GroshLink

According to the Jock/Nerd Theory of History, most historical human societies bore a striking resemblance to K-12 education. In primitive tribes, for instance, the best hunters are on top. If the the village brain knows what's good for him, he keeps his mouth shut if the best hunter says something stupid. The rise of civilization gave the nerds a better deal, but as long as almost everyone worked in agriculture, brawn continued to pay well.

Want to understand how some nerds see the world go round?  Check out more at Redistribution: Blocking the Revenge of the Nerds.

This piece crosses my [Tom] purview in the midst of some reflections on how I wasn't plugged into social norms when I entered public high school from a small Christian school.  Over time I learned to better communicate the reality, encouraged by family and Franklin & Marshall College's Gifted Program, in which I inhabited . . . a place in which the value of education, identity, relationships, spiritual exploration, etc, could not be rocked by other concerns.  Since late in my first year of college, I've become guided by the Big Picture perspective of the Biblical Story.  Today I rest in God's provision, not filled with concern as to whether I'll be known or accomplish great things.  Instead I endeavor to faithfully steward the diverse interests and gifts I have been given by God for the blessing of others and the piece of creation to which I've been called to care.  One of my greatest tasks is walking with Ellen and Hayley in their educational journey and by God's grace, passing along to them the lens of the Biblical Story through the Word, prayer, reading together, processing through their day, life together (homework included in the fall, more games in the summer, various IVCF conferences/friends).  Am I a nerd?  Will they become nerds?  Although the nerd/jock story explains some things, my life is built on following Jesus and being a blessing to whom I have contact AND not proving I'm a nerd (by some scoring tool or by reading all the books in Open Library), a jock (by playing ball hard), or something normal in between (aided by my wife's insights and purchases to address The importance of dressing well). 

Want to know more about how some nerds understand themselves? Check out Why Nerds are Unpopular, a piece some CMU grad students discussed a few years ago. Here's part of the introduction, I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way. But it could. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But in a typical American secondary school, being smart is likely to make your life difficult. Why?