7 ms·

Re: Why Nerds are Unpopular

66 points by wumi 18y ago

mattmaroon 18y ago
"The example of private schools suggests that the best plan would be to go in the other direction, away from government control." 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. The other option is to abolish publicly funded schooling altogether.
- swombat 18y ago
  Privately run and privately funded schools seem to do the job, but only for people who can afford them. Perhaps the solution is not to abolish public schooling altogether, but to work on actually improving it. Perhaps improving the quality of teachers would do the job better.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    It's not obvious to me that improving teacher quality is possible. Is there really a large enough pool of people out there who would be good teachers, but choose not to teach? I know it's a popular talking point by teachers unions angling for more money, but I don't think it's really a solution. Improving the process also matters, and we even know how to do it (Direct Instruction). It is effective even when used by low quality teachers. Unfortunately, it's also dead in the water since teachers unions don't like it. http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm
    - swombat 18y ago
      Well, as an example of how you might go about doing that, I remember reading an article about a study that found that bad teachers don't get better with time, but they tend to cling on anyway because they get significantly more money each year. One of the suggestions from that article was that to improve teaching quality, it might be worth offering a flat (higher than the current 1st-year and lower than the current 10th-year) salary to encourage people to try teaching for a couple of years after uni (since the salary would then be decent right away). This would also discourage people from clinging on to the job unless they really like it. This is certainly not a solution that teachers' unions would advocate, but I suspect it could produce some positive effects, assuming the study I mentioned was correct, and assuming part of the problem is indeed the fact that many people who could be great teachers don't bother because they pay is very bad at the beginning and they can go and be bankers instead. Of course I'm not an expert on this, so my theories may be wide off the mark, but I don't accept the idea that the pool of existing teachers can't be improved. I suspect that one of the reasons why private schools are indeed better than public schools is precisely that they can afford better teachers. As for teachers' unions... I have little respect for a professional organisation that works against its own professional aim. I'm sure they can be taken care of in some way or another.
      - yummyfajitas 18y ago
        I'm not sure that altering salaries alone will do much of anything. Now there is an incentive for young people to teach, and it might save money, but there is no incentive for good teachers to teach. My main objection to the idea of "hire better teachers" is that I don't think the people who would "go and be bankers" would necessarily be good teachers. It's a completely different skill set. I'm a good programmer and researcher, but I'm an adequate teacher at best. There isn't much benefit in attracting me to teaching. Also, teacher pay is actually quite good when include benefits, tenure, multiply by (12 months per year/9 months of work) and add in the value of 3 months vacation.
      - wallflower 18y ago
        In the words of a dot-com-bubble-bursting-era letter from a teacher in response to a dot-commer saying he'd just get a job teaching (as a fall-back): "Good luck!". Teaching is hard and it's keeping qualified teachers teaching that is a problem. I remember reading an article in Time magazine "Why Teachers Hate Parents" (2005). I was fairly shocked back then to read why teachers hate their job: Parents. The article was helpfully blog-copied; it is a good read, even though it probably uses more extreme examples of "helicopter parents" "Ask teachers about the best part of their job, and most will say how much they love working with kids. Ask them about the most demanding part, and they will say dealing with parents. In fact, a new study finds that of all the challenges they face, new teachers rank handling parents at the top. According to preliminary results from the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, made available exclusively to TIME, parent management was a bigger struggle than finding enough funding or maintaining discipline or enduring the toils of testing. It's one reason, say the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, that 40% to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Even master teachers who love their work, says Harvard education professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, call this "the most treacherous part of their jobs." "At the most disturbing extreme are the parents who like to talk about values but routinely undermine them. "You get savvier children who know how to get out of things," says a second-grade teacher in Murfreesboro, Tenn. "Their parents actually teach them to lie to dodge their responsibilities." Didn't get your homework done? That's O.K. Mom will take the fall. Late for class? Blame it on Dad." http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=8834&page=2 http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=8834&#38...
    - mynameishere 18y ago
      Is there really a large enough pool of people out there who would be good teachers Keep in mind that the labor pool is controlled by a cartel. Remove the certificate (and other) requirements and you have a very large pool. Allow people with specialties to teach part time, and you could get some very good people.
- bokonist 18y ago
  "Charter schools (privately run, publicly funded) seem to be even worse than normal public schools." Really? Anecdotally, the one's I know of seem to be better. There are some like Kipp or Amistad Academy that have worked miracles in the inner city. From articles I've read that look at test scores at all charter schools, they do about the same as their public counterparts.
narag 18y ago
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. For concerned fathers, I would recommend finding some side activity, preferably sports, that help socializing. Yes, you 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.
pavelludiq 18y ago
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).
rokhayakebe 18y ago
Do you want to start doing dumb stuff? You do not have to do dumb stuff to become popular. Also being an athlete or better looking than the average person does not make you dumb. That is simply a stereotype. As for the rest of the article I agree with it. 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. 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 . If you are from a society that values education more than entertainment, then smart kids are the popular ones.
- jraines 18y ago
  Nowhere did he say that being an athlete or good looking meant you were dumb. He does say it automatically makes you popular, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Better make sure you're a good athlete in football if you're south of the Mason-Dixon line.
  - rokhayakebe 18y ago
    they don't waste their time on the dumb stuff you need to do to be popular. This implies that people who are popular spend their time doing dumb stuff. ANd who are those popular ones? If you're good looking, a natural athlete, or the sibling of a popular kid, you'll automatically be popular . So if people who are popular do dumb things then they are dumb , since smart people do not waste time doing dumb things.
    - astrec 18y ago
      Plenty of smart people do dumb things. Every single day.
    - imgabe 18y ago
      But most popular kids don't get that kind of free ride. They have to work at being popular. ^ The sentence immediately after the one you quoted. Being good looking, a natural athlete, or a sibling of a popular kid is a way to be popular WITHOUT doing anything, that is, without doing all the dumb stuff that all the other people have to do to be popular. Hence he's not implying that good-looking or athletic people are automatically doing dumb stuff, but rather, they get out of doing it based on their looks or athletic ability. The ugly, nonathletic people are presumably the ones who would have to do a lot of dumb things to work their way to being popular.
peakok 18y ago
“One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.” - Stendhal Maybe this is one part of the explaination, since nerds are more likely to enjoy solitary activities. 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 ? 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). 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.
- huherto 18y ago
  Great insight. It is not being popular what matters, it is to have character.
- chris_l 18y ago
  About ACD: well, that was as a student, not in high school which is what the essay is about, but ok. Could you be more specific about what you mean with "character"?
  - peakok 18y ago
    To (over-)simplify : some boldness.
- eugenejen 18y ago
  Interesting. I found the same thing when I needed to get into military service. Though it is not as pleasant as what Doyle experienced. I think after exposure to real world and learned to team with others, a boy becomes a man by learning from mistakes and learning to take responsibility in his life. I guess that becomes attractive to other people.
ratsbane 18y ago
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.) 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. 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. 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]
- dominik 18y ago
  If schools didn't do sports, perhaps they could focus more on academics. Unfortunately, as you astutely point out, football and other sports bring in "big crowds paying lots of money" -- something that academic competitions can't bring in. There isn't a National Computer Science League that gets televised each Sunday. American football exists as an American high school institution precisely because mainstream American culture heavily advertises and hypes it. I'd love to see schools make sports subservient to academics, but I fear it'll never happen purely for financial reasons.
  - cconstantine 18y ago
    I was a nerd in high school, and I was an athlete. Granted it was swimming in the Midwest which means practically nobody cared, but it was a sport. I would count my days on the swim team as an invaluable learning experience. I found that I could think more clearly, could sleep better at night, and was more awake during the day during the swim season. In other words, while I was in shape and health my mental abilities and general well-being improved. I would not have really internalized this lesson unless I experienced it first hand. Sports have a place in school. It helped me learn some social skills, the value of physical activity, and that there can be a life outside of a computer. I was a pretty good swimmer (won more than I lost), but I was by far the worst on the team. I didn't gain any popularity by swimming. This falls in line with what PG said; you have to be a good athlete to gain popularity from sports. This isn't to say that I like how important sports are in school, but they have a place. So yeah, reduce the importance of sports but I wouldn't be in favor of eliminating them.
edw519 18y ago
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost I wish I had read this in 9th grade. Should be mandatory reading (and re-reading) for all high school freshmen. You'd still be unpopular, but you'd care a lot less.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  Poems tend to make sense only once you already partly know the wisdom within them.
  - palish 18y ago
    Could you clarify this? (Perhaps with a poem.) :)
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      words weave a winding way through thickets through traveled thought, without wisdom wearily won we trip, we tumble, we flop
      - immad 18y ago
        amazing. You made my morning
        DaniFong 18y ago
        Glad to hear it. ;-)
      - Retric 18y ago
        Sounds Syllables Semantic Synapsis Missing Meaning Men Meander Wanting Wonder Where Wonder Wanes Musical Mirrors Mussing Meaningless Means
- mynameishere 18y ago
  The poem was written as a cynical comment about Frost's friend Edward Thomas who was unpleasantly bemused by it. Thomas was the first to not get the joke. It is popularly interpreted literally, as inspirational and individualist, but critics universally interpret it as ironic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken Repeatedly Thomas would choose a route which might enable him to show his American friend a rare plant or a special vista; but it often happened that before the end of such a walk Thomas would regret the choice he had made and would sigh over what he might have shown Frost if they had taken a "better" direction. More than once, on such occasions, the New Englander had teased his Welsh-English friend for those wasted regrets. . . . Frost found something quaintly romantic in sighing over what might have been. Such a course of action was a road never taken by Frost, a road he had been taught to avoid. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/road.htm http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/road.htm
fauigerzigerk 18y ago
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. 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. 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.
bootload 18y ago
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 ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html
- ericb 18y ago
  This pic reminds me of Malcolm in the Middle. Paul seems, like Malcolm, to be the nerd who could pass in other circles if he wanted to. Wonder how the reunion was? http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_2002_2965033 http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_2002_296...
quoderat 18y ago
I enjoyed slapping around nerds in high school. It's good for the ol' self-esteem, and that's what's important, right?
- PieSquared 18y ago
  I sincerely hope you're joking.
  - quoderat 18y ago
    I was joking. I wanted to see how downmodded I could get. It worked! Oops.
- gills 18y ago
  Since many (most?) of this community are nerdy people and cannot share your experience, would you please enlighten us with your motivation for such actions? I'm interested in hearing from the other side of the aisle. Edit: Unless you are joking.
  - huherto 18y ago
    I guess that beating nerds made him look cooler and kept the other bullies away. (Except that it doesn't work in HN)
  - chris_l 18y ago
    Well, it probably built up his ego.
dominik 18y ago
How can you tell if you're popular? 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.
arvid 18y ago
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.
- biohacker42 18y ago
  I find myself disagreeing as well, for much the same reasons. However, I do think that America is unique in that the rest of the world values brains, but the US seems to instinctively distrust it. My own totally unscientific pop psychology theory is as follows: I lived in Germany for a few years. It is easy to sense a lot of national guilt. Dark history, I'll try to avoid Godwin. So modern day Germans are not as care free flag happy as other nations. Now consider how patriotic Americans are. Now think about American history, there have been some great high points. But what about all the low points, just of the top of my head: - Pox blankets. Read up on the story of Ishi the last Yahi. - Slavery. - Vietnam. - Etc. So can you be both deep and happy go lucky patriotic in America? I am not saying no American should be proud of their country. In fact, I think America has done a lot good. But American pride can be complicated if you know too much. So maybe that's why there's this almost reflexive anti-intellectualism?
  - mdakin 18y ago
    America is not an entity; it is a process. Processes can go awry but they are malleable and fixable. Do you resent your program because it crashes? No, you fix the bug and move on. It's the same thing with America. American culture values action and results more than intellect. But it's hardly an anti-intellectual country. Such focus on action and results implies it's anti-navel-gazing/anti-analysis-paralysis which are things that often go hand-in-hand with intellectualism. But intellectualism which gets results always has respect in America.
wensing 18y ago
Why don't parents home-school their kids all the way through college? 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. 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. 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). So could high school if it were done right. 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]).
- cstejerean 18y ago
  Most employers say they require a degree in the job description. It's a lie. I've yet to see any employer turn down a qualified candidate because he/she didn't have a college degree. And while parents probably aren't capable of homeschooling their kids through college, unless said kids end up at one of the few top colleges for their field in the country, they might be better off learning the material on their own and using the extra time and money to socialize with other interesting individuals.
silverlake 18y ago
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. 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.
- wallflower 18y ago
  At my high school, the first Friday the 13th is the unofficial Freshman Day where they pick on the Freshman. As a new Freshman, I was even more scrawny and way less confident back then but when I walked past the cafeteria, I overheard a bunch of jocks/seniors hanging out (behind me) say "C'mon. He's got to be a freshman" - I walked past with my head up confidently and didn't look back. I didn't get picked on that day - other people I knew who were of my build were thrown in trash cans, etc. High school sucks. But then you graduate. High school is a geographic coincidence.
- eugenejen 18y ago
  I think this is not pretending. But you just tell yourself "being the cool". It is the same thing like actors project characters into themselves by "being the characters". And the better the actor is, the difficult we can see pretension. Or you can see this from existentialism like Martin Heidegger's idea about a carpenter himself can't distinguish himself from his tools. He just can perform carpentry effortlessly.
david927 18y ago
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. 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.
- pg 18y ago
  To be truly smart, you need to develop both sides, both skill sets. There is something in what you say, but I think this goes too far. Think about some of the people you're claiming aren't truly smart.
- AndyKelley 18y ago
  Be careful, it's easy to get lost wandering around in your right brain too long
martythemaniak 18y ago
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. 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.
Alex3917 18y ago
"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)." ~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. 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.
- saturday 18y ago
  As a counterpoint, in southern California all the champion high school football teams come from the Catholic schools and small school districts outside of LA. The LA school district itself is giant bureaucratic behemoth. Despite having large numbers of players getting scholarhips, the actual football teams from LA public schools aren't that good. ( http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080629_schools.htm http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080629_schools.htm )
hello_moto 18y ago
"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." 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". 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. PS: I'm from CS background.
- gaius 18y ago
  The Ministry of Education way has its own problems, namely that these kinds of organizations aren't really interested in education per se but in social engineering. PS I bet most of the science faculty at your school had written loads of journal articles etc. How many of the business faculty were self-made millionaires?
  - hello_moto 18y ago
    - Yes, we do have journal articles (not sure if it's a lot or not) - Does it matter if one is a self-made or paid-by as long as you're a millionaires? - Does money matter much for you? Once you get 10 millions, does 100 millions matter a lot?
    - gaius 18y ago
      My point is that your science professors are very likely to be real scientists, but your business professors are unlikely to be real businessmen. Ask yourself why that might be.
wallflower 18y ago
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. http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
daniel-cussen 18y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_defeat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_defeat
ivankirigin 18y ago
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. I have a 15 month old: http://flickr.com/photos/abbyalexandra/2617520542/in/photostream/ http://flickr.com/photos/abbyalexandra/2617520542/in/photost... 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. I have more education than the majority of science and math teachers (except coursework in education itself - though I tutored for 10 years). 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. Do people avoid this because of the time it would take? Do they think the socialization process of schooling is too important to miss?
- bokonist 18y ago
  I've wondered the same thing. I suppose it's difficult for people to take off from work. But if you had a group of 10 parents/20 kids, you could have each parent take one day off every two weeks to be the teacher for the day. It might work quite well. You'd miss out on the clubs, sports, field trips, etc. that are probably the best part of public school. But perhaps those could be made for with organizations outside of schools.
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    Club sports are easy to find. AYSO. Field trips are what my family does when we have time off. There would certainly be a large time requirement.
  - lief79 18y ago
    I've been wondering about the same thing. How hard would it be to create this group? Practically speaking, how do you sort through the parents? Background checks? Live video feeds? I have some time to worry about this, but I'd be very interested in the possibilities.
- rodrigo 18y ago
eduardoflores 18y ago
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.
saturday 18y ago
"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." The real difference is that most European and Asian countries use tracking ( http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080622_paradox.htm http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080622_paradox.htm ). 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. 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. 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" ( http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Created-Hamilton-High/dp/067496201X http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Created-Hamilton-High/dp/0674... ) to see the chaos that ensued as a result this "student rights" decision.
- william42 18y ago
  That must be why after the 9th grade my public school experience was so much better. In the 9th grade my parents thought I would need time to adjust and so didn't put me in the honors/AP classes. In later years I took honors/AP classes and did much better.
chris_l 18y ago
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.
xlnt 18y ago
There are other problems with schools, such as the model of teacher who already knows the answer, and student who must learn the material without changing any of it (no attempts to improve the ideas). 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. If the role of a teacher was seen as helping the student in ways the student prefers, as if the student were a customer, it would drastically improve the classroom aspect of schools. There are also a wide variety of smaller problems. For example, many lessons focus on solutions to old problems 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.
asdf333 18y ago
Its not the worst in the US. 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. Its considered a huge issue that can drive kids to commit suicide.

66 points by wumi 18y ago

"The example of private schools suggests that the best plan would be to go in the other direction, away from government control." 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. The other option is to abolish publicly funded schooling altogether.

swombat 18y ago
Privately run and privately funded schools seem to do the job, but only for people who can afford them. Perhaps the solution is not to abolish public schooling altogether, but to work on actually improving it. Perhaps improving the quality of teachers would do the job better.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  It's not obvious to me that improving teacher quality is possible. Is there really a large enough pool of people out there who would be good teachers, but choose not to teach? I know it's a popular talking point by teachers unions angling for more money, but I don't think it's really a solution. Improving the process also matters, and we even know how to do it (Direct Instruction). It is effective even when used by low quality teachers. Unfortunately, it's also dead in the water since teachers unions don't like it. http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm
  - swombat 18y ago
    Well, as an example of how you might go about doing that, I remember reading an article about a study that found that bad teachers don't get better with time, but they tend to cling on anyway because they get significantly more money each year. One of the suggestions from that article was that to improve teaching quality, it might be worth offering a flat (higher than the current 1st-year and lower than the current 10th-year) salary to encourage people to try teaching for a couple of years after uni (since the salary would then be decent right away). This would also discourage people from clinging on to the job unless they really like it. This is certainly not a solution that teachers' unions would advocate, but I suspect it could produce some positive effects, assuming the study I mentioned was correct, and assuming part of the problem is indeed the fact that many people who could be great teachers don't bother because they pay is very bad at the beginning and they can go and be bankers instead. Of course I'm not an expert on this, so my theories may be wide off the mark, but I don't accept the idea that the pool of existing teachers can't be improved. I suspect that one of the reasons why private schools are indeed better than public schools is precisely that they can afford better teachers. As for teachers' unions... I have little respect for a professional organisation that works against its own professional aim. I'm sure they can be taken care of in some way or another.
    - yummyfajitas 18y ago
      I'm not sure that altering salaries alone will do much of anything. Now there is an incentive for young people to teach, and it might save money, but there is no incentive for good teachers to teach. My main objection to the idea of "hire better teachers" is that I don't think the people who would "go and be bankers" would necessarily be good teachers. It's a completely different skill set. I'm a good programmer and researcher, but I'm an adequate teacher at best. There isn't much benefit in attracting me to teaching. Also, teacher pay is actually quite good when include benefits, tenure, multiply by (12 months per year/9 months of work) and add in the value of 3 months vacation.
    - wallflower 18y ago
      In the words of a dot-com-bubble-bursting-era letter from a teacher in response to a dot-commer saying he'd just get a job teaching (as a fall-back): "Good luck!". Teaching is hard and it's keeping qualified teachers teaching that is a problem. I remember reading an article in Time magazine "Why Teachers Hate Parents" (2005). I was fairly shocked back then to read why teachers hate their job: Parents. The article was helpfully blog-copied; it is a good read, even though it probably uses more extreme examples of "helicopter parents" "Ask teachers about the best part of their job, and most will say how much they love working with kids. Ask them about the most demanding part, and they will say dealing with parents. In fact, a new study finds that of all the challenges they face, new teachers rank handling parents at the top. According to preliminary results from the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, made available exclusively to TIME, parent management was a bigger struggle than finding enough funding or maintaining discipline or enduring the toils of testing. It's one reason, say the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, that 40% to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Even master teachers who love their work, says Harvard education professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, call this "the most treacherous part of their jobs." "At the most disturbing extreme are the parents who like to talk about values but routinely undermine them. "You get savvier children who know how to get out of things," says a second-grade teacher in Murfreesboro, Tenn. "Their parents actually teach them to lie to dodge their responsibilities." Didn't get your homework done? That's O.K. Mom will take the fall. Late for class? Blame it on Dad." http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=8834&page=2 http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=8834&#38...
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    Is there really a large enough pool of people out there who would be good teachers Keep in mind that the labor pool is controlled by a cartel. Remove the certificate (and other) requirements and you have a very large pool. Allow people with specialties to teach part time, and you could get some very good people.
bokonist 18y ago
"Charter schools (privately run, publicly funded) seem to be even worse than normal public schools." Really? Anecdotally, the one's I know of seem to be better. There are some like Kipp or Amistad Academy that have worked miracles in the inner city. From articles I've read that look at test scores at all charter schools, they do about the same as their public counterparts.

narag 18y ago

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. For concerned fathers, I would recommend finding some side activity, preferably sports, that help socializing. Yes, you 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.

pavelludiq 18y ago

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).

rokhayakebe 18y ago

Do you want to start doing dumb stuff? You do not have to do dumb stuff to become popular. Also being an athlete or better looking than the average person does not make you dumb. That is simply a stereotype. As for the rest of the article I agree with it. 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. 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 . If you are from a society that values education more than entertainment, then smart kids are the popular ones.

jraines 18y ago
Nowhere did he say that being an athlete or good looking meant you were dumb. He does say it automatically makes you popular, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Better make sure you're a good athlete in football if you're south of the Mason-Dixon line.
- rokhayakebe 18y ago
  they don't waste their time on the dumb stuff you need to do to be popular. This implies that people who are popular spend their time doing dumb stuff. ANd who are those popular ones? If you're good looking, a natural athlete, or the sibling of a popular kid, you'll automatically be popular . So if people who are popular do dumb things then they are dumb , since smart people do not waste time doing dumb things.
  - astrec 18y ago
    Plenty of smart people do dumb things. Every single day.
  - imgabe 18y ago
    But most popular kids don't get that kind of free ride. They have to work at being popular. ^ The sentence immediately after the one you quoted. Being good looking, a natural athlete, or a sibling of a popular kid is a way to be popular WITHOUT doing anything, that is, without doing all the dumb stuff that all the other people have to do to be popular. Hence he's not implying that good-looking or athletic people are automatically doing dumb stuff, but rather, they get out of doing it based on their looks or athletic ability. The ugly, nonathletic people are presumably the ones who would have to do a lot of dumb things to work their way to being popular.

peakok 18y ago

“One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.” - Stendhal Maybe this is one part of the explaination, since nerds are more likely to enjoy solitary activities. 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 ? 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). 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.

huherto 18y ago
Great insight. It is not being popular what matters, it is to have character.
chris_l 18y ago
About ACD: well, that was as a student, not in high school which is what the essay is about, but ok. Could you be more specific about what you mean with "character"?
- peakok 18y ago
  To (over-)simplify : some boldness.
eugenejen 18y ago
Interesting. I found the same thing when I needed to get into military service. Though it is not as pleasant as what Doyle experienced. I think after exposure to real world and learned to team with others, a boy becomes a man by learning from mistakes and learning to take responsibility in his life. I guess that becomes attractive to other people.

ratsbane 18y ago

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.) 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. 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. 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]

dominik 18y ago
If schools didn't do sports, perhaps they could focus more on academics. Unfortunately, as you astutely point out, football and other sports bring in "big crowds paying lots of money" -- something that academic competitions can't bring in. There isn't a National Computer Science League that gets televised each Sunday. American football exists as an American high school institution precisely because mainstream American culture heavily advertises and hypes it. I'd love to see schools make sports subservient to academics, but I fear it'll never happen purely for financial reasons.
- cconstantine 18y ago
  I was a nerd in high school, and I was an athlete. Granted it was swimming in the Midwest which means practically nobody cared, but it was a sport. I would count my days on the swim team as an invaluable learning experience. I found that I could think more clearly, could sleep better at night, and was more awake during the day during the swim season. In other words, while I was in shape and health my mental abilities and general well-being improved. I would not have really internalized this lesson unless I experienced it first hand. Sports have a place in school. It helped me learn some social skills, the value of physical activity, and that there can be a life outside of a computer. I was a pretty good swimmer (won more than I lost), but I was by far the worst on the team. I didn't gain any popularity by swimming. This falls in line with what PG said; you have to be a good athlete to gain popularity from sports. This isn't to say that I like how important sports are in school, but they have a place. So yeah, reduce the importance of sports but I wouldn't be in favor of eliminating them.

edw519 18y ago

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost I wish I had read this in 9th grade. Should be mandatory reading (and re-reading) for all high school freshmen. You'd still be unpopular, but you'd care a lot less.

DaniFong 18y ago
Poems tend to make sense only once you already partly know the wisdom within them.
- palish 18y ago
  Could you clarify this? (Perhaps with a poem.) :)
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    words weave a winding way through thickets through traveled thought, without wisdom wearily won we trip, we tumble, we flop
    - immad 18y ago
      amazing. You made my morning
      - DaniFong 18y ago
        Glad to hear it. ;-)
    - Retric 18y ago
      Sounds Syllables Semantic Synapsis Missing Meaning Men Meander Wanting Wonder Where Wonder Wanes Musical Mirrors Mussing Meaningless Means
mynameishere 18y ago
The poem was written as a cynical comment about Frost's friend Edward Thomas who was unpleasantly bemused by it. Thomas was the first to not get the joke. It is popularly interpreted literally, as inspirational and individualist, but critics universally interpret it as ironic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken Repeatedly Thomas would choose a route which might enable him to show his American friend a rare plant or a special vista; but it often happened that before the end of such a walk Thomas would regret the choice he had made and would sigh over what he might have shown Frost if they had taken a "better" direction. More than once, on such occasions, the New Englander had teased his Welsh-English friend for those wasted regrets. . . . Frost found something quaintly romantic in sighing over what might have been. Such a course of action was a road never taken by Frost, a road he had been taught to avoid. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/road.htm http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/road.htm

fauigerzigerk 18y ago

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. 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. 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.

bootload 18y ago

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 ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html

ericb 18y ago
This pic reminds me of Malcolm in the Middle. Paul seems, like Malcolm, to be the nerd who could pass in other circles if he wanted to. Wonder how the reunion was? http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_2002_2965033 http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_2002_296...

quoderat 18y ago

I enjoyed slapping around nerds in high school. It's good for the ol' self-esteem, and that's what's important, right?

PieSquared 18y ago
I sincerely hope you're joking.
- quoderat 18y ago
  I was joking. I wanted to see how downmodded I could get. It worked! Oops.
gills 18y ago
Since many (most?) of this community are nerdy people and cannot share your experience, would you please enlighten us with your motivation for such actions? I'm interested in hearing from the other side of the aisle. Edit: Unless you are joking.
- huherto 18y ago
  I guess that beating nerds made him look cooler and kept the other bullies away. (Except that it doesn't work in HN)
- chris_l 18y ago
  Well, it probably built up his ego.

dominik 18y ago

How can you tell if you're popular? 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.

arvid 18y ago

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.

biohacker42 18y ago
I find myself disagreeing as well, for much the same reasons. However, I do think that America is unique in that the rest of the world values brains, but the US seems to instinctively distrust it. My own totally unscientific pop psychology theory is as follows: I lived in Germany for a few years. It is easy to sense a lot of national guilt. Dark history, I'll try to avoid Godwin. So modern day Germans are not as care free flag happy as other nations. Now consider how patriotic Americans are. Now think about American history, there have been some great high points. But what about all the low points, just of the top of my head: - Pox blankets. Read up on the story of Ishi the last Yahi. - Slavery. - Vietnam. - Etc. So can you be both deep and happy go lucky patriotic in America? I am not saying no American should be proud of their country. In fact, I think America has done a lot good. But American pride can be complicated if you know too much. So maybe that's why there's this almost reflexive anti-intellectualism?
- mdakin 18y ago
  America is not an entity; it is a process. Processes can go awry but they are malleable and fixable. Do you resent your program because it crashes? No, you fix the bug and move on. It's the same thing with America. American culture values action and results more than intellect. But it's hardly an anti-intellectual country. Such focus on action and results implies it's anti-navel-gazing/anti-analysis-paralysis which are things that often go hand-in-hand with intellectualism. But intellectualism which gets results always has respect in America.

wensing 18y ago

Why don't parents home-school their kids all the way through college? 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. 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. 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). So could high school if it were done right. 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]).

cstejerean 18y ago
Most employers say they require a degree in the job description. It's a lie. I've yet to see any employer turn down a qualified candidate because he/she didn't have a college degree. And while parents probably aren't capable of homeschooling their kids through college, unless said kids end up at one of the few top colleges for their field in the country, they might be better off learning the material on their own and using the extra time and money to socialize with other interesting individuals.

silverlake 18y ago

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. 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.

wallflower 18y ago
At my high school, the first Friday the 13th is the unofficial Freshman Day where they pick on the Freshman. As a new Freshman, I was even more scrawny and way less confident back then but when I walked past the cafeteria, I overheard a bunch of jocks/seniors hanging out (behind me) say "C'mon. He's got to be a freshman" - I walked past with my head up confidently and didn't look back. I didn't get picked on that day - other people I knew who were of my build were thrown in trash cans, etc. High school sucks. But then you graduate. High school is a geographic coincidence.
eugenejen 18y ago
I think this is not pretending. But you just tell yourself "being the cool". It is the same thing like actors project characters into themselves by "being the characters". And the better the actor is, the difficult we can see pretension. Or you can see this from existentialism like Martin Heidegger's idea about a carpenter himself can't distinguish himself from his tools. He just can perform carpentry effortlessly.

david927 18y ago

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. 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.

pg 18y ago
To be truly smart, you need to develop both sides, both skill sets. There is something in what you say, but I think this goes too far. Think about some of the people you're claiming aren't truly smart.
AndyKelley 18y ago
Be careful, it's easy to get lost wandering around in your right brain too long

martythemaniak 18y ago

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. 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.

Alex3917 18y ago

"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)." ~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. 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.

saturday 18y ago
As a counterpoint, in southern California all the champion high school football teams come from the Catholic schools and small school districts outside of LA. The LA school district itself is giant bureaucratic behemoth. Despite having large numbers of players getting scholarhips, the actual football teams from LA public schools aren't that good. ( http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080629_schools.htm http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080629_schools.htm )

hello_moto 18y ago

"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." 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". 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. PS: I'm from CS background.

gaius 18y ago
The Ministry of Education way has its own problems, namely that these kinds of organizations aren't really interested in education per se but in social engineering. PS I bet most of the science faculty at your school had written loads of journal articles etc. How many of the business faculty were self-made millionaires?
- hello_moto 18y ago
  - Yes, we do have journal articles (not sure if it's a lot or not) - Does it matter if one is a self-made or paid-by as long as you're a millionaires? - Does money matter much for you? Once you get 10 millions, does 100 millions matter a lot?
  - gaius 18y ago
    My point is that your science professors are very likely to be real scientists, but your business professors are unlikely to be real businessmen. Ask yourself why that might be.

wallflower 18y ago

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. http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

daniel-cussen 18y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_defeat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_defeat

ivankirigin 18y ago

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. I have a 15 month old: http://flickr.com/photos/abbyalexandra/2617520542/in/photostream/ http://flickr.com/photos/abbyalexandra/2617520542/in/photost... 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. I have more education than the majority of science and math teachers (except coursework in education itself - though I tutored for 10 years). 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. Do people avoid this because of the time it would take? Do they think the socialization process of schooling is too important to miss?

bokonist 18y ago
I've wondered the same thing. I suppose it's difficult for people to take off from work. But if you had a group of 10 parents/20 kids, you could have each parent take one day off every two weeks to be the teacher for the day. It might work quite well. You'd miss out on the clubs, sports, field trips, etc. that are probably the best part of public school. But perhaps those could be made for with organizations outside of schools.
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  Club sports are easy to find. AYSO. Field trips are what my family does when we have time off. There would certainly be a large time requirement.
- lief79 18y ago
  I've been wondering about the same thing. How hard would it be to create this group? Practically speaking, how do you sort through the parents? Background checks? Live video feeds? I have some time to worry about this, but I'd be very interested in the possibilities.
rodrigo 18y ago

eduardoflores 18y ago

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.

saturday 18y ago

"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." The real difference is that most European and Asian countries use tracking ( http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080622_paradox.htm http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080622_paradox.htm ). 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. 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. 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" ( http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Created-Hamilton-High/dp/067496201X http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Created-Hamilton-High/dp/0674... ) to see the chaos that ensued as a result this "student rights" decision.

william42 18y ago
That must be why after the 9th grade my public school experience was so much better. In the 9th grade my parents thought I would need time to adjust and so didn't put me in the honors/AP classes. In later years I took honors/AP classes and did much better.

chris_l 18y ago

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.

xlnt 18y ago

There are other problems with schools, such as the model of teacher who already knows the answer, and student who must learn the material without changing any of it (no attempts to improve the ideas). 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. If the role of a teacher was seen as helping the student in ways the student prefers, as if the student were a customer, it would drastically improve the classroom aspect of schools. There are also a wide variety of smaller problems. For example, many lessons focus on solutions to old problems 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.

asdf333 18y ago

Its not the worst in the US. 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. Its considered a huge issue that can drive kids to commit suicide.