UK Schools Ban Best Friends

Mar 30, 2012

This week The Sun reported that schools across the United Kingdom are instituting bans on best friends. If a teacher notices that two children are developing more intimate friendships, they direct the children to play in a large group instead. A member of the National Association of Head Teachers confirmed that some schools are implementing a no best friends policy. The reasoning behind the ban is that school officials are trying to spare children the pain of broken friendships later on. The Campaign for Real Education called the policy ridiculous and argued that schools are robbing children of their childhoods. This latest move by school officials further illustrates the way in which modern education denies a child’s fundamental humanity. Not only are schools failing to recognize that children have souls which need to be cultivated, but they are further refusing to recognize a basic human need: friendship. C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves argues that the greatest of the four loves is friendship. Where moderns value romantic love as the highest love, the Bible talks about friendship more than any other relationship. The love that David had for his best friend Jonathan was greater than any love David had for a woman. And there is no greater love, teaches the Scriptures, than a man laying down his life for a friend. Interestingly we almost always think about that verse in romantic terms; we think of a man dying for the woman he loves. But not so. The greatest love is the self-sacrificial love of a friend. So in an attempt to spare children the pain that sometimes comes from relationships in a Fallen world, schools will deny children the greatest blessing as well: intimate friendship. The opportunity to love and to be loved. Truly the tender mercies of the ungodly are cruel. I can’t help but wonder if this is also a case of egalitarianism run amok--a desire to see children play in groups without preferring some individuals over others. We must all love each other the same amount and in the same way. One thing’s for sure. This new ban undermines the old complaint about homeschooling—children need to attend public schools to be properly socialized. I think I’ll start telling people that I’m homeschooling so that my children can have healthy social lives , best friends and all.

Angelina Stanford

Angelina Stanford has an MA in English literature from the University of Louisiana, graduating Phi Kappa Phi, and has taught in various Christian classical classrooms for over 20 years. She is currently teaching the Great Books online to high school students at the Harvey Center for Family Learning and recently joined the online faculty of the Circe Academy. She’s also the co-star of the popular Circe podcast “Close Reads.” She has a particular interest in myths, fairy tales, and understanding literature through the study of mythological archetypes and biblical typologies—as well as a mild obsession with the influence of Celtic fairy stories and Celtic Christianity on the development of British literature. She also has a more than mild obsession with Wendell Berry.

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Barbara 03/30/2012 - 3:29pm

Sadly, I first heard about the topic of banning best friends because an ultra conservative Catholic college had done the same thing. I think that policy has since been revoked. Just to say that the spirit that urges some to assert their authority in in appropriate ways, and as you say deny the humanity of others, rears its head eveywhere. I find the desire to control/manage the lives of young people so closely seriously disturbing. I see it regularly amongst homeschoolers ( I homeschool my kids), religious & secular, and I see it within the greater population. It is a fundamental lack of trust in others and a inflated sense in the controller that without their guidance things will go poorly or even horribly wrong. Perhaps it is a symptom of a collective cultural anxiety problem. It reminds me of what Gatto called the "accursed management spirit" in one of his fabulous talks. Sometimes it gives me the creeps, other times it makes me angry but always it makes me sad for the young people who are held in such low regard that adults hyper manage them in these ways and others.