I think it's hard to convey the extent to which 'school culture' leaks into *everything*. I was homeschooled, and so when I got into the world 'school culture' was glaringly obvious.
Thread of examples:
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1. Portrayal of teen norms
School is everywhere, in *all* media for teens. All kids go to high school, and the dynamics of high school are enmeshed with the plot. Even when the setting is fantasy, teens still carry norms that are unique to a school setting, such as:
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2. Isolation of kids and adults. The important people in a kid's life are *other kids* almost exclusively. Kids are isolated in a radically different environment, and then undergo a transition into 'adult world.' This is weird and feels super artificial.
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3. Relationship to learning. School-culture sees learning as a job - you go in, turn in the paperwork and if you do well enough you get a promotion (grades, good college). I can't tell you the number of times ppl asked me "what course is that for" when I was reading BOOK FOR FUN
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4. School imagery *everywhere*. There's aisles in grocery stores dedicated to it, there's an ad season for it. Yellow busses, apples and teachers and desks and hand raising. In my world, this is a foreign language, but it's saturated in tiny ways everywhere we look.
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5. Bullying. Even if it's not outright, there's still toxic relationship norms rampant in school culture that are considered default, normal, not-weird. People will laugh about the one time everyone outed and made fun of them to their crush like this is just how the world works.
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It's hard to really sum up the extent to which this happens. It's in tiny references - "playing hooky", "drop out", "teacher's pet", "cram", "saved by the bell", "who do you sit with at lunch", "recess", etc. - that exist *everywhere*. We're swimming in it.
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This is a thing even when it makes very little sense for the teen to go to school
like, fighting aliens or being a superhero or whatever which is super important but they're still drudging along doing busy work at school