ENGLAND– Schools in England are banning a common concept around the world, and especially with children: best friends.

According to Business Insider, Thomas’s Battersea, the school where Prince George attends, bans kids from having best friends.

Instead, teachers encourage all students to form bonds with one another to avoid creating feelings of exclusions among those without best friends.

A parent whose child attends the school explained the concept on a talk show called “Loose Women.”

“There’s a policy,” she said, “that if your child is having a party — unless every child is invited — you don’t give out the invites in class.”

Full story here.

What a terrible idea. You can't ban best friends! Friendships is a purely hierarchical idea and so if you ban best friends than you ban all friends. Seriously, what good is a friend if you can't leverage them against other friends to maximize cost-profit outcome? It's like a ship, you don't just run a ship with a bunch of commie sailors. No, there's a command structure: you've got your first mates, your second mates, your third mates, your poop deck scrubbers (that's a little maritime vocabulary for you land lovers), and your latrine scrubbers. Trust me: I've signed enough petitions for a  Master and Commander sequel to know how a ship works.

I don't understand how they couldn't have just stopped at banning inviting classmates to parties in class if everybody wasn't invited. Like, that's not a best friend thing, that's just a decency thing. Not only that, but it's a good idea! It's the right thing! Why couldn't you just stop there? Banning best friends is such a wild jump from that point! You think those snot-nosed kids are going to listen to you? You've got another thing coming! We're humans: we love picking favorites and we love breaking the rules. Congratulations, you tyrants, you've just made having a best friend the new cool thing. 

P.S. to every parent who thinks this is the right call, you all have loser children who don't have best friends, and ultimately that's on you.

P.P.S. We fucking deserve a Master and Commander sequel. How can you end with a scene like this and not give us a sequel? I'd pay fifty dollars for a chance to see Paul Bettany and Russell Crowe jam out with their fucking string instruments. I watch this scene and then amazon shop for cellos, every. single. time. Give us what we want.