smart ppl (nerds?) in HS

[lyssword]

I thought this essay has interesting analysis about hierarchy @ US highschool, and I agree on many points. A nerd version of "catcher in the rye" 😀
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html *warning, the whole essay takes long time to read*

 

[probzy]

No can help.

 

[WhiteKnight]

An interesting read. I don't fully agree with his posit that schools are just prisons for otherwise useless teenagers (useless to modern adults anyway), but he does make some good points.

 

[Hyperblaze]

Don't agree to this.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Smart is not synonymous with "nerd".

 

[WhiteKnight]

Originally posted by: Fingolfin269
Smart is not synonymous with "nerd".

Just as the author said, "So far I've been finessing the relationship between smart and nerd, using them as if they were interchangeable. In fact it's only the context that makes them so." Did you read the whole article?

 

[MrChad]

I read the essay, and frankly I'm not impressed.

The author seems to get his high school anecdotes and stereotypes from The Breakfast Club rather than from the real world. I was a geek in high school at the top of my class, and while I certainly wasn't the most popular kid in school, I had plenty of friends. All of the top students in our school participated in lots of social activities (both in school and out of school), had many friends, and in general were "well-rounded" people. Bullying stopped in junior high. The concept of popularity in the Hollywood sense never existed in my school. Cliques of all sorts could be found up and down the social ladder, but there was never a single group of people that was universally liked by everyone (at least that I can think of).

The comparison of schools to prisons is an interesting if underdeveloped argument. If you enjoyed that part of the essay, I highly suggest you pick up John Gatto's Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, a collect of speeches and essays on the subject by an award-winning high school teacher.

 

[zebano]

I generally agree. However, I do believe there are some things schools need to teach (Physics, Algebra, Logic, reading and Grammer all spring to mind) but as the author points out, no meaningful goal exists except to pass a test and keep the kids off the streets. If there were a way to make the work useful, school might actually be interesting.

 

[DaShen]

Meh, 😉 I am smart, but I didn't do very good at school. I was way too lazy and classes bored me.
Even still a lot of people thought I was extremely good at school for some reason. Go figure. Most of my friends were in the top 10%, but I didn't care (I was comfortable with mediocrity). Now I regret that I was so lazy before in school, but it still baffles me why people that I bump into from high school thought I was some sort of nerd. It is a conundrum. It was probably because I was so much of a hermit in High School, and much even now, and also that I was really good at chess when I was younger (not anymore though).