Petras\’ Corner

Mark Petras
Essay 2 - Portfolio Edition
High School Then and Now

            Think high school was bad when you grew up? I thought so until I learned what high school was like for my father. There are a lot of missing subjects that we have taken that weren’t around for my father. People dressed differently back then and so therefore the dress code had to be fit accordingly. Everyone has heard that in the old days you got hit with a ruler if you were goofing off right?  The respect we give teachers has changed over the years as well. All of these topics have changed over the past 60 years, some for the better and some for worse.

            First of all, there are many differences in the courses my father took while attending his high school. Math classes only went up to Algebra 2 (Advanced Algebra). There was no trigonometry or calculus like there are today in most high schools. Our history classes today focus on events that have happened all over the world and from the beginning of time you could say. On the other hand, my father’s was more geared toward just United States history and some of the important world events, such as World War One, etc. When I went to high school it was very common to see a movie in at least every class through out the year. My dad’s high school was the total opposite. You were lucky to even see one movie in any class throughout the whole year.

            Another huge difference I discovered during my interview was how different their dress code was from ours. First of all, girls were not aloud to wear tight clothing at all. When I was in high school, girls could wear the tightest clothing in the world, just nothing that was to revealing. Girls wore dresses (not required) and guys had to have their face’s shaved. It was pretty common to see guys trying to grow out there little beards when I was in school. Guy’s wore what my dad called “engineer boots” to school. When gym class came around, everyone wore tennis-shoes that were in fact only worn in gym class. Nowadays we wear tennis-shoes not only in gym class, but everywhere we go.

            The final difference I noticed between my father’s high school and mine is how we treat teachers. The respect we give teachers these days is not the greatest. We don’t pay attention a lot or we tend stare out the window. If you were in my dad’s high school you would have been smacked with a ruler for talking back to a teacher and not just kicked out. Kids were getting smacked so much that teachers went through about 5 yard sticks a year. Nowadays hitting kids is against the law so we didn’t have to worry about that. I think that is why we don’t pay attention as much as they did back then. I know for a fact that if I was getting smacked then I would defiantly start paying attention during class.

            Over the past sixty years, the way a school is run has changed quite a lot. There are many new subjects to study. People wear different styles of clothing. We also treat teachers another way. It has all changed to adapt to how people live today. Now we will have to wait another sixty years to see what new changes come.