If you could go back and spend four years at any fictional high school from the ’80s, where would you enroll?
Would you hang out with Spicoli at Ridgemont High? Serve Saturday detention with the Breakfast Club at Shermer High? Shoot hoops for Hickory? Learn the African Anteater Ritual at Crandall High?
Or maybe you'd choose a school where there's absolutely no chance of being murdered by your classmates or attacked in your dreams.
This week on Stuck in the ’80s, Steve and Brad are going back to school as we pick the fictional high schools of the 1980s we'd most like to attend — and the ones we'd avoid at all costs.
There are plenty of tempting choices.
There's Weemawee High from Square Pegs, where being popular might be difficult but there's always the possibility you'll score an invitation to Buffy's bar mitzvah and see Devo perform.
There's Ridgemont High from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which was also the overwhelming favorite among our listeners. Sure, you might have to survive Mr. Hand's history class, but apparently you can have pizza delivered to class, visit a morgue on a field trip and spend the rest of your free time hanging around the mall.
Then there's Hickory High from Hoosiers, where school spirit is off the charts and the enrollment is small enough that we might actually have a chance of making the basketball team.
We also consider Rydell High from Grease 2, Crandall High from Can't Buy Me Love, Edwina Pearl High from Just One of the Guys and, of course, Shermer High, the center of the John Hughes universe.
Shermer seems pretty appealing. Affluent Chicago suburb. Good education. Great house parties. Interesting classmates.
Just don't get Saturday detention.
Of course, not every fictional ’80s high school belongs on the recruiting brochure.
We'd probably skip Ampipe High from All the Right Moves unless we're particularly excited about a future at the local steel mill.
We're definitely staying away from Beaumont High from Footloose, where dancing is illegal and nearly every adult seems determined to make teenagers miserable.
Then there's Westerburg High from Heathers, where the murder rate alone should probably affect its U.S. News ranking.
And we're absolutely not enrolling at Springwood High from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Any school where falling asleep during algebra can result in your gruesome death is an immediate dealbreaker.
Bunker Hill Military Academy from Taps isn't looking much better. It's about to close, the townies hate you and there's a reasonable chance Timothy Hutton is going to get everyone killed.
Otherwise, lovely campus.
We also share your picks, including votes for the schools from Square Pegs, Better Off Dead, Summer School, Three O'Clock High and the John Hughes movies.
But Ridgemont?
Ridgemont wins by a landslide.
The High School Class We Wish We'd Had
We also have a special interview this week with Todd Shriver and Shawn Curtis, two Indiana high school teachers who have somehow managed to create what might be our dream job.
They teach a class about the 1980s.
Todd and Shawn tell us how the class came about, what parts of the decade they cover and what today's high school students think about the music, movies, history and pop culture their parents grew up with.
Even better, they've managed to bring the decade to life through an impressive collection of interviews with ’80s celebrities.
Which leaves Steve with only one question:
Where does he submit his résumé?
Why We Never Really Forget High School
There's a reason high school remains such a powerful setting for the movies and TV shows we grew up with.
Those four years are when many of us first started dreaming about who we might someday become.
It's where we found our people. Where many of us fell in love for the first time — and discovered heartbreak for the first time, too.
It's where we were challenged academically, personally and sometimes morally. We made good decisions. We made terrible decisions. And somehow all of those experiences became little pieces of the adults we eventually turned into.
And then there's the soundtrack.
The songs and movies we discovered during high school never really leave us.
Forty years later, one song can come on and suddenly you're not sitting in traffic anymore. You're 17 again. You're driving somebody's terrible first car. You're thinking about someone you had a crush on. You're remembering some completely ordinary Friday night that you had no idea you'd still be thinking about decades later.
For four years, we were becoming ourselves.
We just didn't know it yet.
And if you were lucky enough to go to high school in the ’80s, at least you had one hell of a soundtrack while you figured it out.
Join Us on The ’80s Cruise!
Want to take your love of the ’80s out of the classroom and onto the high seas? Join Stuck in the ’80s on The ’80s Cruise, where we'll once again be sailing with an incredible lineup of ’80s artists and thousands of fellow fans of the decade.
We'll be there hosting trivia, recording podcasts and enjoying a week when it's perfectly acceptable to dress like it's still 1985.
When you book, use promo code STUCK and you'll receive $250 in onboard cabin credit.
Class dismissed.
See you at sea.
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