Having recently taken on facilitating the voluntary sector's development of young people's wellbeing in Middlesbrough, I immediately thought about school, the socio-economic factors that influence relationship building and culture which effect a person’s development. I began to reflect upon what dictated being popular at school when I was there many years ago.
Football and risk-taking behaviour were the driving force behind school social circles in 1990’s Skelton, a small town in East Cleveland. I can remember moving from relative obscurity right into the friendship of the most popular kid in school towards the end of Year 6 by sharing a bottle of Lucozade sport. This was a total one off purchase and entirely unintentional move. Until this time I had a small entourage, collected through similar interests and reading levels, which was how brains were measured back then. Regardless of being bright this social link catapulted me beyond anything I gained by being clever, right into the school football team despite still being as rubbish as I had been the week before. The kid with the best trainers had spoken and I was in.
Despite being reasonably bright upon reaching secondary school I quickly recognised that it was not cool to be clever and obey the rules, cool was being interested in football, wrestling and risk-taking behaviours the two most common of these were fighting and drinking cider on a Friday night. I was fortunate enough to have a positive experience at school due in no small part to this adaption from smart kid to smart arse who made the hard kids laugh and the sporty kids join in. Class clown became more socially lucrative than top of the class. If you were a swot or your trainers didn’t have swoosh’s then you were not going to be successful in building a social structure, you were the last picked for everything and you were definitely going to be cannon fodder for the bullying fraternity.
I recently returned to the school environment as a supply teacher and despite being an adult in a position of authority that whole sense of peer groups and status came back again. In the same way I had witnessed during my school years the groups revolved around popular kids who were popular because they were good at sports, had expensive clothes or were ‘handy’ so they had friends or else! Everyone else then existed on a sliding social scale dictated by their level of extroversion and commitment to join in with common culture.
It is safe to say that while the range of sporting interests may have slightly broadened there is still significant socio-economic barrier to building healthy relationships during school years. Attempting to make a difference could be a huge task, one which I am going to start by understanding the current offer of support, activity and development from the community and local organisations for young people in Middlesbrough. Learning about the whole system in this way will help me to understand the culture surrounding social development.
