A plead to FIRST, anyone else agree?

[ajd]

Originally Posted by E. Wood

I too do not consider myself a "nerd". Sure, I have what you may call "nerdy" moments and be an engineer by trade but this does not automatically make me a nerd. I believe that FIRST students can be very creative, bright students but to call us all "nerds" is unfair. That is a title that must be accept and carried by each individual person. If you want to be a nerd, good for you, there is nothing wrong with that, but some of us have other titles in mind for ourselves.

The trouble with the "nerd" label is the same as the trouble with any label (think "jock," "learning disabled," "ADD," "goodie two-shoes," "communist"): they obscure the real, individual people they are applied to.

Part of FIRST's mission is encouraging kids to move away from the culture where kids inordinately look up to music/sports stars. It's trying to break the culture where the most athletic/social students are often considered the "elite" and the more intellectually-/mechanically-/technically-/whatever-inclined are lower on the totem pole. But it must be very careful to avoid encouraging the "nerds" to form cliques of their own. Society needs all types, and I feel that FIRST's rhetoric sometimes fails to acknowledge that.