Nerds and North American Anti-Intellectualism

[tealin]

I just heard a really fascinating discussion on the radio about Americans' mistrust of book-smarts, how this is apparent in the culture as a whole and affecting academic performance vs. the rest of the world. It was gratifying to hear confirmation of some of my own observations about the matter and doubly exciting to hear further conclusions and comparisons to other cultures from an actual anthropologist. Luckily the show is available as a podcast, so I don't have to rely on my shoddy memory! Right-click and download! I highly recommend listening to it; it's not too long (only the first segment of the show) and is really, really fascinating.

Unfortunately it adds another issue to the ever-growing list of Things Which Massive Injections of Cash Will Not Fix But Can Only Be Solved by a Massive Societal Overhaul, so it's unlikely ever to change.

Comments

[sander123.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. The first time I heard about nerds was from one of my classmates who made an exchange year in the states. I couldn't believe him. In our class the most popular boys were fantasy-roleplayers, scouts, loved comics, computers, chess and did in their free-time things like building little bridge-models with matches. :) so typical nerds :).
At the other hand we have a lot of silly biases, too only for other things. You have a hard time here, when you are very good in something and overenthusiastic, theaters, sports whatever (but that's perhaps a typical swiss thing, we have to be modest all the time).
I'm so glad that I'm not a kid any more :D