Smarts

While blog perusing, I ran across a post that linked to this blogger's post: 


"But the only thing that makes me more bearish is the way that America denigrates intelligence and studying.  It's taken for granted that in America, there is mutual exclusion between being well-liked growing up and having very academic hobbies.  The captain of the chess team is assumed to have trouble getting dates.  If you are in high school and win lots of math competitions, people assume you're below average in admiration by peers.

In China, getting good grades makes you MORE popular.  The valedictorian is usually very popular.  And respected.  It automatically gets you points.  In America, it automatically drags you down in the eyes of your peers.

I think this is the single biggest factor that could lead to America's decline.  Everyone wants to be loved and respected by their peers.  Making that at odds with pursuing intellectual activities is very damaging to maintaining the status as the land of innovation." 

Like the re-poster, these thoughts also make me pause and think, especially since I came across with an overt reflection of this attitude while chatting with a lab mate just earlier this week.  Our conversation somehow turned to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  He had watched a broadcast of the final round, where "an Indian girl" had just spelled the final word and won the Bee.  My colleague described the ensuing scene: as a national network TV interviewer approached the girl with a microphone, she was backing away, almost afraid of the microphone. Clearly, my colleague pointed out, this 11 or 12 year-old girl "had spent hours after school doing nothing but studying for the spelling bee for years" and her behavior was "almost creepy." I countered that most pre-teens are awkward to begin with and that few would be eloquent and charming during a national TV interview, particularly after just winning a national spelling bee!  My colleague implied that had she not engaged in this academic endeavor, she would have be more socially graceful.

This kind of thinking drives me crazy! What if this kid had spend "hours after school" in soccer practice, or gymnastics, or dance - and yet interviewed "awkwardly" on TV? Would we have blamed it on the soccer practice? No!

To be clear, I have been surrounded and am surrounded by lots of highly educated, intellectual people (i.e. medical students!).  Like this spelling bee winner, we probably spent many hours poring over books. I don't feel disrespected by others for taking academics seriously, but certainly, I sense that culturally, our society equates being brain smart of being "uncool."

It's really sad that America does not appreciate intellectuallism and even individuals in very intellectual fields (hello post-post-doc who is a brilliant scientist!) harbor the attitude that pursuing an academic hobby like spelling precludes you from having any social aptitude whatsoever.