“One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.” - Stendhal<p>Maybe this is one part of the explaination, since nerds are more likely to enjoy solitary activities.<p>edit : if you just want your children to avoid the nightmare you have endured yourself, they don't need to seek popularity but only respect. All it takes to earn respect is some character. The interesting part is : how to help them develop this trait ?<p>edit2 : I cannot find it on Wikipedia, but the extended biography of Arthur Conan Doyle might give a hint. If I recall correctly, he interrupted his studies for one year and engaged in a journey on a fishing boat who was hunting whales in Antartic (or was it North Pole ?). While it doesn't sound very romantic, it is known that when he went back from his trip, he wasn't the same man. The former inexistant shy guy (probably a nerd) became famous on the campus because of it's popularity among female students (he was known as dating multiple girls at once).<p>Who knows what happened during his journey, but it was definitly very formative. He didn't do any "dumb stuff" to become popular, and didn't even seek to become popular, but he just returned as a different man.
If the un-nerdly activities in high school had the prominence of sports then perhaps the kids who participated in them would be more popular. Think of the friday night football games - big crowds paying lots of money at the gate, football players in uniforms running out onto the field, cheerleaders - versus math and science competetions - four or five kids pile into someone's dad's Suburban and drive fifty miles to sit in small windowless rooms for a few hours. (At least, that's exactly what happened at my high school.)<p>One way to make nerds more popular is to make more of a big deal of that kind of activity. For those of us who were high school nerds, what about sponsoring math and science competitions for high school students? I'm remembering a conversation I had recently with a friend who teaches CS at the local university. He had organized some sort of programming competition for high school students. Even $500 to be used as prize money would go a long way to enhancing the prestige of something like that and of the kids who participate in it.<p>PG had some good points in his essay and follow-up. The kids he's talking about aren't just some random nobodies - they're US a few years ago.<p>After I graduated my (private) high school spent several million dollars in redoing the football field. They even put down artificial turf. And they stopped preping kids for the CS AP test. [sigh]
<i>Why don't parents home-school their kids all the way through college?</i><p>Two main reasons, from what I can tell: 1) most (if not all) quality employers require a degree; 2) parents feel (and often are) incapable of teaching advanced material.<p>If you're a true student of PG, you're now dying to say 'but what about being around other smart kids'? Answer (limiting our scope to high school for the moment): home schoolers are frequently around other smart kids. Home schooling doesn't mean that children are locked in their houses all day every day. Home schooling doesn't mean learning on an island. It's more like learning in a chain of islands, with frequent trips to the others. And since the parents of home schooled children are (by self-selection) those that tend to care more about their child's intellectual development (and can afford the means), the average home schooler is at least better-read (if not better 'educated') than the average high schooler.<p>Also, when you home school, you can accomplish things about twice as fast, which frees up the rest of your day to get your kids out into the real world (something kids locked up on a high school campus all day every day see much less often). If Johnny prefers, he could read more too (which is often the case).<p><i>So could high school if it were done right.</i><p>I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for public schools in South Florida to get it right. They're among the worst in the nation, and given our means, I feel it would be an irresponsible choice to off-load my daughter to those places. (We cannot afford private school to the tune of $12,000 / year ... although I could argue that home schooling is better than even those places [I went to one]).
I always had a hard time trying to visualise the school being described in the parent article. I had no trouble after viewing a snapshot of the characters ~ <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html</a>
I always disagreed article with this because I did not experience this. My high school years were not painful and were a lot of fun, even though I was labelled a nerd, curve-buster, einstein, etc.... So this is my advice from my experience.
Don't try to be popular. Be friendly. Help others. Volunteer. Get Respect. Get involved in a sport. Get involved in various things with different people and you will have enough friends that being popular won't matter and no one will dare pick on you. I played soccer and later ran x-country and track, I sang, I was a scout, I was in youth fellowship, I was a mathlete and I hacked a pdp-8 in the hour between school and practice. I certainly was not popular but I was friends or at least friendly with most of the school. People knew me and I had their respect.
I was a textbook definition of a nerd: skinny, all A's, glasses, bad clothes, took college classes at night, asian in a very white blue-collar town, did all the nerd stuff (even math camp!). I went to a mediocre high school with few smart kids. Nevertheless, I was popular in high school. In fact, even as a freshmen I was hanging out with the cool senior crowd. There were many factors: I was never intimidated by anyone, I had a sharp wit, I never made others feel dumb, I didn't take any jokes personally. The big thing is body language. If you walk around like Clint Eastwood, people assume you're cool. Even when I moved to a big city, thuggish guys assumed I was one of them.<p>My advice: just pretend that you're cool. First impressions and body language matter a lot. It works for my friend, too. She's a small girl, but big, loud, obnoxious Wall St. traders are intimidated by her when she walks into a meeting. She exudes a self-confidence that makes them shut up and listen. If it works for a skinny nerd and a 5ft girl, it's gotta work for you dweebs, too.
I think Paul is missing something here, and that's soft skills. I, like him, was at the D table, and it was only much later that I realized why. I was much more interested in left-brain activities at the expense of right-brain ones. Yet left-brain skills are not necessarily smarter than right-brain skills, just as being a physicist isn't better than being a film director. The film director was probably popular in high school. The physicist probably not (and probably still isn't). And that's too bad for both. Nerds are unpopular because they're hiding in what they're good at; the same reason a cheerleader might put on makeup.<p>To be truly smart, you need to develop both sides, both skill sets. You should be able to dress well and yet know the Earth's distance from the Sun. The true smart is a round thing.
<p><pre><code> Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost
</code></pre>
I wish I had read this in 9th grade. Should be mandatory reading (and re-reading) for all high school freshmen.<p>You'd still be unpopular, but you'd care a lot less.
I'd like to hear a good discussion about education. I'm certainly concerned about it. I don't bother with debates about public education though, because the answer is so obvious: privatization.<p>I have a 15 month old:
<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/abbyalexandra/2617520542/in/photostream/" rel="nofollow">http://flickr.com/photos/abbyalexandra/2617520542/in/photost...</a><p>I think I can teach him everything he needs to know about math, science and computer science. It would make sense to do this with others, because learning is a collaborative beast.<p>I have more education than the majority of science and math teachers (except coursework in education itself - though I tutored for 10 years).<p>Why don't more adults get together in loose organizations to teach their kids? I'm talking about the technorati here, not the average person who is less capable than the teachers I've had.<p>Do people avoid this because of the time it would take? Do they think the socialization process of schooling is too important to miss?
<i>Do you want to start doing dumb stuff?</i><p>You do not have to do <i>dumb stuff</i> to become popular. Also being an athlete or better looking than the average person does not make you <i>dumb</i>. That is simply a stereotype.<p>As for the rest of the article I agree with it.<p>EDIT: Smart kids are unpopular simply because they spend as much time as any other kid focused on what they love, and what they love IS unpopular.<p>And this related to what their society values. It happens that the western society largely values sports and beauty. This is reflected in models' salaries, as well as athletes' compared to the earnings of a physics' professor .<p>If you are from a society that values education more than entertainment, then smart kids are the popular ones.
I agree with almost everything pg says there. But the assumption that it may be better in countries with centralised school systems run by PhDs is questionable. You have to ask who these PhDs are and what they got their PhD for.<p>In many european countries universities are a kind of extension of public school with all its flaws, only more chaotic. So those PhDs who go on to become civil servants in the ministry of education are people who, in a sense, never left school.<p>Their entire system of reference is shaped by entrenched ideologies, 18th century philosophy and political party loyalties. They are not researchers competent to design a modern education system.
"I'm just guessing here, but I think it may be because American school systems are decentralized. They're controlled by the local school board, which consists of car dealers who were high school football players, instead of some national Ministry of Education run by PhDs."<p>The real difference is that most European and Asian countries use tracking ( <a href="http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080622_paradox.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080622_paradox.htm</a> ). Forcing all students onto the same curriculum makes no one better off. Less apt kids don't learn the skills that would actually be useful to them. The nerds have their courses dumbed down, and earn the hatred of the kids who receive poor grades.<p>Local school boards do not actually have that much control. Have you noticed how schools have nearly the same basic structure everywhere? Education PHD's have an enormous influence because they control the education schools. That influence has been almost entirely pernicious. Plus they have a lot of control over curriculum requirements that come down from the state and federal boards of education. Teachers unions have an enormous amount of power and are also a national organization.<p>One more under-reported factor is the Supreme Court decision in the 1970's that made school discipline much, much harder to enforce. Read "The World We Created at Hamiliton High" ( <a href="http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Created-Hamilton-High/dp/067496201X" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Created-Hamilton-High/dp/0674...</a> ) to see the chaos that ensued as a result this "student rights" decision.
In my old school it was a nightmare. Im my current school its pretty good. My current school is not private, but it has a reputation of an elite school in my town. In Bulgaria after 7-th grade(when you are 14-15) you can choose to stay in your class in 8-th grade, or you can take a test and go to an elite class in your, or in a another school(your score from the test is valid in any school with elite classes) I was in an in my class there are mostly smart kids. And most of them are girls, so i haven't had any problems here, i have actually become somewhat popular because of my rebellious arrogant attitude. In my old class some off the kids had police records at 13, some are still my friends, but most of them i hate and am glad that i haven't met them in years. My new class isn't that effective at teaching, i usually read some python books in geography class(geography is so boring).
"I think nearly everything that's wrong in schools can be explained by the lack of any external force pushing them to be good. They don't compete with one another, except in sports (at which they do become good)."<p>~70% of kids quit sports entirely before entering HS, and the vast majority of HS teams aren't even remotely good. Even on the best teams in the country, the ones that consistently get athletes recruited by top colleges and send guys to the jr. national team, the majority of the guys on the roster will still be mediocre at best.<p>All of the evidence (c.f. Alfie Kohn) seems to suggest that competition would only make education worse. But even if you wanted to reinterpret the data, looking to athletics as a model of success would be a mistake.
How can you tell if you're popular?<p>I have fond memories of high school, but perhaps because I took just one class there while attending college classes and the local math and science center. Still, I "felt" popular at high school: people knew my name, said hi, were nice. Contrasted with my experiences at the math and science center: there folks weren't as friendly and bitter rivalries seemed to run amok.
I was reading the comments on PG's original essay a week ago and was struck by how a lot of the comments show that PG is reaching a wide audience of high schoolers who know nothing about HN but stumbled across his essay and identify with it.<p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html</a>
I've sometimes wondered how I would have turned out if I had gone to a typical American highschool - my HS experience was so different I have trouble relating to this essay, tv shows with high schools etc.<p>My high school was uber-immigrant (I'd estimate about 5-10% of the kids were born in Canada, everyone else being a first-gen immigrant), and groups were divided primarily by grade, then by ethnicity, religion and regionality, then by activity (drama, music, sport, math etc) so it was almost impossible to form cliques, judge cross-group popularity etc. But it wasn't that bad either, it was actually pretty easy to move within groups - got to know people through playing music, through volleyball, hanging out with the other eastern europeans etc.
This high school business is all about ego. The popularity thing is just a layer on top of that. Being popular means joining in with the collective ego building. Being good at something that requires honesty (i.e. math, chess) will just get in the way of this.
"They're controlled by the local school board, which consists of car dealers who were high school football players, instead of some national Ministry of Education run by PhDs."<p>You know what those PhDs look like Paul? They remind people of the "Nerds" that had trouble settling in. They remind people of misfits. They also remind people of the "guy who know it all but can't make a good decision".<p>My Business professor told me once: "The Business school taught students how to make decisions". That is something that separates business students and science students. Science students argue (too much) based on science in which sometime not applicable or whatnot while Business students make a decision.<p>PS: I'm from CS background.
I don't think that the question is about public school. I went to public high school here in Spain and I found it fine. Maybe there are more factors than public vs private.<p>For concerned fathers, I would recommend finding some side activity, preferably sports, that help socializing. Yes, <i>you</i> have to put time and effort. Children responde well if it's not imposed but chosen, parents play with them and it's presented not only as a physical challenge, but also as a mind game. Sports can also be "hacked". Also there's music.
"The example of private schools suggests that the best plan would be to go in the other direction, away from government control."<p>Charter schools (privately run, publicly funded) seem to be even worse than normal public schools. I think I'd sooner have all free schooling be federally controlled than have it all be charter schools.<p>The other option is to abolish publicly funded schooling altogether.
Its not the worst in the US.<p>I'd say the US is pretty good. Generally ppl are left to be who they are. Its very homogeneous societies like Japan and Korea that have the worst problems. The pressure to conform is high and everyone gangs up on victims.<p>Its considered a huge issue that can drive kids to commit suicide.
Unfortunately, most central Ministries of Education tends to be filled with politicians rather than education PhDs (or by PhDs with a mostly politics interest). Who knows if that's better than the average local school boards in the US.
There are other problems with schools, such as the model of <i>teacher</i> who <i>already knows the answer</i>, and <i>student</i> who must learn the material <i>without changing any of it</i> (no attempts to improve the ideas).<p>Traditional knowledge has its place, but so does criticism and reasoned judgment and new ideas, and schools are not designed to facilitate the rationalist, liberal approach.<p>If the role of a teacher was seen as helping the student <i>in ways the student prefers</i>, as if the student were a <i>customer</i>, it would drastically improve the classroom aspect of schools.<p>There are also a wide variety of smaller problems. For example, many lessons focus on <i>solutions to old problems</i> without enough explanation of what the problem was or why it was important to people. For someone who doesn't understand the problem situation a solution attempts to address, that solution is uninteresting.