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What I (personally) find very interesting in American schools is the "unpopular"=="picked-on" relation. I understand pg's argument that you have to work at bei
by visitor4rmindia 18y ago
What I (personally) find very interesting in American schools is the "unpopular"=="picked-on" relation.
I understand pg's argument that you have to work at being popular. In my (Indian) school, I was a typical nerd - I was poor, often wore uniforms from my previous years, I loved to read, and couldn't bother to spend the time socializing. There were a few others like me and a few widely popular, athletic, rich kids.
But we never got picked on for "being nerds"! Never! If anything, we got respect for being good at our work. It didn't make us popular but we had good friends (hell I had my share of girls in high school) and overall an enjoyable experience.
Sure there were cases of bullying, but they were one-off. It was not nerd==target and even the bullying was handled pretty soon, either by us (as a group) or the teachers.
I really would like to know where this animosity towards nerds comes from. I think that's the interesting (and painful) part of American culture that needs probing. It's definitely not universal. Any ideas?
- BrandonM 18y agoI think it's a popular cliché in the media, mainly. I never saw it, personally, but beyond 4th grade my class size was less than 100, so my experience isn't exactly representative. In my school, the only ones who really got picked on were those with disabilities (unfortunately, but it was mostly in "good fun", like getting them to say funny stuff, etc., not ever anything violent). I'm not trying to over-generalize my experience, but I think that in this day and age, nerds are not picked on nearly as much as you might be led to believe by popular media. Perhaps 20 or even 10 years ago that was true, and now those individuals are the same ones who are writing the same old nerd clichés into modern-day settings.