USA Telephone and Channel 8 (WMTW) deserve a slap on the wrist for the a TV commercial that portrays top math students as nerdy geeks with broken glasses.

The commercial features a cluster of adults trying to compare competing telephone company offers. A three-member team of “mathaletes,” students who enjoy math and compete against other schools in solving math problems, join the baffled adults with their calculators in hand.

The mathaletes are exaggerated nerds, scrawny, unkempt and wearing unfashionable clothing. Their spokesperson is a tall kid with thick-framed black glasses held together with white tape.

After the math students furiously pound their calculators for a few seconds, he announces that U.S. Telephone offers the best deal.

That may be so, but the ad is a raw deal for smart students.

There are probably many reasons U.S. students lag most of the developed world in math skills. Part of the blame, no doubt, rests with our glorification of good looks and physical athleticism over intellect.

Anti-intellectualism is a strange and recurring thread in the American character. While teachers and intellectuals are revered in many lands, here we seem to heap way more praise on football, basketball and baseball players.

When we portray engineers as people with pocket protectors and too many pens, and top math students as gangly, acne-faced adolescents, we shouldn’t wonder why many U.S. students then shun those disciplines.