"Is it any coincidence why the most socially-outgoing people, in the history of K-12, are typically *not* the intellectuals? The "nerds" and "geeks" are always kept from ever rising above the "jocks" on the social ladder."
Another consideration; maybe the "nerds" and the "geeks" give science a bad name. I excelled at mathematics and the visual arts from an early age, and loved reading history and philosophy. However, I also wrestled and played hockey, and generally hung out with "jocks". My impression of the kids who were "nerds" and "geeks" where that they were socially awkward people who, rather than trying to improve their speaking, hygiene, or physique, became vindicative and tried to flout their supposed intellectual superiority. Few of these kids actually measured up though; for example, when faced with an AP Calculus course where the "jocks" got better grades, they'd throw out accusations of favoritism rather than considering that maybe those "jocks" realized the limits of their natural talents and made up for it with discipline and study. I briefly associated with a student gaming group in college, and found the same thing; plenty of computer science, chemistry, and other science majors who thought they knew everything yet couldn't change their clothes or wear deoderant, and make vulgar, juvenile, or racist jokes and then wonder why people were put off by them. The end result of this was a small, vicious clique that no one else cared to associate with.
Nerds may not socialize, but good scientists and mathematicians do. If you look through the history of science, most of "the greats" - Newton, Gauss, Lavoisier, Hilbert, Darwin, etc. - were all highly effective communicators who managed to "schmooze" with those outside academia who only had tangential interest in their disciplines. This is because one of the surest signs that you actually know what you're talking about is your ability to explain it to the non-initiated.
Slashdot Mirror
"Is it any coincidence why the most socially-outgoing people, in the history of K-12, are typically *not* the intellectuals? The "nerds" and "geeks" are always kept from ever rising above the "jocks" on the social ladder." Another consideration; maybe the "nerds" and the "geeks" give science a bad name. I excelled at mathematics and the visual arts from an early age, and loved reading history and philosophy. However, I also wrestled and played hockey, and generally hung out with "jocks". My impression of the kids who were "nerds" and "geeks" where that they were socially awkward people who, rather than trying to improve their speaking, hygiene, or physique, became vindicative and tried to flout their supposed intellectual superiority. Few of these kids actually measured up though; for example, when faced with an AP Calculus course where the "jocks" got better grades, they'd throw out accusations of favoritism rather than considering that maybe those "jocks" realized the limits of their natural talents and made up for it with discipline and study. I briefly associated with a student gaming group in college, and found the same thing; plenty of computer science, chemistry, and other science majors who thought they knew everything yet couldn't change their clothes or wear deoderant, and make vulgar, juvenile, or racist jokes and then wonder why people were put off by them. The end result of this was a small, vicious clique that no one else cared to associate with. Nerds may not socialize, but good scientists and mathematicians do. If you look through the history of science, most of "the greats" - Newton, Gauss, Lavoisier, Hilbert, Darwin, etc. - were all highly effective communicators who managed to "schmooze" with those outside academia who only had tangential interest in their disciplines. This is because one of the surest signs that you actually know what you're talking about is your ability to explain it to the non-initiated.