Nowadays geek and nerd are in every language it seems, and they even become cool (I think so, but I'm too old now to be sure). But I've been at school in Polan

Nowadays geek and nerd are in every language it seems, and they even become cool (I think so, but I'm too old now to be sure). But I've been at school in Poland in 1990, before most English influences started, and there were insults for people, not because they are smart, but because they focus too much on good grades. It was cool to be smart, it was uncool to show the effort and to care too much. Basically you didn't wanted to be a kujon (literally - a hammerer = someone who mindlessly hammers in every lesson to memory to get best grades). We also had bookworm (mól książkowy) and "inteligencik" (mostly political label given by communists and their supporters to intellectual workers who weren't on board with the whole communist thing). Outside of politics it was mildly negative label, and wasn't used too much. Also, there are a few new ones associated with political issues - "wykształciuchy" and "łże-elity" is a degrading way to call people who graduated some university and think they are better than you but actually know nothing. It's a word borrowed from political marketing of the current government, which includes anti-intellectualism (because most experts disagree with them on 99% of their policies, and their target demographics is less educated compared to other parties). TL; DR: I don't think anti-intellectualism is inherently American, it's a common theme in populism. American schools are just weird (we haven't had words for bully, cheerleader, jock either).