  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
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.
This is a new trend coming not an establish trend like the anti-bullying trend. We’ve seen where anti-smoking trend led to, now we’re at the Twinkie tax point, where they tax any food they don’t want you to eat – beef, fish, rice.
You will never get a collectivist’s, ie Demoncrat/Socialist/Commie/Nazi, to give up on trying to control the population. They see school as the logical point to start to engineering children into a bunch of easily controlled loners.
A population that can’t get together and agree on anything. Does anybody that witnessed the switch from “See everyone as the same” PC garbage to the “Strength through Diversity” garbage think that they won’t be able to enforce this through school and the work place.
I’ve had so much failed brainwashing from my employer and government schools that it’s pathetic. I’ve been strong enough to with stand their brainwashing, but most don’t, Bobutt is an example. It’s always funny to watch PC people spout their diversity stuff and try to enforce conformity thought and belief all the while – hypocrites.
Whatever………………………………
Traaxx
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?
@Traaxx
What a typical load of right-wing trash ‘thinking’.
> We’ve seen where anti-smoking trend led to..
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03EFD71F3EF93BA1575AC0A9619C8B63
We sure have. A consistent reduction in heart attacks in places where the ban has taken place.
> You will never get a collectivist’s, ie Demoncrat/Socialist/Commie/Nazi, to give up on trying to control the population.
You guys never miss a beat trying to pin it on the opposition, which is *ALWAYS* a diversion tactic to deflect blame where it belongs. On the Repugnicans. Just take a look at the more notable alumni from the Mary Institute.
Ironic you should mention Nazis, because George Herbert Walker, Nazi sympathizer was one of their esteemed grads.
Then there’s John McDonnell of McDonnell-Douglas, maker of war machines. Certainly not a Democrat.
How about Pete Wilson(R) Governor 36th Governor of California. He signed the three-strikes law that has ultimately bankrupted CA. Nothing says fiscal responsibility like screwing tax payers with the bill for a guy who got life in prison for stealing a slice of pizza.
Then there’s Senator John Danforth(R). Earlier in his career, while Missouri Attorney General he employed John Ashcroft(R), and Clarence Thomas(R). Bad decision making seems to be a theme with you guys.
To be fair, there are quite a few notable Democrats to come out of the Mary Institute, but none of them seem to be part of any scandal. Why is that?
It seems to me that all the above examples of Repugnican ass-hats are all guilty of one thing: “trying to control the population” to fit their world view.
> I’ve had so much failed brainwashing from my employer and government schools that it’s pathetic.
Omission of fact is considered a lie. How about the successful brainwashing you’ve received by your parties propaganda machinery? Clearly you don’t live in reality.
Psychologists have a term for taking ones own shortcomings and blaming someone else. Transference. You point the finger at Dems, all the while it’s you and your Repug buddies undoing the very things that make America great.
#27 It’s not called transference, it’s called projection. My, how much ignorant can some people be.
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?