Peer Group Relations In Middle School And

High Sch Essay, Research Paper

Peer Group Relations In Middle School and High School Adolescence is the time when children move from family-centered life into a peer-centered existence. Adolescence is characterized by the acquiring of independence, a sexual identity, recognition of self and a place in society. Teenagers begin viewing friends as more influential than family. School and friends become the prime focus of adolescents, and friendships affect social and academic success in school. The friendship networks that adolescents have consist of many types of friends. Typically, all students have their friends in the school. Females tend to be more involved in school networks then males, and females also tend to be more emotionally invested in the social systems in school. Boys tend to associate with friends in the context of game playing, either athletics or computer based. Girls tend to associate by talking together, either about someone or something. (Carter and Carter, 13) Friendships tend to change forms as the adolescent matures.Middle School Friendships Elementary school students play in large groups, typically have one different best friend a month. Group divisions are usually along gender lines. Social life changes with the advent of middle school and puberty. Middle school students are thrust into a new situation at the time when they are most susceptible to low self-esteem. They deal with new bodies, a shift in cognitive abilities and when a new social system is introduced, like middle school, students can become lost or confused. Females, especially, experience a loss of self-esteem at this age. To deal with middle school, new social life skills emerge. Cliques become common in middle and late elementary school. Cliques allow members to have a safe haven to deal with new issues and a support system to help members to cope with life. Cliques usually consist of about six to eight friends and most frequently appear between fifth and eighth grade. (Degirmencioglu, Tolson and Halliday-Scher, 545) Groups play an important social and socializing role, provide emotional support and a place where individuals feel safe to talk about very intimate and personal dilemmas. (Carter and Carter, 12) Although cliques can be beneficial, they have some disturbing characteristics. Cliques can be close-minded. Anyone outside the clique is not considered as important as clique members. Fights between clique members are common, often resulting in the group being angry at one or two members. These fights are usually short lived and after a few days are forgotten. (Degirmencioglu, Tolson and Halliday-Scher, 545) In the middle schools, status among cliques and individuals becomes important. An adolescent becomes focused on showing others that he/she are powerful and popular. Ways to exert this power include phoning, public cutting and going out in public without parents. Phoning in early adolescence becomes a symbol of popularity. Middle school students often spend hours a night on the phone for several reasons. One is to feel important because someone has something so important to tell them that it can’t wait for the next day at school. Another is the busy signal, which gives the impression to whoever else is trying to call that the teenager has many friends. Finally cutting someone off to talk to a different friend gives the illusion of power to the adolescent; the adolescent has someone else he/she needs to talk to because he/she is so popular. (Elkind, 437) Cutting refers to not being recognized in public. When a teenager goes through all the motions of greeting a person, walks towards them, smiles, makes eye contact, and the person does not recognize them. This often happens in the junior high hallways. Cutting usually results in deep embarrassment for the recipient. Middle school students engage in this activity to show power over each other. (Elkind, 438)To see and be seen becomes important to adolescents, especially without parents, when adolescents are away from school, especially in the middle school years. They tend to be in homogeneous groups, with their buddies or their cliques. They came to the mall without their parents and to talk and hang out not to shop. (Stiles et al. 1997) These groups are usually “buddies”. Buddies are typically close friends who attend social activities together, such as going to the mall or movies.Best friends are also common at this age. They tend to occur among females. Best friends are normally in the same social cliques and group system. Females typically report having more intimate friends the males. (Degirmencioglu, Tolson and Halliday-Scher, 541) Best friends, unlike cliques and buddies are static, and can often remain the same into adulthood. (Degirmencioglu, Tolson and Halliday-Scher, 546) High School In high school, cliques tend to disperse. Typically, older adolescents report having different friends then they did in middle school. The process of growing from highly selective groups to larger, loosely connected groups is called degrouping. Older adolescents tend to also become more selective with the people who they become friends with. (Degirmencioglu, Tolson and Halliday-Scher, 541) Instead of small same-sex groups, high school students can be categorized in four groups or crowds. Crowds are the large groups of acquaintances that share a same recognized meeting place, such as a certain hallway and tend to spend free time together. Although the