Question High School Dynamics

I've been wondering this for a while now - in many stories that I read involving high school students (not just Whateley stories, although those admittedly make up the bulk of high school stories that I read), I've seen the "Jocks and Nerds" high school dynamic. But I didn't see that sort of thing at all in my high school (which was about 5 years ago). So I was hoping to get some opinions on whether high school dynamics have changed over time, or my school was just weird (or possibly too big), or whether I was simply unobservant (a very real possibility).

My observation from my kids' schools is that with increasing size, the inter-clique conflicts kind of fade away; there are more and more other cliques between the jocks and nerds, so the stereotypical conflict isn't there. In my HS, it WAS there, but then again, that was a few decades ago.

Hmm. I think it's an overused, exaggerated trope. I never was a jock, and I was pretty much a nerd... but my best friend growing up was not only athletic, he was the son of a PE teacher. And a damn good student.

You know, the whole bullying thing is much more complex than the black-and-white way it's usually portrayed. Relationships change very quickly at that age. In one month a guy would be bullying me... the next month we were good friends... then it changed again, and we were just acquaintances... and, I'm ashamed to say now, sometimes I was one of the bullies.

elrodw wrote: My observation from my kids' schools is that with increasing size, the inter-clique conflicts kind of fade away; there are more and more other cliques between the jocks and nerds, so the stereotypical conflict isn't there. In my HS, it WAS there, but then again, that was a few decades ago.

Yeah, I pretty much only interacted with the other AP students. And it's hard to pick on the one lone nerd when he isn't alone. The other thing is that at my school, while we had a cafeteria, not everybody ate there. Even people who bought lunches instead of bringing them like I did would buy their lunch and then take off for some more comfortable corner of the school. So it was pretty easy to never interact with the people you didn't have classes with.

In particular, I would probably be considered a classic bully target - skinny, glasses, huge backpack, carrying a book at all times... But two of my best friends (also nerds) were two of the largest kids at school (one of them was occasionally referred to as "Sasquatch" in good humor), so perhaps I wouldn't have been the wisest choice for bullies to target.

There HAVE been changes to the social dynamics of my high school... I talked to someone who went there a decade after I did and it sounded like a different place altogether than I had remembered... places, especially those that have a highly social ecology, are going to evolve over time, Businesses are the same way... The company I worked for right after college was only a slightly different place, than when I started, by the time I left it ten years later but is now completely unrecognizable to me both in people and social dynamics.

I think the Jocks vs Nerds thing was fairly common but then TV and movies happened and it became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy for those places it wasn't common. It also depends on how your school views Jocks... in some of them the Jocks are local celebrities and treated as if they can do no wrong. Other schools don't treat them that way... especially the larger they get and harder it is for specific sports stars to always stand-out.

The reason writers stick with the common High School tropes is that they need some way to make the environment interesting and generate controversy. Jocks versus Nerds works because, almost by definition, Jocks are known for being stronger and faster and Nerds are known for being weaker and smarter. It provides ready-made bullies and victims. Not that they Jocks are always the bullies and the Nerds always the victims but it does provide a predictable background to work off of.

I'm sure there are papers out there talking about this phenomena to exhaustion... these are just a few of my first thoughts on it and I'm gonna stop before I have to start doing research.

There is some truth to the trope, or it wouldn't be one. However, while some of that jock vs nerd type of warfare was present, the dynamic was far more "targets" vs "popular kids"

My school was kind of a sick version of an African plain, where you were part of the herd, or you were singled out by predators. The ones who couldn't blend in, who stood out? Those were food for the jackals and hyenas. A more careful look at my earliest WA story will reveal that insight, even though at first glance it seems to fulfill the trope itself.

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think that's a dynamic that ever changes.

My highschool way back when, had a different sort of dynamic, because with the exception of the Wrestling team, none of the sports teams were any good. The Band was one of the top two in the state, the other nerd groups and teams were all good.

Part of it was also size, my PE class was as big Kristin's graduating class, and my graduating class bigger than her school. I knew a small fraction of the kids I graduated with.

There was some bullying that went on. A couple people even tried bullying me, I found that if you ignore them they went away. Apparently it isn't fun if there is no reaction.

As have been stated by many, school dynamics have changed over the past several decades. For me, I was part of the unseen crowd. I tried joining a few clubs only to drop out.

On one I stayed until the season was over and when I had my chance I missed it due to a misunderstanding of when to be there. It was my only chance to shine as those on the team said I would have won hands down with my routine. After that I had to bow out as my mother worked a graveyard shift and I wouldn't have been able to continue.

The other things that changed was how the school was run. We had at the time designated smoking areas for both faculty and students. Which are no longer there.

We had the computer nerds of course along with the jocks. You knew the jocks as there was a raised platform in the cafeteria and those who were athletes (football, basketball and so forth) ate there. It changed as the year progressed. I hear it's no longer that way.

I used to bus tables for a nickel a tray, a lot of money back then and I wasn't the only one to do it.

Now as my last goes through H.S. he's part of the band. They march and compete and its a year round even to a various degree. There is no real animosity between the players which is surprising. In fact both of my sons have or had friends who were part of football and baseball. The jocks were not some dumb kid as the athlete director had no problem suspending a student who failed to keep his grades up and its mandated in band that you have at least a C average at all times in order to play.

The major complain of course it the food. Its mostly catered out. A closed campus and my son comes home hungry unless he orders off the al a carte, which gets more expensive and he still says the food is garbage.

Girls are not the snobs in most cases but can be. Cheerleaders are not the ravish beauties as seen in the movies.

The problem with them is that once a cliche starts and works, the movie, book and so forth run it to the ground incessantly. My kids used to laugh saying that if any kids did that at school they'd be suspended.

Hollywood as with any industry tries to mold the audience into a spending machine in the name of entertainment. Look how its changed over the years. Actors and actresses helped to define how people lived only to find out how shallow it really is by being overly managed by the industry or putting themselves in lavish places just to be seen.

So High School without the troupes that we see on the movies is not as realistic as it seems. Its just been over amplified to where newer writers have to dream up seemingly implosive situations to maintain the reader for effect. It wasn't uncommon even back in my area to have a football player defend a freshman and so forth as strange as that may sound.

I even knew a couple as I kinda worked in the AV department. But like I said I also was part of the unseen after awhile.

A lot of it I would say had to do with area, culture and dreams. Both parents and kids as they grew. Attitude a major factor.

elrodw wrote: My observation from my kids' schools is that with increasing size, the inter-clique conflicts kind of fade away; there are more and more other cliques between the jocks and nerds, so the stereotypical conflict isn't there.

There were over a thousand students in my high school's graduating class, so while I recall being conscious of cliques existing, they may have been much easier to avoid than at smaller schools. Cheerleaders, and winning teams - well they did get their time in the spotlight. There was definitely some self-segregation by race/ethnicity/social class in the lunchroom as well, but that's par for the course. On the other hand, "double sessions" (JR/SR in the morning, Sophomores in the afternoon) split the various demographics up and maybe helped lessen the potential obnoxiousness.

Those days, I was quiet, as extremely introverted, nearly as socially awkward as I was nearsighted, skinny as a rail, from a low-income neighborhood, a Boy Scout, had a GPA in the top 3% of the class, and even changed schools to get out of the schoold district's PE requirement. If I'd grown up in the Whateley Universe, I probably wouldn't have lived long enough to manifest

The school transfer I mentioned was for AJROTC, a very visible minority group in its own way, so I may have missed out on any jock/nerd divisions and bullying that others went through. Our competition teams were placed between Band and Athletics in the yearbook, perhaps intended as a militarized zone? Still, one way in which Whateley matches my own experience is the way JROTC students tended to stick together.

null0trooper wrote: ...Still, one way in which Whateley matches my own experience is the way JROTC students tended to stick together.

Yeah, I know how that went. Same for me at my high school. Over 4,000 students, just under 1000 in my graduating class alone, and probably about 200 or so JROTC cadets at any given time, spread out through the 4 grades. We were a smallish group, but very close knit, and nobody really messed with any of us because they'd be asking for WAY too much trouble if they did. The most they ever did was label us "Pickles" because of our green uniforms, but we pretty much just ran with that as a badge of honor.

I don't remember any real inter-clique rivalry at my school (02-06). I remember that my preppy friends didn't much like my musical friends, but I don't think that was a clique thing. Overly Protective Band Guy could definitely be pretty annoying, and his best friend Angelic Choir Girl was one of those overly perfect people who makes other people suspicious. Meanwhile, Preppy Political Stoner and his friends Stocky Newspaper Lad and Student McPresident were pretty cynical guys.

I do remember that we didn't really divide up in to nerds and jocks though. Both types were instead distributed among the various cliques, and there were definitely a few nerdy jocks as well. The guy who got me into Dune was a very athletic soccer player and huge history buff, and the girl who sat behind me in AP Calc was a cheerleader. A lot of my AP classmates played sports, in fact. We definitely still had a few stereotypically dumb jocks in the school, though. The only high school bully who actually laid hands on me was of that breed. But that only happened one time, and he was the only person to do anything more than knock a book out of my hands. Most people just stuck with verbal, and that didn't get them far at all. Between making it through elementary with people who had actual ammo to use against me, and then my parents' divorce and subsequent thousand mile move, a few ugly words from people I didn't care about meant nothing at all to me. Helps that I was totally unconcerned about social standing. Hell, I preferred the pariah table at lunch, because there was more elbow space, it was in a more efficient location, and I kind of like eating while I'm eating, not talking. I did eventually end up with friends though, so that was the end of sitting at the good table.

I didn't do any sports, but I was on was the Math Team. During senior year I was the Math Team. That kind of ruled out participating in any more team competitions. I tried registering as the terrific trio of Me, Myself, and I, but they didn't buy it. Even when we had members though, the Math Team was never a clique; none of us hung out when not at an event. I mostly ended up hanging out with the preppies and sometimes the punks. The preppies were because we tended to have the same classes, so we got to know each other. As for the punks, they congregated outside the art building in the mornings before school started, and my first class of the day was often art. Though toward the end of high school I started spending mornings in the library instead. Chairs are more comfortable than the brick ledge outside the art building, especially in the "winter". The quotes are because January in Georgia was like October back in Minnesota. Still, that's cool enough weather that sitting on brick became unpleasant. Especially fresh morning brick.

My only year of US school was in Aleif Texas (Suburb of Houston, Elrodw knows EXCATLY where it is, I belive), where Hastings had a school size of 7000. Yeah, the jocks were top of the pile (IIRC, that was the year we went to state championship in football... 89... Need to check). but, realistically? The jocks generally weren't bullies unless you tried to poach on the dance team for a date...

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Let's just say I spent senior year on the martial arts team, and leave it at that. (And we did very well that year.)

But, yeah. clique pressures/bullying, et al, tend to be magnified the smaller the school, acutally. I honestly can't recall the Jocks getting away with much bullying at all, the head coach was a REAL southern gentleman (he also sponsored the martial arts club too, heh... and he badgered me in simply because he wanted more trophies, he admitted, at the end of the year.)
But, as noted, we were really big, so... and we also had a first rate band, first rate (We DID win state, I know this because I was also on it) academic club, etc...

As for the groups and bullies in G2, I can confirm this. Several groups (even DORMS) are RADICALLY different than G1, some intentionally, some because that's the way it worked out. Not to mention, some of the 'stawart' defenders and good guys have changed over time, too.

Heh. My school had a terrible football team (I think, I didn't pay much attention to it), a high quality, but not amazing robotics team (which I was a part of, but mostly the school ignored), and an Academic Decathalon team which won nationally my senior year (and subsequently the school refused to shut up about)

But the AcaDeca team, as far as I noticed, didn't have much celebrity among the students, it was mostly the administration who cared.



You guys must be watching with glee as we make predictions about 2016 Whateley based on 07 Whateley information which is now horribly out of date. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys have done with the campus.

To be honest, the whole 'Nerds vs Jocks' and 'Mean Girls vs Unpopular Girls' thing that we see on TV and in movies is sort of like Hollywood's depiction of Pushers and Pimps: more based on what the writers see on TV than anything having to do with real life. It's trimmed down and based on really old information that the writers never bothered to research themselves.

Remember, those writers are more interested in creating drama or farce than they are in any kind of realistic portrait. The archetypal high school nemesis is either the head-cheerleader/ cutest girl in school/ most popular girl in school, or the BMOC/ captain of the [fill in the blank] team/ son of the richest guy in town. Why? Because there's no way for the protagonist to compete with them. They have the clear advantage, and they exploit it mercilessly. In other words, with that the writers create cheap easily identified conflict that can be established in minutes so that the drama/farce can proceed quickly. In short, they're stereotypes.

The sad thing is, back in the 1970s, when this trope was first introduced, it was a subversion of the then-existing trope that the BMOC or Most Popular Girl were the Hero &/or Heroine of a piece, with the assumption that a person of their graced station felt a noblesse oblige to the less-socially-fortunate. Now, it's the stereotype, with powerful abusing that power as a birthright. Which seems to mirror the way the powerful work in Real Life these days. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

Personally, I'm starting to think that something where the default villains, the BMOC and Head Cheerleader are NOT complete assholes would be shocking!

Bek D Corbin wrote:
Personally, I'm starting to think that something where the default villains, the BMOC and Head Cheerleader are NOT complete assholes would be shocking!

Wish granted, and prepare to be shocked?

I saw mention of the dynamic not being true for larger schools, well it is also untrue for smaller schools. In larger schools there may be to many people between the jocks and the nerds but if the school is small enough the jocks are the nerds. Speaking from experience most of the people who made it ont sports teams in my school were also ones with good grades.

It depends on the school. 150 in high school, very socially stratified with nerds being a separate group and Jocks and cheerleaders being the most popular and sometimes unpleasant to the lower rungs.

My high school had weird dynamics anyway. We were divided by which school we came from and where we liked to hang out instead of social standing.

Kettlekorn wrote: I don't remember any real inter-clique rivalry at my school (02-06).

I keep forgetting how young some of you are. That was when my children were in high school.

Back in the 50's and 60's, when I was in school, a lot of things were different. So was my perspective. My kids and I went to schools of about the same size (4000 - 6000 students total), in the same general type of suburbs. Other than that, they were very different due to both internal and external factors.

Some of the more relevant differences centered on lunch. Our school had one cafeteria, and the nearest off-campus food (other than home) was more than 2 miles away. There were two small parks within an easy walk for those who wanted a different setting or a mid-day smoke. Students were divided among two (one year, three) lunch periods (each a standard class timeslot). On the other hand, their school had three lunch rooms (one main cafeteria and two smaller "cafes"), a small strip mall literally across the street in one direction (with a half dozen food places), and a shoppiung center about a block away in the opposite direction (anchored by a supermarket, and featuring another half dozen or so food places and a grandfathered liquor store). There are also three (much larger) parks nearby for a change of scene (smoking prohibited, however). Lunch times were staggered by a somewhat more obscure process.

There were clicques at both schools, along with many more groups that didn't even rise to that level. The clicques and groups at their school were far less territorial (and more migratory) than those at our school. This seems to have had significant effects on the social dynamics.

However, it is also relevant to note the role that bullying jocks played in the run-up to Columbine.

joreymay wrote:

Kettlekorn wrote: I don't remember any real inter-clique rivalry at my school (02-06).

I keep forgetting how young some of you are. That was when my children were in high school.

Some of us are even younger than your kids then. At least as long as there isn't a half decade age gap between your youngest and your oldest and the oldest was going to school with Kettlekorn.

Small high school, but not that many cliques.

I don't remember much in the way of bullying, but i was a member of the local viking re-enactment society. We worked with real weapons, not nerf weapons.

We started practising outdoors in summertime on a nearby beach, due to the more difficult and unstable footing.

Ito would have approved, though he would have said that we needed to practise more.

Mister D wrote: Small high school, but not that many cliques.

I don't remember much in the way of bullying, but i was a member of the local viking re-enactment society. We worked with real weapons, not nerf weapons.

We started practising outdoors in summertime on a nearby beach, due to the more difficult and unstable footing.

Ito would have approved, though he would have said that we needed to practise more.

Remember that Ito thinks Ito needs to practice more, and he's right.

Valentine wrote:

Mister D wrote: Small high school, but not that many cliques.

I don't remember much in the way of bullying, but i was a member of the local viking re-enactment society. We worked with real weapons, not nerf weapons.

We started practising outdoors in summertime on a nearby beach, due to the more difficult and unstable footing.

Ito would have approved, though he would have said that we needed to practise more.

Remember that Ito thinks Ito needs to practice more, and he's right.

This sounds peculiarly like the start of Tetsuo Ito Facts, a la Chuck Norris Facts ....

elrodw wrote:

Valentine wrote:

Mister D wrote: Small high school, but not that many cliques.

I don't remember much in the way of bullying, but i was a member of the local viking re-enactment society. We worked with real weapons, not nerf weapons.

We started practicing outdoors in summertime on a nearby beach, due to the more difficult and unstable footing.

Ito would have approved, though he would have said that we needed to practice more.

Remember that Ito thinks Ito needs to practice more, and he's right.

This sounds peculiarly like the start of Tetsuo Ito Facts, a la Chuck Norris Facts ....

Chuck Norris fact. Nobody beats Chuck Norris... Not even Chuck Norris.

My high school years where memorable if for all the wrong reasons.

New-ish high school, was finished about 2 years before I arrived under protest.

Previously some high school types shared a school with elementary kids so one school was grades 1-6, and 10-12 that school was for the College Prep/University track, ie you wanted a white collar degree in the sciences/engineering.

Other school locally was for grades 7-12 if you wanted to go into a trade, or you went 7-9 for junior there and went to another school for grade 10-12 for serious trade school, ie you wanted to work for CN Shops fixing trains. So everyone spent at least 3 years at this run down shithole, the three years of your life when puberty kicked with vengeance with everyone from every social class in the same classes. Rabid wolverines would be running for their lives from that place.

Other school path was 1-6 elementary, then 7-9 junior, then you went to another school in another city for grades 10-12 if you were going to university for business or law.

If you were French, well you had your own schools for 1-6, 7-9, 10-12, unless you entered the late French Immersion program in which case you could transfer to the French schools at grade 7, or stay in your local school in the local French program. You could ask to transfer at any grade after Grade 7 to the French system, you could not leave the French system once in it. Cue the roach motel jokes.

So the town wised up and built a new high school for grades 10-12. Personally I think they did it to avoid 10-20% of the students in the area getting on the wrong bus(es) and ending up at the wrong school for the first month or so, or having to be at the bus stop in the winter at 6:30 and be trapped on a bus for 1-2 hours. Yes most bus drivers had the patience of saints and the vocabulary of Recruit Drill Instructors.

So brand new high school, plopped right down in the middle of this town to handle all the previous high school paths in one building. Oh, and they placed it between the rich brats and the working stiffs area.

So white collar and lace types on the preppy track in the same school with kids that 3 to 4 generation blue collar working stiffs. Die hard Anglophones with die hard Francophones.

So the school admin sucked up to the rich families and the french, 'cause bilingualism meant whatever the loud screaming french woman said to avoid being called racist.

So we did have jocks vs. nerds, but the term jock included 'that guy from the sticks who ripped the sink out of the wall with his teeth'. We also had cool vs. uncool, preppy vs. poor. Everyone vs. the weirdos, anyone from the 'Crick vs anyone else (the 'crickers would be considering the hillbillies in Deliverance to be fancy city folk). I survived my high school years by being adopted by the metal heads when the Rubber Knifers (what we called the prep gang) tried picking on me when I was wearing my Iron Maiden t-shirt.

Yeah my high school years, so much fun. Not. I've been told it's gotten better, it would have to really work to be worse.

Sports aren't really a 'thing' in the UK to anywhere near the same extent as the US, so in my experience there weren't easily identifiable stereotypical cliques. During breaks / lunches, a sizeable proportion of the boys would be found on the field playing footy (soccer), while a sizeable proportion of the girls would be found on hard open surfaces (e.g. playground, paths between buildings) chatting.

You'd typically find me in the library - during my first year (1990-1) I'd have my nose buried in books (I distinctly remember H2G2), but then discovered the adjoining BBC Micro network (8x Master 128s, 3x Master Compacts, with a Level 4 Fileserver in the AV room - notable in that before it was powered down, you had to press a button to release the discs [or rather, release the drive heads from the discs]). During subsequent years I'd mainly be found on the network, and was a student administrator (in the sense of supervising use of the network, managing bookings and assisting the librarian in kicking out those making too much noise). On my very last day there (1995), I shut down the network, but forgot to release the fileserver discs first - CRUNCH. Oops. Good job I wasn't coming back (except to collect my 'A' level results).

I'd say that (back then at least) there weren't so much cliques as friendship groups, which would unsurprisingly mainly be based on those from the relevant feeder school. Back then, some local authorities had a 2 tier education system (Primary: 5-11, Secondary: 11-16/18), but mine had a 3 tier (First: 5-9 Middle: 9-13, High: 13-18; although to add confusion some LAs had Infant / Junior / High instead, and those migrating to 2 tier would adopt "Infant and Junior" for the lower tier while retaining High).

Things are likely to get more complicated in the future with government-funded Academy Schools, Free Schools, Studio Schools and University Technical Colleges (despite the name, another form of secondary school), plus a few locations setting up a single 5-18 "Learning Campus" (probably subdivided into something resembling primary / secondary schools, but on the same site and with Primary pupils having some tuition in the Secondary buildings).