High School Musical Psychology

‘’High school is the best years of your life,’’ is a shibboleth commonly used by adults, but how true is this expression? As high school is a time in which one obtains freedom and independency, without having many responsibilities, some adults consider those years to have been the best of their lives. However, plenty of adolescents repudiate this, as they endure a lot of pressure during their high school period. In this essay, I will argue that, although adults often regard high school as the best time of their lives, it is a social institution that can be very threatening to adolescents, as issues such as peer pressure and parental expectations, which become evident in the teen movie High School Musical, generate a lot of tensions that can

According to Collins and Thomas, studies have shown that ‘’conformity to peers’’ is a very weighty component of teenage behavior. In the movie High School Musical, peer pressure has a significant influence on the storyline, as the main characters, Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez, make leading decisions in response to it. Especially Troy, who is captain of the basketball team and who is eligible for a scholarship, is pressured to completely focus on playing basketball, instead of singing, which he notes as ‘’it is not what I do,’’ and playing in the school musical with Gabriella. Peer pressure in the movie becomes most evident through the song ‘’Stick to the Status Quo’’, in which a number of students reveal their secrets passions and the rest of the school tells them to keep doing what they are supposed to

Nowadays, a lot of parents ‘’ put continuous pressure on children to do well in academics or co-curricular activities’’. In the movie this tension between parent and child is clearly depicted by the relationship between Troy and his father and Gabriella and her mother. Troy his father, who is also coach of the basketball team, puts an enormous amount of pressure on his son to completely focus on basketball and get a scholarship, while Gabriella her mother expects her to go to Stanford, which they have been discussing since she was a little girl. However, both parents totally ignore the fact that their children might consider other options for their future. Now, as Frank Smoll, a professor from the University of Washington, says: ‘’since there is a natural bond between a parent and child, feedback can be quite powerful’’. Indeed, as a result of his their parents’ pressure and expectations, Troy and Gabriella feel even more discouraged to participate in the school