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> "There remains the possibility that a toxic culture in high school has prevented some students from realizing that they are interested in computers" I take s
by gedy 6y ago
> "There remains the possibility that a toxic culture in high school has prevented some students from realizing that they are interested in computers"
I take some issue if the characterization is "the nerds" are the toxic ones here. It's been a while, but the high school culture was overall toxic if you were not attractive and popular, and computer geek types were frequently targets for their interests. Young women were as bad as the males in the shunning.
- radford-neal 6y agoI didn't mean to imply that the "nerds", or any of the students, were "toxic". It's the culture. Probably starting with the whole concept of segregating teenagers from the rest of society.
- gedy 6y agoThanks, agreed
- burntoutfire 6y agoInterestingly, there was almost no bullying in my high school in Poland in the nineties. I think school bullying may be a product of Anglo-Saxxon culture, which is very individualistic, success oriented (i.e. if you're a "loser" you're barely a human being) and also kind of heartless. Currently, as Poland converges to the standard of global culture emanating from the US, there are reports of some cases of bullying, but still I don't think it's the everyday reality of each school.
- jcranmer 6y ago> I think school bullying may be a product of Anglo-Saxxon culture, which is very individualistic, success oriented (i.e. if you're a "loser" you're barely a human being) and also kind of heartless. That is rather refuted by the rather notorious bullying in Japan, which is about as far away from individualistic culture as you can get.
- orthoxerox 6y agoThere was plenty of bullying in my middle school in Russia in the nineties. Hell, there's a 1983 Soviet movie about bullying. Any kid that was weird and had no "redeeming" qualities (strength or wealth) was likely to be bullied. Don't tell me your class was one big happy family and that you didn't have that one kid that no one cared about.
- burntoutfire 6y agoYep, we had one guy like that, that was kind of weird and thus was unpopular and made fun of by a couple of guys. It was far from the scale of "industrial bullying" that I imagine the US/UK schools are - with regular beatings, putting heads into the toilet etc.