Meditations

[Anteroinen]

This is a very strong urge, an it often overrides common sense.

It does so without you ever noticing it, may I add. I wonder though, how is this peer pressure created in the first place? High school isn't compulsory (technically anyway) so how do the cases that don't want to go in there somehow infect the rest of the group with the same attitude? To be sure, the students aren't all (or even most) beacons of ambition but at that point you'd think they could see through the veil of sloth and recognize it for what it is at the very least.

According to the Education Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index) the United States are in the top twenty countries with the best quality of education. For comparison, Poland is 34th, Croatia is 51st, and Turkey is 110th.

Oh look, Finland there at the top. With Cuba no less: that is a stereotype shattered.

[The Abacus]

We tend to mimic each other in order to "fit in".

Before we realize that we have better things to do.

You have to remember that an average human is not that smart, and smarter people are a minority.

Is smart the right word? It can have multiple meanings.

I think it is a bizarre kind of rebellion against how school is run. Our education system is archaic, quite literally. It hasn't been rethought in 300 years or more. Ideally, kids would rebel by educating themselves while in class, but instead they rebel by intentionally failing boring classes.

That's possible.

"cool"

What's that?

[The Kakama]

Cool:popular;"everyone's doing [so&so],why not me?"
In layman terms.

[Vurn]

"cool"

What's that?

cool
adj. cool·er, cool·est
1. Neither warm nor very cold; moderately cold: fresh, cool water; a cool autumn evening.
2. Giving or suggesting relief from heat: a cool breeze; a cool blouse.
3. Marked by calm self-control: a cool negotiator.
4. Marked by indifference, disdain, or dislike; unfriendly or unresponsive: a cool greeting; was cool to the idea of higher taxes.
5. Of, relating to, or characteristic of colors, such as blue and green, that produce the impression of coolness.
6. Slang
a. Excellent; first-rate: has a cool sports car; had a cool time at the party.
b. Acceptable; satisfactory: It's cool if you don't want to talk about it.
7. Slang Entire; full: worth a cool million.
adv.
Informal In a casual manner; nonchalantly: play it cool.
v. cooled, cool·ing, cools
v.tr.
1. To make less warm.
2. To make less ardent, intense, or zealous: problems that soon cooled my enthusiasm for the project.
3. Physics To reduce the molecular or kinetic energy of (an object).
v.intr.
1. To become less warm: took a dip to cool off.
2. To become calmer: needed time for tempers to cool.
n.
1. A cool place, part, or time: the cool of early morning.
2. The state or quality of being cool.
3. Composure; poise: "Our release marked a victory. The nation had kept its cool" (Moorhead Kennedy).
Idioms:
cool it Slang
1. To calm down; relax.
2. To stop doing something.
cool (one's) heels Informal
To wait or be kept waiting.

[azareus]

According to the Education Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index) the United States are in the top twenty countries with the best quality of education. For comparison, Poland is 34th, Croatia is 51st, and Turkey is 110th.

Oh look, Finland there at the top. With Cuba no less: that is a stereotype shattered.

And Denmark. Go Scandinavia!

[Oleander]

A few people are bringing up peer pressure and things of the sort - in the context of my question it's suggesting that people will purposely do badly at something so they don't seem noticeably better than others. Is this what you guys are saying? I'm aware that peer pressure can be quite convincing but in this situation that seems almost absurd. Plus, there are large groups of 'smart' people as well. Would they choose the other because it is easier?

In any case, my question was more on the lines of asking how something like this would even begin.

[Anteroinen]

A few people are bringing up peer pressure and things of the sort - in the context of my question it's suggesting that people will purposely do badly at something so they don't seem noticeably better than others. Is this what you guys are saying? I'm aware that peer pressure can be quite convincing but in this situation that seems almost absurd. Plus, there are large groups of 'smart' people as well. Would they choose the other because it is easier?

In any case, my question was more on the lines of asking how something like this would even begin.

Not really. The peer pressure is more towards using your time to do some other things, rather than studying. Not specifically out of studying, but to do a thing X that happens to be something else.

EDIT: As for your actual point, I can't see why it really would happen, at least in a way that would concretely lower the results. I mean people tend to get working when time runs out.

[Vortex]

I guess frustration is the origin of this.

Imagine, for example, that a brand new computer game is released. Soon people find that the difficulty of that game greatly exceeds the one they are used to. Just a small percentage of players are skilled/dedicated enough to reach highscores that are unbelievable to the normal player. An average player that enters the game looking for a high position inside the game's hierarchy, seeing those outstanding results, is soon frustrated, and this leads him to think (consciously or unconsciously) that reaching a high rank in that game is not that important for him, and rapidly qualifies the overly skilled players as geeks/nerds. This could be thought of as a brain mechanism, if the game's constructed hierarchy were important in real life then that person would be in a low social position, which clearly isn't convenient at all for him. Thus, most people, as a collective phenomenon, dismiss that ranking system when they see the highest places as unreachable, because if they accept the system it would be perjudicial in their social life, and understandably human brains aren't very keen on that.

I think that the school phenomenon you pointed out may probably follow the same model, when there's a general belief that some school subject is difficult and they see "smarter" people receiving honors, they get frustrated (perhaps not consciously, as I said, it may be just a brain mechanism) and they start not to give a shit about grades, to avoid setting themselves low in the rank (and they also qualify the smarter people as geeks/nerds, just as in the previous example). The other option (studying more) is normally seen as unreachable or taking too much effort compared to the first option.

[Redafro]

High school is compulsory in the USA until I think age 17 (at least in Missouri, though their is acceptations), and returning to my point that the format of education has not changed for a 100 years or more, it is simply not in a format most people can appreciate, especially in our day and age of computers and movies. Imagine if they created an education method that utilized multimedia experiences?

[Oleander]

What do you mean by multimedia experiences? The things I imagine to be 'multimedia' are used heavily in most schools.