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georginasandAlso, and this goes for everything, there will be typos. If my writing was going anywhere near anyone or anything that might consider it for publication, you can bet there wouldn't be a typo in the surrounding 25 square miles, but for now, c'est la vie. That being said, if there is something garish and humiliating, feel free to let me know.
Fair and Fun and Skipping Free: On Friendship
What is shocking about the New York Times article “A Best Friend, You Must Be Kidding Me,” on educators discouraging best friendships is not that teachers are manipulating children’s social behavior to make their jobs easier. Even when children walked to school up hill both ways in the snow to give Latin recitations, school master and marms have been single out the quiet ones to separate their rowdier pupils; assigned group work to let brainiacs help their classmates get ahead in the name of instill collaborative habits. The antics of school’s such as St. Louis Country Day is nothing new, and ironically, it was this type of social manipulation that landed me first best friend. Early in the third grade, Mr. Soltz –in his infinitely progressive wisdom—sent my dutiful assignment book keeping skills out into the hall with Krystal Tubbs to try to get my zealous organization to rub off. We had little in common, but bonded in those ten minutes before the bell because neither of us had managed to infiltrate ourselves into the early stages of elementary schools cliches. I was bookish and painfully shy; she was pitied by teachers as “at risk” and a little awkward. We were desperate and latched onto each other. According to C.S. Lewis “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says ‘what, you too, I thought I was the only one;’ we both thought we were without a hopscotch partner.
About a year and a half later my parents and teachers deemed Krystal and the small band of cliche-cast-offs that I ran with “the wrong types.” They ate junk food and watched movies about vampires, so my mother shuddered to think what I was learning as we sat on the swings at recess. In order to save me, the imperious Mrs. Lancaster decreed that I must play kickball once a week with other kids thinking she could lure me because we were so dissimilar. She was right that we had little in common, that would eventually be why we drifted apart, but she underestimated our need for companionship, however tenuous it might be. I was desperate for affection and felt excluded from all but those once-a-week kickball games. The teachers mentioned in the New York Times article may believe that close friendships are the root of cliches and bullying, but those early best friends were my anti-cliches: a confidence incubator and refuge from the developing cattiness of eleven year old
I cannot believe that the way to end bullying is to teach children to regulate their love. Indeed there is an exclusive nature to best-friendships, especially in the hands of literal minded early elementary school kids, but why is the solution to teach kid to love less, and with more regulation, rather than to love more, and freely? Children, all humans really, will gravitate to some people more than others: the people whose interests match ours, whose judgment we trust, and even those who’s t-shirts, hair cuts, or pheromones catch us at the right moment. We probably exclude people more out of disinterest or discomfort than malice. There will always be people who disagree with our politics, wear perfume that makes us sneeze, or never seem friendly enough to approach. We shouldn’t abandon those we love to make musk-scented-frown-adorned-libertarians feel included—quite possibly they have their own friends—but we must treat them, politics and perfumes aside, with respect.
Rather than wasting time and energy on “friendship coaches” trying to smooth our children’s paths (a tactic that I am sure does more harm than good in building a child’s resilience), teachers should be teaching that lesson; that you don’t have to be friends with everyone, but you must treat them with kindness and civility. This is a difficult lesson to teach and learn. Even in two summers as a camp counselor, I sat under many trees with sobbing, newly hormonal, bruised girls trying to get them to talk through their tears and silent treatments. As difficult a lesson as civility and kindness is to learn when you feel your bunkmates have betrayed you, making it explicit and helping kids face the realities and consequences of their feelings will be more effective and beneficial than the dubious lessons and confusing heartache of adult-controlled social engineering.
And the world will get to keep the friendships that make us real and solidify our lives. For who would Hamlet be without Horatio, or Romeo without Mercutio? Even among the twelve your call your own, you need to know that there will always be that one person who you can depend on when you need them, and depend on them to need you. Krystal and I lost touch when I moved in 7th grade, without daily contact and geographic proximity there really was little to hold up together. She called me at age 13 to tell me proudly that she had lost her virginity. I hung up on her, sobbed into the arms of my new friends and we haven’t spoken since. Middle school brought a larger group of wonderful girls into my life, many of whom I am still close to, but it was not until junior year of high school that I replaced—and hugely surpassed—the kind of friendship I had with Krystal.
During the nine months between meeting Carly and getting my driver’s license, the stretch of
I would give the world the have met Carly at age six rather than sixteen, and for no other elementary school kid to face the playground alone. But the fact is that our relationship evolve: for me middle school was better, and now university has brought me to a group of people I very nearly call family. Like many aspects of education we cannot standardize how children create relationships: wee cannot stop friendships from happening and more than we can hand them pre-grown relationships. But we can equip them with the skills to they need to become the social beings that is their birthright: the duty to be civil, the confidence to be kind, and the resilience and experience to face social pain with grace, and the knowledge that it can always get better.
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Date: 2010-07-12 10:59 pm (UTC)2. I hate your mother.
3. Lets drive in circles around Corinth Square again. How's Friday work for you?
4. I love you.
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Date: 2010-07-13 01:41 am (UTC)2. Yeah, I know.
3. Yes please, Thursday and Friday is hard. I could do Wed (though I bet you will be tired) or Saturday/Sunday evening.
4. I love you too.