Quick! Bully him, he's smart!

[A Shadows Age]

Because we are different, if you don't understand this answer or disagree with it you probably think it refers specifically to you and it doesn't... Simply goes like this: nerd bullies idiot, idiot then associates people who act like this person as the same as this person and proceeds to retaliate. The person he retaliates against probably doesn't understand why he is being "picked" on and from that point forward retaliates in his own way against people he thinks are the same as this idiot.

Doesn't have to be in that order or related to intelligence. The key is often in the number of differences vs. things in common, people will do this in regards to hair shape or color for gods sake. I have been given shit for being an idiot, for being intelligent, for liking sports or outdoor activities, for not conforming, for being a member of the status quo, for being affable, for being intolerable, for being talkative, for being quiet, for helping animals, for not helping animals, for believing in god, for not believing in religion, ect. ect. ect. And have given it all back too.

Just calm down and realize it's the same for everyone is about all I can say. It's like a fucking pinball machine of action and reaction, newtons laws might as well be describing people for all of the similarities.

 

[zarguhl]

It does happen, but I don't think it's as prevalent as people claim.

I spent all my primary school years and most of my secondary school years thinking I was being bullied for being smarter than everyone else.

Looking back though, I also happened to be a douchebag.

Maybe if I were just smarter there would have been a couple of annoying kids, but being a douchebag is what caused the real problems. And of course teachers, school counsel, etc. were all telling me it's everyone else's fault. Poor me, I'm just a victim of the other kids and I just need to accept that's how people act when someone is different, blah, blah, blah.

What I really needed is someone saying "Hey, maybe if you stop being an arrogant, condescending douchebag to every kid you talk to, they might not dislike you so much."

 

[Tdc2182]

I've never seen a kid get picked on purely based on the fact that he was smart.

Usually, along with being smart, they are very socially awkward.

Hell, a few of the "bullies" at my school were straight A students.

 

[poppabaggins]

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

<--That about sums up my feelings on the matter (nerds have better things to do than try to be popular).

I graduated 9th of > 360 in my high school class, but I never got picked on for being smart. Quite the contrary, I floated around a bunch of social groups and knew a bunch of people, largely due to the friends I had coming in to high school, even though I primarily hung out with the nerdy crowd.

No, the kids who were shunned and derided were the ones who were asses about how smart they were, even though they weren't actually all that smart.

 

[zarguhl]

No, the kids who were shunned and derided were the ones who were asses about how smart they were, even though they weren't actually all that smart.

Exactly.

 

[Fishdog52]

Ironically, I took geometry at the high school while in middle school and had to be short bussed back daily because I was more advanced. Not once was I picked on then.

As soon as I was a student there, it was hell. Never was too sure what happened.

 

[Pibb Omega]

Kids are bastards sometimes. If you weren't good at those subjects they would make fun of you for something else. I for one got made fun fun of for being fat and that happened until middle school.

Okay, to really your question its probably because they felt threatened because you were better at it than they were.

 

[Moraki]

i don't get why UK US schools have this problem herein kuwait for me has happed only once and ended after 5 min after smacking him upside the head but as i can see here they just get tesed or annoyed but not bullyed maybe becase of envy probebly

 

[mornal]

I don't know about everyone else but I had a very different experience, I was a very quiet smart kid in high school and I was one of the more popular kids for reasons I can't fathom. What would happen is that every class I took I would start out as the quiet kid and in two weeks I was one of the most popular kids in the class that everyone wanted to talk to. The thing was while I was quiet I just never started conversations but I am very talkative once I get started and I believe that's what everyone wanted that and I was very generous with helping everyone in class.

Are you me? That's a fairly accurate description of my high school career.

I was never physically bullied or teased/picked on (at least to my face) for being smart. It also probably helped that I took classes that only the smart people took and that I was always willing to help people. I also did most of the work in group projects because it was easier than getting other people to do what needed to be done.

 

[Twilight.falls]

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

<--That about sums up my feelings on the matter (nerds have better things to do than try to be popular).

I graduated 9th of > 360 in my high school class, but I never got picked on for being smart. Quite the contrary, I floated around a bunch of social groups and knew a bunch of people, largely due to the friends I had coming in to high school, even though I primarily hung out with the nerdy crowd.

No, the kids who were shunned and derided were the ones who were asses about how smart they were, even though they weren't actually all that smart.

Much the same with me. I remained on friendly terms with a large amount of people, and try my best to make people laugh. I think that the people around school liked me too much to bully me.

 

[Dr. wonderful]

I didn't get teased cause I was smart, I gotten tease cause I was fat.

I DID manage to get back at them though, who knew you could trick kids into believing Cthulu was real?

 

[Winthrop]

In my experience, it's the smart kids who pick on the idiots in the class. Not because they are stupid, but because they act like idiots.

I would know. I'm an idiot.

This guy is totally right. Im willing to bet that at some time you were rude to them after they picked on you right? The "nerds" tend to view retaliation as bulling. I am very close to the top of my class and I get along great with everyone. What I see is the smart person being mean and being upset at the retaliation. Also, not to be mean, but I know a lot of smart people who are quiet and people pick on quiet kids because they can come off as cold if their shyness is taken as rudeness. But who knows maybe its just the school I'm from.

 

[Korolev]

Bullies pick on ANYONE they can, for whatever reason they can. They bully the smart, the not-so-smart, the pretty, the ugly - anyone they think who can't stand up for themselves, or anyone who attracts attention for being different.

In my school there were plenty of smart people who were not bullied - why? Because they were also tall and pretty gosh-darn athletic. Some smart people were bullied, but that was usually because they looked like they could be.

I hate to say it, but with some people you can just tell, with one, glance: yep, they'll be bullied. If they are quiet, soft-spoken, and they aren't built like a truck, chances are some bully will try to pick on them. Usually, smart people who focus on academic work are soft-spoken, quiet and unfit - that is one of the reasons why they are mostly picked on.

Also, academically gifted students can tend to lord their skills over the students who are not so good at academic work. One student in particular in my 10th grade mathematics class was pretty good at math, and would derisively refer to anyone who wasn't as a "slow-boy" or "slow-girl". He wasn't too popular after that. It's a myth that all the athletes are all the bullies - I've met enough academic bullies both during school and after - they just tend to use passive-aggressive behaviour, trash-talking, rumours and sabotage to bully their victims.

Also, people who do well at school academically also tend to behave better in class. Bullies hate rule-followers for a reason I could never quite understand.

But by and large, bullying is not due to how intelligent someone is - it's due to how easy a target they are perceived to be. I've seen bullies pick on the smart kids by calling them "egg-heads", "squares" or what have you, but then turn around and pick on the learning-disabled kids by calling them "Retards" "dumb-asses" or "morons" or what have you. A bully will pick on ANYONE who is 1) Perceived to be an easy target and 2) Different enough from themselves to find insults for.

 

[KoalaKid]

easy. at least in the US to understand. In the US, intelligence is evil. look at the people we call heroes. Basketball, Football, Soccer, Baseball players. People whose entire goal is to hit/catch/whatever with a ball. pretty simple. Look at people we call villains. Bill Gates, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Stem cell researchers, the list goes on. People who are EDUCATED are bad. So, at least in the US, of course they will bully smart people. They are evil.

I'm going to call bullshit here. Although there are some small cultural groups in the US that don't value higher education being clever and well educated has always been promoted by the greater majority in the US. I have always been encouraged to go to college and make good grades and told that if i didn't my life would suck. I think your simply promoting the currently trendy anti-American stereotypes, but then I guess it's anything to fit in or be hip right?

I'm gonna call bullshit on your "I'm being hip" idea. I'm not hip by being anti-American. I am being realistic for being anti American. and where I live (Southern Ohio) they SAY go to college, but they don't want you LEARNING something useful. They want you to go to college on a sports scholarship, or to study something simple.

I'm going to call bullshit on your all parents in Ohio want their kids to go college on a sports scholarship and hate all that fancy book learn'n . This is a ridiculous idea that can be disproved by the simple fact that colleges in southern Ohio have remained open and functioning. The simple fact that there are colleges in Ohio shows that enough people in Ohio want an education to keep the place from financial collapse. It's possible that you have been pushed to go for a sports scholarship because whoever thinks that's your best chance at a college education.

 

[TheDooD]

I was socially awkward and nerdy yet because I had good muscle build and was pretty decent at all sports nobody really bother me. I guessed because I was hard to read.

 

[Reaper195]

I used to get bullied when I was at school for being smart (Well, more than the idiots I had to deal with) until they realised I fought back. I remember some guy pushing me into a wall because I 'outsmarted' him in History (By which I mean he didn't know when New Zealand was first discovered (Live in New Zealand), and I did). I was already sick and tired of all the horse-cockery I had been receiving from everyone for numbers of reasons, so I responded by bouncing off the wall, grabbing him by his shirt and throwing him to the ground with a rather wonderful death-metal scream, which somewhere contained me telling him to fuck off.

Many of my years at school were absolute shithouse, but the last couple of years were somewhat better.

 

[fundayz]

Here I was, casually surfing the web when a thought struck my mind. I can't remember what it was, but it pulled up the memory of school ( one I dislike ). A lot of you may have experience this too, where the other children will pick on the "smart" kids, for...well? Being smart. I got it most in science, because Physics came to me much faster than any others in my group. This got me thinking, why do they pick on the "smart" kids? Just because we understand what we were being taught and picked it up is grounds to bully us? Maybe it was them thinking we were weird or just different. I'm not sure.

Don't kid yourself, you weren't picked on because of your intelligence or interest in science. You were bullied because you were a social outlier.

I don't know you so this is all speculation but maybe you were seen as a try-hard, a goody two-shoes, or teachers pet; maybe you didn't have a "normal" sense of humor; maybe you were particularly non-athletic; maybe you were on the uglier sides.

A close friend was quite popular in elementary and high school and he is one of the smartest people I've known. Personally, I am relatively smart(80's in 2nd year uni without having to slave over school) and my interest has always been science yet I've never been the victim of real bulling; obviously there has been times when fun was made at my expense but not more than normal.


Simply being smart rarely attracts bullies, it's how you ACT that determines how people treat you.

 

[derkis]

Don't kid yourself, you weren't picked on because of your intelligence or interest in science. You were bullied because you were a social outlier.

I'm glad one person in this thread actually struck on the real reason people are bullied. It was your lack of natural social awareness that caused you to be bullied as a kid. Acquiring that understanding and being able to communicate amicably with other human beings (and understanding why people might react negatively when you say or do something) is a skill to be trained, rather than something to be scorned.

Assuming that the root cause of the problem is fundamentally outside your control effectively ensures that you'll never succeed in that area. You weren't maligned by your peers because you were a good student, but rather because of how you made them feel through your words and actions.

 

[fundayz]

Assuming that the root cause of the problem is fundamentally outside your control effectively ensures that you'll never succeed in that area. You weren't maligned by your peers because you were a good student, but rather because of how you made them feel through your words and actions.

It is easier to blame others than admitting our own words and behaviour can bring problems down on ourselves, no?

Is it fair that those who deviate from the norm are made fun of or excluded? Not at all, but that is the way human society works and resigning yourself to a life of social maladjustment is not going to make it any easier.

 

[witness51]

Hah, I've never had this problem. I'm the best in my class at almost every subject. I just never do homework that I deem 'pointless'. If you don't like bullying, get stronger.