to think that, in general, people in the UK have an appalling attitude towards academically bright children?

[AKMD]

I realise that that's a sweeping generalisation but it irks me. I am academically bright and had a dreadful time at school, not really from the other children, but from the teachers and friends' parents, who were quite sneery and mocked me infront of the whole class/friends if I ever did get anything wrong. It always felt that they were waiting for me to trip up and that they resented me just because I was good all-rounder (terrible at art though!). That was only 7 years ago. Since then, I've seen it happen time and again when people openly jeer at others who are clever, especially girls and women, and it's seen as completely acceptable. Just a few weeks ago on here, I was really shocked when a mother posted in Children's Books about her 18mo DD liking books and asked for age-appropriate suggestions, to be met with sarcasm about introducing her to Joyce and applying to Mensa. I've seen one regular MNer who clearly has bright children be sneered at when she said that the gap between her DDs' intellectual and emotional maturity caused them social problems: "Oh, poor you, it must be sooo hard to have clever children ."

AIBU to think that this attitude is disgusting and that the obstacles placed in the way of bright children are one of the reasons why we as a country are increasingly going to struggle to compete in a global market?

I think what is coming out of this thread very strongly is that put-downs never do any good: the best we can do for our own children is to model how to create a win-win situation: I feel good about myself and I make you feel good about yourself.

Cory, do we all have to add on to our posts the usual statement that has to be added when we talk about any social issue - anorexia, racism, violence against women etc. I'll write it anyway.

WARNING! Other victim/perpetrator combinations may apply.

This is a thread about the poor treatment of very able children by their peers and sometimes adults. That does not mean that other terrible things don't happen to other kids or that clever kids are never mean. Does that mean we can't talk about the issue of what happens to clever kids?

I'm sure there are some arrogant intelligent children.
I'm sure there are also children like the one cory describes, who have clearly been pushed/made insecure so they crave recognition and think the only way to get it is to show off/excel.

But I think it's often hard to distinguish those children, and their needs, from children who honestly have no clue they are doing anything they shouldn't be.

bruffin it depends on what you mean by "arrogance".

If a child is going around saying "I'm better than you because I'm cleverer" then yes that's just like any other form of boasting/arrogance and not going to go down well.

But a lot of the time clever children do things that are interpreted as arrogant, but really aren't. For example, when I was about 6, I used to go round at school correcting other children's spelling. I always found spelling very easy. I thought I was being helpful. Of course, I now realise that must have come across as really arrogant, and unsurprisingly, it didn't win me any friends. But at 6 years old I had no idea that was how it would come across.

What is the best way to teach a socially-unaware child not to use their abilities to do down their friends and peers? (Presumably sporty kids do this to the non-sporty, and kids in music school must have this sort of rivalry etc etc)

Are there any teachers on here who do anything in class? What do some of you do at home?

Exoticfruits: you know some crappy people then!

Not in RL but you can find them in their droves on MN! Wait until they cast for the Nativity Play soon and choose the best! There will be moans aplenty that posters DC is a villager and not Mary or Joseph! As a DC I liked being back row of the chorus-thankfully I didn't have a mother who was pushing me onto centre stage for reflected glory!

Many parents seem to want a genius, a DC who is going to excel in some way, either top of the class, ace tennis player etc and it stands to reason the majority are going to be average.

It is much better to support the DC you have to make the best of their abilities and not get jealous of those who do stand out in some way.
DCs pick up from their parents-I bet in many cases they go home and the parent is disparaging about the DC chosen as Mary and will come on MN and say 'why are the same ones always chosen'.

We all need to celebrate the gifted and talented and the attitude will rub off but it is a bit difficult when there are far more parents that think they have a gifted and talented DC than there are DCs.

cory - I agree more or less with that. I'm sure at times when I was a child I needed to be told sternly what was wrong, but often a put-down did no good because I just didn't get what the issue was.

I mean, how can it not be complicated, that children know they'll be praised for working hard and getting the right answer, but then have to learn that sometimes they must also try a bit less hard or give the right answer a bit more slowly?

I'm not saying it's anything like SN or should be compared to it, but it is it's own problem.

Really? I've been here for years and yes you see the odd thread, but mainly you see people piling on and giving them a kicking! MN isn't RL and I fully believe that half of what's written isn't true or is the result of too much self-absorption and three glasses of wine.

MillyR Thu 03-Nov-11 09:30:10
"Cory, I am sure that having issues with social skills is something that applies to people of all ability levels, but I have rarely heard anybody suggest that children of any other ability should be held back from pursuing their intellectual potential because of their lack of social skills."

I don't think anyone on this thread has suggested that a gifted child should be heald back from pursuing her intellectual potential due to lack of social skills either. There are ways of pursuing intellectual potential which do not make other people feel inferior: that is what we should be teaching.

It doesn't make an iota of difference to dd's friends that she had read most of Shakespeare's plays by the time she got to secondary, because she didn't use that to make other people feel small. There was never any reason for holding her back. Even if she had, that would have been a reason to teach her how to behave, not to lock away her Shakespeare.

I disagree strongly with the OP. I think that bright children are generally encouraged and admired. The obstacles don't lie in the attitudes of friends and family and teachers but in the lack of social justice in the allocation of secondary school places and, much more so, higher education.

LaPrune that's an interesting question. I think just explain it to them. Explain how it makes other children feel (or might make them feel). Give them a few "rules of the game" eg don't mention your exam results because other people may have done less well than they hoped and will feel worse if you have done a lot better.

These are bright children - they'll get it, once explained. The problem is, they are sometimes expected to "get it" without anyone ever explaining it to them.

How do you do it, cory?

I'm trying to think of what I would say or do to balance out encouraging a child and not making them feel as if they were being told to keep something hidden/be quiet.

(Genuine question from a position of total ignorance, so if you want to ignore it please do, it's not strictly relevant!)

I think the best way to deal with unintended arrogance is to talk a lot to your children about people and their reactions, give them social stories, give them positive examples of how you make people feel good about themselves, respond gently but firmly when they give you these little snippets of playground conversation that make your hairs stand on end ("and then I said to Gillian...").

A big part of my problem as a child was that my own mother was unhappy where she lived, felt out of it as being better educated than most people around her and had little or no interest in fitting in- so I picked up on all those signals and decided it wasn't a bad thing to be socially awkward because these people didn't really matter after all. I took my lack of social integration as a sign of my genius, rather than seeing it as something unrelated that I could do something about.

I was disabused when I got to university and found that some of the most charming people there were great scholars in their field and that some of the nerdy genius types wrote appalling essays.

Cory, Youarekidding wrote this morning:

''...often wonder if schools/ parents gave these children some social support instead of 'hot-housing' them they would be far more 'gifted'.'

Which is the post I was taking issue with when you came back on to the thread.

But you seem to have an absolute focus on pursuing your own agenda and your own situation rather than talking about gifted children, or even children, in general.

One of my mother's big problems- apart from intellectual snobbery and intense shyness- was that she really wasn't good at talking about feelings in a detached cheerful way.

Minipie - that's the point though, a bright child might have an overwhelming need for information to be right (so corrects their peers or teachers) or might not be "allowed" to be praised for being clever so gets into the habit of sticking up for themselves when they're being done down (I'm the best at X, you're rubbish and can't even spell dog...) - what if they genuinely don't have the ability to see how awful that behaviour is? It's a hard thing to teach, that your impulse for things to be right isn't always appropriate - I don't think telling them and expecting them to take it on board is enough..

I just don't get it. Both my children are bright, G&T for several subjects, etc, but have never remotely suffered from any stigma. My only worries have been that the schools just don't have the resources to teach all levels as well as might be hoped, and that the invidious stupidizing culture of teaching towards SATS and other exams erodes teachers' capacity to challenge children (all children, not just the brightest).

I was bright at school too, and consequently went from a comprehensive education to a fully grant-funded place at Oxford. That opportunity has disappeared now. That is the problem, not the maelstrom of self-consciousness around "giftedness" that seems to afflict so many parents.

The culture of the school is going to make a massive difference.

I think this is why people can have such skewed views on this. Because if you're only used to schools of one culture, you can say that 'you've never seen' the experiences of a different culture.

I went to two high schools, one where academic achievement was valued, one where it was not. In the second school, for example, it was impossible to get an A in one GCSE subject. The teacher refused to teach that part of the syllabus as a B would be good enough.

Ok, missed that post, Milly, and no I don't suppose I do agree with it either: I don't see that there should be any contradiction there: I think schools should both teach social skills and support academic needs and that these should be seen as two sides of one coin.

It seems stupid to let one exclude the other: a bit like saying schools would be better off if they taught English instead of maths or maths instead of English.

What I would like schools to tell themselves is: everybody needs their abilities catered for and we will do our best for every child. But we also recognise that every child needs a modicum of maths, a modicum of English and a modicum of socials skills and we will offer extra support to anyone who looks like they might be falling below the bottom line in any of these, because there is a bottom line below which life will be very difficult.

In fact, this is what good schools already do.

That's interesting. Both my parents are like that - they were the nightmare types who'd march into school and demand we be put in a higher set or rant about how the teacher was making mistakes in maths or grammar.

It's not great and because I was rubbish at some things and good at others, I never knew if I was meant to be trying hard, or not working at all. Looking back, like Milly's example about a 6 year old correcting spellings, I was probably a horrible little girl to some of my teachers. But if they'd only bothered to explain it would have helped - and they would have needed to explain quite a lot to counteract what happened at home! The best I got was 'keep quiet dear' with no explanation why - was I being stupid? That's what I usually comcluded.

I do think the 'keep quiet dear, you're talking too much' attitude can be quite problematic later on, too. The OP makes a point about gender and I think it's valid. There are loads of women who go through school learning these bright-child social skills. At university they seem to get shouted down by boys, in whom being noisy and talkative is still seen by some as more acceptable.

"They don't go to the play and think 'wasn't Miranda wonderful in the part'-they go to see their DC and think 'why was Miranda chosen again and not my DC'. They have no interest in the overall production, the fact that Miranda is reliable, can learn her lines, has a clear speaking voice and a good sense of comic timing"

Taking your example, actually - I do, unashamedly, think 'why was Miranda chosen again', and so do many of the other parents...and I think it is completely valid to have those misgivings. A school play is a school play - it should be inclusive, and just because a particular child has Oscar potential doesn't mean they should always be asigned the main part in preference to his/ her cohort of classmates who are more than capable but not so starry and talented

Agree with Jean that the culture of the individual school is going to be important. Saw 4 state secondaries recently: 2 were clearly good at encouraging all levels, 1 was very keen on gifted students but had little in place for SEN, 1 seemed to have very low expectations for all their pupils. As far as I am concerned, that's two schools who are not doing their job.

Personally, I do not have any negative feelings towards very bright children (or adults for that matter) - why on earth would I? What I do have an issue with is parents who feel the need to inform you of their child's special abilities at every given opporrtunity - IME the parents most likely to do this do not usually have particularly outstandingly high acheiving DCs in any case. There are a couple I'm thinking of specifically in RL .

The way you were treated at school OP is, of course, wrong & very sad.

LaPrune oh yes the need for answers to be 'right'. What I'm currently trying with DS age7 is 'It's great you're doing so well in maths and how are you doing at being one of the most kind?' Yes that may sound a bit competitive but play to what works with your DC!

"Posters are saying that they or their children got told off for finishing work quickly or made to sit there and do nothing while the rest of the class caught up and got praised for it - surely you can see how the bright child in that situation gets penalised compared to children who are average?"

Yes. I did. Although the 'telling off' was more of a comic roll of the eyes and somethnig along the lines of 'Here she comes again!' rather than a beating! But I honestly didn't see it as a problem. I finished things earlier than all the other DC and the teacher wasn't ready for me. Not my fault no, but not the teacher's fault either. She/he is there to teach the whole class not just one or two advanced children. What is she supposed to do? When Ms Cleverclogs gets up with a completed, perfect essay in half the times Ms Dimandslow takes? 'Oh look children, let's heap some more praise on this brilliant pupil! Isn't she marvellous? Why don't you all hurry up so we can go at her pace? In fact. stop what you are doing, we are all going to some advanced maths so my star pupil gets stretched!". No, the sensible thing to do is to take the work, tell her to sit down and read quietly whilst those who can catch up.

And yes i got sent home with same book twice because the teacher didnt beleive I had actually read it in one night.

But so what? It didn't dent my confidence in my abilities or my eventual academic outcomes. It isn't 'penalising'. How is it penalising?