Nerds, High School, and Socialization
Apparently when you search "facts about nerds" on Google we come up 2nd. The first site returned is fascinating article by Paul Graham on "Why Nerds are Unpopular". It brought up many great points that spoke to my own popularity issues in high school and also to many reasons as to why I homeschool. While I am quoting many pieces, I recommend you read the article in its entirety.
One of his great points is that nerds don't want to be popular enough to be popular.
He also speaks as to how real life compares to high school.
So once again all this just points out the obvious, if high school isn't real life why is it so important to make your kids learn how to fit in? I feel it harms the kids more than anything, so I homeschool to combat it all and raise functioning adults.
One of his great points is that nerds don't want to be popular enough to be popular.
But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.
At the time I never tried to separate my wants and weigh them against one another. If I had, I would have seen that being smart was more important. If someone had offered me the chance to be the most popular kid in school, but only at the price of being of average intelligence (humor me here), I wouldn't have taken it.
...
The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They're like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.
He also speaks as to how real life compares to high school.
Why is the real world more hospitable to nerds? It might seem that the answer is simply that it's populated by adults, who are too mature to pick on one another. But I don't think this is true. Adults in prison certainly pick on one another. And so, apparently, do society wives; in some parts of Manhattan, life for women sounds like a continuation of high school, with all the same petty intrigues.
I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.
When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage. Bill Gates will of course come to mind. Though notoriously lacking in social skills, he gets the right answers, at least as measured in revenue.
So once again all this just points out the obvious, if high school isn't real life why is it so important to make your kids learn how to fit in? I feel it harms the kids more than anything, so I homeschool to combat it all and raise functioning adults.
Labels: Homeschoooling
posted by NerdMom at
2:25 PM
4 Comments:
Oh, I just LOVED being a Nerd in high school! Okay, so THEN I didn't love it, but NOW I am so grateful that I was protected from many of the "popular kid" activities, you know, smart things like drinking and smoking and sleeping with boyfriends.
There was no temptation for me to sleep with my boyfriend, as There Never Was One. Yep, No One wants to date the nerd! Love it! :)
By
Ma, at 4:12 PM
Wow, this hit such a chord with me it almost makes me want to cry. It's always amazing when someone else says so perfectly what you wish you could express. I remember my 4th -8th grade years being taken up with trying to be popular and just not "getting it". I had a love-hate relationship with school because i was in a gifted program that was challenging and interesting, but socially I hadn't a clue. I remember always standing on the outside of tight circles of chattering girls at the playground trying to find my way into the circle. High school was better; I finally figured out to just be friends with the people I enjoyed instead of trying to be "in"; and college and adulthood have been like . . . well, I've always talked about finally getting out of my "box". I actually had a huge circle of friends who liked the things I liked and we had interesting discussions and did neat stuff together (like medieval reenactments and poetry readings and watching foreign films) -- I even had dates, yep that's right boys *actually* liked me, thought I was attractive, asked me out ... smart, artsy, interesting, delightfully geeky guys. I even MARRIED one, and have smart, artsy, interesting, delightfully geeky children...
And i agree with the first commenter, that NOW, I appreciate the way my nerdiness protected me from certain things when I was young.
By
Anonymous, at 10:36 AM
Interesting article, thanks for sharing!
The one thing I would have to disagree with the author is how he found being smart in elementary school easier than high school. For
me, it was the opposite. In elementary school, the classes were all mixed-ability so my braininess really stood out. In high school, the classes were tracked by ability & being smart was seen as a positive rather than a negative. The "in" crowd were not the dumb jocks but the kids who were both athletic and also fairly bright. The nerds were neither popular nor unpopular.
By
Crimson Wife, at 1:02 PM
The most important thing that high school offers for most nerds is the first chance to meet other nerds.
That's because nerds are still a small enough portion of the population that on any given block, or grammar school, or art class, or soccer field, you don't meet any other than perhaps one.
I am not pro socialization for the sake of socialization. But recognizing that Graham's point that the bigger your available population gets, the more chance that you meet nerds still applies in high school, which is likely 2k kids instead of 200 or 20. So maybe there are 5 nerds, or 20.
Now, does that mean you can't homeschool? Of course not, but what are you doing to make sure that your child is able to meet actual peers that have similar interests? This doesn't mean they have to be "popular" but it does mean finding enough outlets that they can meet more than one or two other nerds. making sure to find a classroom full of nerds, or as close as you can possibly get to one, makes a huge difference.
There's another point though, that I think is really important based on what Graham said: he wanted to be SMART. That's right, most nerds want to be smart. But successful nerds, like successful everyone elses, learn how to WORK HARD. And you don't need to work hard in most grammar or high schools if you're smart, and you might not need to work hard in homeschooling either. And for nearly everyone, the most important trait needed to move past simply being smart, and resting on that, to learning HOW to work hard, is to realize that you aren't the smartest person you know.
Finding smarter and more talented people than you is really really important to learning that hard work and discipline matter.
If you don't find that in high school, or homeschool, you need to find it somewhere. I didn't find it until college, and by then it was too late to learn the skills of working hard. Homeschoolers need it even more--they need to be sure to learn that talent is really nothing. Nothing better than seeing others more talented than you to send that message home.
By
Anonymous, at 7:43 PM
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