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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Is it a uniquely American thing, this weird school with a caste system based on football?

I went to international school, and I noticed the kids who were playing the popularity game tended to be Americans. The ones who liked to say who was in and who was out. The ones who wanted to be cool, the ones who watched all the right shows and wore all the right clothes. It was a really strong influence on the other kids, and it was particularly Americans who'd recently arrived.

Since it was an international school, not everyone bought in.

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I grew up in the U.S. but moved around a lot, and most schools I went to were like PG described.

All except for my high school, which was predominantly immigrant (majority Russian/ex-Soviet bloc, minority Asian; parents were mostly geeks as well), which culturally felt a lot like Silicon Valley: nerdy, eccentric, and optimistic about the future. Unsurprisingly, there's non-trivial overlap because many of my friends from high school moved out here for work or to start companies.

I'm not sure if it's uniquely American. I think the secondary school social system is based in the individualistic culture of American society at large, and may appear in other countries with a similar individual emphasis.

In many cases, American children (at least in my region of the country, growing up in the late 1990's & 2000's) are told that they are exceptional at a young age by their parents/mentor figures. This article sums up the environment nicely.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unha...

I think a desire to fulfill this expectation of individualized achievement can lead adolescents to pursue peer approval as an activity unto itself, the so called "trying to be cool," you may have observed.

American culture is not individualistic. It's conformist to the extreme.

Some one earlier mentioned it was about playing the right sports and "football" (soccer) is a non U sport.

As a mate who went to a minor public school (Bedford) it was Rugger, Rowing and Drinking Beer as the school sports.

It's a wealth thing. Substitute different things for football.

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