Schools can also send that message by experimenting with imaginative ways to address the issues discussed in this book. At Sachse High School in Texas, for example, every day for fifteen minutes between third and fourth periods, all 2,600 students and every professional staff member—including teachers, administrators, counselors, librarians, coaches, diagnosticians, and facilitators—must sit down in a classroom, pick up a book, and read for fun.
Now students who would have been ostracized in years past are no longer vilified for reading for pleasure. Everyone does it. Students’ and teachers’ conversations often revolve around literature, many teachers keep classroom mini-libraries, and bulletin boards are plastered with book reviews written by students for fun. Since Sachse introduced the sustained silent reading program in 2007, said assistant principal Cheryl Beard, “It has really made a difference in the culture of our school.”
Improve clique relations—among staff
Students across the country told me, unprompted, that they are fully aware of what one student called “a hostile environment among school faculty.” They know who among teachers and administrators are allies or enemies, and they pay close attention to teachers’ cliques. If schools want to improve student relations, they would do well to begin with relationships among the adults. At the very least, school personnel (like Mandy) should take pains to disguise their animosity in front of students. In extreme circumstances, administrators should sanction the offending teachers.
Confront issues head-on
If there are divisive social issues at your school, rather than dance around the topics, ask students about them directly. “When we have special bully meetings, we read short stories instead of discussing what’s actually going on in our school,” said a popular Midwestern middle schooler. “We have some kids that are bullies, and reading short stories to them is not going to help.” Recognize that administrative neglect is even worse than teacher neglect. A teacher who doesn’t put a stop to psychological abuse might ruin the educational experience for a handful of students or classes. An administrator with his head in the sand can affect an entire school.
Have a well-known anti-bullying procedure and contact person
If schools truly want to eliminate bullying, then they must be prepared to address every aspect of the school environment. Bringing in an expert for a one-day presentation will not improve the school atmosphere if administrators don’t continue to instill the messages every day. We don’t teach kids about oral health by making them brush their teeth only once a year.
There has to be a plan to reduce exclusionary behavior and harassment. Even three years after two alleged bully victims orchestrated the Columbine massacre, the school still did not have an anti-bullying program in place. No matter how ineffective students claim these programs might be—and even if the programs do fall short—it is nevertheless crucial to have an adult whom kids can turn to for help. As the mother of a friend of the shooters said in 2002, “There has to be, in every school, someone these troubled kids can go to . . . Columbine does not have an anti-bullying program. One lady said to me, ‘You can’t expect them to do it this fast.’ Well, yes you can.’ ” And you must.
Chapter 14
CAFETERIA FRINGE: LUCKY AND FREE
It is natural for people to want to join groups, and to do what they believe they need to do—like exclude—in order to be accepted into those groups. Groups can, of course, provide benefits. But there’s a catch.
Consider the jellybean jar game, in which the person who comes closest to guessing the correct number of beans wins the jar. There is a trick to winning this game, or at least coming close. If you play once and alone, you have small chance of victory. However, if you play with a group, you have much better odds, and not only because of the higher number of guesses. When a large enough group plays the game, the arrangement of the guesses resembles a skewed bell curve (bounded by the number zero). The average of those guesses will approach the actual number of jellybeans—and usually will be more accurate than 95 percent of individual players’ guesses. If you waited until all of the members of your group had guessed, averaged their answers, and submitted the result as your own guess, you would have an excellent chance at a jellybean dinner.
There’s an interesting caveat, however, that makes this game relevant here. This trick works only when each group member comes up with his guess alone, without sharing information or strategies. “The more diverse the group of participants,” neuroscientist Gregory Berns explained in Iconoclast, “the better the group’s average. The only thing that matters is that the participants act independently of one another.”
Groups are most advantageous when they consist of diverse members, when each person can act as an individual, bringing something different to the table. A study group wouldn’t fare well if each student were an expert on the same subject. A potluck meal wouldn’t be satisfying if everyone brought the same dish. Yet many perceived popular students demand that group members stick to the same bland fare. In the school setting, the higher a group’s status, the more likely it is to require unanimity. “The more influence a group’s members exert on each other . . . the less likely it is that the group’s decisions will be wise ones,” journalist James Surowiecki wrote in The Wisdom of Crowds. “The more influence we exert on each other, the more likely it is that we will believe the same things and make the same mistakes.” The conformity that tends to characterize student social circles, then, negates many of the benefits of belonging to a group in the first place.
It is arguable that outcasts are not only courageous, not only crucial, valuable contributors to society, but also, in a way, lucky. Cafeteria fringe status can be a blessing that allows people to embrace and express their true selves because, having already been labeled as different from preconceived norms, they’re not expected to act like everybody else. Outcasts may be persecuted or shunned, but they are also free. Just as the Straight Edge label validated Regan’s decision not to drink, cafeteria fringe labels validate students’ decisions to resist conformity. Cafeteria fringe status liberates them from the confines of rigid teen boxes, saving a student the time, energy, and frustration of trying to be someone he’s not.
Undoubtedly the loneliness that may accompany this freedom can be a heartrending price to pay. But most people are lonely at times. As countless students—like Whitney, like Blue—have indicated to me over the years, just because a student has company doesn’t mean that she’s not lonely. Better to be lonely and real than to hide constantly behind a mask of self-deception. The loneliness will pass.
Geeks, loners, punks, floaters, dorks, freaks, nerds, gamers, weirdos, emos, indies, scenes—whether they choose to alter their labels or ignore them entirely, they are free to self-catalog as an identity of one. Identifying as an “I” rather than as an “us” means that there are no rules. Unshackled by strict yet arbitrary, misguided norms, outcasts can be, look, act, and associate however they want to. And in this ever conformist, cookie-cutter, magazine-celebrity-worshipping, creativity-stifling society, the innovation, courage, and differences of the cafeteria fringe are vital to America’s culture and progress.
Which is why we must celebrate them.
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Endnotes
CHAPTER 1
high schoolers view life as “a conveyor belt”: Interview.
“the Bermuda triangle of education”: See, for example, Juvonen, Jaana; Constant, Louay; Augustine, Catherine H.; Le, Vi-Nhuan; and Kagonoff, Tessa. Focus on the Wonder Years: Challenges Facing the American Middle School, Rand Education, 2004.
Only 22 percent of U.S. youth: See Wittig, Michele A. “A Mutual Acculturation Model for Understanding and Undermining Prejudice Among Adolescents,” Intergroup Attitudes and Relations in Ch
ildhood, Levy, Sheri R. and Killen, Melanie, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
some of the highest rates of emotional problems: See Juvonen; however, I first came across this statistic in Ryan, Allison M. and Shim, S. Serena. “An Exploration of Young Adolescents’ Social Achievement, Goals, and Social Adjustment in Middle School,” Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2008. In addition, a higher percentage of U.S. students than students in other countries say they are stressed in school. Health Behaviors in School-age Children 2005/2006 survey.
In 1957, theologian Paul Tillich: See LIFE, Jun 17, 1957. See also Tillich, Paul. The Spiritual Situation in Our Technical Society, Thomas J. Mark, ed. Mercer University Press, 1988. This quote is cited in Bishop, Bill. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Author J. K. Rowling: See, for example, Dick, Sandra. “Rowling Back the Years,” Evening News (Edinburgh), September 19, 2001.
“a squat, bespectacled child”: See, for example, Flockhart, Susan. “rowling rowling rowling,” The Sunday Herald, November 11, 2001.
“are plainly outcasts”: See Weir, Margaret. “Of magic and single motherhood,” Salon, March 31, 1999.
Musician Bruce Springsteen: See “A Yearbook of In-Groupers, Outcasts, Strivers and Dropouts Reveals that Biggies Can Bomb in High School Too,” People, December 25, 1978.
Television host Tim Gunn: See Gunn, Tim. Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work, New York: Gallery Books, 2010.
DreamHack: The video that inspired Blue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o__iURpwMWs.
The pedophile, etc. claims: A resource for students in similar situations is WiredSafety.org, which polices all forms of harassment related to technology and the Internet.
the advisor restricted Arwing’s: “Now he’s taking it into his own hands, and it’s failing horribly,” Blue lamented a few days after the meeting. “It’s like, if a veterinarian said he couldn’t save your dog because he didn’t want to do the surgery because it would have been too complicated. So eff the veterinarian.”
“hyper and squeaky”: Interview.
A substantial percentage: Interviews.
keep the price tags on: Interview.
changed her e-mail address: Interview.
“We get a lot of Goths”: Interview.
“Goths wear all black”: Interview.
“People constantly criticize”: Interview.
“head toss every five seconds”: Interview.
“every song in the Apple commercials”: Interview.
“usually have long hair”: Interview.
“even if they aren’t tardy”: Interview.
Blue’s table: Blue sent the table to me, unprompted. I disagree with the characterizations, but I think the perspective is informative.
“smart Asian nerds”: Interview.
Jew Crew, Superjews: Interviews, group discussions. Thank you to Rani Schlenoff, Hava Shirazi Anderson, and their students for a fun and interesting discussion.
church girls: Interviews.
“they wear alternative clothes”: Interview.
“underground concepts”: Interview.
global warming: Interview.
who are weird on purpose: Interview.
descended from beatniks: Interviews.
“It makes me more sure about myself”: Interview.
“I’m not going to eat them”: Interview.
“bros”: Interviews.
student bullying is up: See, for example, Elkind, David. “Playtime is over,” The International Herald Tribune, March 30, 2010.
concept of “normal” has narrowed: This trend is occurring among labels for mental health characterizations as well. See, for example, Lane, Christopher. Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, New Haven: Yale University Press: 2008. As Lane wrote, “We’ve narrowed healthy behavior so dramatically that our quirks and eccentricities—the normal emotional range of adolescence and adulthood—have become problems we fear and expect drugs to fix.”
CHAPTER 2
“I’ve been able to use that”: Interview.
Blue’s mother: Readers of The Overachievers will recognize some similarities between Blue and AP Frank. I was not aware of Blue’s issues with his mother when I began following him. Blue, who told me he could relate to Frank, noted that in response to the pressure, Frank completed his schoolwork to escape while Blue abandoned his schoolwork to rebel.
students’ involvement in extracurricular activities: See, for example, Eder, Donna and Kinney, David. “The effect of middle school extracurricular activities on adolescents’ popularity and peer status,” Youth and Society, Vol. 26, 1995.
route to popularity: Ibid.
factor that brings cheerleaders prestige: See, for example, Merten, Don E. “The Meaning of Meanness: Popularity, Competition and Conflict among Junior High School Girls,” Sociology of Education, Vol. 70, No. 3, July 1997.
visibility: See, for example, LaFontana, Kathryn M. and Cillessen, Antonius H. N. “Children’s Perceptions of Popular and Unpopular Peers. A Multimethod Assessment,” Developmental Psychology, Vol. 38, No. 5, 2002.
nerds or geeks might not be popular: See, for example, Brekke, Kjell Arne; Nyborg, Karine; and Rege, Mari. “The Fear of Exclusion: Individual Effort when Group Formation is Endogenous,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2007.
being recognizable: See, for example, Merten.
the most frequent interaction: See, for example, LaFontana.
“children focus on the quantity”: Ibid.
to be popular means to be influential: See, for example, Xie, Hongling; Li, Yan; Boucher, Signe; Hutchins, Bryan C.; and Cairns, Beverley D. “What Makes a Girl (or a Boy) Popular (or Unpopular)? African American Children’s Perceptions and Developmental Differences,” Developmental Psychology, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2006.
prefer the things they see: See, for example, Berger, Jonah; Heath, Chip; and Ho, Ben. “Divergence in Cultural Practices—Tastes as Signals of Identity,” Stanford University unpublished paper, March 2005.
often able to actively maneuver their position in the social hierarchy: See, for example, Mayeaux, Lara; Sandstrom, Marlene J; and Cillessen, Antonius H. N. “Is Being Popular a Risky Proposition?” Journal of Research on Adolescence, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2008.
savvy about the Machiavellian methods: See, for example, LaFontana.
viewed as lacking skills: See, for example, LaFontana.
The Exclusives: Interview.
“Hair color has to be blonde”: Interview.
dictionary definition of popularity: Merriam Webster defines popular as “commonly liked or approved.” See Merriam-webster.com.
“a shared recognition among peers”: See Schwartz, David; Nakamoto, Jonathan; Gorman, Andrea Hopmeyer; and McKay, Tara. “Popularity, Social Acceptance, and Aggression in Adolescent Peer Groups: Links with Academic Performance and School Attendance,” Developmental Psychology, Vol. 42, No. 6, 2006.
developmental psychology literature: Ibid. Note that sociologists made this distinction earlier than developmental psychologists did. Also, thank you to Sacred Heart University psychology professor Kathryn LaFontana for discussing this issue with me.
More recently: Interview, LaFontana. See also Mayeaux. See also Rubin, Kenneth H.; Bukowski, William M.; and Parker, Jeffrey G. “Peer Interactions, Relationships, and Groups,” Handbook of Child Psychology. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
perceived popularity: See, for example, Parkhurst, J. T. and Hopmeyer, A. “Sociometric popularity and peer-perceived popularity: Two distinct dimensions of peer status,” Journal of Early Adolescence, Vol. 18, 1998.
kind and trustworthy: Ibid.
“mean popular” and “nice popular”: Interviews.
CHAPTER 3
“the girls who could model”: Interview.
overt aggression and alternative aggressions: See, for example, Rose, Amanda J.; Swenson, La
nce P.; and Waller, Erika M. “Overt and Relational Aggression and Perceived Popularity: Developmental Differences in Concurrent and Prospective Relations,” Developmental Psychology, Vol. 40, No. 3, 2004.
Relational aggression: Ibid. A popular theory holds that relational aggression is the more common aggression among girls. However, Stacey S. Horn persuasively argues against dividing aggressions by gender in Horn, Stacey S. “Mean Girls or Cultural Stereotypes: Essay Review,” Human Development, 47, 2004.
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School Page 43
