When I grew up in China, students in a school were divided into fixed classes. Those classes formed great communities, as we spent hours every day for at least three years and some for 6 years. Each class had a head teacher, who fostered the sense of community too. No one would mock people for geeking out. No one would mock people for not being good at sports. No one would mock those who struggled at academics. At least not openly. We loved each other and still do. Our bond was so strong that we had regular reunions every few years, and most of my classmates would make it. We had multiple couples who were high-school sweat hearts, even though dating in high school was a taboo in China then. The concepts like nerds, like queen bees, like sports jockeys, like that those who can get drugs and drinks are popular... They were all new and parts of the culture shock to me when I moved to the US.
> No one would mock people for geeking out. No one would mock people for not being good at sports. No one would mock those who struggled at academics. At least not openly.
I always hoped there was a way to avoid US-style bullying. I hadn't considered that it might be yet another consequence of society existing at too big of a scale (ex: behaviors that are accepted or even optimal in a city of 20 million people is wildly different than in a social setting where everyone knows you, your siblings, your friends, your parents, your boss, your coworkers, your pastor, etc.)
Cohorts sound like a good, if imperfect solution, for managing this at school.
Ugh, yes, and many Americans naively imagine that all that John Hughes movie nonsense is somehow a normal universal part of teenage growing up! They'll see their kids start doing it and since they did it too they just shrug whist fully about the passage of time!
Ignoring that it isn't normal elsewhere and wasn't normal here 100 years ago either when children were too busy for that kind of baby court intrigue.
In fact, even in the modern US it's not universal. Both I and my child have gone to school in different areas and in both cases the level of that kind of nonsense was far less in some places than others.
Teenagers aren't naturally alienated. You're alienating them and that's why they're alienated. By 13 a normal child is ready for and craves a lot more responsibility and efficacy than much of modern suburban American provides them, and lacking it leads to trying to direct the energy into other less constructive outlets. Idle hands are the devil's hands.
This reminds me of my time at school in the UK. At school we were divided into "houses" based on where you lived. You had to meet in your house twice a day so we all became friends and after school we would meet up and play basketball, football or skateboard in our rural village (this was around 2008 so smart phones were rare). In the winter when we got home we would just put our xbox 360 headsets on and play endless games of Gears of War or CoD MW2 together. You got as much social credit for being good at gaming as at you did for being sporty. Good times, and nowadays I still see those friends about once a month.
