A new study finds that some schools are more likely to foster cliques than others:
Cliques form because people are often attracted to people of the same race, class, gender, and age as themselves—this is not a novel idea, and in sociology, this concept is called homophily (“love of the same”). But Daniel McFarland, an education professor at Stanford and the lead author of the study, discovered that this tendency to segregate is much more prevalent in large schools and schools that provide students with more academic freedom. A news release about the study explains: “Schools that offer students more choice — more elective courses, more ways to complete requirements, a bigger range of potential friends, more freedom to select seats in a classroom—are more likely to be rank-ordered, cliquish, and segregated.”
Which is why there are no cliques in schools in China or Japan. Children aren´t given the leisure to engage in bullshit at school.
I wonder to what extent the clubs serve as cliques in China/Japan?
Bukatsu have internal hierarchy; the senpai are content to oppress the kohai and don’t need to go picking up fights with other clubs.
In any case, high school students are much too busy with juken and baito to be doing any mischief. You do get cohesive groups of friends in class, but there’s little conflict.
I’m not aware of any club system in China; my sources tell me the kids are so drowned in homework that they have trouble making friends at all.