On athletes and geniuses

At my school, in Britain, athletes got cheered, geniuses got jeered. The great sadness of this is not in that this happened, but in that this is not unusual. The world over, this is the more common of the possible reactions to such people.

The gifted athletes were school heroes - almost universally popular, accepted and welcomed. Those of great intellectual gift, however, were marginalized, picked on, bullied, victimized. They were often subject to consistent, systematic, social exclusion. This did not happen to all gifted kids at my school - but to many of them, it did. The mediocre majority ganged up on them and made their lives uncomfortable at best, hell at worst.

It was common for the kid who was brighter than the rest, but perhaps somewhat different, to be mocked for their differences. I remember one kid who was clearly genetically unusual from his appearance alone - who was gifted in physics and maths, who never received anything but a jeer everytime he spoke. No-one welcomed him. Everyone laughed at him. He, however, would talk on as if they were saying nothing until he got his point out - yet, I wonder how he really felt at this universal scorn, hate and mockery that greeted his every word. He never showed any reaction - but he must have heard what they said; he must have felt their loathing directed at him.

I remember his name, but won't mention it for fear that I might bring him some harm, now, all these years later. No doubt, he wouldn't want to be reminded of how he was treated. He was the most acute example of this phenomenon - but there were others: gifted children who had become the centre of much dislike, simply because of their gifts.

The oddest thing about this is that my school was a fee-paying, "Public School" - a highly selective institution, which made an effort to find academically able students to fill its classrooms. Yet, that did not mean that all were equally able. There were those one would term highly gifted and above - but the vast majority would not have even been termed moderately gifted: there are simply not enough of them to go around, what with all the schools seeking to recruit them. So, most would just have been "bright".

Yet, though most were bright, by typical standards, they were not welcoming or kind, or warm to those who were brighter than they were. Usually, they were hateful towards them. They treated the best among them with a virulent spite that had no end: it was as if the very fact that the best were better than them filled them with a deep-seated loathing.

Looking back, I find it astonishing that gifted athletes should have been loved; and gifted intellectuals should have been hated. There was something profoundly wrong with the culture of the school. Thinking more on it, however, I think that it wasn't just the school, but the whole nation at fault. Britain was already showing signs of anti-intellectualism at that time - and, though I haven't lived in England for years, from what I have read, recently, that poisonous ideology has become even more entrenched in the British psyche. I will write more of that another time, perhaps.

Is it the same in your country? Are athletes feted and the intellectually gifted isolated and bullied? I would welcome your observations, thoughts and feelings. Thanks.