# Do/Did all American High Schools have AV and drama clubs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 10, 2018, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-did-all-american-high-schools-have-av-and-drama-clubs/821129 "2018-09-10T21:53:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2018, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-did-all-american-high-schools-have-av-and-drama-clubs/821129/41 "2018-09-14T00:38:48Z")
Happy with Mods (if that’s what y’all are still called around here) to move this into MPSIMS since I have got my answer but plenty of folks are chiming in with their own personals. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2018, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-did-all-american-high-schools-have-av-and-drama-clubs/821129/42 "2018-09-14T00:45:17Z")
I don’t remember if we had a drama club, but the A/V club was essentially child labor: whenever a class had to show slides, film or a then-burgeoning technology called vee-aitch-ess, someone from the A/V club ran the equipment so the teachers didn’t have to learn how to work anything. An early version of Geek Squad. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2018, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-did-all-american-high-schools-have-av-and-drama-clubs/821129/43 "2018-09-14T01:33:27Z")
If you look at my high school yearbooks, there were pages and pages of clubs and teams — math club, chess club, poetry club, debate society, thespian society, choral society, computer club, future farmers, business and marketing club, Christian athletes, cheerleaders, spirit club, yearbook staff, school newspaper, arts society — football, basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, wrestling, softball, tennis, Richer schools had even more — film society, photography club, lacrosse, golf ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2018, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-did-all-american-high-schools-have-av-and-drama-clubs/821129/44 "2018-09-14T02:49:07Z")
Growing up, all the schools around me, small or large, had some sort of drama club. I never heard of an A/V club, though. Classes did sometimes have video projects, though. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2018, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-did-all-american-high-schools-have-av-and-drama-clubs/821129/45 "2018-09-14T03:25:41Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > - The “V” didn’t exist in schools then. It as all “F”. I don’t recall what the actual term was. Are you assuming that the “V” in AV club stands for video (as in videotaped content)? Because it doesn’t. The term is “audiovisual club” not “audio-video club”. And the teachers actually needed more help in the days when movies were shown on actual 16mm or 35mm film than the later days when movies were shown on videotape. Because even the early videocassette players were simple enough for most teachers to handle on their own, but actually loading a film reel, threading it correctly through the projector and then onto the takeup reel takes more training. There were also these things called “filmstrips” which were a primitive sort of multimedia presentation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-did-all-american-high-schools-have-av-and-drama-clubs/821129.md?page=2)