|
|
|
The clique quandary
Cliques! The word says it all! We all have cliques in our schools. We have the nerds, the jocks, the desi-blondes, the cool crowd, the wannabe crowd, and the misfits! Everyone is aware of which clique they’re in and the social-chain at school continues. The atmosphere is predictable, the socially retarded nerds are poked at and made fun of daily by the jocks, all for what? “Oh their pants were too high” comes the reply. The cool crowd does their thing; the weirdoes do their thing, their very weird things, which get many a snooty comments. But life goes on.
The Nerds are identified by their properly buttoned shirts, their pants worn too high (the logic being: so that they don’t fall off), thick- rimmed glasses, a biology book in one hand and calculator in the other. But why are they classified? Why are they judged? Why are they looked down upon as geeks? Because they’re smart? We should applaud them for it, not smirk at them. So what if they’d rather look at frog intestines and amoebas rather than a football game or a soap opera?
Then we have the Jocks. The pompous pigs who have too much ego to admit their love for literature and art. And why? They’re afraid of being laughed at! All their life they have been encouraged to play sports, they don’t believe they can do anything else any more.
Next come the Desi-Blondes. They’re arrogant, they’re mean, they’re snobs! But maybe there is more to them than hair and make-up and boys. And why do they have to make you feel so unbelievably low? Why do they treat the world around them like slaves who have nothing better to do than worship them? Hello, you’re not Cleopatra and there is no use saying that you’re channelling her!
The Wannabe Crowd (the so called ‘cool crowd’). The phony accents, messed up hair-do, bragging about the conquest they only dream about, all in all, more than fifty per cent of the student body.
The Cool Crowd. The rebels, they don’t care of what others think of them. These people aren’t ashamed of who they are, and they’re not out to impress anyone. They develop a passion for a certain thing, be it music, art, or sports.
The Misfits. People are labelled misfits because they do not represent the clichéd images of other high-school cliques. They don’t think it beneath them to be nice to others. They take an equal interest in everything, from academics, to sports, to family obligations, to music, to friends, to food!
The question is, why judge people? They haven’t found themselves as yet, they don’t know their ‘inner calling’. These cliques confine them to a narrow train of thought, they mind warp them into believing that making it in high-school is the most important thing in their life. Making it to the top of the social chain to school is not the only thing that matters. The ‘popular’ and ‘cool’ people are actually so confused and insecure, that they feel the need to insult others to feel better. Maybe they grew up in an environment where their interests weren’t encouraged, or maybe they never had a stable role model for themselves, so at school, they think they finally have a place to prove themselves (however poorly they achieve this task.)
There is not a single high-school movie that won’t portray at least some of these cliques. Judging people and labelling them at such a vulnerable age when they are very impressionable ends up destroying these characters rather than moulding them.
|
|
|
|
