What's In a Name?
William Shakespeare wrote: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." While Shakespeare apparently believed that names aren’t important, David Anderegg, a professor of psychology at Bennington College in Vermont feels otherwise. He contends that the mere mention of the words geek or nerd tend to perpetuate a stereotype. “The words are damaging, much like racial epithets and should be avoided” he said in a recent New York Times interview. He suggests that while the words are often used interchangeably, the connotations are a bit different. In today’s lexicon, the word geek usually suggests a person with special expertise, e.g., a computer geek, whereas the word nerd suggests social ineptness. Nevertheless, he contends that neither is perceived as a “cool” moniker.
Anderegg further asserts that in the US, math, science and computer science are courses that younger people too often associates with nerds and geeks. He adds that the negative connotations of these words are taking a toll on the US workforce. And, he may be right! Fewer college-aged Americans are majoring in science and engineering and US competitiveness in math and science has been steadily declining for the past 20 years or more. According to Dr. Anderegg the best way to combat these trends is to attempt to eliminate the words geeks and nerds from the American lexicon and “banish them to the linguistic dustbin.” To that end his most recent book, “Nerds: Who They Are and Why We need More of Them” may be a step in the right direction to convince young Americans that more engineers and scientists will be required for the US to remain competitive in today’s rapidly changing global economy.
Not surprisingly, I think that science, engineering and technology are pretty cool and mistakenly get a bad rap because of the way in which science and math are taught at the primary and secondary educational levels. Put simply, many of the teachers’ currently teaching math and science don’t have sufficient breadth or depth to teach the subjects that they are asked to teach! One way to begin to change this is to convince some very hip, newly minted PhDs (you know who you are) that pursuing careers as high school biology and biotechnology teachers is—despite assertions to the contrary—a pretty cool thing to do! Call me crazy but I think this is what it is going to take to reinvigorate America’s competitiveness in science and technology! After all, nerds will be nerds, geeks will be geeks and scientists will be scientists....not that there is anything wrong with that!
Hat tip to David Anderegg!
Until next time....
Good Luck and Good Teaching!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is amazing the things you learn if you pay attention from time to time. While attending a meeting on e-healthcare last week in Philadelphia I learned that according to the American public the pharmaceutical industry is less popular than the banking industry. This was startling to me given that the recent financial collapse was caused almost entirely by the banking industry. That the pharmaceutical industry is more reviled than the banking industry suggests that life sciences company have a bit of PR work to do. But, not to worry, people still hate the oil industry more than the pharmaceutical industry.
