Educating Swots

Laurie Taylor has a potentially interesting item on how classroom swots ‘manage their identity’ on his programme, Thinking Allowed, today. Given the prevalence of the culture of the classroom to stigmatise anyone who seems over-interested in working or learning, or displays signs of being a ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’, this should be interesting listening. Maybe Paul Willis was wrong to paint ‘the lads’ as the only ones who weren’t interested in work. Can you be clever and popular?