America's Youth | Introduction
“As social groups, cliques introduce young people to negative aspects of society, such as conflict and prejudice.” —Debra J. Jordan
“Cliques are not an entirely negative aspect of the high school social structure.” —Nathan Black
“When kids are tossed together everyday, six hours a day for the entire school year,” says psychologist Thomas J. Berdnt, “friendship groupings form quite naturally.” These “friendship groupings,” better known as cliques, are small, tightly knit, autonomous, and sometimes inclusive groups of people that share the same interests or characteristics. Members of cliques often share the same values and exhibit the same behavior. Although they have been known to form in elementary school, cliques are commonly associated with middle and high school students. In a recent nationwide survey of teenage girls’ views of cliques, 96.3 percent of the respondents claimed that cliques existed in their schools. In addition, 84.2 percent of the respondents reported that most of their classmates belonged to cliques.
Cliques “can be based on appearance, athletic ability, academic achievement, social or economic status, talent, ability to attract the opposite sex, or seeming sophistication,” according to adolescent development experts Anita Gurian and Alice Pope. The prominent characteristic of a clique usually becomes the clique’s label. For instance, a group of selfassured, varsity-jacketed male students might be known as “jocks” while another group’s unkempt appearance and spacey demeanor could earn them the “stoner” or “druggie” label. While every high school in America seems to have its own “jocks,” “stoners,” or “druggies,” cliques can become well defined and evolve based on a school’s particular environment and culture. According to journalist Jerry Adler, “At Glenbrook South High School, in the Chicago suburb of Glenview, the [school’s peer] groups even take their names from their perches: the fashionable ‘wall’ people who favor a bench along the wall outside the cafeteria, and the punkish ‘trophy-case’ kids who sit on the floor under a display of memorabilia.”
There are strong incentives for adolescents to join cliques. For example, teenagers use cliques to ease their way through large peer groups. Psychiatry professor Mitch Prinstein claims that cliques are a “sort of shortcut for adolescents to develop friendships and romantic relationships.” Prinstein explains that teenagers use cliques to categorize their peers, especially when they move on to middle or high school, where student populations can reach the thousands. Cliques and peer groups also help adolescents establish an identity. Youth expert Alison Landau suggests that “one’s peer group helps adolescents to establish an identity, however unstable it may be, apart from their parents. Peer group involvement helps to build confidence among members in their collective and individual abilities to influence their own environment.” Most importantly, teenagers join cliques to gain a sense of belonging. “That children identify themselves with a group is part of deciding who they are and having a feeling of belonging,” asserts child psychologist Linda Madison.
The cliquishness among students in American high schools has been treated as a normal and relatively harmless youth phenomenon. However, the perception that domineering high school cliques can worsen many students’ feelings of depression, alienation, and rage emerged strongly after the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado. On April 20, 1999, seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed twelve students, a teacher, and wounded twenty-three others before they turned the guns on themselves. The two students were part of the Trench Coat Mafia, a clique of Columbine students that did not mesh well with the rest of Columbine’s student body. The Trench Coat Mafia’s penchant for black clothing, fingernail polish and makeup, industrial rock music, and alleged involvement with Nazism, satanism, and homosexuality elicited criticism from their peer groups. According to Ben Oakley, who was a sophomore and an athlete at Columbine when the shootings occurred, “[Harris and Klebold] were in the Trench Coat Mafia, and that’s something around our school that we considered freaks.” Oakley explained that “nobody really liked them. . . . So everyone would make fun of them.” Others claimed that jocks bombarded the members of the Trench Coat Mafia with homophobic remarks.
Some commentators believe that Harris and Klebold were exacting revenge on the cliques that taunted them. For example, when the two boys ambushed the school library, they ordered all the jocks to stand up. Also, nearly a year before the shootings, Harris and Klebold had presented a homemade video to a class that depicted two gunmen in trench coats shooting jocks at random in a school hall. Some Columbine students claim that the tragedy was not a surprise because rivalries between cliques at the school had reached worrisome levels. “With all the animosity between the various social groups at Columbine,” said Eric Quintana, a former Columbine student and athlete, “something like this was bound to happen.”
Other school incidents give further credence to the idea that cliques can incite American teenagers to violence. In March 2001, a New Jersey honor student was arrested for allegedly planning to gun down members of a clique during a wood shop class. In November of the same year, five Massachusetts students were arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb their high school, shoot “jocks, preps, thugs, and faculty,” and kill each other before being apprehended by the police.
The Columbine tragedy and the recent spate of school shootings have generated much criticism of high school cliques. Some commentators suggest that cliques can be socially counterproductive because they create hierarchies that alienate some teenagers. For example, violence prevention consultant Jay Bass states that “the downside [of cliques] is that there are some groups that are valued more highly than others . . . those who cannot latch [onto] groups are somewhat disenfranchised.” Other commentators insist that cliques thrive at the emotional cost of other students. Aaron R. Kipnis, author of Angry Young Men: How Parents, Teachers, and Counselors Can Help Bad Boys Become Good Men, claims that “one of the ways cliques reinforce themselves is by putting down whoever isn’t in with them with teasing, taunting, and . . . physical abuse.” Some critics even warn that adolescents who are persecuted or rejected by popular or mainstream cliques may react and form cliques that defy the entire school, such as the Trench Coat Mafia. Psychoanalyst Leon Hoffman asserts that “all kids need to belong, and if they can’t belong in a positive way at school, they’ll find a way to belong to a marginal group like a cult or gang.”
However, other analysts maintain that cliques do not create a competitive or hostile school environment. Journalist Jerry Adler claims that the “diversity of cliques has made student life more democratic.” Others claim that most cliques are not exclusive and create a sense of belonging for their members. According to student Kerisha Harris, “Too many people think of cliques and immediately conjure up images of a social circle that’s as secure as Fort Knox, where only the most beautiful, rich and popular kids can be included. . . . I believe that today’s teens are forming cliques not for the purpose of exclusivity, but to find other kids who they can connect with.” Additionally, some believe that cliques may prepare adolescents for the complex social structures of the real world. Adolescent psychiatrist David Zinn contends that cliques teach teenagers how to socialize in a society that is “dominated by hierarchies.”
The role of cliques in school violence was one of many issues raised in the aftermath of the Columbine tragedy. The transgressive elements of popular culture and entertainment, gun control, and bullying have also been examined in light of school shootings and remain sources of debate. America’s Youth: Opposing Viewpoints examines these and other issues that face American teens in the following chapters: What Influences America’s Youth? What Problems Confront America’s Youth? What Values Do Young People Hold? How Can Society Help America’s Youth? The authors’ views on these issues reflect the difficulty of understanding America’s teenagers and devising ways to help them succeed.
