That’s engineering. Sorry, alphabetical is not. That’s just plain retarded to think that.
Social engineering logically has to do with any social arrangement that influences the individual and/or group.
IF you think that persistently being at the end of the line and back of the group due to name alphabetizing fails to influence such individuals in any way--then evidently we do not share a sufficiently large dictionary to have any meaningful dialogue whatsoever.
I’m saying that alphabetical seating forces some incompatible kids together, for the entire year in some cases, and it has also been measured and shown to favor the kids sitting in front (the A’s thru G’s) and that the kids in the back (P thru Z) get called on less and do slightly worse on grades. So it doesn’t matter that it is arbitrary; it still adversely affects a certain number of kids.
So I fail to see why the teacher moving the kids around from time to time to introduce other kids to them for a short period of time is any more harmful. There isn’t any pattern of seating that will be optimum for everyone — it’s all social engineering.