The Needs and Geeks

There is something very wrong with the system of values in a society that has only unkind terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious.

We all know what a nerd is: someone who wears thick glasses and ugly clothes; someone who knows all the answers to the chemistry or math homework but can never get a date on a Saturday night. And a geek, according to “Webster’s New World Dictionary”, is a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live chickens. It is a revealing fact about our language and our culture that someone dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge is compared to such a freak.

Even at a prestigious educational institution like Harvard, anti-intellectualism is widespread: Many students are ashamed to admit, even to their friends, how much they study. Although most students try to keep up their grades, there is but a small group of undergraduates for whom pursuing knowledge is the most important thing during their years at Harvard. Nerds are looked down upon while athletes are made heroes of.

The same thing happens in U.S. elementary and high schools. Children who prefer to read books rather than play football, prefer to build model airplanes rather than idle away this time at parties with their classmates, become social outcasts. Because of their intelligence and refusal to conform to society’s anti-intellectual values, many are deprived of a chance to learn adequate social skills and acquire good communication tools.

Enough is enough.

Nerds and geeks must stop being ashamed of what they are. Those who don’t study hard must stop teasing those who do, the bright kids with thick glasses. The anti-intellectual values that have spread throughout American society must be fought.

There are very few countries in the world where anti-intellectualism runs as high in popular culture as it does in the U.S. In most industrialized nations, not least of all our economic rivals in East Asia , a kid who studies hard is praised and held up as an example to other students.