The War on Intelligence

The Law Student 
by Norman Rockwell

"There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius." 
-- Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending

In my analysis of John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, I talked about the crisis of the fading gifted kid, in which children who are labeled as "gifted and talented" in the third grade tend to fall into a state of confusion when they average out in high school and are unsure of what to do with their identity. But what happens to the kids who stay above average? What happens to the ones who spend their whole lives with all A's, the ones who pass their AP exams? And how does the culture of the American high school react?

Swim with the Crowd

The high school culture expects people to be average and has a problem when they aren't. This is eerily reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron as well as my theory as to why we love tragedy. We want people to be the same as us or below us, so that we can feel better about ourselves. When we see people who are smarter than us and display it (whether our own GPA is a 4.0 or not) we want to see their pride humbled, and their grades shattered, so that they are on the same level as everybody else. 

Just as we want to see others fit into the crowd, we want to fit in ourselves. We have a fear of "looking nerdy," since to do so would imply that we are smarter than others. To show passion for school, to share our high grades, to display knowledge or interest in a subject matter, would produce the illusion that we are smarter than others, and therefore better. Those of us who care about conformity and want to respect our peers' desires for equality silence our intelligence to fit in of our own volition, and those of us who are open about interests and successes are usually silenced by our succumbing to peer pressure, or outcast when we don't. 

Because of this desire to fit in and be like everyone else, whether from ourselves or from peer pressure, intelligence became nerdiness, and nerdiness became unpopular. It's cool to get B's because everyone else gets B's. But what happens when everyone gets C's, or F's? Do you keep swimming with the crowd, just for the sake of fitting in? Or do you step out of the popular opinion and aim higher for the sake of your own college applications? 

Is it Bad to be Smart?

Intelligence isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing objectively wrong with having knowledge or being interested in gaining knowledge. There isn't anything bad about listening to what teachers say or taking notes. Being smart only becomes a negative when the popular deems it so. We only fear nerdiness because everyone else does. Objectively, intelligence is good. But because we equate good and bad to cool and uncool, intelligence becomes something to avoid, and good grades become something to hide. 

Who Cares About What's Popular?

We know that it's all a matter of the popular thing to do because while people get backlash for being too smart, they also get backlash for not going to college or for going to trade school. It's not necessarily that being smart is bad, or that we hate the pursuit of education, but that we dislike people doing things the majority isn't doing. If everyone gets bad grades, you should too. If everyone goes to college, you should too. If everyone eats Doritos, you should too. If everyone jumps off a cliff, it seems like maybe you should too. See the pattern? 

It seems inconsequential to not aim for high grades because no one else does or to go to college because everyone else does. But when you put the same principle to bigger decisions with higher stakes, it reveals the absurdity behind it. What sense is there in doing things just because everyone else does? It doesn't gain you anything, nor does it actually impact your popularity. If we don't have any actual reason to follow the crowd, then why shouldn't we acknowledge our own intelligence, our A's and B's and 3-4.0's? As long as we're not bragging and rubbing it in other people's faces, what's wrong with merely acknowledging the truth about our own and others' intelligence?

Nothing, really. Nothing is stopping you from actually trying and earning that 92, 87, or 100. But if you do aim higher or acknowledge that you care about your studies, you're stepping outside of the norm. You're risking being called a nerd. You're risking people noticing. And the problem becomes not so much whether you should do what everyone else is doing, but how to deal with their opinions once you stop going along with the trends. 

The Best (or Worst) of Both Worlds

If you openly acknowledge that you're interested in school or score high grades and thus qualify as a nerd, you risk people perceiving that. They could claim you're bragging, and perhaps you are if you're reminding people of your intelligence 24/7 and trying to pretend you're better than them because of it. Still, they could claim you're bragging even if you're quiet about it, so you can't put full stock into that accusation. Even if they accept that you care about your education, they might take such large notice of it that intelligence becomes your only personality trait. Maybe you were funny, pretty, or popular before you started trying, but when you begin to care about your education, people start to see that as your whole personality. You become a walking Encyclopedia in their eyes, even if you really don't know as much as they think you do or your grades actually aren't any higher than theirs. Just the fact that you care can mean you get perceived as nothing more than your studies. 

Getting called out, rejected, or turned into a textbook sounds pretty miserable, and the rational conclusion is that while you should care about your education and aim high because it's actually a good thing, you should also keep your passion or intelligence on the down low. This doesn't work, either, though. If you are quiet about your studies, don't say anything so that there's no possible chance you could be bragging, you could get accused of pretending to follow the crowd and being some kind of educational double agent. You're not humble, you're actually just lying to act like you're the same as everyone else while really working hard behind their backs. Sounds crazy, but it's a real perception that some people will have of you. 

So what are you supposed to do? If you stop caring about school, you get to be like everyone else. But do you really want to be like everyone else? It's a lot easier to get into college when you're not like everyone else. But if you're not like everyone else, then you become the outsider, the minority, and everyone sees you as such. If you're okay with that, you're a jerk, and if you act like you're still a part of the majority, you're also a jerk. It's a real dilemma since there doesn't seem to be any option that allows you to soothe the social pressures while still pursuing your future. It would seem that unless there's a cultural shift, the back and forth is something that we all have to deal with. As long as education is branded as uncool, we face a dilemma without a real solution. Unless there's an end to the war on intelligence, we have to pick a side.