Were your junior high/middle and high schools cliquish? (senior, elementary, ethnicity)
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Let's bring back memories of junior high / middle and high school. Were they cliquish, as often portrayed in Hollywood movies, with the athletes and cheerleaders occupying the top rung of the social ladder and picking on the "geeks"? Or did it contradict the stereotype?
My school district had only one elementary, middle, and high school, so if one was there for every year, their senior class at graduation would not be much different in its composition than their kindergarten class. It was also relatively small - my graduating class consisted of about 140 students (about 10% didn't make it).
Beginning in Kindergarten, there were the "popular" kids and the not-so-popular kids. By the time I came back from two years of parochial school in seventh grade, students switched instructors for classes, so we were now a "class" rather than a classroom.
I was very interested in the social dynamics of my school and devised a five-tiered classification system, based mainly on prestige - what kids then called "popularity", though I think a more accurate term would be "prestige", as all the "popular kids" were not necessarily popular with those who weren't, but definitely had greater social prestige. V kids were the most prestigious; VI kids hung out with V kids, but did not possess their social status; III kids were "in the middle": possessing a stable self-image, not seeming to want to advance, neither looked up to nor looked down upon; II kids were of lower prestige, but still had a cohesive, healthy group of friends; I kids were the nerds, geeks, and freaks, and formed the bottom of the social ladder. The IV and V kids seemed to form one big clique, as did the III kids. The II and (especially) I kids seemed to be segregated by sex in their cliques.
People from all cliques played school sports, although many of the star athletes fell into the IV and V groups.
Many of the II, at least the girls, were already turning into "burn-outs" in 7th grade: the type of girls who began to smoke at a young age.
In retrospect, I think the system achieved a certain degree of accuracy.
In high school, especially after my freshman year, the vertical system in which it was easy for students to compare two others in terms of "popularity" or prestige began to break down and transformed into a more level system of interdependent cliques. Bullying and social exclusion seemed to stop or at least decline, although students preferred to hang out with their own. Football and hockey (the two most popular sports) athletes were respected for their athletic prowess at school assemblies and games, but not so much their social prestige, which for many of them never exceeded average. A real class spirit began to form in our later years, and especially our senior year.
And to an extent, at least when I'm thinking negatively, adult life still seems cliquish in a similar way. The ladder climbing and disregarding those below you aspect if not the cliques based on activities (jocks, drama, nerds). Hanging with only those of your own race/ethnicity/dating experience, social level, etc.
I was probably a II in high school. Quiet and shy. Mostly a ghost. Pretty socially awkward too. But I was friends with guys were III and IV so I wasn't picked on or tormented.
Not really. I never understood the movies where that was the stereotype because I never felt that way.
It may have been because my high school class was 1390 people.
Now, when I talk to other people who went to the same school, they say that the area was snobby and isolating and blah blah blah...but I never got that. I never felt that way. So maybe everyone's experiences are different.
People grouped mostly according to activities, but there wasn't a strict hierarchy over which group was "better." We had queen bees in the fine arts programs who could easily give the cheerleaders a run for their money, in term of "sh*t doesn't stink" attitude.
i had 50 kids in my graduating class; most of us started together in kindergarten, and finished 13 years later in high school.
we didn't have enough people to break into smaller groups, so it just divided in half. one side were the more attractive / athletic / personable kids.
The other side was "everyone else", who never really managed to form a clique -- they just sort of orbited the popular kids, from elementary school all the way to high school parties. Some of the "other" kids were really smart, some were religious, some were new, some were annoying, etc.
Being that small, we actually had a few entire grades where all the boys were in the "less cool" group.
My own was a large school with several hundred of us attending. It was clique-ish, I suppose, but that may be a result of logistics rather than some negative thing.
My childrens' school was small - 6 to 8 kids in a grade. 80 to 90 some kids attending from kindergarten through 12th grade, depending on the year. It was not clique-ish at all. How could it be? You needed everybody for anything! Pretty much, if you existed - you were in. And if the activity was not your favorite, you still did it knowing that your classmates would be returning the favor when something happened that you were enthused about.
In elementry school cliques were basically "popular" or "unpopular." There wasn't any outright meaness from the popular kids but they certainly didn't embrace the unpopular kids either. The popular crowd had its "founding members" (pretty much the ones who were attractive, athletic, got good grades, etc. since first grade) and hangers on who joined in later grades.
In high school cliques weren't that strong either, but they were different. There seemed to be a group for jocks/cheerleaders/beautiful/rich kids, another group for nerdy/smart/somewhat attractive/rich kids, and another for very quiet/very studious/drama club/band/arty/dorky/unattractive/lower-income/probably going to junior college kids (yeah I know this one is contradictory!), and then there were the kids who avoided social interaction with anyone because they were extremely shy or just plain hated everyone.
I did not have a middle school "experience." I went to parochial school the whole way through, so it was K-8 and 9-12, and in urban California. K-8 was definitely NOT cliquish, even as we became teenagers. It was pretty damn funny, with most people making fun of the teachers and each other, but in a cool way.
I went to 2 different high schools. The first was a very high-ranked school. It went all the way from rich to poor, and the catchment area was huge. The cliques revolved around socio-economic status and not much else, since all the people were smart. I then got to go to the 2nd school, which was actually my first choice, but it was a 3.5 or 4 out of 5 stars school. I liked it because it was more laid-back and the socioeconomic range was tighter. However, it was even MORE cliquish. The cliques were organized by stratification as jock, cheerleader, nerd/smart, not nerd/smart, art/drama, "gear head," stoner, independents, etc. Then they were stratified more by the proximity of your "feeder" school to this high school. And this wasn't even a large school.
The sad part was that we were zoned for a great public high school that a lot of my K-8 friends departed the parochial school system for.
Last edited by robertpolyglot; 03-30-2012 at 07:34 PM..
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