After watching the Breakfast Club, the strongest feeling that possessed me as I left the movie was definitely pity. Pity for that archetypical character Brian the Brain. You see, in the movie, he stays at school for detention with a jock, a princess, a criminal, and a basket case. At the end of the 80s classic, the princess hooks up with the criminal and the jock falls for the basket case.

And Brian the Brain? No love. Nothing. He is left, in fact, laboriously thinking of what to write in the mandatory essay required of the five as per the usual detention penalties.

Then yesterday, I re-watched Grease. The movie was hardly fifteen or so minutes in when the Greasers started to pick on poor brainy Eugene, pushing away his books and yanking maliciously at his bowtie. Granted, Eugene’s getup might generally be the impetus for negative reaction, but I’m sure he didn’t deserve to be cornered by Travolta and his pack of leather-clad failures.

However, I have to say one thing: this doesn’t happen so much today. Packs of rude students generally don’t attack the “smart kids.” Gone are the days of nerds wearing eccentric, old-fashioned clothing and speaking in nasal voices. Okay, maybe there are the exceptions, as there inevitably always will be. But the students who are passionate about school today are generally either treated as equals or kings.

Of course there’s still a big pre-requisite: being smart without being obsessed. In other words, still melting at least partly into the mass sentiment of laziness and lethargy.

But, really, other than that, I don’t see any other drawbacks to being a smart kid at school. There’s more of a drive today than ever before to maintain the idea that you’re someone smart. Thank god for the transition from the days when cavemen and football players with brawn were praised above everyone else to the modern day, when people seem to value sense and wit more than anything else.

Since people have always tried to invest their hearts into values that are eternal, unwavering and useful, it should be no surprise that the pen trumps the sword, the brain the brawn and Bill Gates the Hulk.

Does this mean that kids today are on the path to brilliance? Ha!