Comment Re:Smart people are discriminated against in US... (Score 1) 502
Now that's just stupid.
You think that kids are only called nerds or geeks in the U.S.? This is a global phenomenon, yet it doesn't stop everyone else from making progress. Hell, even in the rest of the Anglophone world there's Tall Poppy Syndrome, which isn't entirely unrelated to American anti-intellectualism.
It could definitely be argued that the politicization of anti-intellectualism is what really is driving downward, but it's a fairly complex issue. Education certainly has a hand in this. We've been falling massively behind in our science EDUCATION for a while now. I would say that we should try to increase the exposure of students to the sciences from a primary level, and then keep using more flashy or exciting demonstrations in the classroom. I mean, hey, it might be shameless, but I'd also be lying if I claimed that the fact that I like explosions didn't factor at all into my pursuit of Chemistry early on.
Now of course that doesn't solve everything, and I think anti-intellectualism plays a part in all of this, but it's certainly not everything.
Also, I have to make the obligatory comment that if you think evolution is about the survival of the "best" or "smartest" then you clearly learned about it in an American school.