A childhood belief about classes

I was young when President Reagan was shot. At my grammar school it was said that kids at ‘the high school’ had clapped when they heard the news. I didn’t understand the politics of it all and only knew that it was horrible that a human being had been shot. I thought that ‘the high school’ must be this incredibly frightening orgy of violence – think ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ crossed with ‘Spartacus’ – that was orchestrated, encouraged and graded (!!) by the teachers. What else could bring people to applaud the assassination of a president?