Every year, I take short trips sporadically to Minnesota to visit one of my best friends, Rachel.
Last time I visited, I shadowed her at her high school in St. Louis Park. I went to all of her classes, finding that even some of her hardest ones (AP and IB) didn't seem quite as challenging or demanding as even my regular classes at Stevenson. It wasn't just the curriculum and the difficulty of the class that I saw noticeable differences in, it was also the way the students treated their teachers and just acted in general. When I walked into her spanish class, I was greeted by a kid who yelled "OH SH*T WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" The teacher was standing right there and didn't even react to that comment. Also the kids in that class were goofing off the entire time, making inappropriate comments toward the teacher and overall just being out of control. The whole time I sat in silence, laughing at the occasional joke or comment, but thinking "is this how they really act? This would never happen at Stevenson" Rachel later told me they had made previous teachers cry.
Although I didn't realize it at the time, the culture at St. Louis Park high school is a lot different than Stevenson. At Rachel's school it might be acceptable to treat a teacher like that, while at Stevenson it is seen as a more.
If I were a student at Rachel's school, I might have been goofing off with the rest of them, but because Stevenson has conditioned me to be a well-mannered hard working student, I saw their behavior as strange and wrong to me.
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The way a sociologist would phrase it is that behaving in class is a more and so the kids at the other school were violating a more, but it is a good example of a difference - perhaps a different subculture? I am not sure, I would have to know more about the school to make that leap.
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