Buncha Nerds!

[andrewducker]

Just posted this on my link blog, and then realised that it deserved a wider audience.  I'm fairly sure I've posted it before, but it could definitely do with the exposure.

I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way. But it could. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But in a typical American secondary school, being smart is likely to make your life difficult. Why?

The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly. Why don't smart kids make themselves popular? If they're so smart, why don't they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as they do for standardized tests?

Read the rest here.

Comments

[rainstorm.livejournal.com]

Ooo, interesting.

I would like to point out that he quotes Alberti, who is one of my heroes.

rambling - sue me

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the article yet but I would argue that it's a different kind of 'smart' rather than them being clever so therefore good at everything. It's relatively easy to get good school-grades, while human relationships, which obviously become more important and dominant in secondary school, are more nuanced and messy. An unpopular kid with zero friends can therefore concentrate on the lessons (simple rules, easier to 'get') and get better grades.

You can't -make- people like you, but you can get better at convincing people that they do - that's a skill you get better at as you get older. Schoolkids, even smart kids, are still learning.

Re: rambling - sue me

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

The article says that smart people could learn how to become popular but choose not to becaues they find other things more interesting, so your comments don't really apply.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

A very interesting article.

Personally, when I was at school, I didn't really care that the popular kids didn't like me, as I had very little respect for most of them. I knew I was leaving and it didn't matter anyway. I suppose in many ways I was 'playing a different game'.

Equally, I was quite lucky in some respects: while people tried to bully me or give me a hard time, 'tried' was the operative word.

In some ways I miss school. I actually really enjoy studying things for their own sake, which is something I don't have the luxury of doing at the moment. It was important to me, but I can see why it doesn't work for some children and also that it bears little relation to work in an office environment.

Re: rambling - sue me

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Ah well. Never mind. I'll read the article when I finish work.

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

But some very smart kids do choose to be popular. But because they're putting all their time and effort into being popular the fact that they're extremely smart gets overlooked. Not all smart kids are nerds and I knew a number of nerds who weren't even very smart, just dogged.

The article has some interesting points, but I think it overlooks a lot of the nuances. It does bug me that the social position a person inhabits during high school is often taken to be an indication of their intellectual ability. There may well be some general truths in the stereotypes, but the last thing teenagers need is to have sweeping generalisations made about them.

[andrewducker]

There may well be some general truths in the stereotypes, but the last thing teenagers need is to have sweeping generalisations made about them.

That sounds like a sweeping generalisation to me.

:-P

[fellow-traveler.livejournal.com]

Reminded me of The Underground History of American Education (http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm), which is available for free online reading.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Favourite quote:

"Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits."

Re: rambling - sue me

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Actually, I remember the article as more nuanced, and indeed it is. Plenty of smart people learn how to become popular and engage their brains on that in particular -- it's just that they're not the ones that stand out as nerds.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

"Why don't smart kids make themselves popular?"

Probably because they don't feel the need. I never did.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

I suggest you replace the word world with nation.

Re: rambling - sue me

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

verily :-)

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of very good points in this essay, but I think he's missing something fairly important. At least according to my observations, nerds appear to have deliberately singled themselves out.

I'm pretty damned smart, but I was very popular in high school. Not the cheerleader/football-player type of popular (though I did play some sports), but the kind where anyone in school felt okay talking to me, and I got invited to a lot of good parties. Intelligence honestly has fuckall to do with it. I didn't /work/ at being popular, either; I honestly didn't give a damn. I just had fun, spoke my mind, and feared nothing. I unapologetically used words the tanning-booth set didn't understand, busted ass in the library, and chatted with the Math Team boys about Clarke and Asimov. I wore some seriously weird clothes. I never, ever sucked up to the artificial nobility. And yet I was popular. What made me Not A Nerd?

The way nerds identified themselves was by their thoughts, interests, and abilities. But the other kids didn't see any of that. What they saw was this:

1. Dresses like my grampa.
2. Walks like he's in a bouncy-castle.
3. Talks like he can't breathe.
4. Won't make eye contact.
5. Can't discuss anyone's interests but his own.
6. Fears/disdains others outside his group.

In both the high schools I went to, several of the most popular kids got top grades in math and science; several of the most shunned nerds had the intellectual capacity a damp ham sandwich.

Presumably it was somewhat different in the essay-writer's experience, but I still feel that an air of resentful self-congratulation taints this otherwise interesting article.

... Okay, done speechifying. Didn't mean it to get that long. ;p

[kelly-lesbo.livejournal.com]

Great article.

[andrewducker]

Some very interesting points in there - it's a shame he comes across quite so shrill sometimes.

[kelly-lesbo.livejournal.com]

Thinking further on this article. I am both a huge nerd and incredibly cool. I have always been like this, its just the person i am in grown up land means I fit benefit from both categories.

If we could find a way for people to stop having children then there wouldn't be all this bother in schools.*

Although that would mean I couldn't perve at school girls anymore :(


*patented Occam's Razor "simple solutions for a complex world" ideology