Growing up with parents who focused on education, I did pretty well in school. I was proud of myself, my parents were proud and so were my teachers. Unfortunately, I remember vividly one time when my academic prowess was frowned upon. I started middle school which was in a different school with different students. A few months into the school year, my pre-algebra teacher announced that I received a score of 100 on three consecutive exams. I guess I should have been proud, but I didn’t really like the spotlight. Then I heard some classmates whisper, “nerd” and “geek” in the background. And when the teacher turned back to the blackboard, someone threw a crumpled up piece of paper at me. On the next test, I did something that I am not proud of. I succumbed to the pressure of my classmates and purposely got an answer wrong so I wouldn’t be teased. (It turned out I didn’t need to purposely get an answer wrong as I answered another question incorrectly anyway). There went my streak of 100s. I was disappointed that I didn’t score 100, but even more disappointed that I let others influence me negatively.
You know the stereotype of the nerd or the geek. We see this all the time on television. The smart student wearing glasses who is a bit goofy and socially awkward. In a way, I feel like the movie Mean Girls, starring Lindsey Lohan explores many of the themes about whether intelligence is valued in our youth (Yes, I did enjoy the movie…please don’t judge me). Lohan’s character who was home-schooled in Africa does not understand the social dynamics of high school in the states. In the movie, it shows the “nerds” and “geeks” being relegated to 2nd class citizens and sit in a different part of the cafeteria. Lohan’s character is forced to join the mathletes as punishment which is seen as social suicide. She pretends to be dumb so that a guy she is attracted to would be interested in her. The popular kids are the ones who are more interested in their wardrobe and parties, the one’s who are superior athletes, rather than the ones who are academically successful.
“In a world where Paris bloody Hilton is seen as a role model to teenage girls, the incentive to study hard and be proud of your smarts gets drowned out in a sea of baby-voiced dreams to become the next American Idol. God forbid you open your mouth and be branded an elitist, Smarty McGee!” – Hortense Smith in an article entitled, Why Don’t We Value Intelligence Anymore?
Many people are saying that “nerds” are cool now, citing Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates as well as other tech innovators. They also mention shows like The Big Bang Theory. I think many people are fascinated by new tech gadgets, but I don’t think there’s any correlation with nerdiness being cool or an increase in the embrace of study and education. An interesting note which may only interest me: the character Leonard Hofstadter from Big Bang is named after Richard Hofstadter who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Anti-Intellectualism in America.
“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.” – Paul Graham, programmer, writer and investor.
Getting back to my experience growing up, when I told my mother that some kids were being teased at school, her conclusion was that the child must not be doing well in school which results in teasing. My mother grew up and went to school in China, and I remember looking at her thinking she had no idea what she was talking about. I thought that her conclusion could only be valid in some bizzaro world.
Recently, as I was talking to my wife who grew up and went to school in Honduras, she told me that she did not know of the concept of the “nerd” when she was in school. However, she went to private school growing up. When she came to the states to go to university, she said that she would raise her hand and participate in class, until she realized that most students did not participate, so she stopped participating to blend in with the crowd. I asked a friend who grew up in South Korea, and he was also not familiar with the “nerd” concept. He said that students were pretty intense about studying. According to him, there was a saying that if you wanted to pass, you slept 4 hours, and if you wanted to fail, you slept 5 hours.
Thinking that this “nerd” concept was local to those living in the U.S, I decided to ask some fellow bloggers who went to school outside of this country.
Sam from Financial Samurai, explained that it “goes on everywhere, including schools outside the US for sure. The cool thing to do is to blend in with the crowd, as it always is.”
Erin from Broke Millenial said:
There were of course kids who got teased in both of my international schools (Japan and China) but a lot of academic insults were tied into race. Getting a B was called an “Asian Fail” while getting a D or F was a “White Fail” in my schools. If someone said, “Ugh, I failed that test.” The response was generally, “Did you Asian Fail or White Fail?” I even had a teacher once tell my (IB) math class that it always seemed like the white kids were in this specific class because it was the lowest level of IB math.
I also went to very privileged, private schools which means everyone was smart and to not keep up academically was embarrassing and could get you expelled. I went to school #12 on that list but my school in China was actually more expensive, we just didn’t have a boarding school option.
With regard to the Asian Fail, I’ve never heard of it, but I think I may have experienced it. My mom was a bit of a “Tiger Mom” and while my non-Asian peers were applauded for getting a 95 on a test, my mom would ask me where the 5 points went! However, I don’t want to make this topic about Asian versus non-Asian education systems. While I do notice many Asian cultures put studying and schooling as a top priority, I find that the method of teaching is based on repetition and rote learning which sometimes stunts creativity. And my Korean co-worker’s experience where there is pressure to sleep less than 5 hours to continue studying is pretty extreme and I don’t think it’s healthy to put that much stress and pressure on students. Okay, sorry for going on a tangent! With the privileged private school aspect, I think that makes a difference. My wife also went to private school growing up and that may be why should was unfamiliar with the “nerd” concept. The high school I went to was considered an elite school and students were chosen based on their academic record. Studying hard and being smart was not frowned upon there.
C. from Romania Experience said,
The kids with good grades and who study a lot are often times picked on, called nerds and other names and are not allowed to hang out with the “cool” kids. What’s even worse in my opinion is that there’s a sort of a cult growing bigger and bigger about not studying and we have teenagers who brag about not reading a single book in their life, who barely pass the year and these are the guys everybody wants to hang out with. As a result of this and many other factors probably, the results to a simulation for the exam all high school kids in their final year must take (and pass) before even being allowed to apply for college were the worst in our history: just 42% managed to pass and most of them with very low grades.
Pauline from Reach Financial Independence said,
For me a nerd is not necessarily gifted, on the contrary, they will spend hours and hours studying to get good grads. In my class there was a group of guys that were always studying and had good grades, but often without studying much I got better grades, and no one picked on me for being nerdy because I didn’t study a lot. Anyway, yes sadly we bully students in European high schools as well for wanting to outperform. But in my school if you did well and made it look natural you didn’t get picked on.
It is sad that you have to make it look “natural” and that you can’t study a lot without being a target. Honestly, working hard and studying is more important in my opinion. Not everyone is naturally smart and can understand topics quickly, most students grasp the topic by spending a lot of time working on it.
How will kids gain necessary skills and become academically successful if it isn’t something that is valued by their peers? Why do you think nerds aren’t popular? It seems based on the experience of a few bloggers that I surveyed, this happens everywhere, but if you went to school in a different country, please share your experience on this topic.