> and the decades-long prevalence of "lol nerds suck" attitudes to those who even THINK of getting said education. There was a HN post semi-recently comparing

> and the decades-long prevalence of "lol nerds suck" attitudes to those who even THINK of getting said education. There was a HN post semi-recently comparing American mathematics textbooks to soviet mathematics textbooks. Basically the Russian school textbook was/is equivalent to the American university textbook. There were other comments in the thread about education quality, school systems, etc, but the novel takeaway for me was that there are some countries where anti-intellectual stigma doesn't exist at all. It was quite a moment to realise that a lot of your experiences growing up and going through the education system (as one kind of said nerd) are the result of a mass-cultural and quasi-political _choice_ of attitudes that aren't actually universal.