When I grew up, the media in my country kept telling us how great the geek culture in the US was, how deep down the stack the geeks were willing to go, and both adults and us kids were left in awe. The entire nation, for what I could tell, routinely reflected why we couldn't be like the US: educating and nurturing generations of geeks to be the best engineers and scientists in the world.
Well, it was quite a reverse culture shock after I moved to the US. I definitely didn't know that "teacher's pet" was a thing, or my coworker, a brilliant engineer who went to a highly reputed public school, was chased off his school bus simply because he used some poetic words, or geeks were not that respected in schools, or a mile wide and an inch deep with great leadership is what the US people revered. In the meantime, I guess other countries more or less picked up the baton of the US culture, and grew their own geeks.
Well, it was quite a reverse culture shock after I moved to the US. I definitely didn't know that "teacher's pet" was a thing, or my coworker, a brilliant engineer who went to a highly reputed public school, was chased off his school bus simply because he used some poetic words, or geeks were not that respected in schools, or a mile wide and an inch deep with great leadership is what the US people revered. In the meantime, I guess other countries more or less picked up the baton of the US culture, and grew their own geeks.