- Oh this is a nightmare, God who knew that
picture day was gonna be so stressful?
- UCSGs? ECSGs?
- GCSEs?
- That's it.
That's definitely not right but
I don't know what else to do.
(western music)
- Hey I'm Jeff, I'm from America,
the land of monster trucks, the Superbowl
and of course the glitz and glamor of Hollywood.
- And I'm Tom, I'm from the UK.
Land of tea, talk about the weather and Hollyoaks.
- Eh, it's the same thing.
- And this is Brits versus Americans,
where we sit down and discuss even more of our differences.
- The debate never sleeps!
- So today we're talking about high school.
I know there is tons of things
about American high school that I wouldn't know about.
- Our schooling system is so different.
It's actually insane to talk about
why your college is our high school
and who's 6th form and what is...
It's just, it's so bizarre, it's so confusing to me.
- Junior, senior, middle, sophomore,
high small, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, I don't know.
( ring bell chimes)
- So as you didn't wear a school uniform I think
it's important that you experience it at least once.
I'm gonna need you to go and dress yourself up in the best
version of a British school uniform that you can.
I'm gonna give you a run down.
What I want is I want some kind of like
smart shoe and smart trousers.
Then I want, like, a tie but the tie has to be
really really short and really really fat.
With a shirt and a blazer and then I want you
to have a back pack that is low,
like on the biggest setting and as low down as possible.
- That's how I do my backpack anyway.
So I would 100% wear it like that.
- Perfect. - Perfect.
- That's your challenge.
- Okay.
Okay there's no way he meant it to be like,
actually maybe.
Then I don't know what
I'm supposed to do with this rest of this bit.
- (chuckling) It's definitely not right but
I don't know what else to do.
Now I've put my blazer on.
I honestly feel like a drunk business man.
This doesn't really feel right but
I don't know.
The final touch is the backpack.
Which I have here and it is on the loosest
end possible so it hangs
as low as it possibly can just like my shoes.
- 3, 2...
- (screams) Oh my god you nailed it!
- Did I?
- Yes, do a turn!
That is so good!
(wheezes) The tie in particular.
- Okay, my thing with the tie though.
- [Tom] Yeah.
- Does the rest of it just get tucked all the way in?
- That's a good point, I mean, to be honest.
Oh the untucked shirt as well!
- Oh yeah and
I don't have boots.
(laughs)
- But, they're like-- - And the bare feet, yeah.
- I feel like a drunk business man
who drank too much at the pub,
had to get changed back into his work outfit
like 13 minutes late reeking of cigarettes.
Probably still have the cigarette in my hand
as I walk into the meeting.
- I mean Jeff all you've done is describe you at 10.
(playful music)
- When someone says like "Oh I was in 8th grade," like,
I don't know when that is or what that means.
- Yeah it's, so first of all you call it years.
You don't call it grades.
- Yeah, yeah we call it, yeah.
But then I think it's different numbers
so I think that when we are in...
- Do you have a kindergarten?
- It's called reception.
- What? Why did America choose a German word for this,
like where did that come from?
(chuckles)
What's the last year you have?
- Well this is the thing it depends because,
because school ends legally in year 11
when you're 16.
- Kay.
- At that point you can leave if you want.
But say a large amount of people
are willing to stay at that school and go to 6th form.
Which are the final 2 years when you do your A levels,
or you can leave and go to a separate college
where you could also do A levels
or some kind of like vocational degree.
Or continue with an internship, or job or whatever.
Saying it all out loud now it does sound really confusing.
- The whole like college, 6th form, A levels,
there's 2 different versions,
you can stop at 16 but you can keep going on
or you can stop altogether,
or you can go to a different school,
which is really the same thing but it's also a college.
I'm like what?
- Okay, final year of high school
we are also 17 to 18 but that is year 13.
Or upper 6th.
- Where did the 13th year come from?
(chuckles) What?
- Yeah that's weird!
- I thought we were the complicated ones.
This is so confusing.
1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade,
4th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade,
8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade,
11th grade, 12th grade.
Boom. Graduation.
- But then some of the other things in British schools
which I'm sure you don't have are like
some like the really old archaic stuff
like one of my schools that I was in
was broken up into houses.
- Like, like Harry Potter houses?
- Literally exactly the same like,
to the point where like one of them was yellow,
one of them was blue, one was green, one was red.
- No way.
- It was all named after different
like ancient castles up north.
- Another thing that confuses me about
our schooling system is the
difference between private and public?
I think ours are opposite.
So for the US public school is free
and private school is paid for.
- So here I don't think it's opposite.
Private school means paid for,
and public school means paid for.
- Oh, sick.
- The free one is called state school.
Because I guess because it's state funded.
(ring bell chimes)
- A big part of British schools
is your school emblem, your school logo.
You know it's on your school shirt,
it's on your sweatshirt like,
you know it's a badge of pride.
I want you to draw your perfect school emblem.
I want to see what you think you'd wear with pride.
- What does it,
what does it represent, like is it people?
Is it animals, can it be, like?
What was your crest?
- It was like a shield and a tree and like a book
but some poeple's was like a bird over a river,
some poeple's was like coat of arms type.
- [Jeff] Yeah, yeah.
Like a pirate ship.
- But I want like the Jeff 2020 re-up version.
- Yeah, okay cool.
I'm really bad at drawing but I already have some ideas.
(clock ticking)
- So what do you have for me Jeff?
- So before I show you what I drew
I want you to guess what you think my crest was.
You know me well enough,
so what do you think my crest would be?
- Well, what do you...
You like traveling, you like going out.
You like gay stuff.
Maybe, I'm imagining palm trees and
I don't know like a circuit party.
- (laughing) You're half right.
I did not include any gay stuff.
- Oh my god, oh my god palm tree!
Are you kidding? - Yeah, so I drew
a beach with some waves, a palm tree and that's the sun.
Although it looks quite dark.
House of Therm! - Stunning.
I know you so well, or maybe you're just really predictable.
- Yeah true.
(light bouncy music)
- Do you do that thing where you like
sing the national anthem at the start
or something of the day or like what is it?
- (laughing) So it's the Pledge of Allegiance
and at the start of every day,
you have to stand up from your seat,
hand over your heart; look at the flag.
You have to look at the flag.
And you go: (orchestral music)
"I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands
one Nation, under God, indivisible,
in liberty and justice for all."
(chuckling)
- (wheezing) It's like something from Star Wars.
Okay so something I have to ask you about.
Which is so ridiculous to me to bring up
in a high school chat is graduation.
The fact that you graduate school.
- Why is that weird?
- School is just something you have to do.
Like you guys dress up in like
robes and like a mortar board to finish school.
It's crazy!
- Yeah I mean, we had a graduation for everything.
We had an elementary school graduation.
A middle school graduation.
A senior year graduation.
- You do not.
- I had a Hebrew school graduation.
- Well, okay.
So, okay this is the thing.
Hebrew school, for example, you don't have to go there.
So like if you do you've like put in effort
and you've like tried.
And it's like, do you know what I mean?
It's on your own, like, "Well done,"
you've like achieved this thing.
When it's like, "Oh well done you've
made it through middle school!"
It's like, you really don't have a choice!
But one tradition which I think transcends every school
in the UK is that on the last day of school
a few people would bring in like a Sharpie
and everyone would just sign each others' shirts.
- Sign each others' shirts?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh no we would sign each others' year books.
And one year I passed my year book
around my class and someone stole it,
and they're like 80 bucks to order one!
- Why would someone steal your year book?
- Because they probably didn't order one
or they were just being a bully to me.
And I still to this day I think I know who it is
but she never admitted it.
- Oh my god. I hope she sees this.
- I know. Me too.
I know it was you!
(ring bell chimes)
- Okay Tom.
Your American challenge for this
is to create your own year book picture.
Everyone's gonna look back on this picture.
So, no pressure.
Not only do these pictures go in your year book,
but your parents can also order
prints of them to like put in your house.
So there was always some sort of backdrop.
So there was like plain backdrops,
there was one with like trees in it.
So you can kind of have fun with what your
year book picture backdrop is.
- I'm gonna have to do it with
like self-timer on my phone here
but I have an idea of how to make it
look as year "book-ey" as possible so bear with me.
(guitar plays)
Alright I feel like this stool is good.
Oh I'm nailing this.
Oh this is so, this is yeah.
This is it. This is so it.
Let's just see if I can get the pose right.
So you said it was kind of weirdly to the side.
And then like a...
Yeah great.
Now I wanna go for like a kind of really
I don't know maybe like NSYNC type look.
Yeah, so into this.
- And then the piece de resistance.
(thuds) Oh the lens fell out.
(thuds)
You know what.
Oh the whites, the white socks
are actually quite pertinent to the look.
And yeah I think, so I'm gonna go hands on knee.
Feet, oh yeah this is good.
Hands on, hands on knees like this,
feet together turned to the side...
Weird smile. Feels great, let's do it.
Alright come on Tom. You've only got one shot.
(timer counting down)
(camera shutters)
Oh, (laughs) okay.
Oh, nailed it. So happy with this.
Jeff is gonna be so phased.
So here I've moved on to the Photoshop
stage of the year book photo.
I felt it was necessary to edit it
a bit to really capture the essence
of that true year book style.
I guess it's time for the big reveal!
I'm gonna show you my year book photo.
I took into account everything that I could.
- Kay.
- We've got hands on the knees.
We've got a parting,
a lovely bit of square glasses happening there.
- The full commitment to this,
for your hair and your glasses
is just spot on like you've nailed the high school look.
And the backdrop is like what makes it
the high school year book picture.
(upbeat techno)
- What I want to know about SATs.
- Ugh, the worst!
So in order to go to I believe most colleges,
if not all you have to take the
standardized test which is the SATs.
They basically test you on like a bunch of subjects.
So like English, math, and it's like a long,
miserable several hour test.
And then I think I even did the SATs twice
because my first time wasn't great.
It's just awful, it's awful.
Yeah it's just so bad.
It's those stupid like,
"If James got on a train running 32 miles south,"
and it's like...
I don't study James train movements ever in life.
Like why does that matter?
- So the kind of like culmination
of the year almost ends up at prom.
- Oh yeah.
- Like prom is the moment you are waiting for.
Do you guys have like homecoming or prom or dances?
- We have like what you would call
a junior prom at the end of the year 11.
It, to be honest, felt for all intents and purposes,
like we were kind of emulating what American proms do.
With the stark difference that
everyone was getting hammered.
I'm surprised. - Hmm.
A few of my friends did drink
and they drank a little beforehand
but they got caught and like got suspended.
- Really? - Uh huh.
- Oh my god.
- Yeah. Drama.
(ring bell chimes)
So another essential part of high school
is voting on superlatives.
Who is the best dressed in your class?
Who has the best hair in your class?
Who is the most likely to be famous?
So my challenge for you is for you to come up
with your own original superlative.
- Oh okay I can so do this, okay I'm down.
- Think about what everyone else
would then actually vote for you to have won.
- Yeah oh my god it's so true.
Well I think I would be the most
and what other people think I would be the most
are probably 2 very different things.
- Yeah I obviously thought I was gonna win
most likely to be famous but did I end up on that?
Nope.
- [Tom] If I was in high school
and you had to come up with a superlative
about me most likely to what would it be?
- Most likely to become a YouTube star?
Oh my god, thank you! (cheers)
Ryan!
If I was in American high school
and I had to do a "most likely to:"
what would I get?
- Become a serial killer.
- [Tom] (chuckles) Okay. Well that's great.
Thanks Ryan. - [Ryan] Yep!
- And the results are in!
We've got, "most likely to be a serial killer."
I wish you'd taken it seriously.
We've got "most likely to be a YouTube star."
I wish she'd taken it seriously.
And then we've got,
"most likely to win biggest turnip at the county fair."
Which is my addition.
I think we know which one's gonna win
but we'll see which one Jeff likes.
So, Jeff, the best I thought to
come up with some superlatives
was to ask those around me,
so I've come up with 1 myself and 2 are from my friends.
So we've got:
Most likely to become a YouTube star.
Most likely to be a serial killer.
Most likely to win biggest turnip at the county fair.
- I don't know what the turnip one means.
- You know like when you go to a farmers' market
and they have a competition about who can grow
the biggest vegetable?
(trumpet trills)
Maybe that's a bit niche.
- No.
- What do you see for me?
- I don't see you becoming a serial killer
so we can "X" that one. - Thank you for saying that.
Thank you.
- I mean, most likely to be a YouTube star seems a little
like too on-the-nose, so.
If we were in high school and I had to vote for one of those
I think most likely to grow the biggest turnip
would be my vote.
- Yes! That was my one, that was what I wanted.
I genuinely think I do have you know,
I've been spending a lot of time in the allotment
so I think I've got a pretty good
chance of that, thank you.
- Every time we do one of these
I learn more and more and like,
honestly we could have done like,
an entire 2nd or 3rd video about this,
like there was so much.
- The main thing I was actually surprised about
is all the things I thought were true, were true.
(laughs)
I thought when I went to high school
that was an exhausting experience,
but if I had to tack on like,
you know making sure that I like
had asked some girl to go to the prom,
then to go pick up my pottery from the kiln,
and then making sure that I had done my lacrosse.
Like, oh my god I don't know how I would have coped.
So I think for once I actually wasn't surprised like,
I thought it was going to be really really different,
and it is.
Everything that I thought about US schools is true,
and I for one and happy about that.
If you want to see more Brits versus Americans,
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(orchestral music)