
Nerds and Jocks - mariorz
http://nat.org/blog/2009/07/nerds-and-jocks/
======
mannicken
Preaching to choir. Hacker News is like the nerdiest of nerds.

Seriously, I came from Ukraine when I was 12 and being an out-of-shape
immigrant and a nerd made my life in American school a living hell.

The problem I remember having the most was isolation. It's interesting because
people did make fun of me in Ukraine all the time, but we made fun of everyone
and were pretty much all friends, we conversed a lot, even when we were
fighting.

In U.S. it's just different, people ignore you. Spending 8 hours in a place
where no one talks to you except for teacher (and several accidental buddies)
is pretty miserable. I often thought it'd be easier if I was bullied, at least
someone would fucking notice me. Took me a around 4-5 years before I became a
misantrophist and just started hating everyone by default and that's sort of
how I managed living here.

~~~
zimbabwe
_Hacker News is like the nerdiest of nerds._

Dungeons and Dragons players, Star Trek geeks, anime fans, weapons geeks,
LARPers, fantasy enthusiasts. Wanting to make money instantly boots you a step
or two above the absolute dregs.

~~~
jcapote
I think you've mistaken nerds for dweebs.

~~~
zimbabwe
Please let's not argue terminology. Article opening:

 _Growing up without any noticeable athletic skills, the nerd-jock duality was
a pretty important part of my childhood. Nerds were the kids who carried
calculators, wore glasses, dressed poorly, read books for fun, liked to be
right in class, and had few friends. Jocks were athletic, well dressed, and
popular, but probably stupid as well. Every person in my class could have
listed, by name, the “nerds” and the “jocks” among our classmates, and if we’d
transferred to a different school, we could have identified them on sight. It
was, for me, and I suspect for many other kids like me, the primary sorting
system for my peers_

He's talking "cool kid" versus "uncool kid." End of discussion.

------
lsb
Let's keep things in perspective. America is 10 million square kilometers, 4
million square miles, so there are lots of communities that value smarts.

My freshman year college roommate was on his HS football team, captain of the
math team, and knew the difference between synecdoche and metonymy.

That said, it's appalling how freely people joke that they're bad at
arithmetic, when they wouldn't joke so freely that they're bad at, say, being
able to read.

~~~
seertaak
I agree; probably the article is excessively polemicized. I do think the
author has a point, but he oversimplifies in making it a black and white, us
vs germany thing.

I think the biggest difference is that it seems that in US schools, due to the
high risks teachers face from litigation and the various incentive structures,
the situation has degenerated to an "inmates running the asylum" scenario. The
teachers, simply put, lack the ability to impose some minimum level of order
and discipline, and the worst are allowed to run amok to the detriment of all
of those remaining in the class. The focus in education in the last twenty
years has always been "not leaving someone behind", and of course that sounds
at worst anodyne if not downright saintly. Sadly, "not leaving someone behind"
is in practical terms often paid for by the good students not being able to
pay attention during class or being harrassed by the bad kids.

I think it is probably along this dimension where there is the greatest
disparity between the US and Europe. In Europe, at least to my mind, there
seems to be more deference to authority, in particular to the teacher. Just as
a silly example: in the US, there was a recent supreme court case where some
kid had a banner that said "Bong Hits For Jesus" at a school event. The kid
was ordered to remove the banner and IIRC was suspended or the like; nothing
huge. So he took the school all the way to the supreme court! Aside from the
absurd legal waste here, and despite the fact that he lost his appeal, what
strikes me is the sense of entitlement. I don't think it would even cross a
French or German high school student's mind to try to pull a stunt like that.

On the other hand, US universities are the envy of the world --- and the
concentration of US universities in the FT top universities ranking is
evidence of that -- and there is no shortage of nerd glorification at these
institutions. Also one need look no further than Silicon Valley to conclude
that the situation for the US is far from lost.

Finally, I would add that, in respect of high school education, it does seem
that in more than a few places Europe is regressing in performance, and for
much the same reason as the US and indeed many other countries: we've relaxed
the system, made it easier for students, in particular the bad and disruptive
ones, with predictable results. Not that I'm advocating a return to harsh
punishment, sadistic teachers, militant drills, etc., but I think we need to
think carefully about the overall incentives for students and teachers and ask
if, in the current constellation, society is best served.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
A few random comments ...

Sports are something that require initial talent followed by hard work and
dedication to reach the point where you can earn a sensible living. However,
some sports can be spectacles. People can watch and appreciate the skill and
excitement. Getting large numbers of people watching can generate money, which
can support the teams and players, and so talent/work/skill gets converted
into money.

Engineering, math, science, etc., are something that require initial talent
followed by hard work and dedication to reach the point where you can earn a
sensible living. Turning them into a spectacle seems unlikely. Hence they will
never generate mass appeal, or money from popularisation. People will never
watch a scientist at work and appreciate the skill, and so will never, by that
route, aspire to be a scientist (mathematician, engineer, hacker, physicist,
etc).

All people know of science, and math in particular, is that it's hard, and
they can't see the point. With sports they can see the potential for
adulation, and enormous sums of money. Hence the "youth of today" aspire to be
sports stars. Or celebrities.

Where are the celebrity geeks?

I have, and on occasion wear with pride, a "Nerd Pride" badge given to me by
Gerald Jay Sussman. Maybe we should all be proud to say we're
geeks/nerds/hackers/engineers and wear such labels with confidence.

For reference, Ron Graham worked his way through graduate school by performing
in a circus with a trampoline troupe. Bela Bollobas represented Oxford
University at modern pentathlon, and Cambridge University at fencing. Paul
erdos was astonishingly good at table tennis, and these are not isolated
examples. Many distinguished scientists and mathematicians are extremely good
at sports.

------
GeneralMaximus
Question: does the nerd vs. jock divide _seriously_ exist?

I live in India, and back here being a nerd means you're a sort of minor
celebrity. Doing well in school? You're the talk of the neighborhood. Doing
well in school _and_ captain of the school Cricket/Football/Foo team? You're a
minor god. Doing all this and _not_ aspiring to be an engineer? O NOES THE
WORLD IZ ENDING!!1! U _HAZ_ TO B ENGINEER!!1!

Of course, being a hacker does not count for much. People understand a perfect
marksheet. Nobody understands elegant Python. One of the reasons I'm "good at
computers, but needs to work harder on academics".

~~~
jibiki
> does the nerd vs. jock divide seriously exist?

Well, most of us, when answering that question, end up generalizing from one
example. Either: "at my school, everyone was either a nerd or a jock;
therefore, at all American schools, everyone is either a nerd or a jock." Or:
"at my school, there was no divide between nerds and jocks; therefore, at all
American schools, there is no divide between nerds and jocks."

In reality, who knows.

------
paulgb
John Hodgman talked about the jock/nerd thing recently at the White House
Correspondent's dinner. Most of the video is off-topic, but the conclusion has
a similar theme to this post.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY>

------
llimllib
What a load of bull. This comment is slander against the article because
there's no substance there to even refute. Just nonsensical social and
economic claims.

You should be better than to vote up any article which has "nerds" in the
title, YC.

------
iamelgringo
Nerds. Represent.

That's one of the best things about being in Silicon Valley. Nerds have won
the battle, and we rule here. It's actually a good thing to be a nerd here.
"Coolness" tends to be based on what new technologies you're playing with and
what you're building.

When I lived in Chicago, it was clear that the jocks ruled. Walking down Rush
and Division (Sports Bar Mecca) on a Friday or Saturday night immediately gave
me flashbacks of ninth grade. That was the year that I got 65 wedgies at
boarding school.

~~~
alexgartrell
I might have a unique insight here, as a CS Major/Software Engineering Minor,
but if there's a personality difference between the average high school
athlete and the C-level executives that actually run this town, I haven't seen
or heard about it yet.

The "jock personality" is doing very well here.

The good news: jocks don't actually hate or even dislike nerds. Teammates of
mine played World of Warcraft, loved gaming, and participated in numerous nerd
pursuits. Throughout my football career I was deeply interested in Computer
Science.

Nerds just need to figure out that the jock personality is actually useful,
and figure out how to use it.

~~~
DTrejo
>Nerds just need to figure out that the jock personality is actually useful,
and figure out how to use it.

I think that some people with tons of booksmarts don't see the value of
streetsmarts. It is almost ironic, as one would think that all those
booksmarts would lead to such a realization.

~~~
zackattack
My streetsmarts are mainly the result of a deduction that the cultivation of
such smarts is efficient and rational. Happy to go into this further, over
email (zackster=gmail).

------
mlLK
This observation has finally stopped making me wonder why the Super Bowl is
such an important event here in America. I'm not a foreigner either, I just
have never understood (let alone bothered to understand) what motivates your
average sports fan to tune into ESPN on day-to-day basis as if it were news. .
.

I think given the condition one can not adopt or subscribe to this _cultural
profile_ of sports then one will inevitably pursue alternative cultural
networks (enter the nerd) HN is just one of my many cultural outlets I tune
into on a daily basis, thus I consider it part of my cultural profile.

This is why being a nerd, for me at least, is so appealing since _you_ (the
nerd) not only subscribe to more than one cultural network as a viewer
(reader) or fan, but you can participate in your culture's network as a player
by simply knowing a language, picking a project, using the project, knowing
the project, checking out the project's source, and committing your changes
accordingly.

~~~
wallflower
As explained by one of my always-been-popular friends, sports in America is
more about getting the guys over and hanging out. Yes, women watch sports but
for many guys who aren't hackers - watching sports and having beers may be the
male gender equivalent of shopping for women. Socially-accepted ways to bond.

------
edw519
"This is what happens when you don’t stigmatize engineers: you get a country
full of engineers, self-identifying as engineers, growing up dreaming of being
engineers."

Er, no, this is what happens when the rest of the world won't allow you to
have an army because of what you did when you had one.

Your engineers have nowhere else to go but into the private sector where they
are much more visible.

In the U.S., many of the best and brightest end up in the military or
government service. We don't know what many of them do. I guess that's the
price we're still paying for winning World War II.

~~~
TriinT
_"In the U.S., many of the best and brightest end up in the military or
government service."_

Would you please care to provide examples?

If you said that the best and the brightest are funded by military and
government, I'd agree. After all, that's what DARPA and NSF are for. But I
have never met one bright person who enjoyed working for the U.S. military or
government. Not one. They all quit their jobs after a while, and came back to
academia, or the private sector.

~~~
erlanger
I'm sure there are plenty of intelligent, power-hungry people working for our
government in either a martial or administrative capacity. Dick Cheney is an
example of such a person.

~~~
TriinT
Your certainty that there are intelligent people working for the U.S.
government stems from 1st hand experience, or does it stem from wishful
thinking?

I thought Cheney was no longer in the government. And if he's so smart, why
didn't he anticipate the Iraq quagmire? Maybe he desired one?

~~~
DTrejo
>And if he's so smart, why didn't he anticipate the Iraq quagmire? Maybe he
desired one?

He desired and planned one.

~~~
TriinT
That makes sense. A quagmire would provide the U.S. Military an excuse to stay
in Iraq for years and control the Middle East's oil fields.

With NATO in Afghanistan and closer ties with the former Soviet republics in
Eurasia, the U.S. could deny China land access to energy resources. The icing
on the cake would be a major war against Iran. That would allow the U.S. to
effectively control the world's energy resources.

~~~
DTrejo
Cheney and Bush have strong ties to many of the corporations making money in
Iraq as a result of the conflict.

------
caffeine
This hilarious German saying from Judith (in the article's comments) deserved
to be reposted here:

 _“Karohemd und Samenstau - der Mann studiert Maschinenbau.” “Checkered shirt
and lack of sex - the man is studying engineering.”_

(The German rhymes nicely - say this in your best Bruno accent).

------
tokenadult
Paul Graham's article about the phenomenon:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>

