Overall, I have to say I highly agree with this essay. Although I didn't agree with everything, there was a lot of little assumptions and opinions in there that I felt all nit-picky about, but the big picture was more important then that, and that's what I agreed with, mainly when he summed much of what he said up near the end, such as this:
"It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it."
What I didn't necessarily agree with is how he seemed to praise the "real world" outside of school as some kind of place where the most intelligent truly succeed, and the way he looked at adults as so mature. I don't think neither are all that true. Popularity still matters just as much as it does in school, although it is different. In order to find a decent job you generally have to fit in socially, you have to be respected (but by society's skewed standards), and thinking for yourself and speaking out will not lead you to a comfy, warm spot safely nestled in society. In many cases, it's going to drive you further away from it. It seems that he sort of gave two meanings for nerd, one of them that intelligent kid that highly respects his/her teachers, studies hard and gets good grades. Basically, the ideal person in society's eyes, someone that works hard and takes instructions, and doesn't go against the norm much. The other definition he seemed to give for nerd was someone that was more rebellious, independent and critical of society. Sure, both are true to an extent, and there isn't one specific definition of nerd, it can mean many different things to different people. But my problem is he used the word a lot, but associated it with conflicting things.
And I didn't particularly agree here:
"What happened? We're up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30."
Sure, a good number of jobs require more specialization now, but I don't think that's really the problem, and the degrees, demands and longer education are merely bi-products, I think the problem is in those so called bi-products themselves. I think much of what is thought to require school to be learned can be learned without formal education, or at least certainly not in the very limited and procedural method that school teaches it. People can learn on their own, especially when there is easy access to knowledge, and there is, especially today. The massive amount of knowledge and information on the internet, in books and many other sources provides an excellent foundation for anybody with a passion and self-motivation to learn. I mean, Albert Einstein dropped out of school. He didn't need years and years of "specialized education," to develop his foundation-shaking theories, he had a limitless intellectual curiosity, he took it upon himself to read, write and learn. That's something school, I think, kills, and discourages.
I'm sure the author would somewhat agree with me here, but it seemed like he contradicted himself. He says how boring, pointless and unproductive school is, and then he says how it's needed to train people for these supposedly ridiculously specialized careers. Perhaps he didn't mean college and was just talking about public school, but if so can you really tell me that college is too much different? I hardly think that a college is a place that is conductive to an organic, open learning process that nurtures people's intellectual curiosity and encourages exploration and creative new ideas. No, it's based on a more rigid, in-depth and unforgiving version of the public school experience that you get to pay inflated prices for.
Like he was saying with the way adults view a lot of teenage problems are innate, I think a lot of these supposed "issues" with living in a world with demands for technology and innovation aren't innate either, they are created out of our society's misconceptions and ignorance regarding it's own needs. Everything is the same as before, knowledge and past innovations build on each other, and are handed down to the next generation to build upon. Just because we are gaining the capabilities to create more complex, progressive things doesn't mean people have to spend more and more years in an expensive college to understand and function in it.
I could go on much longer, but I'm tired of writing.
