@tlm550 said:

I did go to high school in the 80s in Indiana... we moved a lot, I actually went to three different high schools. I went to grade schools and Jr. High schools in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio... and then three high schools all around Indiana.

Just facts about MY EXPERIENCE...

1. No one walked around with walkmans or headphones of any kind - no such thing was allowed. Not at any time; they weren't allowed on school property - not during regular school hours anyway.
2. Hats were not allowed in school either.
3. Shorts were not allowed except in gym/PE class. Girl's skirts and pants or whatever those short "pants" were called had to be below the knee.
4. Cheerleaders did not spend the entire school day in their cheerleading outfits. - If we had a pep rally or other sports assembly, that would be at the end of the day or right before the last two classes - so they might have worn those in the last two classes but never all day. Same goes for any team uniforms.
   
5. There were no payphones anywhere on any school property where I attended. People didn't feel the need to make phone calls every 20 seconds... also, there was no time to make calls... you didn't just roam around or hang out wherever you wanted, you went to class. If there was some emergency where you needed to make calls, you did so from the school office. I never made any calls from school.
6. Lunch time was not a time to put on a display or make a presentation... in high school, our lunch was HALF of a class period, we had 25 minutes to buy food and eat it... that meant most of us never were able to get lunch. In 9th grade, we had the full class period, but not in 10th to 12th grades.
   
7. We had no Spanish classes. Our community went nuts and spewed their racist thoughts when they learned the schools were considering adding Spanish classes --- the parents put a stop to that... with the horrible "they need to learn OUR language" nonsense. We had German and Latin... that's it... and only a few classes for those, so only a select few got into those classes.
8. There was no time before or after school for any hanging out or other gatherings... you got off the bus and had 10 minutes before the first class... after the last class, you had to be on your bus in 10 minutes and then they all left 5 minutes after that.
9. Almost everyone rode the bus. The grade schools were all in town, so some kids would walk to school; very few rode bikes. For all of the Jr. High and High Schools I attended, they were outside of city limits... so you rode the bus or your parents drove you... there wasn't room for hundreds of cars to line up like you see today, that is so stupid.. Obviously, in high school, SOME kids drove themselves... but most didn't... parking was always an issue anyway.
10. You didn't roam the halls, going into other classrooms looking for your friends - you would be stopped. You definitely didn't barge in on someone who was working on the school newspaper or anything like that. For those five minutes between classes, the halls were EMPTY. If you were walking in the halls, you had better be on your way to the office. You didn't wait until the bell rang before walking into the next classroom (like I've seen so many times on Stranger Things, The Middle, Malcolm in the Middle and every other TV show showing kids at school). If you walked in after the bell, you were late and you were marked as late --- actually, you were supposed to be in your seat when the bell rang at the end of the five minutes. A few times of being late, and you were sent to the office and then you'd be in detention the next day.
    
11. There were no vending machines. You bought lunch in the cafeteria or you took your lunch ---- never saw anyone take their lunch in high school though. Also, there were no sodas available in the cafeteria... everyone drank milk, orange juice, or kool-aid or something like that. No, there weren't individual bottles of drinking water in the 80s... not unless you bought it in a gallon jug. I drove to California in 1992, when I stopped for gas in Huntington Beach, I walked inside a gas station/convenience store --- that was the first time in my life I had ever seen 20 oz bottles of drinking water: most of the drinks in the store were water... they didn't have any Coke, Pepsi, or Mountain Dew --- in the Midwest, those 20oz bottles of water still weren't being sold there at that time... I'm 100% certain of that... the attitude was "Me, Pay for WATER!?? I don't think so". :) Yeah, I said 20oz because that is what they used to be, not the 16.9 oz we have now. One exception to vending machines is that there were soda machines in the gym of two of the high schools that I attended but you were not allowed to use them during school; they were for after school sports or other activities; also, you'd never be anywhere near the gym unless you were in gym class or in a pep rally or other school assembly. You couldn't just walk in there whenever you wanted without being noticed and without being stopped or questioned.

Well...

-It’s not a documentary.

-It’s not a "HISTORY" channel series.

-The series isn't about high school life in Indiana during the 80's.

-If you throw a rock and hit any high school in the US, it is going to have something in common with every other high school in the US; and with frictional ones, as in this series.

-Poetic License...a/k/a “artistic license, literary license, dramatic license, historical license, narrative license...."

-I’m not discounting anything you said; just pointing out that a work of fiction is no place to go looking for "facts".

@acontributor said:

I would say that this show creates an 80s motif without giving an accurate impression of what the 80s were really like.

I think it's pointless to remind the OP that this is a work of fiction. That is already obvious.

Well, since the OP has stated no objections to being reminded, who is to say they didn’t need reminding.

Also, maybe the reason the OP has no dispute with my list is that they found each of my points “on point”, and is glad I brought them to their attention.

--Of course the OP could have gotten hit by a and is still in and....

I've never seen "Stranger Things", but I've heard nothing but good things about it. Just to provide a counterpoint to Alfred's post, and to show that, indeed, experiences can be different:

I went to high school from 1989 - 1993; it was a public high school (some of the things Alfred posted sounded as if they might have been in a parochial setting). It was located in the Midwest, in Michigan. And,

1) Walkmans were definitely not allowed in class-- they had to be left in your locker --but you could bring them to school, and listen to them during lunch.

2) Hats were allowed in school-- like baseball hats and women's berets --just nothing that covered the face. Most kids didn't wear hats, but some did and they were allowed.

3) Shorts were allowed. Skirts were also allowed; if they were really short-- say, far up the knee or just below the hips --the girls would be told to wear something more appropriate.

4) I agree on this one. Cheerleaders did not walk around in their cheerleading outfits all day long.

5) We did have (a small number, perhaps three or four in a high school of 700) pay phones in the school. Now, the only time anyone would've had time to use them was during lunch. They weren't used that often. For an emergency call-- like Alfred said --you would more typically make this from the school office.

6) Agree, here. In my HS we only had 20 minutes for lunch-- so you really had to scarf it down. No time for presentations.

7) We did have Spanish class (I took more than three years of it in HS), as well as French and Latin. No community resistance. The town was overwhelmingly white back then, but we did have a small yet longstanding Hispanic presence in the community. Perhaps that was why nobody had a problem with it.

8) If you took the bus this was probably true in my HS, as well; but we had a lot of walkers and bike riders, as well as upperclassmen who drove; so if you were any of those folks, you had plenty of time to hang out before and after school. The HS was located in town.

9) See #8. Also, at my school, there was plenty of student parking. It was a very large campus with lots of property.

10) My experience was the same. No just walking around and going into any class you felt like.

11) My HS did have vending machines, near the cafeteria, and students were free to use them. They sold pop and snacks-- chips, candy bars, etc. Now, years later, while visiting, I did notice that the health craze had fully taken over. The snack vending machines were gone, and the soda in the beverage vending machines had been replaced with water and fruit juice.

These were just my experiences.

That very well may be true but then when has Hollywood ever portrayed anything accurately? Hollywood is in the business to entertain not educate us on historical accuracy.