Stereotypes In Ameil Burke's Summer Heights High

One of the main themes in Scott Westerfield’s text Uglies is the conflict teenagers have with where they stand in society and learning to respect and value themselves. Using examples from the text compare them with today’s world for teenagers.

Teenagers are irresponsible. Young adults can not handle real life situations. New generations do not know how to use things in moderation. These are all stereotypes of America’s youth, yet they all seem to refer to teachable things. They are all things that need to be learned. Most of the time, the young are looked down on for messing up in life, yet the reality is that anyone can screw up, it just is more likely to happen to someone who has less experience as opposed to someone who has more. The more time a person is given to learn about something, and the more guidance they have, the more experienced and reliable they will become. This applies to many things, but one specific example is alcohol. Typically teens are seen as too irresponsible to have access to substances containing alcohol, but if they were to legally have it in their lives, it may educate them sooner as to how to use it properly and in moderation. In the United States of America, the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen years old.

The expectations they have of who they have to be, influence the reasons they are in detention; each student, Claire, Brian, John, Andrew, and Allison, have been placed into detention for reasons that directly relate to who they think they are. To start, Claire, who has been declared as the school’s “princess,” is in detention because she ditched school to go shopping. According to her own opinion of herself, she is privileged, she is a daddy’s girl and deserves nothing more than the privilege in her life. So, when her father drops her off, he lets her know that he will “make it up to her” since she had to spend an entire Saturday in detention, rather than doing something else, such as more shopping. Throughout the movie, Claire makes comments such as “I don’t think I belong in here,” implying that she is better than the four other students surrounding her because of her privileged life. With that, she also takes stabs at other students because she has made to believe that she is of a higher social standing than the rest of them are, except for Andrew Clark. But most of her comments include Bender because it is evident that they do not have the same social standing and her opinion became especially evident when she says “only burners like you get high”. Claire is stereotyping the other students around her, and they are stereotyping

“Mean girls, jocks, band nerds, geeks, and freaks” are all terms used to stereotype and group teens in the 2004 movie hit, Mean Girls. This film created controversies in the content that it delivered. The credibility of adolescents is questioned greatly in this film. Mean Girls taught us that popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, in fact, they taught us that it’s actually meaningless. Through extreme character development, this movie shows the viewer that at the end of the day, all of the teens are the same. They all struggle to fit in, and that’s really the moral of this hilarious, but raunchy story. Mean Girls captures the struggle that every teen seems to have at some point of where they belong and how they relate to everyone around them. The film takes those stereotypes and melds them into what all high schools should aspire to be: a community.

Mark Water’s ‘Mean girls’ portrays the story of a girl who moves from being home schooled in Africa to entering a public high school for the first time and encounters many psychological problems within the school. Throughout this film many concepts of social psychology were used to portray today’s society. Within the school setting many stereotypes are made of one another along with intergroup conflict resulting in prejudice and discrimination.

Unfortunately, the media has a strong control over the appearance of adolescents. This appearance of adolescents are typically looked at in a negative view. As if the stress from the media is not enough, adolescents also face the obstacles of being stereotyped, the intense peer influence they face, and also the silent social system that is present among schools and everyday life. In the films, The Breakfast Club and Mean Girls these similar themes take place. These films allow the focused adolescents to triumph through hardships that are placed on them by the media, their peers, and their environments. These two films may have a few surface generational differences between them, however, the overall themes stay the same.

A concept of a stereotypical teenager in the 20th century was to grow up through childhood but not surpass the values, beliefs and attitudes of a typical adult. In the 1998 film, the audience is shown a great selection of characters, symbolism and setting which reinforces the idea of a teenage role that shows a new perspective that affects society.

A documentary filled with scripted spontaneity and a slight insight to reality explores the stereotypical lives of five high-school seniors. Kaylee O’Dwyer talks about the truth behind this popular film, “American Teen.”

I am writing to you because I find it impossible to understand why ‘Educating Essex’ represents teenagers in this such way to society today, it only makes an impression of them, that “all Britain’s teenagers are goby, impolite, spoilt and lacking enough self-discipline to interact with anyone.” This supports stereotypes of modern reckless teens, when in reality “the majority of Britain’s teenagers are interesting, polite and simply brilliant young people quietly going about the business of creating a bright future for themselves.”

Imagine the typical asian household. Most people would think of a plain, very quiet house with children that are constantly studying mathematics or practicing the piano. Their parents probably wouldn’t like their children to be doing anything but studying. These students are not involved in the school as much, and focus mainly on studying, getting good grades, and getting into a good college. This is what most people would think when they see an asian kid in the hallways of school. They would be the quiet, shy kids that aren’t really interested in anything, really. I, however, do not fit into this stereotype.

Binge drinking is encouraged now teens are at risk of making unhealthier decisions. Mischievous behaviors begin with cutting class, shoplifting, and lying to parents. "Stated simply, adolescent decision making is a complex and multiply determined phenomenon" (Dustin Albert & Laurence Steinberg, Temple University, Judgment and Decision Making In Adolescence, 21(1) 211).

There posed his last challenge. He had to continue how to move on, to live life once again, and to accept that love is not what you expected.

The teens say that they are always doing their homework super late and never getting enough sleep. This gave me more information on how other teens felt and how late they are actually up. For example Bankowski said that she sometimes does not go to bed until 3am. In ¨ today's tired teens¨ the article only has information from experts. It has opinion from the AAP, who are not high school students. It only stated real facts from studies and did not have any opinions from students.

With everything that goes on in people's lives they all thing back to their own teenage years growing up. Some might be tougher than others and of course growing up differently but in the end they all have one thing in common and that is going to high school. High school is the one place where teenagers are either the popular kids that are mean to everyone or the quiet kids that are nice to everyone. Within life today television shows are starting to relate to the younger generation by trying to show what might be happening in an everyday teenager life. The Freeform’s critically acclaimed hit series The Fosters hits a lot of key points that the adolescence can relate but not limited to: same sex parents, immigration issues, and being in the system.

Teenagers today are growing up in a different scene then their parents and grandparents did. When the grandparents of today were growing up, “more than half of their fathers were in the work force and their mothers were homemakers” (Hilliker). This being said, there was usually always a motherly figure at home all day. With a parent constantly at home, this allows for the adult to be regularly involved in the teen’s daily life. When the parents of teens today were being raised, it was now more common for both parents to be working. With two parents working, this means teens are more likely to be left alone at home during the day. With a teenager home alone for the majority of the day, “teens are more likely to