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From what I recall of highschool here in Australia, students are deliberately rotated and mixed up as much as possible to prevent cliques and long-term rivalrie

by yakult 11y ago

From what I recall of highschool here in Australia, students are deliberately rotated and mixed up as much as possible to prevent cliques and long-term rivalries from forming. A teacher once told me this makes it easier to assert control. While I would have preferred the other way back then as a student, I wonder what the statistics say, in terms of outcomes. My gut feeling is that it reduces the outliers in student relationships (long-term sexual relationships, cycles of revenge, etc) that cause the school expensive problems.

alexashka 11y ago
What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. When you keep having to make new friends every year - you only learn to develop shallow relationships. This is a huge problem with consequences no anti-bullying campaign or work-etiquette pamphlet is ever going to solve. As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either.
- yakult 11y ago
  >What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. While I don't disagree, the effect is the same from the school's perspective: 1. they are hostile to group outsiders 2. punishing any member makes the whole group hostile to the teacher 3. they're a basis to spread peer pressure 4. they can form rivalries with other cliques What I'm saying is, the positive effects do not benefit the school directly, while the negative effects do, and are difficult to deal with. >As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either. Neither have I - possibly because of the mash up system - but I can see a failure mode like this: student X quarrels with student Y; Student Y gets his friends together and beats up student X; student X gets his friends together and beats up a friend of student Y; etc. Now you have the start of a gang problem.

by yakult 11y ago

alexashka 11y ago

What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. When you keep having to make new friends every year - you only learn to develop shallow relationships. This is a huge problem with consequences no anti-bullying campaign or work-etiquette pamphlet is ever going to solve. As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either.

yakult 11y ago
>What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. While I don't disagree, the effect is the same from the school's perspective: 1. they are hostile to group outsiders 2. punishing any member makes the whole group hostile to the teacher 3. they're a basis to spread peer pressure 4. they can form rivalries with other cliques What I'm saying is, the positive effects do not benefit the school directly, while the negative effects do, and are difficult to deal with. >As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either. Neither have I - possibly because of the mash up system - but I can see a failure mode like this: student X quarrels with student Y; Student Y gets his friends together and beats up student X; student X gets his friends together and beats up a friend of student Y; etc. Now you have the start of a gang problem.