
Re: Why Nerds are Unpopular - wumi
http://www.paulgraham.com/renerds.html
======
peakok
“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.

~~~
pg
_they don't need to seek popularity but only respect. All it takes to earn
respect is some character._

Where I went to high school, the way people were treated was not a function of
character. Think about all the people who've been maltreated at school. Are
you saying it was because they all lacked character?

~~~
peakok
Why are some teachers respected and others just get eaten alive by all their
classrooms ? There is a trick beyond each illusion.

~~~
apu
With no exceptions at my high school, the respected teachers respected their
students. This appears to be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one
-- there were some teachers who respected the students but weren't themselves
respected (for various reasons).

------
ratsbane
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
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
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.

------
wensing
_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
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.

------
bootload
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>

~~~
ericb
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_296...](http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_2002_2965033)

------
arvid
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
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?

~~~
xenoterracide
slavery?! every part of the world has had slavery at some point... (Most of
those countries had revolutions... we had a civil war)

Vietnam? at least we have the guts to go to war. Europe didn't and they got
their asses handed to them, we then bailed them out.

Pox blankets? stupid or asinine (I'm not looking it up. Your probably
referring to us infecting the 'Native Americans') but I'm sure we aren't the
first to do something like that.

Being an actual American... I don't see that we are all that patriotic.

~~~
biohacker42
Good point about slavery.

Vietnam? No Europe first. Europe didn't go to war. The Germans went to war.
Most of the German war machine was on the Eastern front, you didn't bail the
soviets out. And while you helped the Brits a lot, I dare you to say you
bailed them out to their face.

Now on to Vietnam, who or what exactly were you fighting there? International
communism? As someone who was born behind the iron curtain, I HATE commies
more then any American ever will. And yet I would not drop napalm on anyone in
any effort to fight commies. It is not worth it me. Obviously we disagree on
that.

Pox blankets true fact. Massacres, countless. If at some point you do bother
to look deep into that part of US history, you may just never look at your
country the same way again.

Having been around the world and currently living in America, Americans are of
the, if not the, most nationalistic of all the western nations.

Not that is necessarily a bad thing. My point is, you can and should be proud
of America. But it is more complicated if you are fully cognizant of the fine
details of US history.

~~~
menloparkbum
"Americans are of the, if not the, most nationalistic of all the western
nations."

Well, outside of Euro Cup finals week, sure...

~~~
maw
A nice thing about sport is that it's a safe outlet for some of the uglier
aspects of human nature. Usually, anyway. Some people end up taking it way too
far.

------
silverlake
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
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.

------
david927
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
_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.

------
edw519

      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.

~~~
mynameishere
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>

 _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>

~~~
JesseAldridge

       "Though as for that the passing there
        Had worn them really about the same,"
    

Those lines always bugged me. They seem to run contrary to the rest of the
poem.

I guess this explains it.

~~~
RyanKendall
i agree, i recently had this thought about that stanza that might give some
insight.

"and having perhaps the better claim/ because it was grassy and wanted wear"

to me that means that like every person wants to go were many haven't...

with the addition of "though as for that, the passing there/had worn them
really about the same"

i make the conclusion that because ppl want to go were many havent, the paths
have worn the same because as soon as one path appears less worn, people
travel on it. on that basis the two paths have worn the same.

i have no experience with poems and im just writing a paper on this one and
saw this post. hopefully my insight is helpful. take care.!

------
ivankirigin
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/photost...](http://flickr.com/photos/abbyalexandra/2617520542/in/photostream/)

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
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.

~~~
lief79
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.

------
rokhayakebe
_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
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
_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.

~~~
imgabe
_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.

------
fauigerzigerk
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.

------
saturday
"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> ). 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/0674...](http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Created-Hamilton-
High/dp/067496201X) ) to see the chaos that ensued as a result this "student
rights" decision.

~~~
william42
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.

------
pavelludiq
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).

------
Alex3917
"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
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> )

------
dominik
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.

------
wallflower
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>

------
martythemaniak
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.

------
chris_l
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.

------
hello_moto
"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
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
\- 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
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.

------
narag
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.

------
mattmaroon
"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
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
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.mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm>

~~~
swombat
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.

~~~
wallflower
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&...](http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=8834&page=2)

------
daniel-cussen
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_defeat>

------
asdf333
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.

------
eduardoflores
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.

------
xlnt
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.

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

~~~
gills
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
I guess that beating nerds made him look cooler and kept the other bullies
away. (Except that it doesn't work in HN)

