"How can we live in a world where the losers in high school are, well, losers for life?"
So asks Cliff Mason at CNBC after reflecting on a new study written about by Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics, 
which says that popular kids make more money in life:
Really, seems to me the "jerks in the polo shirts" (at least the ones in and appointed by the White House) were the nerds...
which says that popular kids make more money in life:Here's his summation of the results:
"They find that each extra close friend in high school is associated with earnings that are 2 percent higher later in life after controlling for other factors. While not a huge effect, it does suggest that either that A) the same factors that make you popular in high school help you in a job setting, or B) that high-school friends can do you favors later in life that will earn you higher wages."
Come on, you've gotta be kidding me.
I thought the geeks were supposed to inherit the earth.
What happened to Revenge of the Nerds? .....
We need some more evidence here. I can't let this stand. How can we live in a world where the losers in high school are, well, losers for life? Man, that's depressing. And the people with lots of close friends who were on the football team?
They get to win?
If "the same factors that make you popular in high school help you in a job setting," it's no wonder we're headed for a repeat of the great depression. We gave the jerks in the polo shirts the keys to the economy.
Really, seems to me the "jerks in the polo shirts" (at least the ones in and appointed by the White House) were the nerds...
posted by Helen at 11:54 AM
37 Comments:
It doesn't help that our educational culture makes it not only okay, but a badge of honor to say things like "I suck at math!" or "I just memorize the dates in History for the test, then I forget all about it."
Can you imagine anyone declaring with that same pride "I can't read!" -- ?
It's really just a reflection on our cultural values. We respect the fast talking people who can make connections with other people fast.
Why do you think Obama got so popular? He's the ultimate "jerk in a polo shirt".
If this "study" is true then I really bucked the odds. Not only was I a nerd loner in school but I earn rings around most in my graduating class.
I think you can relax, the nerds are inheriting the world, most just operate from behind the curtain, directing the puppet on the podium...
From Levitt's article: ...popularity is highly correlated with other traits that prove to be very valuable in the labor force. For instance, people with high I.Q.’s and who planned to go to college are much more popular in their data. People with high I.Q.’s and lots of years of education also earn higher wages.
Looks like an important point as well as this: I could easily imagine that there is a bias toward naming people who have been successful since high school as friends.
No doubt. Living where I live, I've met dozens of people who were friends with George Clooney back in high school.
I suspect there is a lot more going on here than what was measured and "adjusted" for. I look at my two youngest, 7th and 10 grade. The more popular kids in their classes strongly tend to be the smartest and most talented whether it be sports, music, art or something similar. On my daughter's basketball team half or more of the players are honor students. The quarterback on last year's football team had a 4.0 GPA as well as being a good player. He got a athletic scholarship to Harvard. Yeah, he'll be making more than most of us.
The real mistake here is Cliff Mason's bigoted and erroneous attitude towards towards athletes and such. Plenty of these people are smart plus have people skills.
In my son's class one kid is a super nerd. Very smart, scored a 33 on the ACT as a high sophomore. In academic team competitions he beats the other team all by himself sometimes. But, his people skills are lousy. He may end up being a doctor or professor someday but lots of business people make more money than people in those professions. I'll bet on the kids who are almost as smart as him and have all the other skills to boot.
Since when is earning money equated with being a winner in life?
Sample headstone: "TMink did really well at his job and made lots of friends at the office."
My life objective veers off to a different course.
Sadly, I do not make enough money to support that statement Cham!
And my friends call me Trey. 8)
Trey
I think one of the reasons the intellectual left hated George Bush so much is they thought he was just a popular not so smart frat boy and how dare he become president when they were the smart nerds who were supposed to triumph in the end.
CLass, that kind of elitism sounds about right. Although, I find it difficult to look down my nose at someone who went Ivy League when I went to UNC. I wonder how they manage it?
Trey
do I detect a bit of bitterness on the part of the guy who did this study??? I
To be totally honest here: I was not a popular kid in school. I was a late bloomer. It would be so easier to blame "the popular kids" but the reality is is that most of them were popular for a reason: they had good people skills.
The people who truly were turds to me were NOT popular kids, but wannabes who vented their frustrations by going a little lower on the food chain.
I have also realized as an adult that the fact that I grew up in a very dysfunctional home contributed to a lot of my social missteps in high school.
But in following the logic, who's to say that those who make the most money and are the most "popular" are the happiest in the end?
Lots of friends and lots of money, it seems to me, sometimes works inversely towards happiness, depending on what you had to sacrifice to make them.
Most of the really good things in life, in the end can't be marketed, bought and sold. Or if they can, it usually proves to be only temporary, in my humble opinion.
Maybe the answer is to stop worrying about others and comparing yourself to them via status measurements, figure out what it is that brings you happiness, and then go out and work on getting that. (and if you only want the $$ for its own sake, and the popularity in say, being president, but don't want the whole package that comes along with it -- ie/the presidential duties and responsibilities; the self lost in following the "friendship" crowd, then maybe you need to get more creative and check out more in life?
Tis' a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be ... FREE afterall.
I think you're onto something here Mary. The real issue isn't pounding people into the same hole. It's everyone finding their own niche and using their talents.
It's also not about maximizing the amount of money one makes. Although money is not a bad thing in and of itself. It buys nifty stuff like food, clothing and housing.
I think the thing that tweaked people off with this guy though, is his snotty attitude about the popular kids. Because you cannot underestimate people skills. They are not some unimportant factor. It isn't everybody's strong point, but its a good thing not to ignore that development either. And the sour grapes attitude that what they had isn't valuable anyway.
makes perfect sense to me. after all, as the sage said, "life is merely high school fought with live ammo."
Makes sense to me too.
I read a lot about social autism, about how the super-smart intellectually usually have a rough go socially. About how looks and charm and social skills predict success and income more than 'g'. And about how the popular and charming guys--i.e. socially adept--are preferred by women over the super-smart ones.
Perhaps that God's way of evening the scales. So we're not ruled by a bunch of brainiacs with tin ears.
I question Levitt's conclusions entirely. In Freakonomics he makes a huge amount of errors; mostly by confusing cause and correlation. I've long concluded that he simply takes a contrarian view of something and then sets out to prove it using statistics (and manipulating the hell out of them.) He's also not above just making stuff up.
While I have many problems with the way standardized tests work, I will say that the combination of "No Pass, No Play" and standardized testing seemed to make sure the kids who were popular in my school were the smart kids. Teachers couldn't get away with passing a student just so they could play a sport because they would also have to perform well on the standardized tests. I'd like to see that work without the threat of those tests... with just the teachers having the integrity not to pass a student who doesn't deserve it.
Also, we didn't care so much about school sports when it came to who was popular. Students in my school were more likely to be popular because they were a generally likeable person, or because their family was rich. And the parents of the rich kids were pushing them to keep their grades up and participate in extra-curricular activities so they could get into a good college and go into a career that would make them rich. (Most of the people in my area who "have money" do earn it in some way, rather than inherit it.)
There are some serious social flaws in how that works out, but it does mean the popular kids from my high school really would be the ones most likely to make the big bucks in the real world. Maybe similar things account for the findings in that study?
One thing I can find fault with, without even reading the whole piece, is the use of the term "close friends". Is this quantified? Is Leavitt counting hangers-on as close friends. As I have aged, it becomes obvious that the number of truly close friends is limited, even (and maybe especially for) for "popular" people. I have loads of acquaintances, and with my memory for names (a gift from above) I am able to maintain a larger circle of nominal friends than many other people. But because of circumstances (an autistic son, a wife who works odd hours), I find it hard to establish and keep truly close friendships.
I was pretty much a geek in high school. I still had a lot of close friends, its just that they were mostly other geeks. The difference between popular and unpopular is how the people who AREN'T close friends treat you.
So I don't see this study as proving that the popular kids end up earning more money later on -- just that the truly antisocial people earn less.
I had the same experience as Revenant. Also, both in those ancient daze and these I see that brains and social ability are not mutually exclusive, and they are't exclusive to athletic ability either. A lot of jocks on a variety of teams did very well academically and were nice people. One of the valedictorians was a Cheerleader.
So there.
Were it proven beyond doubt that the same clique from high school usually goes on to drive the Beemer and live in shorefront property in Malibu, I don't see the cause for surprise.
If, at an early age, certain people learn that bogus behavior, superficial appearances, trendy fashions, adherence to the zeitgeist and parroting of popular slogans are what people flock to and admire from afar, then where is the cause for surprise here?
All the football quarterbacks, hockey forwards, cheer leading queens and class officers from my own high school went on to great careers in sales ($$$) or other fields that left others mired in BS while they raked in the bucks.
I think Stephen King and Bill Gates are the only geeks in history to have butlers.
Speaking of education, maybe legislators want the masses fat, dumb and dependent of this Seattle P.I. story is factual: State senate passes bill to make graduation easier
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The state Senate has made good on a promise to help students graduate from high school by passing a bill that would eliminate one diploma obstacle.
The measure would eliminate the requirement to keep taking the math Washington Assessment of Student Learning every year until graduation. High school students who fail the 10th grade math test, would still be required to keep earning math credits, however.
The bill, which passed on a vote of 43-4, still requires approval in the House. It would affect the class of 2009, if it passes both houses and is signed by the governor.
The bill is Senate Bill 5498.
Historically, the intelligentsia served the illiterate nobility/king.
The current revolution being conducted by Obama's puppet masters is by the intellectuals: step by step over decades -Fabian/Menchevik(sp?) instead of the armed uprising of the Bolsheviks. Yet, I expect the crude murders to take over once it is established.
Just to let you know, the most popular guy in my high school was this guy.
He was captain of just about everything, came from money, was the lead in all the school plays,did well in school, played on a bunch of sports teams. He bragged a bit about being sexually abstinent with his girlfriend. I always thought something was a little off with him but I couldn't put my finger on it.
I hope he is doing well with his MetroFresh restaurant.
How does an incremental benefit for each CLOSE friend translate to a benefit from popularity? The popular kids in high school don't necessarily have any more CLOSE friends than anyone else - in fact, they often have fewer, for all the backstabbing that goes into climbing the high school social ladder. They have groupies and hangers on, but not close friends who wouldn't drop them like a hot potato for the next flavor of the month.
Another big problem with these statistics is the distortion caused by a small minority of earners. It's the same reason the "people with college degrees earn more" statement is a scam. Within that pool are wildly successful people (like Warren Buffet) whose income is so massive that it makes average income look much higher. Use median income and most of these correlations vanish or even become negative correlations.
DADvocate:
"No doubt. Living where I live, I've met dozens of people who were friends with George Clooney back in high school."
Whoop-dee-doo. You get a gold star for that one.
dweeb said...
How does an incremental benefit for each CLOSE friend translate to a benefit from popularity? The popular kids in high school don't necessarily have any more CLOSE friends than anyone else - in fact, they often have fewer, for all the backstabbing that goes into climbing the high school social ladder. They have groupies and hangers on, but not close friends who wouldn't drop them like a hot potato for the next flavor of the month.
12:38 PM, MARCH 10, 2009
Apparently our society does not value close friendships. The way to success in America is stab everyone in the back, with a smile of course. Don't you just love all those homecoming king/queen contests and other nonsense?
Use median income and most of these correlations vanish or even become negative correlations.
12:56 PM, MARCH 10, 2009
Statistics are the tool of the devil!
This year is my 30th high school reunion and our class has a website where you can put all kinds of stuff on your profile, pictures, high school memories, what you are doing now, etc. I am completely addicted to it and check it every day and part of it is, much as I hate to admit it, schadenfreude. I was an itty bitty, very quiet, very shy, very smart, late bloomer in high school. I did have friends and activities and I was not unhappy in high school, but I was definitely not in with the in crowd. It's been very interesting seeing who's doing what now and I am not above doing a little zillowing on some people's homes. My life has turned out great with a wonderful, financially successful husband, well-behaved, high achieving children and a calm, peaceful day-to-day existence.
One of the advantages of being a teeny tiny, flat-chested high school girl is that at the age of 47 I am still pretty teeny tiny, although not flat-chested. I am not attending the reunion because it is very far away and we already have a vacation planned that week, but I'm almost tempted to go because I look way, way better now than many of my classmates who were smokin' hot in high school.
The only girl I remember being a mean girl in high school who teased me constantly about my hair now looks like she was rode hard and put away wet. I honestly wish no one ill will but I get just a little satisfaction from looking at her picture now.
Oh come now Dr. Helen. You're filthy rich but then again you seem to be just as restless and unhappy as most of those folks on them liberal sites. Why not give up your money and try living a happy housewife for a change? Too much money and fame's hurtin' you.
Hi Liz. That was me. I rode her hard and put her away wet. Big time.
Thanks, Cappy. I think you were one of many.
Liz,
You better brush up a bit on smirking schadenfreude.
It's whoever DIES with the most toys wins.
You've had 30 years since your high school reunion, but there are a few decades to go. All the people that you are now better than could get a gust of wind, maybe even win the lotto, or get a big inheritance, and pass you before the finish line of death.
Similarly, your financially successful husband (I mean what else would a woman brag about in a husband) could become a financially problematic husband.
And then the other people win.
But never lose that cute superficiality. That's worth some "better-than-you" points just in itself.
Popular kids earn more than others in life? I didn't see that; I saw a study that says that the more social kids earned 2% more than they would have earned otherwise. But that's just comparing them along one dimension while ignoring others.
I.E. Tho popularity might correlate with higher earnings when only popularity is considered, other factors (e.g. scientific curiosity) might be of even greater significance. The study doesn't seem to address that, tho I admittedly didn't dig too hard. Back to work now.
Elusive W wrote: "I read a lot about social autism, about how the super-smart intellectually usually have a rough go socially."
Interesting point. I see a type of child in my practice who is really quite gifted intellectually, but normal emotionally. The problem can be that they can reason things that they cannot emotionally manage. They tend to try to become little parents, and they hang with adults because peers seem to be lagging behind. So they miss out on learning to interact with peers a bit.
The peers ARE lagging behind in comparison to the really bright kids when it comes to academic subjects, but they are not having to deal with thoughts and worries that the very smart children sometimes do. As a result, it usually seems to be pretty smart kids that have non PTSD anxiety.
Maybe in this instance, they are indeed too smart for their own (emotional) good.
Maybe. 8)
Trey
Cham wrote: "I always thought something was a little off with him but I couldn't put my finger on it."
It is so hard, I mean difficult to discuss sexual matters without falling into the pit, um trap, um mistake of making at least several Freudian slips.
But I bet you could not put your finger on it Cham! 8)
"If, at an early age, certain people learn that bogus behavior, superficial appearances, trendy fashions, adherence to the zeitgeist and parroting of popular slogans are what people flock to and admire from afar, then where is the cause for surprise here?"
There's no surprise at all.
What I see, both in my career and in society at large, is a huge disconnect between the skills that win you new jobs/promotions (popularity) and the skills that allow you to actually perform those jobs.
It's especially clear looking at politicians. What are the skills most important to getting elected? Convincing strangers to give you large amounts of money, speaking with credible authority on subjects you may know little if anything about, straddling contreversial issues while actually saying as little as possible about your actual position on them, and convincing people that your opponent is stupid/evil.
Being good at those things gets you elected - as we saw last November. But equally, being good at them has nothing to do with the things you need to do to perform well once in office.
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