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Has anyone else noticed that being intelligent is somehow not 'cool'? At my school, I used to be bullied and picked on because I was smart and answered questions in class and had a posh voice. As soon as I stopped answering questions in class and just did the written work, the teasing stopped.

Why is this, do you think? I personally think being clever is the 'coolest' thing you can be - who wants to be illiterate and struggle with the easiest sums, just because they decided being smart was 'sad'?

Thankfully, I am no longer considered 'sad', so I can speak up in class as much as I want, but when I was 13/14, it really hurt for the teachers to think I was shy or stupid just because I knew I would get railed on after class if I answered any questions.

What do you guys think? Why is 'cool' so much better than clever?

The people who establish what is "cool and uncool" in a school are generally people who spend the majority of their time worrying about what they look like in class, as oppose to what the teacher is saying in class.

Class clowns and goofballs who feel their only reason to be in class is to make people laugh (usually at their own expense) often do not do their homework, nor do they participate regularly in class discussions.

People around them see these clowns and laugh....once everyone is laughing at what they do, then everyone wants to be a little more like that person.

There's never been anything wrong with being intelligent, and any idiot that makes fun of you for being smarter than them is...well...a moron.

I will say that there is a definite difference between those "nerds" that spend every waking hour studying, and those people who are willing to put studying aside for a couple of hours in order to do something like hang out with friends or just enjoy the afternoon in general.

When you get into the "real world" which is not High School or some form of popularity contest....being intelligent is infinitly more important than making a few people in class laugh.

pfff, the only people thinking intelligence is for nerds are most of the time people struggling to pass a simple year in highschool.

I spend my last two years in highschool sleeping cause classes went so slow thanks to those "cool kids" who can't set a verb from a chair sort of speak ... I didn't mind... they failed tests and later on their uni/whatever ... I got a good sleep and finished first without doing anything

for me it was a win/win situation here

Basic intelligence - I believe - is born into the person. This does not say that the intelligent child does not want to be liked and admired.

Often it is the super-intelligent ones that are the class-disruptors as they feel that they are not being stimulated due to the rest being slower then they are and as a result they are bored to tears.

My experience of life has shown me that the most clever of people are usually the most poorly socially-adjusted ones either because they are treated like weirdo's by their peers or because they only have time for filling their thirsty minds and nothing else.

The REALLY lucky ones are the ones that are attractive, intelligent, confident, sociable AND don't need to study all that hard to gain the highest grades.

I think we will find that the classic "nerds" are the ones that are so lacking in self-confidence that they feel the need to bury their heads in books all the time. This is - in the main - a self-protectionist behaviour that actually makes them more of a target for the "cool" types than less of a target.

Often it is more of a curse than a gift to be highly intelligent as any kind of quality that lifts you above the norm is going to make you stand out for examination by the lesser beings.

Then maybe they will accept you if you act the goat in class !

Anybody recognise that description ?

I'm considered one of the "boffins" in my year because of my intelligence by both the boys and girls. At my school its always the 'intelligent groups' of people the 'sporty' people and nearly all of those who are the sporty people are the ones that disrupt classes and cant even read and write properly at the age of 15.

I used to have the mick taken out of me for finishing my work and all that, people would say stuff like "oh you boffin, knew you would finish it" "help me with my work, come on, your a boffin, you can help me out!' and so on...

Then when they found out i was also a very sporty person and helped them out in school teams, sports competitions and actually had an interest in football (which boys ususally find strange for girls which is really sexist) it all stopped, no longer am i considered one of the 'boffins' im just talked to normally and the rest of my friends who are intelligent dont get picked on so much but those who take no interest in sports and always have their noses in books are still bullied. Its strange

Being smart is only uncool to the ones who are dumb themselfs. What can be more uncool than being ignorant.

I have no patience for a good looking people who have no brain at all but think that all is about looking good, i have no patience for them, nor the people who encourage and support that idea!

Agree totally with lil. Smart girl

Noone really noticed it. My class mates try to get good marks. But what you say it awful! Idiots bashing you because you are not as stupid and infantile as they are?

Generally the situtaion that someone is bashed for being smart is just ridiculous.

But in my school was one girl, she wasn't much smarter than the rest of us, but she was acting as if she were in any way better, she also didn't take part in any trip or parties. Only because she was spending all her free time on learning to show of how intelligent she is during next lessons. And to be honest she didn't have many of friends



NOTE: i know i can't spell cry

oh, yeah, clovie, there is one person in my class who act idiot. madzia hates me, cause i get better marks than her and don't even study.

ad. NOTE: angielski to nie twoj ojczysty jezyk, wiec czym sie przejmujesz? i tak jestes dobra!

Oh do I know how that is...I was always one of the top students in my schools, and people'd always pick on me because of it. Through much of high school most people thought I was stuckup and thought I was better than everyone else because I'm very smart (which wasn't true, of course, I'm just really shy and find it hard to talk to people...which also was a consequence of being picked on). It really bothered me, until I realized that they were only picking on me to make themselves feel better.

I don't think that being intelligent is considered to be uncool, or that smart people get bullied... well... at least not here

the ones that get bullied and are called nerds are the guys/girls that do nothing else but study, have no social life or friends whatsoever, look nerdish etc and sometimes they are not even smart (well, there's this girl at my school who is like that). But still no-one has the right to label someone as a "nerd" just because they made different choices in their lives

anyhoo, I think I'm lucky: at my school, being smart is considered very cool, and especially if the good students help out the bad ones etc

Being smart is awesome. If some morons made fun of your for asking questions you should have used your smarts and wit to make them feel even dumber. That's what I do. Tell them to look behind them, and then when they turn to do so, walk off, they won't turn around untill you're gone because they're too stupid to realize what just happened.

Just rest assured that the people who made fun of you and bullied you in class will probably spend the rest of their lives delivering pizza's to pay for the child they accidentally had during or after high school because they weren't bright enough to figure out how to use a condom.

Anyways, don't let some fools make you feel bad because of your intelegence. And don't let them stop you from raising your hand in class and answering questions. If they bully you, either defend yourself or, if you must, tell the teacher. You're status in high school is extremely trivial, and only matters to, well, idiots.

you heard it nerds, go to evy's school to be safe

I've overstepped the cool-nerd boundary.

All my friends are those goofballs you speak of, but I'm in top classes and have top grades. Also, I'll be done with High school math (all four classes) by second semester of my second year.

I never have consider myself to be smart or intelligent. All my basic knowledge is from the stuff I read. I think that being cool (no matter how you define it) and being intelligent are just two different things. One thing I think is NOT cool are people that brag about their academics and claim to be well educated. That for me is arrongance and not cool. Is okay to have pride for the education you've taken. But to claim you know everything is just a plain pile of stinkin BS.

I rather be humble and accept that my knowledge is average. I wish boasters would take that into consideration before going around being arrogant.

i never got that concept myself. i'm not smart but i'm not dumb. i never actually got picked on about getting an A in class or answering every teacher's question. funny thing... when i was a freshman, i was in the "smart" class, but i goofed off a lot and never submitted any of my home work... so my sophomore year, i was in the "cool" --i.e. dumb-- class and we got all the slack so i got good grades even when i goofed off. so my junior year i was back with the "smart" class. i got caught up in some extra curriculat activities, got somewhat famous and in my senior year, i was back with the "cool" class. best year of my high school life.

note: this happened the philippines and it was a private catholic school.

BF...you rock. I suggest everyone should listen to that advice, because someone said that to me years ago and it's what got me through high school and helped me deal with morons.

exactly. that girl also gets envy when someone (eg. me ) gets better marks without working very hard on it


wiem, ze nie. ale po polsku tez robie literowki

Well first of all, whats intelligence? well there are seven kinds of intelligence

1.Linguistic intelligence (as in a poet)
2.Logical-mathematical intelligence (as in a scientist)
3.Musical intelligence (as in a composer)
4.Spatial intelligence (as in a sculptor or airplane pilot)
5.Bodily kinesthetic intelligence (as in an athlete or dancer)
6.Interpersonal intelligence (as in a salesman or teacher)
7.Intrapersonal intelligence (exhibited by individuals with accurate views of themselves)

Now everybody has at least one of'em, I my self have good Linguistic intelligence, desent Logical-mathematical intelligence, not so good Musical intelligence, a good Spatial intelligence, very good Bodily kinesthetic intelligence, I got a good Interpersonal intelligence, and a very good Intrapersonal intelligence.

Now knowing all kinds of stuff, like the capital of whatever, and knowing everything in the countrys history dosent mean that your highly intelligent, alot of people seem to think that way, well it's wrong.

I think it unfair that people should be bullied because of their intelligence, but I do not agree that being intelligent is not 'cool', you can have intelligent people who are considered cool; it's all an attitude or how others perceive you. Admittedly people who answer all the questions correctly all the time in class may appear to be a smart-arses and this may cause some consternation with their fellow classmates, the easy solution would be not to answer ALL the questions asked but to let others answer; if you know the answer straight off then do not put your hand up immediately and answer, wait a while and let others think of the answer or work it out themselves, if after a short period no-one else proffers an answer then do so yourself, this pause will even make others think you have had to work the question out yourself or will let someone else answer, if you are answering a few questions, especially the ones that no-one else is, the teachers cannot think you shy or stupid as you are answering when no-one knows the answer. You should not need to answer all the questions aloud to prove that you are intelligent; if you know yourself that you knew the answer, is that not sometimes good enough?

I guess what's 'cool's defined by the 'ruling majority' of a class. If there's a lot of intelligent people, these'll form the largest group, turn confident and popular and thus brains might be the hot thing in that class. and the other way around. whoever's the 'popular' group'll probably sometimes feel threatened by the strengths of the other group, may it be brains or good looks, and this'll be marked 'uncool' to keep this group from descending from the bottom of the hierarchy.

when did reading make someone lacking in self-confidence? I am a self confessed bookworm. I find reading more satisfying then going out to get legless everynight - whats wrong with that. I'm a very self-confident person, and - I'll admit it, sometimes too self-confident.

And I certainly don't think that the non-studying types are great acheivers - they may get the good grades because they have a sponge like memory, but grades are not a measure of true knowledge. I personally think it is better to do your absolute best and get a D then to not try and get an A

I realised this when I was about 15 and stopped letting them bother me - which is when I got my self-confidence back. Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with being in the lower ability classes, ther is only something wrong if you know you could easily do better and go higher.

My schools really big on this at the moment - has all these posters up, and we had to do a 'personal assessment'. I'm mostly Linguistic and Musical, and pretty high on interpersonal and average on logic-math. atrocious at spatial and Intra - Body depends - I don't like competetive sports, I'm good at dance and yoga and swimming

In my experience tho, a good half the class is afraid to answer in case the other half isolates them. Why should we be scared to show intelligence? Why is sports and 'coolness' so much better than academics? We always used to have 'Sports DAy', but never a Maths Challenge or a Poetry competition, something I would have actually enjoyed taking part in. I even suggested it to the head teacher, but, without even asking the school, he said that not enough people would be interested. What he meant that it would be too much hassle and cost too much - he cared more about the budget than the happiness of the students

I think some schools have differing opinions to others; my school was very good at sports, being an all boys school you would expect this, but we still had other clubs and competitions of an academic calling, we had poetry comps but I think that was mainly due to the fact that Wilfred Owen went to our school (not while I was there I may hasten to add), we had a chess team and entered comps with other schools, we had one of the best soccer teams and the best rugby team in the area, plus a decent cricket team and other sports, we had a brass band that entered competitions too; it sounds like a failing of your head-teacher or school governors if they concentrated wholly on sports. Sports is an important part of schooling too, this helps to build team spirit and helps kids develop so that they are able to work in a team with others, it helps make people more confident in themselves and others, it could even be that your school deemed these benefits as highly important to develop and having competitions involving intelligence etc may restrict the kids who can enter, sports is not restricted to anyone; regardless of your intellectual levels anyone can take part in sports.

OUr school is/was ((I don't go there anymore)) JUST sports. We had a netball team, football, rugby, swimming, hockey, tennis, badminton ((all in boys and girls and mixed teams)). The only academics they cared about was that we reached the OFSTED quota

I think of myself more as a 'geek' than a 'nerd'...

not my fault I got too much of it

doh, I don't agree that you shouldn't answer a question in class if you know it... of course you should answer, everyone should have the right to speak up that doesn't make you a smart ass imho

The funniest part about the whole thing for me is like, you get people saying "Look how hard you work, you must have no life or no friends."

.......Is that the dumbest conclusion ever to me alone? You go to school to learn, not to hang out with friends. That is a secondary thing. I use outside of school time for hanging out and having fun. School is just that, school. There's a social element of course but primarily it's to learn and to work. Those who claim it's dumb to work are often those who end up flipping burgers. Bill Gates was called a geek at school, now he's one of the richest, most successful men on Earth. The guy that picked on him probably isn't as successful.

-AC

Sounds like me.

Because the "pack" is generally stronger than the individual, people respect those with a big circle of friends, no matter how dumb they are. And generally, the majority of the population is of average intelligence. So to put it bluntly, stupid people stick together, and there are more of them than there are smart people... I used to get picked on a lot for that, because I used long words and acted too smart for them to handle. It really sucked.

Remember though that the kids who look at you funny and bully you for being smart are the same ones who are going to be sitting in cubicles doing grunt work for wealthier individuals for the rest of their lives.