no. you mean anyone who doesn't go into highschool willing to submit themselves to bullies has a hard time. you said it yourself: to avoid a beating, join a sports team and work on your car. act the way the bullies like and no one gets hurt.
That's Just silly. I graduated 12th in my class of over 350, played saxophone in the marching band and jazz band, never played sports, was overweight, and was never once beat up. It just takes some social skills. The majority of my friends were also "nerds" to some extent, but we traveled in a relatively wide social circle. I was on relatively good terms with everyone in my grade, mostly because I learned how to talk to people. Just because computers, or D&D, or anything else interests you, doesn't mean it will interest everyone. There are certain conversations you can have with just about anyone: music, homework, whatever common ground you can find. I find it hard to believe that the jocks at everyone's HS were so completely "alien" as to have absolutely nothing in common with any of you. Things like this really go to prove that social skills are simply nto stressed nearly enough in our everyday interaction. Things that can't be learned by reading a book or doing examples on a blackboard are often shoved out of the way in favor of some boring lesson to improve scores on one standardized test or another.
I go to University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and I can honestly say that I haven't taken a single test for any technical/math class that was just regurgitating information. In fact, a lot of people that used to be in my program (computer engineering) have since transfered out because the theory was too dificult. Now High School was a completely different story... everything before college really was just memorization, which is kind of sad. I don't want people to go to school so they learn how to memorize, i want them to learn how to THINK. Unfortunately, I've only run across a handful of teachers that can actually teach those skills. Well, time to get off my soapbox and end my rant, but my original point is still valid, there are places out there that don't teach by rote memorization, but rather by theory.
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That's Just silly. I graduated 12th in my class of over 350, played saxophone in the marching band and jazz band, never played sports, was overweight, and was never once beat up. It just takes some social skills. The majority of my friends were also "nerds" to some extent, but we traveled in a relatively wide social circle. I was on relatively good terms with everyone in my grade, mostly because I learned how to talk to people. Just because computers, or D&D, or anything else interests you, doesn't mean it will interest everyone. There are certain conversations you can have with just about anyone: music, homework, whatever common ground you can find. I find it hard to believe that the jocks at everyone's HS were so completely "alien" as to have absolutely nothing in common with any of you. Things like this really go to prove that social skills are simply nto stressed nearly enough in our everyday interaction. Things that can't be learned by reading a book or doing examples on a blackboard are often shoved out of the way in favor of some boring lesson to improve scores on one standardized test or another.
I go to University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and I can honestly say that I haven't taken a single test for any technical/math class that was just regurgitating information. In fact, a lot of people that used to be in my program (computer engineering) have since transfered out because the theory was too dificult. Now High School was a completely different story... everything before college really was just memorization, which is kind of sad. I don't want people to go to school so they learn how to memorize, i want them to learn how to THINK. Unfortunately, I've only run across a handful of teachers that can actually teach those skills. Well, time to get off my soapbox and end my rant, but my original point is still valid, there are places out there that don't teach by rote memorization, but rather by theory.