Are the School of Friendship and the Student 6 bad?

[DPBOX 65]

I think I read that a lot of people vehemently hate the School of Friendship and the Student 6. Well, what's bad about them? I actually really like the idea of Twilight Sparkle opening a school of friendship for all sorts of creatures. I mean, Twilight Sparkle first studied friendship, then became the Princess of Friendship, then taught a student about friendship and started spreading friendship to lands outside Equestria. The logical next step would be to make a school where all sorts of creatures to learn about friendship. The students then used this knowledge to save Equestria in the Season 9 finale. I really like this idea. I ESPECIALLY love the idea of the show diversifying and focusing on creatures other than ponies! I mean instead of 6 ponies, you now have a pony, a Griffon, a Changeling, a Dragon, a Yak, and a Hippogriff. There are more differences between these characters than the Main 6, so there would be even more of a desire for them to put aside their differences to learn about friendship. I understand that Grogar being Discord was VERY poor, and that REALLY pissed me off, but I don't see a problem with a concept of a school of friendship and students that are all different creatures. I think it was a logical next direction to take the show in. So then what's wrong with the School of Friendship and the Student 6?

[Toastypk 920]

I think people don't like them because the idea of making the Mane 6 teachers is a stretch and a big pivot from what they always do. (Hey, even the mane 6 weren't convinced at first.) And that the Student 6 took attention away from other characters, like the just-introduced Pillars.

But at the same time, jankiness aside, I feel the school was a natural extension of the show's direction. First we learned about griffons with Gilda. Then visited the dragons. Met the yaks. Visited the griffon kingdom for the first time. They reformed the changelings.  And now they're undertaking a mission with bringing them all together for a cumulative message of unity.

Plus I like the Student 6's personalities and cuteness. And they all had their individual stories and motivations.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Toastypk

[Tom Gallagher 33,521]

Yes, extremely.  I always thought it was a terrible idea to force the Mane Six out of their priorities that were larger than ever by this stage.  Rarity has her boutiques, Rainbow Dash is busy as a Wonderbolt, they all had more important things to be thinking about and now all of a sudden, they're completely and utterly forced into having lame jobs as teachers?  That's hardly fair on them at all! Had I been with Twilight, I would've politely told her that and I think she would accept it. 

And of course, the worst part of the whole thing was the fact that we got introduced to the worst characters on the entire show, the Student f*cking Six. 

It’s bad enough that they were completely forced onto us with barely any fanfare but they completely took the spotlight away from the Mane Six and all other characters who we actually had an interest in.  Even seeing them in the title sequence drives me nuts! 

The Student Six are annoying, paper-thin, stupid, dimwitted, unfunny twats and aggravating to be around.  If I ever met the Mane Six, I would cry and give them all a massive group hug.  If I ever met the Student Six, I’d punch them. 

Edited August 10, 2021 by TomDaBombMLP

[ShadOBabe 18,984]

30 minutes ago, TomDaBombMLP said:

they're completely and utterly forced into having lame jobs as teachers

I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that teachers are VERY important people in society, and they they do not get the appreciation, respect, or pay they deserve.

Thank you.

Edited August 10, 2021 by ShadOBabe

[DPBOX 65]

TomDaBombMLP wrote, "they completely took the spotlight away from the Mane Six and all other characters who we actually had an interest in."

So, what's wrong with new characters? The Main 6 were the spotlight for 7 whole seasons. Give another set of 6 characters a turn. What's wrong with focusing on another set of characters?

TomDaBombMLP wrote, "The Student Six are annoying, paper-thin, stupid, dimwitted, unfunny twats and aggravating to be around."

Can you give some examples please? How and when are they annoying, paper-thin, stupid, dimwitted, and aggravating?

[Tom Gallagher 33,521]

1 hour ago, DPBOX said:

So, what's wrong with new characters? The Main 6 were the spotlight for 7 whole seasons. Give another set of 6 characters a turn. What's wrong with focusing on another set of characters?

There’s nothing wrong with new characters but you have to at least make them likeable or interesting, like the CMC or the Princesses or the Apple family or the Kirins and so on. The Students aren’t any of those things. 
Even then, everything went back to the Mane Six. They’re the main characters of the show, why replace them unless it was a spin-off? The show is called My Little Pony, not My Little Uninteresting Student! 

[Will Guide 21,325]

8 hours ago, DPBOX said:

Twilight Sparkle first studied friendship, then became the Princess of Friendship, then taught a student about friendship and started spreading friendship to lands outside Equestria. The logical next step would be to make a school where all sorts of creatures to learn about friendship. The students then used this knowledge to save Equestria in the Season 9 finale. I really like this idea. I ESPECIALLY love the idea of the show diversifying and focusing on creatures other than ponies! I mean instead of 6 ponies, you now have a pony, a Griffon, a Changeling, a Dragon, a Yak, and a Hippogriff. There are more differences between these characters than the Main 6, so there would be even more of a desire for them to put aside their differences to learn about friendship. I understand that Grogar being Discord was VERY poor, and that REALLY pissed me off, but I don't see a problem with a concept of a school of friendship and students that are all different creatures. 

Finally someone summed up what I believed for years.

Besides compare the state of Canterlot at the start of the show where they were practically only unicorn ponies and compare that in the very last episode where there's not just ponies but dragons and Changelings and yaks and hippogriffs and such. If that's not proof that the school of friendship is a good idea and the Young 6 showing non pony races are capable of getting along, I don't know what is.

And despite Discord's poorly thought out plan causing big trouble, it did lead to practically every single race all across Equestria to join together to help our heroes. Further proving my point that sometimes a badly done event can still lead to great things.

[Will Guide 21,325]

8 hours ago, DPBOX said:

Twilight Sparkle first studied friendship, then became the Princess of Friendship, then taught a student about friendship and started spreading friendship to lands outside Equestria. The logical next step would be to make a school where all sorts of creatures to learn about friendship. The students then used this knowledge to save Equestria in the Season 9 finale. I really like this idea. I ESPECIALLY love the idea of the show diversifying and focusing on creatures other than ponies! I mean instead of 6 ponies, you now have a pony, a Griffon, a Changeling, a Dragon, a Yak, and a Hippogriff. There are more differences between these characters than the Main 6, so there would be even more of a desire for them to put aside their differences to learn about friendship. I understand that Grogar being Discord was VERY poor, and that REALLY pissed me off, but I don't see a problem with a concept of a school of friendship and students that are all different creatures. 

Finally someone summed up what I believed for years.

Besides compare the state of Canterlot at the start of the show where they were practically only unicorn ponies and compare that in the very last episode where there's not just ponies but dragons and Changelings and yaks and hippogriffs and such. If that's not proof that the school of friendship is a good idea and the Young 6 showing non pony races are capable of getting along, I don't know what is.

And despite Discord's poorly thought out plan causing big trouble, it did lead to practically every single race all across Equestria to join together to help our heroes. Further proving my point that sometimes a badly done event can still lead to great things.

6 hours ago, TomDaBombMLP said:

force the Mane Six out of their priorities that were larger than ever by this stage.  Rarity has her boutiques, Rainbow Dash is busy as a Wonderbolt, they all had more important things to be thinking about and now all of a sudden, they're completely and utterly forced into having lame jobs as teachers?  That's hardly fair on them at all! Had I been with Twilight, I would've politely told her that and I think she would accept it. 

I'm sorry but I have to greatly disagree. In Universe nobody was forcing the main ponies out of their main priorities. They chose to do the teacher jobs.  The fact that they were able to do both their main jobs AND the teacher job is quite impressive to me. Because if this was done more in real life it would be extremely stressful and the fact that they manage to juggle their priorities and manage to handle it shows they are quite capable.

 

And as @ShadOBabe said, teachers are very important in society and they're the ones who teach the next generation of people things in order to improve their society in the future. So please don't insult a job as simple as teacher. Even secretaries have power in that they can prevent you from reaching your dream job if you are mean to them. There's even a trope on that. Just read under the real life folder of that page and you'll find perfect examples

 

[JMTV99 1,348]

That's cool if you enjoy those things, but for me, I wasn't too crazy about them.

The Friendship School doesn't work because 1. Main 6 already had jobs 2. Friendship cannot be taught in school since you can taught friendship through social interactions. and 3. we already Cheerilee's school. Plus, the design of the school look gaudy. At least Twilight's Castle may look gaudy, but at least it contains some kind of appeal. This just look like a playset that you can get at Walmart for $50. I bet the school only exists so that Hasbro can make a toy out of it or something.

As for the Student Six? Don't get it twisted, I'm all for diverse MLP characters. I love Gilda, I love Autumn Blaze, I love Zecora, and I love Little Strongheart. They're all diverse characters. I wouldn't mind the Student Six if they're very interesting. The thing is, they're not all that interesting. They're just carbon copies of the Main 6's personalities and nothing more. I find them bland, uninteresting, and very forgettable. You could've give Gilda, Zecora, Autumn, and such more chance in the spotlight and give them more development because there's more interesting things about them. I just don't see that with the Student Six.

Finally, feel free to disagree with me, but since the show about My Little PONY, the creatures shouldn't taken too much of the spotlight than the actual horses themselves. It's fine every now and then to give them character development or characters that we haven't seen in a long while, but I felt ponies should be the main focus.

So that's my take on it.

[Goat-kun 2,498]

Teaching position is where characters go to fade out of relevance. It's boring, it's passing of the torch, and non-pones didn't exactly send their best and most interesting. They were just ponies in non-pone suits.

[CastletonSnob 3,025]

Other posters have summed up quite well why people don't like the School of Friendship and the Student Six.

 

That's not even getting into the "White Man's Burden" undertone of the whole thing. The ponies open up a school to teach the non-ponies about friendship? 

[Megas 27,064]

Ignoring the fact that the idea of a School of Friendship is dumb as fuck, there’s also the fact that it contradicts what was established in Episode 1, literally the reason Celestia sent Twilight out to make some friends is because Friendship wasn’t something that could be taught in School.

Then there was the fact that it actively got in the way of their lives. Jim Miller initially dismissed this as “cartoon logic” but then the show would regularly make it a point that they didn’t have enough time for anything

Then there’s the mane 6 being teachers at the school, the writers went out of their freaking way to make sure you knew they weren’t good teachers, even though they didn’t need to be. Writers constantly propped up the Student Six and the School at the expense of the Mane 6. “But Megas why shouldn’t they try to give more characters attention?” Show tried multiple times to tell you how much better they were than the main characters, at that point you’re just making people hate the student six more instead. There’s nothing extensively wrong with the mane 6 having a group of students who mirror them but the writers went out of their way to do everything wrong 

[Will Guide 21,325]

27 minutes ago, Kiryu-Chan said:

literally the reason Celestia sent Twilight out to make some friends is because Friendship wasn’t something that could be taught in School.

That's not what Celestia said. she said there was more to life than just studying. Right up front. 

She never said that "friendship wasn't something that could be taught in school" not even at the end of the Season 1 two-parter when most people allegedly claim she said "you can't learn friendship in school"

She even said she must continue studying the magic of friendship.

[CastletonSnob 3,025]

I'm surprised more people haven't noticed the "White Man's Burden" undertone to the School of Friendship, and really, most of the interactions between the ponies and the non-pony species.

Really, most of the time, the non-pony species only seem to exist to make the ponies look better. Remember when Pinkie had to save the Yaks from dying because of their own stupidity?

[BornAgainBrony 2,395]

2 hours ago, CastletonSnob said:

That's not even getting into the "White Man's Burden" undertone of the whole thing. The ponies open up a school to teach the non-ponies about friendship? 

That's some pretty impressive mental gymnastics for villifying inclusion. Especially considering what the dominant opinion of the season would be had it been a "ponies only" school.

It's no more or less bad than what was already going on ever since the Cutiemap first appeared, with the Mane 6 being "missionaries" of a sort, traveling to different lands to spread the "Good News." Their reason for opening the school was because the world as they knew it was rapidly expanding to new lands and they were getting spread too thin. Instead of globetrotting all over the place, all the seekers could come to them. The school is actually LESS imperialistic in nature.

10 hours ago, ShadOBabe said:

I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that teachers are VERY important people in society, and they they do not get the appreciation, respect, or pay they deserve.

3 hours ago, Will Guide said:

I'm sorry but I have to greatly disagree. In Universe nobody was forcing the main ponies out of their main priorities. They chose to do the teacher jobs.  The fact that they were able to do both their main jobs AND the teacher job is quite impressive to me. Because if this was done more in real life it would be extremely stressful and the fact that they manage to juggle their priorities and manage to handle it shows they are quite capable.

It's worth considering that maybe the teaching isn't nearly as taxing on the Ponies as we would expect. Also, the map quests had to already be taking up a lot of their time. Possibly moreso, because you have to factor in travel time, investigating to find where the problem is, and then coming up with a solution and executing it. Replacing all that with a school means you can have a predictable schedule to build your life around, instead of being "on call" 24/7 like a first responder. And you get to be home every night instead of off in distant lands.

Also, Twilight could have structured it from the beginning to be more accommodating to part-time teachers by staggering class schedules; making it less like a public school and more like a university mixed with a spiritual retreat. Even for your basic public school teachers in Equestria though, we should keep in mind there are some things that Equestria handles far, FAR better than human society. It's probably not a lot to assume that being a teacher there isn't nearly as Hellish as it is on Earth, with irate parents screaming during PTC week, doing hours of unpaid work grading papers every evening, or worrying that "armed combatant to deter school shooters" will be added to the already ridiculous list of teacher duties.

3 hours ago, JMTV99 said:

Friendship cannot be taught in school since you can taught friendship through social interactions.

First of all, school is where kids learn social interaction the most. That can be done at any school. But more important, we have to remember that Friendship isn't just a passive social construct like in our world. It's right in the title. Friendship is Magic. This isn't simply a school that is teaching children how to be nice to each other. It's teaching them to wield magic. At the time of the school's founding, Friendship in the pony world is sort of developing into a spiritual path. This is a recently-discovered kind of magic that is accessible to all creatures. The classes delve into the theory behind it, both established and speculative, based on all the notes and research that Twilight has been taking over the years. In that regard, yeah, the school is a bit of a large-scale social/magical experiment. The culmination of this effort reveals itself in the final episode: all creatures are able to harness the Elements of Harmony.

7 hours ago, TomDaBombMLP said:

There’s nothing wrong with new characters but you have to at least make them likeable or interesting, like the CMC or the Princesses or the Apple family or the Kirins and so on. The Students aren’t any of those things. Even then, everything went back to the Mane Six. They’re the main characters of the show, why replace them unless it was a spin-off? The show is called My Little Pony, not My Little Uninteresting Student! 

I think they knew that the show was nearing its end, and the S6 were an experiment to try and provide the "pilot episode" for a new series. That new series being what would become G5. So, that would have been a spin-off... sorta.

This is evidenced by how the Student 6 were being treated at the time. The Tree of Harmony's roots spread to the school and then dragged the Student 6 into 'trials' very similar to what the Mane 6 had to go through in Everfree Forest. It seemed pretty obvious that the tree was searching for some new acolytes. All that came to an end in S9 though with the killing of the Tree (which if I remember right, was ordered by Hasbro). I also have my suspicions that Cozy Glow wasn't meant to be a permanent villain. Though she has a lot of malicious intent and is using them to her own ends, she worked with the Student 6 repeatedly throughout Season 8 and was very good at planning and coordinating them into a unified group. I could have easily seen her reforming and eventually becoming the "7th" member of the Student 6, like Spike with the Mane 6, or Stygian with the Pillars (both Stygian and Cozyglow got banished after trying to perform an arcane ritual that involved six powerful artifacts, which was something that I couldn't assume was mere coincidence).

 

To all in this thread:

I had no problem with the Student 6 or the school. At first glance, I thought it would be a disaster, and I hated the idea of it. In application though, the school was fine. I feared it would turn the show into something episodic, with every single story being about student life in the school, but fortunately it didn't do that. Not even close. There were still plenty of episodes that were detached both from the school, and the Student 6, so I don't see why everyone seems to act like this wasn't the case. I also didn't think I was going to like the new characters. "DHX, how DARE you replace my beloved Pones!" But I fell in love with them from the very first episode. Yeah, they did somewhat slip into the archetypes of the Mane 6, but there were a lot of things that separated them from being carbon-copies as well. With the S6 they were also able to address some problems kids deal with, that really couldn't have been done with the CMC without wrecking established CANON.

[JMTV99 1,348]

6 minutes ago, BornAgainBrony said:

First of all, school is where kids learn social interaction the most. That can be done at any school. But more important, we have to remember that Friendship isn't just a passive social construct like in our world. It's right in the title. Friendship is Magic. This isn't simply a school that is teaching children how to be nice to each other. It's teaching them to wield magic. At the time of the school's founding, Friendship in the pony world is sort of developing into a spiritual path. This is a recently-discovered kind of magic that is accessible to all creatures. The classes delve into the theory behind it, both established and speculative, based on all the notes and research that Twilight has been taking over the years. In that regard, yeah, the school is a bit of a large-scale social/magical experiment. The culmination of this effort reveals itself in the final episode: all creatures are able to harness the Elements of Harmony.

Fair enough, but I just thought it was very unnecessary.

1 hour ago, Kiryu-Chan said:

Ignoring the fact that the idea of a School of Friendship is dumb as fuck, there’s also the fact that it contradicts what was established in Episode 1, literally the reason Celestia sent Twilight out to make some friends is because Friendship wasn’t something that could be taught in School.

Then there was the fact that it actively got in the way of their lives. Jim Miller initially dismissed this as “cartoon logic” but then the show would regularly make it a point that they didn’t have enough time for anything

Then there’s the mane 6 being teachers at the school, the writers went out of their freaking way to make sure you knew they weren’t good teachers, even though they didn’t need to be. Writers constantly propped up the Student Six and the School at the expense of the Mane 6. “But Megas why shouldn’t they try to give more characters attention?” Show tried multiple times to tell you how much better they were than the main characters, at that point you’re just making people hate the student six more instead. There’s nothing extensively wrong with the mane 6 having a group of students who mirror them but the writers went out of their way to do everything wrong 

Exactly my thoughts.

[Toastypk 920]

34 minutes ago, BornAgainBrony said:

That's some pretty impressive mental gymnastics for villifying inclusion. Especially considering what the dominant opinion of the season would be had it been a "ponies only" school.

It's no more or less bad than what was already going on ever since the Cutiemap first appeared, with the Mane 6 being "missionaries" of a sort, traveling to different lands to spread the "Good News." Their reason for opening the school was because the world as they knew it was rapidly expanding to new lands and they were getting spread too thin. Instead of globetrotting all over the place, all the seekers could come to them. The school is actually LESS imperialistic in nature.

I agree with the diplomatic and missionary approach of the school,  but I actually think I know what is being talked about here in the negative, I just never touched on it in my other comment.

It's the whole idea that we (ponies) are so much better off than everyone else, (by having friendship and no one else seems to) so we need to spread it to everyone else! Sounds fine on the surface, but could have some iffy connotations if you think about it in a certain way. Though I've noticed, at least with the hippogriffs and yaks, they all seemed to enjoy friendship and family just fine. (Griffons on the other hand...)

[Thrond 3,257]

I think there are some issues with the execution, but by season 8 I was so bored with the show that literally any gimmick would have made me happy. 

10 hours ago, DPBOX said:

So, what's wrong with new characters? The Main 6 were the spotlight for 7 whole seasons. Give another set of 6 characters a turn. What's wrong with focusing on another set of characters?

Well, the thing we have to remember is that the show never actually did this; seasons 8 and 9 still have more episodes about the mane six than anyone else. I really like the student characters, but the show didn't really have space to really do much with them. 

Ideally the mane six episodes that season would have been a little more focused on their place in the school, but I would have taken more student six material than a lot of what we got from seasons 8 and 9. I mean if the show did end somewhere around there, leading to the student six getting their own show, I wouldn't have complained. 

13 hours ago, DPBOX said:

I mean, Twilight Sparkle first studied friendship, then became the Princess of Friendship, then taught a student about friendship and started spreading friendship to lands outside Equestria. The logical next step would be to make a school where all sorts of creatures to learn about friendship.

This is true, but it's a bit more complicated with the others, who all have other jobs that they don't seem to have given up. Thematically, it fits: all of the mane six had been teaching friendship for a while now, so a school is an entirely sensible evolution of that. It's just that I don't know where most of them find the time.

3 hours ago, CastletonSnob said:

That's not even getting into the "White Man's Burden" undertone of the whole thing. The ponies open up a school to teach the non-ponies about friendship? 

The show was doing that long before the school came about. In fact, I think "we're letting non-ponies come to learn about friendship, even though the authorities don't approve" is a massive improvement over "we're going to foreign countries to teach non-ponies about friendship." Before, it was about getting in people's face and evangelizing. Now, it's about inclusion. 

3 hours ago, Kiryu-Chan said:

Then there’s the mane 6 being teachers at the school, the writers went out of their freaking way to make sure you knew they weren’t good teachers, even though they didn’t need to be.

"Non-Compete Clause" and "The End in Friend" both reminded me a lot of the episodes in seasons 6 and 7 where someone would be a jerk for 22 minutes until someone else finally convinced them to stop. In my mind, that's less the show actively trying to make the mane six look bad, and more the same old formula as always; it just happened that the show needed to do something with the students, so they might as well be the voice of reason this time. It was a waste of the students too. 

2 hours ago, BornAgainBrony said:

I feared it would turn the show into something episodic, with every single story being about student life in the school, but fortunately it didn't do that. 

Well said on most of your points, but this here sounds like it would have been a lot of fun. 

[Thrond 3,257]

Reposting a status update from last year: 
 

The School of Friendship may have been an awkward idea but I liked it a lot because

• It was a much-needed change of pace for a show which I felt was stagnating and running out of ideas for its main characters. 
• It seemed like a natural evolution of the main-six-as-teachers trend in the show, and introduced a bit more failure and uncertainty to those stories. 
• It let Twilight work as part of an educational institution, which I had always felt was the perfect line of work for her.
• It served as a symbol of acceptance and let the mane six stand against xenophobia, which was a positive development in the show's depiction of non-pony species. 
• It gave Starlight a clearer purpose in the show, which was especially nice because I felt that season was a major improvement for her characterization. 
• The main student characters are cute. 
   

[FlareGun45 2,221]

It woulda been better if Spike got a class, or at least tutored.

[BornAgainBrony 2,395]

2 hours ago, Toastypk said:

It's the whole idea that we (ponies) are so much better off than everyone else, (by having friendship and no one else seems to) so we need to spread it to everyone else! Sounds fine on the surface, but could have some iffy connotations if you think about it in a certain way. Though I've noticed, at least with the hippogriffs and yaks, they all seemed to enjoy friendship and family just fine. (Griffons on the other hand...)

This could quickly derail into a pretty intense conversation about political influence, and I don't want to get the thread locked. But purely from a logical perspective, I don't think it would mean that Ponies are "better" than anyone else; anymore than when one culture develops a new piece of useful technology that gets adopted by the world. Nationalism or racial prejudice 'could' be injected into that, but ultimately it's in the eye of the beholder. Lightning strikes a certain tree, and a certain primitive human picks up the burning branch, and that tribe ends up being credited with the 'discovery' of fire. A LOT of what we see going on in FiM, isn't actually about Ponies at all. Their wisdom is coming from a higher source, ranging from gentle nudges to really blatant shoves by the Tree of Harmony.

Whether or not it's moral to spread this discovery to other lands, well that's a very VERY complicated question. In the case of the Griffons, we could probably discuss that in circles for hours, because trying to determine "happiness" is a very complicated question. This is the same show that started off the "missionary" quest with the toppling of a pseudo-Communist dystopia. "We" can say the smiles are fake, but when is a fabricated reality that produces happiness worth destroying? Relativism is a very messy thing; where does one draw the line with the Griffons? They're apparently proud of their situation, and in general are opposed to change. But objectively, it's a very impoverished kingdom that has already collapsed. Viewing it through the rose-tinted glasses that Pinkie Pie wears is, honestly, not very good. But then we see how Gallus feels. The other students are all excited about winter break and celebrating the "Christmas" holidays, but Gallus doesn't want to go home. There's nothing warm waiting for him there. And that's not an isolated family issue. Evidently that's typical Griffon culture. To interfere, or not? There's really no right or wrong answer to that. The black and white all fades to gray.

[Thrond 3,257]

16 minutes ago, FlareGun45 said:

It woulda been better if Spike got a class, or at least tutored.

Wasn't he a substitute teacher at one point? 

[CypherHoof 26,479]

1 hour ago, FlareGun45 said:

It woulda been better if Spike got a class, or at least tutored.

Twi let Spike take over a class once, and he went mad with the power,,,,

[Misty Shadow 7,084]

Though I've never personally minded The School of Friendship or The Student 6, I've always acknowledged the flaws of how they were incorporated. However, I'm getting tired of people pointing to that nonexistent "plothole" at the end of the pilot. It had been seven seasons, AND people keep misrepresenting what Celestia said like Will Guide pointed out. Not only does she not say that Twilight had to stay because there is more to friendship that can't be taught with books and learning or in a school, she was acting on Twilight's CHOICE to study friendship with her friends rather than go back to her books and traditional learning. She made the decree after Twilight made it clear that she wanted to stay.  

3 hours ago, CastletonSnob said:

I'm surprised more people haven't noticed the "White Man's Burden" undertone to the School of Friendship, and really, most of the interactions between the ponies and the non-pony species.

Really, most of the time, the non-pony species only seem to exist to make the ponies look better. Remember when Pinkie had to save the Yaks from dying because of their own stupidity?

Because it doesn't exist. Literally, it doesn't. You certainly wouldn't have been happy if it was just ponies teaching ponies friendship, the reverse couldn't have worked because of Neighsay, Neighsay and Cozy Glow, both new characters in that season, make the ponies look bad and the other species look better, and the Student 6 have to save Applejack and Rainbow Dash from dying in Non-Compete Clause. 

[EpicEnergy 22,076]

I didn't really mind them, in my opinion the student six are good characters and the School of Friendship was a good idea. Nothing exceptionally well, but nothing exceptionally poor either. That's looking at things from an entertainment perspective.