If we wish to tackle the very real problems society faces, we require expert-level knowledge. Valuing it starts earlier than we realize.
All across the country, you can see how the seeds of it develop from a very young age. When children raise their hands in class because they know the answer, their classmates hurl the familiar insults of “nerd,” “geek,” “dork,” or “know-it-all” at them. The highest-achieving students — the gifted kids, the ones who get straight As, or the ones placed into advanced classes — are often ostracized, bullied, beaten up, or worse. It’s a version of the social effect known as tall poppy syndrome: where if someone dares to stand out, intellectually in this case, the response of the masses is to attempt to cut them down.
The social lessons we learn early on are very simple: if you want to be part of the cool crowd, you can’t appear too exceptional. You can’t be:
- too knowledgeable,
- too academically successful,
- too advanced compared to your peers,
- or too smart.
Someone who knows more, is more successful, or who seems to be smarter than you is often seen as a threat, and so in order to…
