August is traditionally the silly season for newspapers, with few real news stories emerging. (August 2017 might prove an exception, with Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un appearing all too ready to plunge us all into a nuclear winter. And don’t get me started on Charlottesville and The Trump’s reluctance to condemn racism...)

By contrast, at this stage of the month education news becomes serious and mainstream once more: A-level and GCSE results are in and, after this bank holiday weekend at least, the work of starting the new term gets underway.

Mercifully, this week I came across a story that seemed gloriously irrelevant - till I thought further about it.

“The kinds of skills it takes to be popular are not necessarily the ones that adults need.” So reports Rachel Narr, a researcher at the University of Virginia, in the journal Child Development. In brief, kids who are popular at school are not necessarily those best equipped for success in adult life.

Popularity, says Ms Narr, is often achieved by teenagers who adopt “mildly deviant behaviours”. She’s right: be a rebel; drink cider in the park; or, indeed, be good, but something of a maverick, at sport; then you’ll be the most popular kid on the block. Nonetheless (and here’s the catch), it won’t equip you for a successful and fulfilling adult life.

On the contrary, Ms Narr reassures us, “Having the experience of a close and trusting relationship is likely to be more meaningful than just having status or being liked by others.”

At first sight, this piece of research seemed to me about as revealing as one that conclusively defines the Pope’s denomination, or what bears get up to in the woods.

But then I started to think.

Maybe there is something here that we can usefully remember in schools. I’m not about to identify yet another societal problem and then load it on to schools to solve. But, given the justified current focus on children’s emotional intelligence and resilience, perhaps there is an element in here that schools could afford to stress more strongly.

Cool versus sensible

It’s easy, perhaps too easy, for teachers to criticise those who court popularity: we regularly deplore the “get-famous-and-get-rich-quick” celebrity culture (though I doubt pupils pay much heed on that score). We can even quote Shakespeare: Jacques (As You Like It, in his Seven Ages of Man monologue) scorns those who seek attention in crazy ways:

“Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.”

Perhaps there is indeed something here that we can bring into those personal growth/PSHE sessions. What about getting the students to do a bit of analysis, both in school and at home? To ask, why are some kids popular? Because they’re “one of the lads”, pretty, risk-takers, or just cool? How many close friends do those characters have?

Next, why not find older people (parents, grandparents, family friends) settled in a happy and stable relationship? And try to discover: were they the popular, crazy guys at school? Or were they lucky (and sensible) enough to concentrate on forming a few close friendships and relationships? Those are what last and seem to build success in the future.

It’s not as simple as that, of course. We’ve all known “golden students” who are clever, good at sport, good-looking, loved by everyone and well-balanced: sickening. 

Still, the research concluded that the popular characters who display deviant/attention-seeking behaviours are significantly more likely to suffer depression in later life than the “sensible” ones who built a small, lasting circle of close friends. Perhaps these findings might add some strength to that worthy, if unexciting (“boring”, in teenage terms?), argument.

So this research intrigued me, after all. And I can’t resist a provocative afterthought. Shakespeare skillfully nails the ephemeral nature of the “bubble reputation” on two fronts. He both predates this research by more than four centuries and furnishes a potent argument for protecting the teaching of both drama and English literature. 

Dr Bernard Trafford is a writer, educationist and musician. He is a former headteacher and past chair of HMC. He tweets at @bernardtrafford

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