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?

Bullying can push kids towards suicide too. A teenage girl hug herself in the woods behind my house after being picked on at school. She had spent the previous few months with falling grades. When they investigated they found she had been deliberately failing to try and make the bullying stop :(.

If they are gifted they don't need 'pushing'-I don't know why parents are so desperate to have a DC who is gifted and why they are so competitive.It is as if you must be a better mother because your DC is in the top maths group!!
I know a 19yr old who committed suicide-he couldn't tell his parents that he was failing at university-so sad-especially as in retrospect they couldn't have cared about his results.

All that stuff is beyond words.

If your child is very bright then send them to a school that values intellect. It is simple as that. The average state school cannot handle very bright children and neither can some private schools.

We learned this to our cost with DS1.

That's all very well morebeta sadly some parents don't have he choice of a school which values intellect. That is not without travelling vast distances and crossing boundaries. Even if there is one locally then there is always the chance you won't get in.

And what if you don't live near one or have the money to go private? There really needs to be an overhaul of the system so that intellect isn't sidelined.

"send them to a school that values intellect"

Exotic
If they are gifted they don't need 'pushing'-I don't know why parents are so desperate to have a DC who is gifted and why they are so competitive. It is as if you must be a better mother because your DC is in the top maths group!!

PMSL DS is top set Maths! (bottom literacy!). I am an OK mother most of the time - pretty crap at times and 'the best' at others usually for buying DS something he really wants! I have actually asked other parents for advice in helping DS with his spellings because he is struggling - I now know none of DS friends are bottom spelling group like him! (bless!) but have had some great advice - I work in education but don't know it all and everything I tried has failed! Also tonight another mum asked me for help to help her DD with the maths I was about to explain (Venn diagrams) when DS started to tell it to her! Some children are just naturally apt at some things.

For me the importance is a child being happy and I would think most 5-11yos would be happy with friends and having social skills and would be very surprised if any of them would actually chose aceademices over fun at this age. (I except there are anomallies).

There's a big difference IMO in allowing a child to expand and excell in things they are good at and trying to force the issue they are gifted at something.

I don't believe the average state school can't handle very 'bright' children. But schools will look at the whole picture. If they have a very bright child who excells in Art for example they'll encourage the child to design things/ draw, give them differentiated work and where they have things they struggle with they will help them. Schools look at the whole child though, and being bright and gifted acedemically or in 1 subject is not the whole picture.

I don't think a state school can handle a truely gifted child - but then the truely gifted are few and far between and they are the ones who are taking GCSE's at 6/7 yo and getting A*'s.

Minus/Towndon - I agree. It is an utter crying shame that so many bright children are condemned to be in schools that despise their intellect or dont recognise it. So many teachers and educationalists are blind to the utter scandlous waste of talented young minds.

It also seems if your child is bright but you don't live cap in hand on benefits your chid is deemed not worthy of any help and anything you do as a parent is seen as being a middle class twat

youarekidding you have no clue just because your gifted if dose not mean you can't be lazy
Or lack self belief
Or just be very shy of you talents
Sometimes the parents themselves Don't see the value in education
Its very rare but its also sometimes children don't always enjoy things their good at so need to be pushed.

You seem to think that a bright child will just be so well I can tell you don't no many gifted children then

Morebeta, I totally agree with you about finding a school which values intellect (I know you know it's not as simple as that). I would like to do this at secondary level and have the time and possibly the resources to manage it. I won't have the mistakes of my childhood repeated if I can help it.

However at primary level, I think it's more individual teachers, not state schools, which can't handle bright kids. I get the impression that most state primary schools are pretty fantastic really, bar the odd teacher who causes damage in one way or another to whichever kind of child (or parent) she can't deal with. Certainly I wouldn't swap the teacher ds has at the moment for anything. I'm consistently amazed at how brilliantly she is handling quite a tough class. (I'm actually finding my eyes pricking to tears of gratitude as I write this!)

I haven't read the whole thread as I'm off to school in a minute but dd has always been quite bright. I hated that people always said, 'yes, but it's easy for your girl, she's so good at reading, or writing', when they were talking about their own child's achievements in comparison.

I always said that just because she was bright now, didn't mean it would stay that way and it wouldn't be long before their child was pacing alongside her. And that's ended up being the case. She's gone from being exceptional to being just a bright, academic little girl. To me she's still exceptional and her teacher says she's the best little writer she's seen in a long time, but that's just where her talent lies. I would imagine she tells every parent that their child has some exceptional talent, because that's the kind of teacher she is (thank God!).

What annoyed me to some degree, though, was that these people didn't see the sheer hard work that my girl did most nights. Yes, I know, she didn't have any barrier to her learning, so it was 'easier', but she was constantly writing and reading and soaking up information. She wasn't just naturally bright...she worked at it. And that's what we've tried to teach her. Huffygirl IS bright, we tell her, and does have the advantage of finding some things easier, BUT the thing that makes her stand out is her work ethic. She gets smarter the harder she works. And some things she has to work harder at than others!

I work with children who have barriers to education and I know how hard it is for them to achieve any of the levels expected of them in mainstream schools. I see their confidence fall as they see their classmates racing ahead. I see them panic as they struggle with the basics and think they're 'thick'. I know that their learning journeys are much tougher than my daughters. But I do see that people denigrate her achievements and dismiss them as being 'easy' when actually, they involve a fair amount of commitment and hard work.

I also thought the 'send them to a school that values intellect' was hysterically funny. Like most of us get the chance!!!!

I haven't been talking about the generally bright, who may need a push.

I was talking about the gifted and I don't think it is possible to hold them back. I have known one DS who was gifted at Maths, he was way ahead and his primary used to send him to the secondary school once a week for Maths. When it came to 11 the parents sent him to the same comprehensive. The grammar school were not very helpful and not prepared to treat him as a special case-to quote 'all out boys are clever'. He wasn't particularly good at other subjects-just Maths and he played chess at a very high level. He went to the comprehensive who were prepared to treat him as a special case. He took GCSE in year 7 and was working with the 6th form in year 8, but I then lost touch but he was well rounded, had lots of friends who were very proud of his skills.

In our area the state system has been quite good with the gifted and taken primary school DC for master classes in the secondary for those who stand out.
Of course that causes a problem for the competitive parent who is down moaning 'it isn't fair, why was x chosen and not my DC'!

Sorry 'all our' not all out.

It also seems if your child is bright but you don't live cap in hand on benefits your chid is deemed not worthy of any help and anything you do as a parent is seen as being a middle class twat

Absolutely, maypole.

If I move near to a good school and take on all the associated costs/hardships, I'm sharp-elbowed and pushy. If someone with less money - but not all that less money, frankly - gets a leg-up from the other side of the tracks, then it's all hail, must aid social mobility etc.

Also I see masses about helping inner city kids to aim higher, but I wonder if the Sutton Trust, for example, ever looks further than 2 miles out of central London. There are a lot of rural poor. Perhaps they are not seen as being very trendy - and it's an awful drag to get to Kings Lynn when you could just nip down to Tower Hamlets instead.

If your child is very bright then send them to a school that values intellect. It is simple as that.

Nice if you stand a chance of getting into a state school like that, or the money to go private. The majority of people don't. There are an awful lot of people who don't earn enough to send their children to a private school that will cater for their needs but earn too much to qualify for bursaries to those same schools. The MD at DH's company has 3 children, who all go/went to different private schools - one for fairly average kids, one for arty girls, one that specialised in teaching children with dyslexia. The oldest is now at university studying medicine. Would he have got onto that course if his father hadn't been able to afford to educate him privately? I doubt it.

why?

He isn't particularly bright (although he is very nice!) but the school is known for taking (rich) average-Joes and coaching and tutoring and pushing them hard enough that they learn the work ethic to learn the skills and information that far more intelligent children pick up more easily. Had he gone to a state school he wouldn't have had the tiny class sizes, the individualised attention or the specialised learning environment that he had at this school and would probably have ended up with a range of B, C, D GCSE grades and 3 middle-grade A-levels, like the majority of average students in the state system. Money bought him an advantage (fair play to his parents) that those on low or middling incomes simply can't reach.

Also thinking about how many state schools offer 3-subject Science at GCSE. Mine did for one yeargroup, now it's back to double and single science. You really do need the three subject GCSEs if you want to study medicine, as I got told by my admissions tutor at VIth form.

I really don't understand why people are having these problems .

I went to dd1's parents evening last night, was told she was above average in all subjects (except PE as she has mobility problems), the teacher was lovely, said dd1 was a dream to teach and said she would put her with the older children (there are some a year older than her in her class) so she gets more challanging work. She seemed really helpfull and wanted to encourage dd1's learning as well as help her with her social problems (dd1 has Aspergers). This is dd1's second school and the last school was the same (very helpfull and thought dd1 was brilliant).

Surely 'if a school has a bright child they should be pleased ?' as it makes their SAT resaults look good and makes the school look good? (maybe i'm wrong).

We have never had any problems.

Some teachers are good, some are crap. Some do not like teaching very academic children, just as some do not like teaching those at the other end of the spectrum.

I am an ex-teacher. Quite a few colleagues I have had have said that their favourite students are the not-particularly-intelligent ones who nevertheless try hard. I know this is anecdotal, but it's definitely something I encountered. These teachers claimed that clever children/students were "hard work".

AKMD - the boy you describe, who's been given advantages, taught how to work hard - he'll go far. Knowing how to work and knowing what to work on are massive advantages. I think it's a shame that this kind of advantage tends to come from fee-paying schools - we should all be taught that (bright kids included).

Most state schools around here offer 3 sciences for children who are bright and hard-working enough.

"Also thinking about how many state schools offer 3-subject Science at GCSE. Mine did for one yeargroup, now it's back to double and single science. You really do need the three subject GCSEs if you want to study medicine, as I got told by my admissions tutor at VIth form."

All the schools round our way offer triple science for top sets, and most of them are not that academic schools.

I had parents evening last night for yr9 dd. She is very bright and they were all very positive about her. She is already touching A level ability in Literacy and her english teacher was delighted with that, Her humanities teachers were also very pleased that she asks pertinent questions that challenges them.
In her maths class they are given normal work, then if they finish that they have extension work to do in the class.
This is a normal state comp.