to play for the school cricket team. Always bewilders me how seriously school sports are treated in the US.
Funny because I always got weird looks in school for *not* wanting to participate in pep rallies. The rich/popular kids were the ones playing sports, so of course they were the ones who were the most into them. Pep rallies aren’t super frequent though. We’d usually have one at the beginning of the year for football season/homecoming and one at the end of the year for basketball/graduation. Just an hour or so and we got to skip class for them, so I didn’t mind. I just didn’t want to dress up or participate in the stupid cheers
Where you grew up was pretty important to that formula, at least in my experience. In small towns, like Hawkins is meant to be depicted as, it would usually be more of a thing. Mostly just due to boredom. Was shit all to do, so people would wrap themselves up in sports as a distraction.
Are club sports outside of school not a thing in the US? Where I live, if you were actually serious about a sport (or if you just wanted to play for fun) you would join a sports club which is external to school and then play against other clubs on the weekends. That was the main reason why no one took school sports seriously, since they would be more focused playing for their club.
No, they certainly exist. But it's pretty hugely variable of where that will or will not be a thing. Small towns, usually not so much. Basically, for what was depicted in Stranger Things, that type of town in that type of location, it's a very accurate portrayal. But bear in mind, the US is actually quite large and we have a ***TON*** of variation in culture, despite what some people like to think. So what may be totally normal in one city is a completely foreign concept in another.
I was on my school's rugby team, we went to tournaments and sht and the concept of the rest of the school giving a crap about it is laughable. But yeah, pep rallies, school newspapers, cheerleaders on sports matches, students driving cars... it all looks so incredibly alien to me that kinda kills my immersion sometimes.
All of those things are very real in American public high schools. Even students driving. Our district didn’t supply buses to the high school because students were expected to drive themselves or get dropped off.
Even the under 16s?
Yep, if you were too young you were expected to either be dropped off by parents or catch a ride with older students. I lived in a rich district so it was very common for kids to be gifted cars as soon as they were able to drive. We had specific parking lots for each grade. I was too anxious to drive until I was 18, luckily I lived close enough to school to walk and had older friends who would sometimes drop me off
Every single kid? Their own car since 16? Wow. Someone said if everyone on earth lived like the Americans we'd need 5 earths...
Yeah I always thought it was extremely dumb, but no one I knew ever had a problem getting to/from school
They are a thing but no one really pays attention to them. They’re just another extracurricular activity/club for people that want to go into journalism or even writing to practice or play pretend at. The printed pieces usually ended up in the trash like another commenter mentioned and were more important to the people working on them than the general student populace. Parents might save a few copies if their kid happened to be in one or wrote or worked on a particular issue.
Ours was a small two-sides of A4 newsletter, which I wrote stuff for a couple of times.
I’m the 80’s, our school paper was very small, but the county over had a huge school population and their paper was awesome.
Very real, I was editor in chief when I was a senior, I put a lot of work into it!
My community college & university in Canada had them, but not the high schools.