Dear Log,
From a long and interesting article
«We'll never fix the problem until we face the fact that bullying has
deep underlying causes. Unfortunately, the underlying causes are of a
type that will be hard for the educational establishment to face: that
secondary school is just a pantomime of learning acted out until the
students are old enough to be trusted on their own at college, and that
because the students' need to create hierarchies has no external measure
of performance to fasten on, they create a hierarchy that is its own
raison d'etre.»
-- "Why Nerds are Unpopular"
my reaction
I'm totally down with:
Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so to us at the time. but I think:
Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food is just plain wrong. I could have learned to be a damn fine programmer between the ages of 12 and 16, if I'd had the opportunity, and I bet a good number of people are in the same boat.
And:
When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose. The leaders end up being those who are best at it. The problem with most schools is, they have no purpose. Their ostensible purpose, scholarship, is a joke, not taken seriously even by those who are best at it. But hierarchy there must be. And so the kids make one out of nothing. is just totally wrong-headed in my experience. The people I see at the top of hierarchies are not usually those people who can do productive work. On the contrary: it is usually those PHB's who are good at weaseling their way up through the slimy feudal corporate hierarchy. Dilbert is popular for a reason -- most bosses really *don't* have any idea what they're doing.
