Do the social circles in american high school settings actually exist?

[Zontar]

In pretty much every high school setting I've seen from the US in movies and shows, everyone seems to fit into one of a few clicks. Nerds, Jocks, that sort of thing.

But, that can't be a real thing, can it?

When I was in highschool, I was the biggest Star Trek nerd in the whole school. When it came to the shows and the movies, I knew everything there was to know about it. I was 'that guy' who got into a heated debate with the big Star Wars fanboy over which was better and why, or who would win in a fight. I also had skin problems which caused me to need anti-biotics for years because of acne, which made me the second palest person in our school for 3 of the 5 years I was there (our school system has 7-11 as our high school years). I was also into anime and was the head of the school anime club the last year I was there.

I was also on the football team, and head of one of our three curling teams.

Thing is, apart from two people, of the 400 people in my grade at the time (we all knew each other on some level) everyone was pretty much the result of two or more of the traditional social circles we see in American movies smashed together in about even levels, and pretty much everyone had at least some people in all groups within their circle of friends.

I could list other things which make the image used for high school seem odd, like our football team captain being the biggest weeaboo I'd ever met (until I went to CEGEP and saw how deep that rabbit hole could go) or how our best hockey player was a massive fantasy lover who could tell you anything about Lord of the Rings or Elder Scrolls and owned pretty much everything of both, but listing every example would mean basically mentioning everyone I knew.

So are those social circles a real thing in America? If so, why and how? If not, why are they the pretty much only way high school is shown?

 

[Hieronymusgoa]

I always watch this and think "that cannot possibly be real" but then again some of my American friends say that most public schools actually are. Surely movies overdramatise it, still the framework seems to be like it is shown. Cliches (not to be confused with prejudice necessarily) come into existance because there is some truth to them. We had some similar groups in our school, they weren't as mixed as in your school but yeah, there were people who fit into much more than one "category" and the extremes where still far from every American high school movie.

Bullying, peer groups and all that do exist to some extent everywhere, they just emerge in different ways. It's a cultural thing. In Germany for example it is beneficial for "school cred" to be good at sports, but it is a far way away from the renome that sport has in the US, especially at schools. It would never get you a scholarship for an university, good marks do that, unless of course it is a sports university.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Compared to my experience, the actual clique breakdown in movies is a pretty major exaggeration. The standard cliques were definitely there but they were much more subdued than in the movies. In actuality the biggest divide was really between "the popular" people and "the unpopular" people with members of both of those groups able to be comprised of members of any of the more stereotypical cliques.

 

[mecegirl]

I suppose that they exist in some degree, but that degree changes from school to school. My boss' daughter just recently graduated from High School. She went to an all girl's private Catholic high school, and there are a lot of affluent students. It wasn't until I started hearing about some of the drama at her school that I thought "Wow so that cliquish stuff in the sitcoms is real." I had never experienced anything like it.

 

[chadachada123]

My school district has two schools. In my school, cliques didn't really exist in any real way. Many of the football players were also in advanced placement classes, the cheerleaders didn't tend to date athletes more than anyone else, it was all pretty chill.

Everyone at my school was too drunk or high to give a shit about race or gender or sexual orientation or any of that shit. All the groups were pretty nice to each other, and the lines were pretty blurred, barring some people who fit obvious stereotypes.

The other school in my district DID have massive segregation between cliques, and also had problems with racism, homophobia, etc.

I guess it depends heavily on the school. *Shrug.*

 

[Childe]

Yes they really do exist. It's sad really. I believe the circles are more or less prominent depending on how conservative the population is and by conservative i do not mean politically. For example the school i went to was in an area where beliefs about what is right for a man/women to like was very loose so while circles were still easy to spot they overlapped. However in a school district where there is a very conservative sense of gender roles and what is appropriate for a man or women to do the circles do not overlap. Those that try are bullied.

 

[FPLOON]

I believe the proper phrase you're looking for, in this situation, is "school clubs"...

Seriously, at my high school, those so-called "social circles" were just another way of saying "school clubs" without sounding like you're trying to make a terrible joke... I remember being part of the Japanese Club, the Drama Club, and, during my senior year (12th Grade), was part of the "Link Crew", which was basically an exclusive club that helped out fellow "freshman" get well-adjusted to high school life[footnote]Results were may varied all the time, by the way...[/footnote]... Of course, if you're weren't part of a club, or were but they "rarely" met on a school day basis, you still have your group of "friends" that you would hang out with before/during lunch and/or after school... and, at least from my perspective, I rarely saw anyone truly "alone" from a group perspective all year long...

So, to answer your question, they "do", but not really in the same way you may think, basically... Then again, it's all depends on the american high school in question... So, there's that... (And, yes... Movie representations of american high schools are, sometimes, REALLY inaccurate to a fault... I see it as part of the "life imitating art/art imitating life" reasoning for the inaccuracy...)

 

[Remus]

They existed when I was in school, myself being part of the socially awkward trenchcoat-wearing D&D/M:TG crowd, and they existed when my niece went to school. She was a big girl, big as in she towered over everyone and could overpower most of the men in her high school. This of course led to endless problems socializing with her peers, often ending in violence. She had friends, just not many. As a result, she dropped out, got her GED and is now running her own business. I suspect the cliques will always exist in school. To what extreme will depend entirely on the location and the history. The town by where I grew up is very much a NIMBY neighborhood, where if the big shooting of the week did not directly affect them, they will go on living and acting like it's 1985 and kicking nerds around is cool, even for the teachers. There are a few enlightened individuals - the offensive tackle for my school's football team once dislocated the shoulder of a particularly bad offender (he was a bit of a sci-fi nerd, hence Wookie justice)- but when teachers, coaches, the vice principal, encourage this medieval caste system in their school, who's going to argue?

 

[Vault101]

yes and no

cliques are less defined, more complex everbody has their signiture thing but its not always clear cut, some people kind of drift around rather than remian tight with one group of people

 

[Rylot]

I went to a fairly large high school here in the states (about 2000 kids). We had a pretty big mix of wealthy and poor kids. Economic class tended to be where a lot of the social groups were based around. There were also a lot of cliques based around what you liked. You had the goths, jocks, otakus and geeks, we also had a large population of Russian immigrants. But a lot of it was based around socioeconomic class.

 

[Auron225]

I'm from the UK so my school was obviously nothing close. We did have an American student come for a year though and our minds were blown when she told us her school was pretty much like that. I too thought "this cannot be what it's really like". I don't suppose it is like that in every school (to that degree anyway).

 

[Mr. Jekyll]

So I may or may not have made an account just to reply to this. Long time lurker, first time poster.

From my experience a lot of the social clique business was a problem in lower grades (8-10) before everyone matured and realizes other people aren't just two-dimensional movie characters. A lot of the trouble just comes from not knowing someone else, if you don't know someone and then see them being obnoxious with their sports bros you dismiss them as just a jock because you don't know anything else about them. A lot of it is based off of these snap judgements that we place into the archetypes we've been given through media. You come to high school expecting to see jocks and nerds and popular girls and whatever else, so you put people into those groups. Again, generally in older grades it's less of a thing because are more relaxed and less judgemental.

In my school there was mostly just popular kids and unpopular kids, but unpopular kids were usually the nerds/ goths. Popular kids were jocks and rich people. Stoners generally drifted in between. I guess drugs are a uniting factor.

 

[Lieju]

I'm Finnish, and always wondered about that.
We don't have the school-sports-culture in our country. So there are no 'jocks'.
In high school I mainly hung out with my best friend and we were huge nerds together, but apart from him I had this more or less tightly-knit group of four girls who were sort of unified by loosely similar interests. And one girl who was serious about her career in cross-country skiing (so closest to a jock we had) who I guess drifted into our group because she didn't drink and had no hobbies apart from sports, so she didn't fit with anyone else?
Those groups tended to form because we needed groups of that size for class-assignments.

I personally never understood the popular/unpopular thing.

I mean, I guess the people who had their own social circles and got drunk together didn't invite me to their parties, but why would I even had wanted that?

And it wasn't even that just 'unpopular' kids got bullied either.

I was, but no one else in my 'group' was, to the same extent. (Except maybe the sports girl who maybe would have wanted to hang out with other people?)

And one girl who always was wanted in the parties was bullied for being 'a skank'.

 

[legend of duty]

My high school was small (~450) so everyone knew each other and there was no need to carve out little safe zones. Anybody willing to get into fights and start trouble usually dropped out of school by junior or senior year and went to work on a shrimp boat or collect government assistance for the rest of their lives. Generally though there were two types of people: people who shower and people who smell like dead ass and think AXE is shower in a can.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

In my school everyone was pretty cool with each other. A lot of jocks or athletic types were also big gamers or can be quite nerdy, and the "popular" kids were usually pretty frienedly. Of course everyone had their own group of friends they hung out with, but it didn't mean that they were at war with each other or anything like that. There'd be fights here and there and some shit talking behind some backs, but it had nothing to do with popularity or different cliques. For the most part everyone saw each other on the same level.

As for me, I was usually the loner. I did have friends i would talk to and hang out with, but for the most part I enjoy my time to myself. I did get bullied in elementary, and maybe a bit in high school, but it wasn't anything major and I usually resolve it.

 

[Foolery]

I've no clue. It really is a movie fantasy idea to me. I grew up in rural Canada and graduated with a class of 15 people. These are people I've known since childhood, so forming cliques wasn't really a thing. I'm not saying we all hung out regularly, but everyone at least got along reasonably well. We even fundraised and took a trip to Whistler together.

 

[lacktheknack]

Not where I was. All 30 of us in my grade just broke into three "group of friends", all of whom were assorted mixes of interests, with some overlapping into two groups. It had more to do with getting to know as many people as we cared to rather than finding maximum compatibility between interests.

 

[Willinium]

I guess that it depends on the school. At my 1st high school the only real clique was the JROTC crowd. In my second high school the cliques were definitely there with quite a bit of segregation even within cliques. At my final High school everything was very much relaxed whilst the again the cliques were there they were quite fluid. Army brat encase you were wondering

 

[whycantijustdeletemyaccount]

Isn't this yet another thing that's just exaggerated in movies? Hollywood does love its stereotypes.

I'm from the UK but went to very (like shockingly) conservative schools both here and in the US. There definately were cliques, though they were less pronounced in the US school. In the UK schools we had the usual jocks/nerds/wannabe-players scene, (not much more, you'd get expelled if you had long hair or anything). Your social circle was also dependent on things like class and how rich your parents were. So yeah, it definitely does exist.

 

[Random Argument Man]

I could define the cliques my old high school, but people mostly fell in 3 categories: the rejects, the preps and everyone in the middle. Every year, I've changed categories and realized that people are just people. The rejects and the preps just wanted to have friends and have fun. However, they refused to talk to one another because they weren't in their groups. The rest of us didn't really cared.


What's sad is that I lost many childhood friendships over a social stature that only 30% of the people of the school cared about.