Cliques are a stress response, a symptom. The reptilian brain concerns itself with survival, with defending its turf, with dominance over rival groups. Teenagers join cliques in school because their schools are hostile, high-pressure environments, places of overcrowded captivity, competition, judgment. Their motivation, rarely conscious, is security, and a sense of identity and belonging. Just like urban youth gangs.
Cliques are anything but natural.
Even if a hundred Frenchmen belong to them, it doesn't make it so. As fate would have it, I was only five miles up Wadsworth Boulevard on the outskirts of Denver, visiting the public high school in the adjacent suburban enclave known as Lakewood. We had just arrived, ten seventh and eighth grade students and three teachers from the Albany Free School. It was a cool late-April morning. High, wispy cirrus clouds signaled an approaching snow storm.