What?!? Public Schools Discouraging "Best Friends"?!? WTF?

[BTM]

NOTE: Dammit, really should re-read my posts before I hit "send".  Anyway, did some editing, so hopefully it's more readable now. 

Okay, so, I'm reading this article that links to another article about certain educators that believe in discouraging children from having a "best" friend, but instead, they should be encouraged to have GROUPS of friends.  This is done on the theory that this will help cut back on possessiveness and anything that hints of "exclusivity", which in turn will reduce bullying.

Do I even need to comment on how nutty I think this is?  Luckily, I'm not the only one, many psychologists seem to agree with me.  If you want to read the article (and the original article that it links to, click here:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/e-d-kain-The-paranoid-delusions-of-the-expert-class--96761404.html

What's even scarier though, is the comments section on this article.  

One guys writes: "My son (entering 4th grade) informed me that at his elementary school the kids are supposed to list their best friends, and then the following year the school makes sure they are not in the same classes.  
I told him to list the kids he liked least."

Seriously?!?  What the f**k kind of s**t thinking is that?  "Hey, let's have the kids list their friends and then next year we'll SEPARATE them from everyone they like! HAHAHAHA!"

What are they going to do the year afterward, give them a puppy to care of and then tell them on the last day of school they have to kill it so they can learn a lesson on not being so attached to material goods?

Dear God, someone put the public school system out of it's misery, please?  

[Cthulhu]

What the f**k is this? Seriously? What kind of nutjobs thought that this was a good idea?
Who the f**k are they to do things like this?
They should be lined up and shot.

All right, maybe that's a little extreme, but they are clearly psychotic.
They should not be in any kind of position of power.
I would barely trust them to make my hamburger.

[Doggett]

That noise you're now hearing is the world being flushed down the toilet...

[LilCerberus]

In my personal experience, I've found that the teachers most apposed to cliques, are always the most favoratist hypocrites.

[3mnkids]

Wow. Im almost speechless. Where would they get a stupid idea like this? It doesn't make sense. Some kids are very lucky if they have one friend and to take that away from them would do more harm than good. Some kids just don't make friends easily. Im dumbfounded by this. Really.

[Vik]

Whatehell ? That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. From kindergarten until I went to highschool, I had one best friend I did everything with. (That's 9 years) We always got along perfectly and my childhood would of been extremely boring without that friend. It's not like he was my only friend, I had other friends too, but he was my 'main' friend I hung out with pretty much all the time.
When we went to highschool we still had contact but just went our own way, wich was our own choise. Anyway, saying they should of taken away that friend during when I was a friend is absolute bullsh*t. I'm 17 years old now and I'm doing just fine, I've got all the friends I need.

[Derf]

I used to use an article written by one of Reagan's Education cabinet members as a "Respond to this Article" final exam in my English classes. The lady (sorry, I don't recall her name off the top of my head) came across as a nutjob, but the gist of the piece is ringing more and more true. She claimed that the goal of those in charge of education in the U.S. is to turn kids into good little worker bees (i.e., give them a communist mindset), not to educate them to think for themselves. She gave evidence that I've seen repeated incredulously on this site (I think), such as schools doing away with grade rankings to eliminate competitiveness among students or in isolated cases doing away with grades altogether. The proposition in this article would go right along with her hypothesis that the U.S. education system is working harder to turn our nation into a communist state than it is to educate our children to think for themselves. The more I see these types of editorials (which I really do read with a healthy dose of skepticism), the less crazy the author of that article I used as a final exam seems. 

[Jack]

I went to four different high schools in four years - that was a pretty hellish experience.  So now some moron thinks it would be a good idea to separate everyone from their friends?  Simply beyond belief.  How anyone could be so ignorant of human behavior to think that kids in a group won't like some people better than others, like we're all interchangeable automatons or something...just pathetic.

[InformationGeek]

Glad I'm out of the regular schools (Though I attended private Catholic & Luthern schools, so I do not think this would've apply to me hopefully) and onto college where the teachers don't care about this sort of thing.

I can see that possibly they may think seperating kids from their friends and putting them with others may encourage them to try to make more friends, but I see this as a very bad thing.  I never really had a 'best' friend since 3rd grade (My best friend was a girl I had to leave when I moved.  Not sure how she is doing sadly) and more or less than groups of friends, but I would still hate to be seperated from them.

The things going on at public schools are really starting to get out of hand and I thought the most stupid and idiotic thing ever would be an 11 year old girl being arrested in the middle of class by an officier for doodling on a desk!

[indianasmith]

Why my kids will never see the inside of a public school if I can help it.

Lordy, what idiots some educators are!

[akiratubo]

The public school system is s**t.  That is all.

[Paquita]

I don't see why friends should be an issue in school, you're supposed to be reading, working, and learning in class, not socializing... at least that's what was drilled into me when I was in grade school.  Socializing was for lunchtime and recess, which were my 2 least favorite times of day.  Schools have always been weird about friends, I never had a friend in class and every year I was sent to the school counselor to discuss why I didn't socialize, and I told them I was there to learn and had a friend at home, which was true, but apparently not good enough since I was always sent back later.  I was always well behaved and got good grades, so the teachers would often sit a problem kid next to me.  The bad kids would constantly be doing something wrong and making me nervous and the kids that were failing would just beg to copy my work.  Man I hated school.  It probably would have been better if I was in class with my best friend.

[The Gravekeeper]

I honestly don't see how having a best friend can cause bullying. At least when I was in school, bullies had no interest in being their victims' friend and often attacked in groups with their own friends. If anything having a best friend when the sh*t hits the fan because you know someone's got your back no matter what. For example, we all know that more and more kids are being diagnosed with mental illness (often misdiagnosed, imo, but there are lots of legitimate cases). When a kid has, say, an epileptic seizure in class there's a fair chance that the kids who were just kind of friends with them will no longer want to associate with them; their best friend(s), however, will stick by and provide them with some much-needed moral support (sorry parents, but a child's peers offer a kind of support that adults just can't).

Hell, even just getting through school is stressful enough for many kids and having one or two very close friends makes it much more bearable (after all, when you're in the same classes you have many similar experience throughout the day and can joke about the teacher's little slip up or how the class clown did something funny that you had to be there to understand).

[Criswell]

I've always perfered having a small group of friends. This is crazy, a lot of kids like not having many friends. Public schools are so dumb.

[Newt]

I honestly don't see how having a best friend can cause bullying. At least when I was in school, bullies had no interest in being their victims' friend and often attacked in groups with their own friends. If anything having a best friend when the sh*t hits the fan because you know someone's got your back no matter what. For example, we all know that more and more kids are being diagnosed with mental illness (often misdiagnosed, imo, but there are lots of legitimate cases). When a kid has, say, an epileptic seizure in class there's a fair chance that the kids who were just kind of friends with them will no longer want to associate with them; their best friend(s), however, will stick by and provide them with some much-needed moral support (sorry parents, but a child's peers offer a kind of support that adults just can't).

Hell, even just getting through school is stressful enough for many kids and having one or two very close friends makes it much more bearable (after all, when you're in the same classes you have many similar experience throughout the day and can joke about the teacher's little slip up or how the class clown did something funny that you had to be there to understand).

I agree with you.  I think what they are getting at is kids being excluded from groups.  Which could make them feel bad (the most recent addition to the list of deadly sins).  That and the possibility of groups ganging up on other kids: that is, bullying them as a group.  Taking equality to a ridiculous extent: if there is nothing to choose between (IE all are completely equal and alike) then why would anyone have particular friends: all are interchangeable.  Which is compatible with the whole 'worker ant' mentality too.    

My sister the middle-school teacher tells me that bullies tend to have parents who have set that example; so the issue here is that too many teachers and boards are flat-out afraid to confront the parents and try to avoid that entirely by implementing policies like this one.