For gradeschoolers, is being a nerd/geek more acceptable now than it used to be?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am a 32-year-old male. When I was in grade school in the 80’s and 90’s, you were a social pariah if your hobbies included anything beyond sports and cars. Science, computers, video games, D&D, etc. were the stuff of nerds and geeks and were subject to much contempt from the jock crowd. Certain activities like drama or band were “acceptable” if you were already popular.

My girlfriend (also 32) is heavily into the otaku scene, and I sometimes go to anime conventions with her. I see kids who, if dressed like that in my day, would be severely bullied. When I was in high school, most outcasts had one or two friends that they stuck to. Most high schoolers at those conventions roam in packs of 6-8 friends now, not to mention that nerdy girls are a lot ahem cuter than the nerdy girls at my high school, or maybe we just didn’t appreciate them then.

(*Disclaimer: The previous sentence was made as a statement of observation. I’m not trolling the mall and checking out your daughter. Let’s not go there.)

From my view, “nerd culture” has become much more acceptable for the 13-18 crowd. Anime is pervasive amongst high school kids. Video games are popular all around. D&D is regularly played by varsity athletes. Everyone has a Facebook page. There are regular Zombies & Assassins games staged at my college campus, featuring 30-50 people.

Maybe I’m getting old, but is it easier to be nerdy now than it used to be? Someone with high school-age kids please enlighten me.

2

My son is half way through his senior year in high school, so I feel somewhat qualified to weigh in on this question, despite being an old bat like yourself. :wink:

From what my son has told me in passing, jocks, cheerleaders and student body council (generally comprised of the former two) definitely still pick at teens who are different.

From what I’ve observed, there are more students with alternative interests like Anime, RPG’s, etc. than there were when we were in school so while bullying still exists, it weakened as a function of being diluted by the sheer numbers of potential victims than it once was. Back in MY day, there were maybe a handful of outcasts (if that) in each grade so the bullying/sense of isolation was likely more intense.

That’s not to say that bullying itself has decreased, it’s likely just directed at smaller minorities than “kids who are into anime or have a favorite comic book”. My guess on the new targets are gay kids, obese kids and kids who smell (worse than average).

It’s an interesting discussion though, I’m going to pose the question to my son this evening and report back!

3

I have a 12 year old sixth grade nerd. And yes and no. She still has issues finding others that are really like her (there aren’t many dice rolling 12 year old D&D players - on the other hand, there are plenty of 12 year old Harry Potter readers and Mythbusters watchers). But there isn’t the same level of judging. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t exist - she gets picked on by the girls who think cookie cutter is cool…but there is a lot more room for her to be secure in who she is. She’ll never be “popular” - but she isn’t an outcast simply because she knows who Jonathan Coulton is either.

4

One thing that’s always been true, is just because you’re a social outcast, doesn’t mean you have to be a social outcast. Yes, there’s always an “in” crowd and an “out” crowd, but the “out” crowd is always bigger, anyway, and if you can fit in with other “out” folks, who cares about the “in” folks, anyway? Once you realize this, school years become a lot more bearable.

Are kids realizing this more easily nowadays? I don’t know that part.

5

To my 10yo and 7yo nephews, not being obsessed about Harry Potter, Star Wars, and the latest Wii/DS/whatever games is cause for ostracism.

My older nephew reads like crazy… whatever is considered popular by his peers. He wasn’t interested in Rick Riordan until his friends were reading it, whereupon it became of great interest.

There is definitely bullying still going on – my 7yo nephew will mention it; the 10yo, not so much – but it’s not because they’re going to school in Star Wars or Avengers t-shirts.

6

I think the rise of the Internet made a huge difference in the social status of nerds. The fact that we idolize Steve Jobs and Bill Gates along with Justin Bieber and Tim Tebow means that there are role models for young geeks to choose from.

And there are cool geeks now - Mythbusters is geeks doing science on TV, for crying out loud. Harry Potter did a lot to popularize fantasy as a genre for young people, and the recent spate of actually good superhero movies has brought mainstream acceptability to comics as well.

Computer and video games are big business, and despite the general image of the basement-dwelling teenage nerd playing with the Xbox, the average gamer is now 35 years old. Those of us who grew up playing games largely haven’t stopped. Computer role-playing games have billboards now; can you imagine a billboard for whatever the equivalent of Skyrim was when you were 12?

The world is a very different place. It’s still not all sweetness and light; there is still prejudice and ostracism of those who are different. But it’s a lot easier to be a geek now than it was when I was my daughter’s age. And that makes me very happy.

7

i don’t think the shift is as large as you think. i mean, how severely were you bullied for liking nerd stuff to begin with? i don’t remember much bullying at all. some things were taboo and some people would be classified as the weird “fill-in-the-blank” kids but nobody got stuffed into lockers or tripped in the hallways.

all that’s really changed is that the internet has made isolated pockets of nerds more connected and able to put together bigger gatherings. now you can connect with nerds in other schools in the area and get together to play more D&D or anime or whatever your nerd fetish is. there’s still stigma to it.

i don’t know about anime being pervasive. d&d is definitely not being played regularly - jock or not. video games and facebook are not “nerdy” (video games stopped being nerdy with the SNES - when it start getting fun). and i have no idea what zombies and assassins is, but i’m guess it’s some sort of live action role play? yeah, that’s pretty dorky, and there would be stigma attached to that, or doing real LARPing, or playing quiddich.

so really, things weren’t as bad as it seemed, and the present isn’t as rosy as you imagine.

8

My daughter is the only girl she knows who reads during recess instead of playing tetherball with the other girls, because she says she’s no good at tetherball. One boy in her class actually said to her, "You shouldn’t read so much, it’s a bad habit. ":mad: She doesn’t mention going to anime conventions with me because she doesn’t want to be treated any worse than she already is.

9

Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO.

10

Oh, ca. 1965, my teacher called it “abnormal.”

11

Is tetherball the only activity available at recess? I’m not knocking reading–I *was *that girl, growing up. But there’s a time and place for everything. When she’s at recess, she should be running and playing and junk.

12

In my experience as a high school teacher, the sea-change is that enthusiasm is now acceptable. In the late 80s, early 90s when I was in school, we strove to be literally “cool”–to not care too much. Being passionate about something–be it stamps or baseball stats or video games or books or even your schoolwork–is what got you labeled a geek or a nerd. That’s not true these days; even the very popular kids can be very into whatever they are into.

It’s also a lot more acceptable to be smart, especially for the girls: AP Physics and Calculus are full of cheerleaders each year. Kids are more likely to admire someone’s intellectual abilities than I remember them being when I was in school. Kids brag about how tough their course load is.

13

Am I the only one who thinks it’s strange that the OP asks about gradeschoolers, but almost all the discussion is about high schoolers and Jr. High/middle schoolers?

14

I was bullied pretty much consistently from 1st grade through 12th.
Here is my narrative about this.

I taught myself my numbers and letters from little blocks when I was about 2 years old.
I taught myself to read when I was 3.
Boy, was my grandfather proud when I read out loud, “‘F’ ‘O’ ‘R’ ‘D’, that spells Ford, Granddaddy!”
I know children learn to read much earlier now.
This was before that was normal. We are talking the middle of the 20th century.
By the time I was in 1st grade I was reading at a 7th grade level.
So, I was REALLY excited to be going to school because I wanted to learn everything and grow up and be a scientist.
I showed up in Mrs. Hick’s class and saw the letters of the alphabet across the top of the blackboard and was pleased to see my old friends there.

And a few weeks went by, and all we were doing was coloring inside the lines and not eating library paste. You know, the same thing we were taught in kindergarten.

Anyway, one day Mrs. Hicks (who was in her last year of service as a teacher, ready to retire and probably tired of the whole thing) got us all to take our chairs into a circle and THEN (finally!) brought out a stack of books. She passed them out and I was surprised to see that the cover was blank. But, I eagerly opened the book and found a blank page. Confused, I went to the next page and eventually found a picture of two little kids (a boy and a girl) walking up a hill with balloons.

So, I sat in the circle and waited to see what my teacher wanted me to do.

She asked the first kid in the circle to describe was she saw.
She replied, “I see two children walking up a hill”.
And so it went, with each of us describing different aspects of the picture.
I was maybe 5th or 6th in the circle as it came around, and by that time, I would just be repeating what the others had said.
But, fortunately (or so I thought) there was a copyright notice at the bottom of the page.
Therefore when it came to me, I read out loud and proudly, “Copyright 1954, Harcourt, Brace and Company.”

The strangest thing happened then.

Mrs Hicks looked at me terribly sternly and slammed shut her book and then said, “You children stay here. I will be back!” Then she stomped out of the room. I found out later from my parents that she had actually gone to the principal and demanded to know why there was a **midget **in her first grade classroom!

Now, mind you, the school was eventually pleased to have a ‘reading prodigy’ in their classes, and I was enlisted to help the 1st and 2nd graders in their reading.

Yes, this helped me immensely in fitting in with my peers.
hahahahahahahaha Oh, my goodness, it didn’t.
It left me indelibly stained as THE outsider.

You see, in my town, there were 32 children in that 1st grade class, and of them 17 graduated high school with me. That core group was the ‘cool kids’ and they knew me only as the weird one, the midget, the martian.

It wasn’t until I went to college that I could even date.

Stuffed into a locker. Yep, been there. I am only happy I knew the way to get myself back out (there is a release mechanism on the inside of the lock… and I had read about it (heh heh heh)) and that at 5"8’ I could fit in there without damage.

Beaten to a pulp? Yep, been there. Multiple times.

I am terribly myopic and have worn glasses since I was 7 (or 6, according to my mother). I actually wore ‘athletic glasses’ that could be beaten without breaking after having had one of my other normal frames driven into my eyebrows. If you look carefully, you can still see the scars.

But, the internal scars still remain quite clearly in my memory.

That should be obvious after this little screed.

One of my minor triumphs was when I went to college.
I met one of the really ‘cool’ girls who was actually a cheerleader in high school and dated her for a few weeks. As in dating her, I mean I had sex with her. Many times.
She apologized for what the ‘cool cabal’ had done as best she could.
She apologized quite nicely, and it helped heal my psyche.
I went on to be quite the ladies’ man and haven’t looked back since.
Except, of course, when I tell this tale.

I married the girl of my dreams, so it went well eventually.

15

Only in that I don’t remember there even being any stratification in grade school except via grade. It didn’t kick in until the end of seventh grade. The way South Park illustrates it is pretty close to what I remember, except that girls and guys weren’t nearly so separate.

16

High school was the last stage of grade school, where I attended. Grades 9 through 12.

17

I’m assuming the non American use of grade school from context.

18

To the OP: I think the stuff that was “geek” and “nerd” culture when you were a kid has just moved into the mainstream.

And kids aren’t bullied for the stuff they like, but rather for being different. If being “in to” video games and D&D are the things that a majority of kids do nowadays, then it doesn’t have the same outsider status it did when you were a kid.

I wasn’t bullied for the things I was or wasn’t “in to,” it was cuz I came across as “different.” Those same principles of schoolyard culture haven’t changed, even if what’s considered “mainstream” has. The bullies haven’t changed their M.O., it’s just that you were born in the wrong era apparently.

19

That’s one thing I have been noticing as well. We are about the same age, and it seems to me when we were kids, people had a sort of “meanness” (or maybe a more detatched ambivalence) that kids and early 20-somethings don’t have these days. “Cool” was defined by how close you were to being like Christian Slater in Heathers or Judd Nelson in Breakfast Club. Basically, being a sarcastic, not-give-a-shit, psychologically damanged borderline psychopath.

Nowadays, it seems like Michael Cera is the embodiment of what kids think is cool.
But even in my day, people didn’t pick on people just because they had nerdy or geeky interests. People picked on socially weird kids who were too small and weak to defend themselves. One of my friends growing up was huge into pretty much all 80s nerdabilia - comics, videogames, computers, D&D and RPG games in general, Heavy Metal (magazine and music), anime, you name it. He wasn’t picked on. Of course, he was also a really nice guy and a 250 lb varsity shot-putter.

We also went to school in affluent suburban Connecticut. It’s probably different in places down South or the Midwest where you get beaten up for being gay because you know how to read.

20

I know Arkansas isn’t really the South, but my experience matches yours. I had nerdy interests, and I reveled in being somewhat different. (I considered “weird” a compliment). But I was never picked on for one of two possible reasons. For one thing, I was always very social and very nice to people. I used my scholasitic ability to help out others with their homework and stuff. On the other hand, while I’m a total teddy bear, my large body looks intimidating. When I get angry, people say they get scared just looking at me.

I’m not saying that there weren’t some groups of people who talked bad about me behind my back, and that there weren’t a few people with whom I just didn’t get along. But I was never shunned nor picked on. Heck, until 10th grade I even hung out with the popular crowd.