There are almost no other activities, no special classes, no school sports (only p.e. for everybody), no advanced classes and teaching is mostly done with books, paper and board.
Maybe this is good.
Maybe this is good.
Maybe there's a bit of psychology at play here. There might be a lower out casting of nerds if the popularity gap is smaller. Going off the essay, maybe it's far more acceptable to become more intelligent (both intellectually and scholastically) in this type of environment.
If that's the case, it sounds like a school full of nerds who are cool with nerds--sign me up!
I think in part we feel it absurd in the extreme to focus so overtly on physical prowess in an educational context, and another part of it is that it just goes against our very egalitarian culture.
Ironically, where the higher focus on actual study works in favor of a nerd, the egalitarianism works against him. Lets just say I became a crack pencil artist courtesy of countless and countless hours spent waiting for the class to catch up.
But still for a half-nerd like myself, school was not a very intresting place to be. I was more interested in the real world and computers. School is like mundane job where you go because you have to, you have no control over it and nothing is real. Equal minds is great thing to have, but it means that you can't have so many best minds.
While our education may excel in PISA, still even our schools are not very inspirational places, which I think they should be.
most of the discussion are of low quality and can be done with a smarter audience on HN or some other newsgroups.
But sports teams are good. it really encourages self-discipline, work ethics, and a competitive spirit.