High School Musical... 4?

Life does not imitate art when it comes to high school. The movies and shows we are shown as we grow up tell us that high school is easy street and it is just somewhere adults put us while our bodies are changing. But that is not true. High school is where life long friendships are made, it is where you are taught the basics of how life works. You have to put in effort, you get out what you put in. While high school should be taken seriously, some take it way too seriously.

 

High school may not be a musical, but it is not a military academy. (But the occasional breaking into song wouldn't hurt.) Many parents want and need their children to get As across the board. If they don't, they are a disgrace to the family. That comes easy to some but there are also the few who lose their social lives, don't sit with anyone at lunch because they are studying. Their lives become study, sleep, repeat. That is no way to live your one life on Earth. Life should be celebrated and make you feel happy, not stressed out and sad. The people who are raised like this will probably be our bosses someday, but at what cost of their sanity? We see these types of people in movies as outcasts, just like real life. But, in the movies the "cool" guys reaches out makes them "cool" too. They gain popularity, friends, and a new acceptance from their parents. But this is not true for most, cliques are strong because no one leaves them. Someone's clique isn't as easily broken as it is in the movies. 

 

On the other end of the spectrum, some parents do not care at all. Disregarding your children and their lives messes them up for life. If the children have no force making them try, then they probably won't because it's easier. We also see these people in movies as outcasts, and then another "cool" guy tutors them and helps in them in school and their lives change. Again this almost never happens in the real world. They stick with their clique of people whose parents don't care about the grades. So no one even tries to start trying. But even so, in our world we still cherish these individuals because they seem "cool."

 

We cherish the ignorant and we neglect the knowledgeable. In movies they are equally "helped", but in the real world no one really takes action. The knowledgeable live lives of stress going somewhere, while the ignorant live lives of laxity going no where. Media should portray life as it is to give children a better view on how the world is and is going to be. But if we do that, who would watch? We watch movies and television as a distraction from the stress of the world, not to display our own lives unto ourselves.