  Educators want group-centric friendships
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But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend?
Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.
“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”
“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”
That attitude is a blunt manifestation of a mind-set that has led adults to become ever more involved in children’s social lives in recent years.
Reading this article it appears as if there is a movement afoot to create a collectivist mentality in children under the guise of preventing bullying — the great bugaboo of the day. Children should not have best friends but be “group” oriented loners say these counselors. No mention as to how this actually encourages gang behavior.
found by Tanya Weiman
Truly a roadmap for success: fail at your core assignment and offer controversial social engineering as an option.
Yea America!!
It is obvious that counsellors in K-12 are not getting the help they need.
“Best Friends Forever” isn’t a new thing. I had “best friends” decades ago when I was a kid in grade school. One was a bully who became my best friend because I stood up to him. I got him to tough down his toughness, and we stayed friends until we went to different high schools.
Do you have to go to college to be this stupid or are you born that way? Dear Nanny State, GO FUCK YOURSELF!
“I think it is kids’ preference…” and “Parents sometimes say…”, but we know better. Well meaning people who think they have the answers often do more harm than good.
Kids are not petri dishes. Just educate, parenting is not your job (or right).
What does this article have to do with political correctness?
Or does “political correctness” now mean “opinions I don’t like”?
And there was a time educators believed it was best to force left handed students to use their right hand. Just one more pop psych fad. Thankfully, they can’t force this one on a student. They can only try to indoctrinate. Of course, then, if the child prefers to have a best friend and eschew the crowd, perhaps the child will grow up feeling insecure and inadequate. Sure start to a career as a serial killer.
Having a best friend is a natural and probably healthy thing for kids. Hell, when I was a mere boy, we cut our hands and became blood brothers. And I’m still in touch with him decades later. If I’d been forced to have an entire group, holy crap! I’d have been anemic!!!
I’m not sure that I’m ready to accept that this is really a national trend. The bulk of the article’s evidence and the advocacy of these friendship engineering principles comes from interviews with two officials from private schools and one official of a co-ed sleep-away camp.
You can probably be free of this “trend” by avoiding the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School; the Timber Lake Camp in Phoenicia, N.Y; and Town School, a nursery through eighth grade private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Better yet, home school the young-uns and let Mom be their BFF!
Just what we need in this country, kids that don’t know how to be a friend.
Seriously, it’s about controlling us more. People that are isolated are easier to control and manipulate.
#4 Thank you for clearly stating the solution. Please add Bobbo to the said solution.
#6
Because it’s the meme that’s been going on for years that everyone is special and no one is better than anyone else. The whole notion of a best friend means you like that person more than other people, and that might hurt other kids’ feelings.
I think that BEST FRIEND needs to be defined to BOOTH groups.
A best friend is someone that will tell you, “You are an IDIOT”, and you wont take offense. And will probably LISTEN to them.
A
“..signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.”
My next thought was someone will promote group marriage because it will discourage spousal abuse.
Dissuading groups and clickes is 1 things.
But schools USED to have groups..They used to FOSTER and create them.
Chess,
spanish
Weilding
Wood working
Newspaper
Yearbook
Basketball/baseball/… After school
STUDY CLASSES..
THINGS to keep the kids busy.
Places where an adult/parent/teacher could be around, JUST IN CASE.
NOW, after school..”GET OFF OUR LAWN” or get arrested for trespassing.
A best friend was the PERSON you listened to.
The person that Ran for assistance/help IF you really MESSED UP.
The person that PICKED you up and TRIED to carry you someplace IF it was TO EMBARRASSING..
The person you TALKED to before your parents about SUBJECTS that “you did not think” you parents understood/knew.
Why do people think they are able to change, or engineer how people think? Forcing someone to change how they actually think is extremely difficult and even if you do it is likely to have unpredictable results. Even attempting to do so is likely to turn your subject against your efforts, even if you are acting in that subjects best interests. People don’t like being controlled.
How about we concentrate on giving the kids the tools to make their own choices and support them even when they screw up.
I am deeply involved in early childhood education (pre-school). While I have met some good child psychologists, and there is a good basis for some of the research, there are a lot of idiots in the field that seem to get mileage out of some of the most inane theories. This seems to be one of them.
Saying that group centric friendships are better are one thing, building strategies to try and force it to happen against kids natures is a fools errand and potentially dangerous.
“You Know” kiddies are much like adults this way. some benefit from having a bff, and some don’t. some benefit by having a larger group of non-preferential peers, and some don’t. And its not too much of a paradox to say some benefit by having a little of both and neither and switching back and forth.
and as Matt cogently points out, we really can’t tell which rule would be better for which people. It should be clear though that applying only one rule from the many that apply surely does more harm than good? Expecially, when the 3R’s and exercise aren’t provided adequately at all.
Are going to teach them that fingering their assholes is safe sex and should be taught in school.
Think about it.
Learning is experience.
If you dont START to learn early, you DELAY knowledge/understanding/insights..
How many of us had friends in school, and Found out later they WERE NOT, what you would consider a friend.
After a few years, you lost MOST of them, and gained NEW, still searching for the BEST of best friends.
Why is it that when I read the article, my head was filled with those old movies of hundreds of young women, clad in white, doing calisthenics in Mussolini’s Italy?
Mesmerizing, we don’t need no steenking mesmerizing.
It’s the groups that bully the two best friends. These groups ARE the cliques. It’s your ‘best friend’ who defends you from these groups. This way of thinking will just create gangs/mobs of bullies.
I just don’t know what to say. Are schools really this stupid. If I was still in school, I would probably go crazy operating under stupid rules like this.
it used to be,
WE started training kids YOUNG..8-10 was a great starting age.
Then we went to 12..
Then 14..
16…
NOW we have 2 parents WORKING, no one watching the kids(not those that SHOULD BE), and TV/VID games… to keep them distracted..
What do you expect after 16 years of DISTRACTION?
we had boyscouts, Dances, Sports, ALWAYS something happening to keep them busy.. NOW most of it has GONE AWAY.
NOW you want to take GROUPS and friendship away.
Tell me when its time to CUT off my @$#@$@ and give up.
So instead of Friends these people want “Groups of Friends”. You mean like the Crips and the Bloods?
It’s only practical to prepare today’s children for a life in which they have absolutely no say over anything that we used to think of as an individual’s private prerogative.
Under the total state that bobbo and phydeau have been advocating, there is no room for a “personal” category.
Close personal relationships must be discouraged as they tend to support individualism.
Why am I having to explain this? You’ve never read 1984?