Two from Slashdot.
Here’s one about the software developer as a movie icon: invariably, developers are portrayed as social misfits who can write ultracomplex systems on the fly and like to break into computers. This movie image attracts to the industry people who are social misfits, who believe they can write ultracomplex systems on the fly, and who are interested in breaking into computer systems. Unfortunately, companies want to hire people who work well in teams and are good at communicating, since the bulk of development is done in teams, with business rules and constraints defining projects. The media images leads both to unhappy employees and to people who would enjoy working in software development not to go into the field.
This other article by Paul Graham argues that nerds are unpopular because they value intelligence more than popularity, so purse intellectual achievements rather than social ones. Nerds don’t realize that to be popular, one has to work at it — spend considerable effort at clothing, go to parties. There may be a self-selection process, also, as smart kids will tend to do intellectual things, since it’s easier for them.
Unpopularity is made more unbearable by the persecution that goes with it in high school. Persecution of nerds is also part of the mechanism of popularity, sort of an exclusion of the other brings the popular kids closer together.
Unpopularity and social persecution are mitigated in the real world — post-college — because the real world is more diverse, and the real world has real consequences and real work (high school doesn’t have anything “real”), so it’s important to arrive at the right answers.
The article veers into examing schools as social phenomena, where a population hierarchy is created, and the further consequences for this hierarchy. It notes that other countries don’t have the same problems (though he leaves out Japanese schools, which has a bullying problem, though probably not one based on nerdiness).
Most of this makes me feel lucky to have gone to Stuyvesant, where the vast majority of students are nerds and would have been corralled at their own table in the lunch room at other schools. But Stuyvesant isn’t immune to tribalism; tribalism is merely defined in other ways, such as belonging to Sing or math team, etc. We were also somewhat convinced that what we were studying in school was “real” in some way (though disillusion would come later), and that our work had consequences (though most of these consequences were related to college admissions, they were still consequences that lay beyond high school), so the lack of “reality” imposing tribalism on high school life doesn’t quite hold in the converse.
I’m tempted to invoked the Hofstadter observation about anti-intellectualism pervading American life in general. Intelligence isn’t prized much outside of high school, either, though in a more technologically orientated society, it may be more so, compared to Hofstadter’s mid-century industrial world. This general anti-intellectualism is probably a factor in nerd persecution, though it isn’t mentioned.
Anyway, with regards to bullying, I feel that all kids should learn judo. Not only do you get to bounce around, and not only is ukemi useful in life, but sometimes physical deterrence is the only thing that works.