Punxsutawney (yes, the groundhog one) late 1970’s. There were occasional fistfights and there was some bullying, but it was otherwise a very safe and quiet school.
New England prep school. The biggest danger was being hit by a lacrosse ball during cross-country practice.
12 years of Catholic schooling, that is/was my problem.
More physical problems in the grade school.
Graduated High School in 1961. It is a downtown school for 9-11th grade and last year was a new school run by Christian Brothers.
First one was all Nun’s no civilian teachers at all. 3 of the nuns could whip any of the students in a physical fight. The others were smaller but not to be messed with.
The new school was weird & there several civilian teachers. It combined several different Catholic schools so the rivalries caused some tension but it never moved beyond smart mouthing.
Hunting guns in cars trucks, pocket knives everywhere, Nuns & C B’s were the biggest danger to our health. Had one Brother who was the most mild mannered one there who stood at the door and if you did not beat the bell into the room, you got a nasty whack on your shoulder as you went past.
I was the only one who got thrown out of class that year. I had to take my desk with me. He was pissed. I learned that being right was not always a path to to take if you are not the boss. Being stubborn has consequences. Being right does not protect a fella from authority.
My school–Chapel Hill NC in the late 80s/early 90s–was neither as dangerous nor as safe as some here.
The main divide that I knew of was rednecks vs. freaks. Friend of mine, a punk/skinhead (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice/Straightedgers were big at my school, with violent tendencies toward racist skinheads), had come from a Montessori junior high, and his adjustment to public schooling was…tough. He didn’t get along with some of the rural kids; so one morning between classes they surrounded him and tripped him. He popped up with a combination lock in a gym sock (they’d warned him before school what they were going to do) and sent one of them to the hospital with a concussion.
That’s about as bad as the violence got On the other hand, a kid in a horticulture class held a trowel to my throat and threatened to stab it in. And a kid on the bus, who told lots of anti-gay jokes and who I tormented for it, told me he was gonna bring a gun to school and shoot me. Nothing ever came of either threat.
'81 - '85, Small town, South Dakota.
Not dangerous at all. We only had 19 kids in my graduating class. There were probably only about 110 to 120 in the whole high school. The entire school (Elementary, Middle/Junior High, High) was in one big building.
Suburban Southern California, early 70s. A few fights, no gangs, little bullying. Not all that racially diverse, but there wasn’t much in the way of racial tension. You were in more danger of ODing at a football team party than you were of getting beat up or shot. Huge school, too. My graduating class was over 1000 people.
High school? Utterly safe, but then again it was a Jesuit-run college prep school populated by upper-middle class white and Hispanic boys. I think I might have seen a punch thrown once in 4 years.
Small town in Texas. Late 70’s. Plenty of fist fights. Guns were sometimes left in gun racks in a pick up. Never saw one in school. Some minor vandalism. One morning a “for sale” sign and what looked to be about 3000 beer cans were all over the school lawn. We lived three doors down from the school. Many mornings, I’d stop in the school office to say “Mom says when you’ve taken the garbage can off the flag pole, please take it back to our house and put it on the north side.”
Little Midwestern town, late 1960’s-early 1970’s. Not dangerous at all. One year there was a fight in back of the bleachers at a football game, but that was broken up in a matter of minutes.
Suburban New Orleans, mid-Eighties. We had exactly one punk: spiked black mohawk, piercings, etc. Hell of a nice guy.
Thunder Bay, ON, about 5 years ago. I never personally felt unsafe, but I largely kept to myself. No real gangs. Mild bullying that was largely verbal (not that that’s much better). I know of one student being expelled for threatening another with a knife, and saw one fist fight that had to be broken up. A lot of drugs, but that seems to be par for the course.
We did have a fight church though. Basically if two people wanted to fight, they arranged a time (ie after school tomorrow), and they and about a hundred spectators would go over to the nearby Lutheran church and fight in the parking lot. It could be pretty brutal fighting, but oddly gentlemanly. Nobody beat anybody when they were down, typically nut shots were frowned on, and if anybody got out of hand the spectators would pull them off. Probably happened once every two months, but somehow nobody ever got badly hurt and it never turned into a riot.
Mid-Atlantic US, city with a population of about 40,000, student population of high school about 2500, half white, half minority (mostly black and hispanic but some asians). I attended from 1977 to 1980.
There would be occasional rumors about “black-white fights” i.e., riots, but none ever happened. There were several cases I personally knew of where black girls beat up white girls, but I had friends of all ethnic backgrounds.
During my junior year, a student stabbed a teacher, which was very shocking. If there was gang activity, I never noticed it, nor did I feel unsafe.
Springfield, Illinois, 1980’s.
There were two major groups at my high school: poor black kids from the ghetto, and rich white kids from The Lake. I was a poor white kid from the ghetto, so I didn’t fit into either group.
Things are different now, but in those days the races generally avoided each other, so I didn’t have much association with the black kids, and I was largely shut out by the white kids. Among the black kids, there were beefs from the neighborhood that carried over into the hallways, and fights were not uncommon, and even a stabbing or two. None of it every made it my way, although I was concerned it might at some point, and there were times when I genuinely feared for my life just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The white kids generally left me alone. I got a lot of “social” bullying, if that’s what it’s called, but never any physical bullying, since I was pretty big.
No, I didn’t have to join a gang for protection.
1970-1974, NW Oregon. 200 students total in all 4 high school grades. I can’t even remember one fist fight or other violence.
Everybody knew each other, and the parents knew each other and you were not going to get away with any wrong doing anyway, about as dangerous as a family reunion picnic.
Knives were common. The ‘hood’ type guys kept folding Buck knives in a sheath on their belt, but not for protection, it was part of looking cool along with the chain holding the wallet to your jeans. Guns in the cars in the parking lot were also common especially during hunting season. Or just for plinking. The local farmers would let us shoot nutria after school as long as we closed the gates behind us.
No races yet then. My girlfriend and her sister were the first Hispanics, of course they were adopted out of L.A. by white upper-class parents and were referred to as American Indians, which I suppose was technically true, sort of, but referring to them as Mexicans would have been less ideal of a brand name.
The community is much more diverse now but the town and schools are still about the same size and just as safe.
Suburban/rural school, late 70’s. Graduated 1980. 253 kids in graduating class. One black kid and one asian kid.
No stabbings, shootings or threats with said weapons when some kids openly carried folding knives and a fair number had guns in their vehicles on occasion (farm kids - hunting, varmint shooting, etc).
Sure, there were the usual fist fights and bullying, but really not that bad.
That same school today is much more diverse, but just as safe.
Middle / upper middle class public school in Southwest Connecticut from 1988-1991.
All in all, I didn’t feel like it was particularly “dangerous”. Although I did kind of feel like there was a contingent of kids who acted tougher than they probably really were. There was the occasional fist fight, but I feel like that was pretty rare.
Fairfield County Connecticut is a bit of a patchwork of socioeconomic classes and ethnic groups. So occasionally you heard stories of some party where kids from some other town started a fight or a couple of guys got their ass kicked going into Bridgeport for shady purposes. Every now and again there would be a brawl at a school football/basketball/hockey game.
Small-town high school in rural Virginia. Other than a few fights and some black/white tension (I think it was mostly rumors more than anything) I felt totally safe there. A few dudes tried to bully me but I didn’t back down. If there were gangs I didn’t know about it. Never saw any drugs either, maybe I just wasn’t in those crowds. Guns and knives weren’t a big deal, this was before all the school shootings mania.
Suburban high school in New England in the '80s, about 1000 students. Crazy safe. On rare occasions there would be a fistfight in the hall but that’s about it. No racial tension because there was almost no diversity. Not many rich kids, not many poor kids - just a lot of same-same middle class white kids. Not everybody liked everybody, but violence was unheard of. I’m sure some kids did drugs, but no one ever talked about it (in my circles at least).
Toledo, Ohio, late 80s. School was quite safe. There were parts of the school district where I wouldn’t go out alone after dark, but those were pretty far away from the school. I did have weapons: four good friends who could all bench press more than 250 lbs.