University of Virginia Library

'High School': A Too Accurate Film

Above all else, "High School" is
a deeply disturbing film. Consider
this humiliation, one of many:
"Don't you feel guilty," a guidance
counselor asks a girl, "for
disappointing your father by not
going to college?" The girl looks
stunned. The counselor and the
girl's father, sitting next to the
counselor's desk, look as if they
wished the girl really felt guilt. The
girl, meanwhile, can barely mumble
something while trying not to cry.
And you get the message that
"High School" so brutally
transmits: high schools are prisons
where the old beat down the
young, where raw material is run
through the machine and stamped
BLAND.

"High School" was filmed
entirely at Philadelphia's Northeast
High, an almost all-white,
suburban-type institution.
Northeast is one of Philadelphia's
best schools; it is no better and no
worse than thousands of other
middle-class high schools across the
country. It does not have the
problems of the ghetto, of white
teachers and black pupils, of greatly
overcrowded classes, of parents
who don't care. It cannot fall back
on the excuses about
"disadvantaged children" and
underachievers. Northeast is
thoroughly representative of the
upper level of American public
education.

DREARINESS: This is exactly
what makes the film so depressing.
There is no reason why high-school
life has to be so empty. "High
School" shows no stretching of
minds. It does show the
overwhelming dreariness of
administrators and teachers who
confuse learning with discipline.
The school somehow takes warm,
breathing teenagers and tries to
turn them into 40 year old mental
eunuchs. The school motto should
be "Follow orders." No wonder the
kids turn off, stare out windows,
become surly, try to escape.

Across the country, high schools
are among the most
anxiety-producing institutions in
modern society. Parents and
teachers put fantastic pressures on
students to "do well" and get into
college. Students are judged as
successes or failures on the basis of
their college board scores; schools
are graded by the number of
graduates they get into the Ivy
League. No one has time to bend
the old order or relax the pace. And
the schools develop into fortresses
where dress codes take up more
time than the curriculum, where
the length of the working day is
spelled out to the minute in
teachers' contracts, where the
objective is to turn out people who
are all right, all white, up tight.

What "High School" portrays
most vividly is the different life
styles in the war against the young.
The students are eager to try new
things e school responds with
rules and regulations; the students
want to participate the teachers
hurry to leave with the last bell.
The most frightening thing about
"High School" is that it captures
the battlefield so clearly; the film is
too true.

"High School will be shown in
Newcomb Hall Ballroom on
Tuesday, February 10, at 5:45,
7:30, and 9:30.