32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The uniquely American prejudice, January 30, 2008
This review is from: Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them (Hardcover)
Prejudice is a nasty word - no educated person would tolerate bias based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or dozens of other individual differentiations. It's still OK to make fun of nerds, though. (Q: Do you know how to tell when a nerd likes you? A: He looks at your feet when he talks to you.) Anderegg digs into that prejudice with this book. He finds that its roots run surprisingly deep in American culture, and that its branches and leaves cast real shadows on America's future.
Remember Ichabod Crane and the legend of Sleepy Hollow? Ichabod, the town schoolmaster, dresses badly and looks funny. Brom, his nemesis, is popular, handsome, strong, and uneducated. In the end, Ichabod loses the girl, Brom gets her, Brom runs Ichabod out of town, and at least some of the townsfolk decide as a result that book learning would only harm their children. Fast forward almost two hundred years to the "Math is Hard" Barbie doll, stopping at presidential elections with educated losers, from Andrew Jackson to Al Gore. In most other popular cultures, the smart guy is also the athletic, happy, romantic, handsome, and well-liked one. In the US, the intellectual guy in the typical movie is none of those - and "transcends" his role only if he abandons it.
As a clinical child pyschologist, Anderegg explores some of the reasons why children might pick on those who do well academically. Whatever the reasons, children in grade school use "nerd" as an epithet that has real power to hurt, whether any one calling or called that has a strong idea of what it means. By seventh grade or so, the kids' herding instinct is also a hurting instinct. Despite the demonstrated irrationality of being "popular," kids will do anything to avoid being unpopular - and being a nerd is the easiest and perhaps most fixable way to be unpopular. If a kid is determined to avoid academic success, you can bet they'll succeed in avoiding it. By high school, the non-nerds have already given up literally years of exploration and education in math and physical sciences. Only the rarest among high school students can overcome that and go on to college and a career in technology.
And people wonder why more colleges graduate more PE majors than EEs. Well-meaning economic incentives come years too late to unravel the prejudices laid down earlier. If the math nerd is the one who never gets laid (regardless of whether anyone else does), would a $100 reward for acing algebra attract many high schoolers? Do the math.
Anderegg offers a few postive suggestions for parents of potential outcasts. Very often, even doting parents don't realize the power of kids' peer pressure, and a few innocuous aids to fitting in will go a long way. He also claims back Asperger's as a strictly defined medical term - as something present only if it debilitates the individual, not as a casual excuse or insult for someone whose focus isn't where the speaker's is. Without the shrillness of a nerd pride activist, Anderegg shows clearly why nerd prejudice has such far-reaching implications.
-- wiredweird, who calls himself a nerd
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is not Revenge of the Nerds., February 8, 2008
This review is from: Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them (Hardcover)
Nerds is a thoughtful and insightful look into the reasons for an accepted discrimination present in American society. It approaches its topic with humor and an expert's eye.
Any parent or teacher (I have taught sophomores for 14 years now) should definitely read this book. I found it enlightening and revealing.
You will never look at Ichabod Crane the same again...
Highly recommended.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the time to read, February 6, 2008
This review is from: Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them (Hardcover)
The book offers a thorough look at a curiously ignored problem: why the nerd stereotype persists, and the damage it is causing. The author does a good job exploring such topics as what defines a nerd (though his parsing of differences between nerd and geek is a bit tedious and superfluous), how this label originated, how it impacts us as a society, and what to do about it.
He does try to utilize what little research evidence is out there on the subject, but the book is admittedly full of a lot of personal opinion and conjecture. But given the sparse and maddingly vague nature of the scientific data concerning this issue, one can't fault him too much, and he does repeatedly try to present all sides and remind readers of the dangers of coming to dogmatic conclusions about sociological and pschological phenomenon (though he rightly argues that the official diagnostic criteria of the Mental Health profession ought to considered the authority when addressing what some consider the 'abnormalcy' of nerds).
It is a good book about a real problem. There is so much that is good and beneficial in the life of the mind and the experiences offered to kids who are allowed to explore their interests without being poked fun at for it. His comments on Scouting and how the idea that it's a nerdy thing deserve a big hooray, to give an example.
A great read for parents and teachers alike, especially those trying to understand why their normally bright student is suddenly doing worse academically. It could very well be his/her fear of being labelled a nerd, according to the author.
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