Once there were two headmasters of two Christian schools who were good friends. They lived in different cities, and didn’t see one another very often, but they did make a point of catching up a couple times a year. One time they got together for lunch when their schools were competing in a regional spelling bee.
Right after the food arrived, the younger of the two said, “I have a question. What do you do about competition in the student body? How do you keep it from getting out of hand?”
His friend smiled. “Are you talking about the competition you know about, or the competition that virtually no one knows about?”
“The competition I know about, I guess,” he said. “But tell me what I don’t know.”
“The competition you know about is among the boys. Boys are often described as far more competitive simply because their competition is visible, not hidden. But girls compete far more aggressively than boys do, and everybody is confused, because no one sees it happening.”
The younger headmaster’s eyes were getting wide. This was starting to make sense of certain mysteries and conflicts that were happening in his eighth grade classroom. “Go on,” he said.
“The difference between boys and girls on this is the difference between polo and water polo. Boys compete on horseback, up where everyone can see. They want everybody to see. If they think you don’t see then they yell at you to make sure you watch. With girls, virtually all the action is underneath the surface of the water.”
“What do I do about this?”
“Well, don’t create problems where there aren’t any. But if you have an unhappy classroom, with low morale, and nobody understands why, or no one will tell you, the first thing to check is the level of competition among the girls. Cattiness about grades or good looks goes a long way. Stealing someone’s boyfriend just to prove that you can goes even farther. Creating cliques with invisible but impenetrable boundaries is another sure fire method. It is not as invisible as it may seem to you now, once you know where to look.”
“But what do I do?”
“Once you see it, the thing to do is make sure it gets addressed at a student assembly. Bring in an area pastor, someone who supports the school, tell him what the problem is, and ask him to address it from the Word. This is the thing. Many of the girls are miserable in this arrangement, and don’t know what to do about it either. But there is a way out. Bring the Scriptures to bear on the sin problems you actually have in the school, not on the problems of secular humanism in the school down the road.”
“There’s a thought,” his friend said, and they both laughed.