School is so different from any other environment you'll encounter as an adult that I can't really see how learning "socialization" there is beneficial? Maybe if you plan on doing time in prison? (I'm only half joking) The only time I really experienced a similar environment as an adult was my first job during college at a retail store.
As to your point about former teachers. My mom, who's a former teacher, decided to home school's my much younger sister last year. She's been much happier and more productive since then. She still spends time with other kids her age during archery practice, reading club etc...
However, she actually has time to read books that she likes after school instead of spending 2 hours a night on homework. She was literally spending almost 2 hours a night on homework in elementary school. The amount of stress her teachers put on her to perform on standardized tests was obscene.
"And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school.
Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year."
And...
"Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.
In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric."
A lot of parents get their kids involved in activities which aren't necessarily for the good of the child except to minimise e chances of falling to the bottom of the popularity ladder. A ton of effort and money is spent trying to fit in at school - and as most of us recall - it all simply vanished the minute you walk out the high school gates, in the same way a prisoners society is irrelevant the moment they are released back into the real world.
I'm sorry but I gotta call bullshit on this. I see this opinion so much, on here and throughout pop culture, but I don't think it's true.
From my high school experience, popularity boils down to social awareness, and inversely, social ineptitude. It really has nothing to do with book smarts. It's not a zero sum game. You can be smart and popular. In fact most popular people are smart from my experience.
Most of the popular kids from my high school, 4 years later, are still popular, have really hot girlfriends/boyfriends, and are doing great things with their lives. The vast majority of the unpopular kids from my high school are still pretty weird and aren't doing so hot (although not nearly as weird as they were in high school).
I know it's not a popular thing to say but some people just get dealt a better hand than others.
I'm not sure how much I agree with the essay, but you really need to give it more than 4 years. By 10 years out, most people from my high school had leveled out to a degree--the weird kids were mostly married and starting to have kids, the popular kids were married and starting to have kids. Things like hot girlfriends/boyfriends didn't really matter--they'd all pretty much matured. One other thing I'll point out, the most attractive girl from my graduating class definitely wasn't the most attractive girl when we graduated.
That being said, we had 2 distinct cliques of popular/smart kids, both of these groups were in honors/AP classes. Group A was more popular. Group B less popular (but still more popular than the other various groups), but smarter. These groups started in 8th grade when the school separated the gifted program into 2 groups (I was in Group B btw).
Group A (with very few exceptions) partied through college and then married young. They ended up doing about as well as all the non-popular kids from high school.
Group B partied less, studied harder, married later, and is making much more money than Group A.
I think popularity predicts success to a point, i.e., popularity has diminishing returns. Group A cared too much about the rewards that came with being popular in high school, so they spent too much time maintaining their status. The kids in group B were popular enough to get by, but they worked harder on other things.
I think it's two camps, the socially aware people, and the socially inept people.
The socially inept people basically have some behavioral flaw that they themselves cannot see or understand. Usually it takes until way after high school to figure it out, like being in a dysfunctional household, or autism, or cerebral palsy, or something.
Then there's the normal kids. AKA group A and B in your comment.
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Anyway my conspiracy-theory-of-the-day, and why I posted that comment in the first place, is that homeschooling usually puts them into the socially inept camp.
Reason being, these kids are basically being 100% controlled by their parents. They only have exposure to two sets of ideals and beliefs (their parent's) for their entire upbringing. It'd only work if the parents were perfect and somehow treated their child as a true equal (or if they have like 10+ siblings or something). School mitigates that risk by having another "ground base", out of control of their parents, to turn to.
I think the whole "everything changes" thing happens because you move out of your parents house, not because HS ended.
The central point is that nerds don't become popular because they don't put the time in to be popular. They'd rather spend it on other things.
None of that is different to your comment. In fact you're agreeing by saying that it comes down to social awareness, which is essentially putting in the time to be popular.
> The central point is that nerds don't become popular because they don't put the time in to be popular. They'd rather spend it on other things.
I read the article. I disagree with his argument. Graham even admits his fallacy near the middle of the article, when he admits to desperately wanting to be popular. The "wanting to be smart more" deal is nothing more than pride, I'd say.
> In fact you're agreeing by saying that it comes down to social awareness, which is essentially putting in the time to be popular.
Nope. You don't get more social awareness from something like "putting in the time to be popular". It might work for something like programming but this is nothing like that. You get it from having a healthy, normal-ish mind and from constantly surrounding yourself with people who have social awareness. Some people simply don't have access to that.
Some interesting experimental science stuff, too (Mechanical superconductor-less maglev? Pretty nifty, although it doesn't scale up, and there's video to show that it works)
> Maybe if you plan on doing time in prison? (I'm only half joking)
This is the exact analogy I'm making when someone says that school prepares you socially for "real life". The only part of "real life" school socially prepares you for is prison, with pecking orders based on "popularity", physical traits and meanness of character.
As to your point about former teachers. My mom, who's a former teacher, decided to home school's my much younger sister last year. She's been much happier and more productive since then. She still spends time with other kids her age during archery practice, reading club etc...
However, she actually has time to read books that she likes after school instead of spending 2 hours a night on homework. She was literally spending almost 2 hours a night on homework in elementary school. The amount of stress her teachers put on her to perform on standardized tests was obscene.