For those suffering their way through school

bingley · Post by **bingley** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 10:09 am

You might find this article of interest:

http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Evito · Post by **Evito** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 11:59 am

haven't read all of it but I think it's true
I was an outsider; I sometimes wished I weren't at the time, but now I thank God I was...you know, just looking at what one had to do to be popular in school...going out, I hated that, drinking, that's foolish, dancing to loud music, why: I'd rather work on my computer and program applications...
It wasn't so much that I was smart, ok I was, but it was more that I was just different on the inside. It would have never gotten into my mind to go out with the others, or to do all the stuff they did...

Post by **klewlis** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 4:39 pm

I think he's wrong that you can't have both. I mean, the goal should not be popularity but the parents at least should aim to make sure that their child is socially well-adjusted, which is just plain healthy, without sacrificing education. I think both are extremely important.

There were two brothers in my highschool, Jasper and Eli. Not only were they among the smartest kids in our school, but they were also extremely popular because they were quite simply really great guys. Jasper ended up being student president one year. And yet at home they were not allowed to watch tv, so they spent their time reading and studying. They had the potential to be complete nerds and they weren't. And they didn't go about *trying* to be popular, it just happened because they were socially well adjusted.

So it is possible to have the best of both worlds. :)

Evito · Post by **Evito** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 5:03 pm

I think he's right though that unpopularity often ís a choice made by people who long for deeper contacts on the inside. I mean, being popular gives you so called "friends" and that's all based on appearances and stuff.

Episcopus · Post by **Episcopus** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 7:37 pm

Schools here are not like those in the U.S methinks. Nobody is really hunted unless with some reason. It is not a popularity contest here and there are certainly no beauties! It's just full of nutters and a few nutters who happen to play rugby well, whom praises the headmaster. There are louder people who tend nowadays to yell at quieter people like me who may have merely looked at them. Most quiet people do not care for school, not just the popularity. Those who have nothing better to do are frequently somewhat unnecessarily vociferous and more popular amongst the nutters, being a part of that majority. Personally a while ago I was louder and blunt towards teachers as a result of anger and lack of thoughts in any other place (now however one has latin, chinese, french etc.) and my stupidity and dauntlessness (mutated lighter explosions in class, selections of bbguns, farmyard sounds that ravaged teachers etc.) was liked. Nowadays however if I am there I am an empty impartial unhappy being, not because of popularity or any childish element similar to that, but because of the game that the British education system has become. 4 teachers have admitted this to me and told me to "play the game". I do not go thither to play anything whose prize is a translucent sheet. Their whole career is a game. It is in other countries different but here it is shattered. Moreover the amount of retarded kids here 99% (real estimate) does not help. I don't know who that loser be but his preaching is not of any substance.

Episcopus · Post by **Episcopus** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:22 pm

Yet he is very right about the prison idea and that no one actually learns anything. It is just a game

Mongoose42 · Post by **Mongoose42** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:49 pm

Schools in America are truly different, just look at the test scores compared to the world.

The difference between the best and worst schools is the opertunity to adavce beyond the prison. In the worst school, there is no chance for advancement and any intelligence is crushed into submission. In the best schools the officials don't force students to advance, but the option to advance is present. In my school there is no Latin course, but through personal action a student can secure such a course on an individual basis. However, the nerds choose to focus on society amoung the nerds and freaks and on areas outside of school instead of using the resources available to them. It is true that a person that excels at intellectual arenas will often avoid common social activities out of lack of interest. But it is also true that such a disdain for the public school system has arisen that gifted students won't make use of even the best school systems. The other reason that nerds (and many young Americans) are annoying and ingnored is they ignore the vital social skill known as silence.

Emma_85 · Post by **Emma_85** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 12:49 pm

If that is really what school is like in America... but it's not normal that intelligent people avoid social contact. In the article it say that being intelligent makes you unpopular at school, but I think that's rubbish. It's difficult for me to even imagine the scenario this guy is talking about... categorising students into popularity groups and everyone just worrying about how popular they and everyone else is... a world so far removed from my daily reality that I just don't get it.
Of course there are people here that are popular and others that are unpopular, but that doesn't seem to have much to do with intelligence here, and it's also hard to say exactly who is most popular, or who is more popular than others. There are no groups of unpopular and popular people, people who are good at school and popular are friends with people who are unpopular and not good at school, drug dealers and friends with christians, who won't even touch a drop of alcohol... american school sounds like hell... wow, and I thought my school was hell...

Emma_85 · Post by **Emma_85** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 1:13 pm

Ahh... there is one thing I've just thought of... we have 'Abitur Charakteristika' here, which is where everyone gets to say something about each other and which is later published. You can see that some people have made themselves quite unpopular when reading through those. I haven't seen my own one yet, but my best friend says it's one of the only ones so far with out an insult in it... that means Vanessa hasn't been able to write something it yet then

. The other one with out any insults in it is the Characteristic of Sabine, who is very intelligent and has the best marks in my year. But the most unpopular people aren't the ones with good grades, there's a good mix of people with good and bad and normal grades in there. They are in fact the ones, who talk behind other people's backs, really annoy people by thinking they are sexy and people who'd be better off if they just shut up.
I'm among the ones with very high grades, but that doesn't stop me drinking my self unconscious (I wish it did, though, sometimes), dancing to loud music or being friends with the 'cool' people and drug dealers.