Jacques LePage

Section 10

High School Has Changed

E 2.3

High School Has Changed

            When ever I look back at high school, I’ve always wondered how the seventies was a different experience from now.  I’ve asked my dad many times and he was usually busy or doesn’t want to talk about it, and just slept.  When I look back on high school, I see myself having a lot of fun.  I don’t think my dad’s high school experience was as great as mine.  One day I finally got him to sit down to ask him a few questions about his high school experience.

            We started talking about sports, and how intense they where.  My dad explained that his high school was very small but every kid played sports.  The main sports are where baseball, basketball, football, track, and swimming at my dad’s school.  My dad was a sports fanatic.  He was a top contender for any sport.  He was captain of the football, baseball, and basketball team.  He also told me that he had to lead the team in some fierce battles.  I only played hockey, baseball, and two years of football, so I don’t think I experienced quite what he had in sports.  My dad also said he came really close to state tournaments many times.  I have been to 5 state tournaments in my high school career.  Four for hockey and one for basketball (I wasn’t on the basketball team, but I was on the hockey team.)  State tournaments are great high school experiences.

Next, we talked about school assemblies.  My dad’s school name was Howard Lake / Waverly High School. (Two different cities put in one school)  Every time the assembly started they would shout the team name and sing their school song as did I during my assemblies.  He then said to me that after the song, a show would be put on and everyone would sit untill the show and announcements where done.  My dad said, “The best part was missing all the school time during the assemblies.” (Laughed)  I went to East High School, and they started out the same way as my dad’s high school assemblies did.  The main thing that was different was all the sports awards being handed out and guest speakers that would stop by and give us words of wisdom.  I thought our assemblies where boring and, pointless at some times.  For all the assemblies there is one that stands out from all others.  All of my friends put the idea together of a MAN-LINE.  This was to poke fun at the DANCE-LINE.  During the assembly the girls would put on their routine dance.  When they were done they walked off the stage all formal as they always do.  Out of no where the MAN-LINE ran in the middle of the gym, pressed play on the boom box, and put on the greatest well organized dace that guys could do.  I think they spent at least two weeks practicing the routine so they didn’t get out of sync.  I’m willing to say that was the best school assembly for me ever, because my dad’s school never experienced that ever.

            Finally, whenever anyone would get in trouble at my school the discipline system was very easy to beat.  On the other hand, my dad’s discipline during school was a lot different than mine.  My dad said he saw a kid who wouldn’t stop acting like a jackass, so the teacher wound up and threw his keys at the boys face.  It worked, and the kid shut up.  For the rest of the year he was sort of well behaved.  At least the dangling keys would make him stop acting out of line.  In 2006 my discipline was very easy to talk yourself out of whatever you got in trouble with.  If you did the crime you might have done the time.  We were very rude and obscene guys in our sports marketing class.  It was our senior year, and no one was going to stop us.  Not even four teachers who we made quit, because we were so bad.  No one would get in trouble, and the principal would just speak to the whole class while we just sat there like we didn’t do anything.  After she left the pens, markers, and what ever we threw was in the air.  My dad said, “The worst you would get was an hour after school detention.”  My school’s detention had Saturday school.  Four hours of nothing to do on a Saturday morning from eight to noon.  I was assigned five Saturday schools for bad behavior in my senior year.  (That’s twenty hours of sitting in a room doing nothing.  No one can sleep, eat, talk, or use any electronic devises.)  I didn’t even go to one and my principal thought I went to them all.  That is why it was super easy to beat the system at our school.

Every thing we talked about helped me see how much different generations are.  I guess as we get older we realize that school has to change with the style of kids we have at different generations.  My dad said, “High school has changed so much.  Teachers are so different and less strict.  The way things are ran these days really confused me.”  At the end of our conversation I asked him before he left if he thought his high school experience was a good one.  He told me he had the best four years of his life during high school, and wishes he could relive those great times as a kid one last time.  One year has past since I’ve been in high school.  I had a blast during my senior year and made sure I left my school on top.