I was a kid in post-communist Poland in 90s, and the concept of nerd was absent as well. Being good at math etc was not a problem to your social life (in fact it was sth you could brag about, just not too openly because that's uncool too).
Also there was almost no "jocks" (there were some sport competitions but no cheerleaders, and nothing as important culturally as it is in USA, also teams weren't persistent between classes and there were almost none inter-school sport events).
Grades were public as well (or at least - nobody tried to hide them so teachers would just pin a list with results from an exam on the board). Competition was seen as sth natural (at the time unemployment was 20% and kids were told that you have to be good or you will essentially be a hobo).
On the other hand you were supposed to pretend you didn't had to study a lot, because kids that study instead of playing were "kujon"s = boring, lame bookworms. It was cool to be smart without working for it.
Also cheating had no stigma attached, but telling any authority about any misbehaving was the ultimate social suicide. This obviously included telling teachers that other kids were cheating.
This was probably because 50 years of paid spying of citizens on each other by abusive government. Even now whistleblowing in general is hard because of that social stigma.
Nerd and geek concept was introduced later through movies and internet and in mid 00s it was already established, but still not a negative stereotype (but that may be because I changed environment to CS-related in the meantime and ~ everybody was a nerd/geek/whatever).
> On the other hand you were supposed to pretend you didn't had to study a lot, because kids that study instead of playing were "kujon"s = boring, lame bookworms. It was cool to be smart without working for it.
Yea, where I grew up there was also a term like "bookworm" which was used pejoratively, but it wasn't cause for social rejection, it was merely one of the myriad of ways that kids tease each other. It's not as though the "bookworm" was humiliated or bullied for being so. At least, that's how I remember it.
Also there was almost no "jocks" (there were some sport competitions but no cheerleaders, and nothing as important culturally as it is in USA, also teams weren't persistent between classes and there were almost none inter-school sport events).
Grades were public as well (or at least - nobody tried to hide them so teachers would just pin a list with results from an exam on the board). Competition was seen as sth natural (at the time unemployment was 20% and kids were told that you have to be good or you will essentially be a hobo).
On the other hand you were supposed to pretend you didn't had to study a lot, because kids that study instead of playing were "kujon"s = boring, lame bookworms. It was cool to be smart without working for it.
Also cheating had no stigma attached, but telling any authority about any misbehaving was the ultimate social suicide. This obviously included telling teachers that other kids were cheating.
This was probably because 50 years of paid spying of citizens on each other by abusive government. Even now whistleblowing in general is hard because of that social stigma.
Nerd and geek concept was introduced later through movies and internet and in mid 00s it was already established, but still not a negative stereotype (but that may be because I changed environment to CS-related in the meantime and ~ everybody was a nerd/geek/whatever).