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Anderegg sees the “nerd” problem played out within a larger “metaphorical entailment,” by which he means the bifurcation of learning into a domain that is “hard” and a domain that is “warm and soft.” The implication is that being interested in “hard” subjects is somehow inhuman and unnatural. Drawing on his own clinical practice, he cites example after example of seemingly well-educated parents expressing prejudices against kids who work hard in school, and especially those who “really love getting the right answer,” remarking that their “own ‘normal’” kids are unfairly disadvantaged, especially in math and science, because “after all…they aren’t nerds.”
Anderegg locates this flight from excellence in the larger cultural strain first explored by Richard Hofstadter in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. The preference for the man of action over the man of reflection appears in classic American contests ranging from Brom van Brunt vs. Ichabod Crane, to Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams, to George W. Bush vs. Al Gore.
The dichotomy today between jocks and nerds, regular guys and geeks, has been amplified not only by thousands of hours of television programming, but also by very real social tensions. Increasingly, economic success depends less on brawn and more on brains—specifically the kind of technical brainpower nerds are disparaged for displaying. According to Anderegg, the most anti-nerd kids often have parents who openly express their own anxieties about being displaced by technology and by the technologically adept. That anxiety takes the form of hostility toward the “pencil neck geeks” who increasingly are the winners in the economic game. Because “everyone knows” that the nerds will grow up and make millions in biotech or software one of these days, anti-nerd bias persists as one of the few prejudices that can be voiced openly without fear of social censure.
Nerds are even assigned to their own pathology—Asperger’s Syndrome—as well as the aspersion that they are often the kind of socially awkward teens who wind up killing their parents or their classmates. All of which adds up to misery for countless youngsters for whom the nerd label can mean anguish, denial of the true self, or even suicide.
The brief, prescriptive part of Nerds is largely a reframing of the descriptive part. To help kids, Anderegg suggests trying to introduce them to helpful subcultures (science camp) and promising role models (older tutors who are athletic and socially skilled as well as smart). To help the culture, he urges journalists to cut out the lazy characterizations, and for each of us to mind our metaphors, eschewing the hard/soft dichotomy. He asks us to love our inner salesman a little less, to love our inner nerd a little more, and to add nerd stereotyping to the list of behaviors deserving social sanctions.
The primary omission in his analysis is the issue of social class. While kids in the big middle might be tormented for their intellectual leanings, children at elite—often private—schools are pressured to excel as never before. Whether or not that top tier, combined with immigration, can provide us with the scientists we need, such a widening class divide does not auger well for public support for scientific innovation. Overall, Anderegg faults a culture in which adults, in a self-destructive effort to align themselves with youth, embrace an idea of rebellion that includes contempt for doing your homework.
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