By now, everyone has heard the media gibber about highschool cliques and the negativity surrounding them. The truth is that cliques are probably just as harmful than our government's party system of working. In fact, the cliques we form as adolescents and young adults actually strengthen our social abilities and help us progress to an adult life.
The American way of life is all by association. We all have our assigned niche in our group. Whether that group is a social hierarchy, a religion, a company, a basketball team, a political party, a neighborhood watch group, or even our own group of friends, the human race is always making groups of people that rival against and ally with other groups of people. There are many examples of this: Capitalism vs. Communism, Democrat vs. Republican, religion vs. science vs. pseudoscience. All of this boils down to one big equation: "us vs. them".
This universal struggle is ingrained in human consciousness, from the time it was "us vs. predators" to now, when it's "us vs. the rest of the human race", which is a subject all its own. Cliques prepare us for this dog-eat-dog society. In a working society, the active and functional members must learn to do two things. They must learn to cooperate with people, and they must learn to compete constructively with people (competing constructively is competing so that you win and the other guy loses except not in a way that will hurt you at any time in the future). Adolescents have their own form of this, in the cliques.
The clique separation is noticeable in the lower grades as well. The hazing that is associated with cliques starts here, in 1st grade, with individuals teasing one another instead of groups. With the distinct groups, though, unless you are two subcategories of that group (the "Pure Preps" versus the "Slut Preps"), there is no open hazing of members of your own group. But in the higher grades, adults stop thinking that it may be childish teasing and start thinking of it as a hostile action. The kids involved still usually think nothing more of it, unless they are already troubled or impressionable. Then, you have problems that are at the Columbine level, just as you do if a psychopath can't handle adult society. You never say that it was the society's fault when the killer is an adult, but it's the fault of the psychopath. For some reason, this is not so with teens. Normal, stable children get along perfectly in this mini-world, with all the give-and-take of adult society put to their level.
The only thing that has distorted this wonderful complexity is scapegoating. People are not willing to let their children take responsibility for their actions. Instead of letting it be said that they could not handle the rigors of normal teen society, they say that the norm is wrong and bad and should be controlled. I say, if that should be so, let's see the adults change their society to an attitude of openness and understanding and compassion. If the big pattern changes, so will the small.
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