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?

Oh well that is complete bollocks! Your daughter requires far more time and assistance than her bright child on a daily basis. They shouldn't even be compared. Maybe swapping children for a day may open her eyes to what special needs really means.

to be fair i think she was trying to bond with me in some way

She sounds very self-absorbed and I hope she's mortified.

i liked fanjos post because to me it says:

1. clever kids get bullied (which is obviously bad)

but

1. parents of clever kids often lose perspective

FanjoForTheMammaries your not alone, someone did that to me once, her dd was bright, and normal. but her dad found her a handfull, so she moaned away to me, all the time I am thinking WTF wrong audience to say this too,
so I told her to tell him to have my dd instead, then he would know hard work.....she shut up

Some gifted children can have serious special needs. For example a minority of people with severe autism are also gifted.

It is a still a serious problem of people with serious physical disablites being denied educational opportunites or being condemed by people's low expectations.

My left foot

Some teachers do resent children who, because they are bright, ask too many pertinent questions, point out mistakes the teacher has made, or who are "difficult" because they are bored by too-easy lessons.

Yep. This is some of my daughter's experience. One teacher even refused to engage with her occupational psychologist on the basis that 'she's supposed to be smart and all the rest of us have to manage in the real world'; ignored the instructions for teachers in her IEP because 'nobody else gets special treatment like that'; and would say things to her in class to bring her down a peg or two. Like the time she asked her if she was retarded because the instructions confused her.

At my primary school it was definitely trying hard that was frowned upon. I've never considered myself to be bright but I was a trier. I was interested in things and keen to learn about things.

At 8 my teacher did her best to knock it out of me. Shouting at me 'do you know asking questions is a sign of stupidity.' Having me stand in the corner because I tried to do all of the workbook she had given out and told us to see how far we could get, actively encouraging the other children to bully me to 'teach me a lesson' and telling the guide on the school trip not to tell me anything as I didn't deserve it.. She even told me not to bother as I was an idiot who wouldn't get anywhere.

I sobbed every morning at the thought of going to school. I actually considered if death would be a better option.

Wanted to add, at the same time as Bitch Teacher, she also had a teacher for her special interest who loves the fact that he has a student as obsessed with the subject as him. He brings in his own books and films from home to lend to her and gives her extra 1-2-1 lessons off his own back.

I think it depends on the circumstances.

I was bullied at school for being gifted, dd is arguably more gifted than me and has not been bullied.

Partly I think it is about the school- dd's school has a very strong anti-bullying policy, mine wouldn't have known what an anti-bullying policy was.

Partly it may be about the fact that dd, frankly, has greater social skills than I did. I was quite capable of asking akward questions deliberately to show the teacher up and there is no denying that it was a form of boasting: I wanted everybody to know I was cleverer than the teacher. The idea that the teacher, too, might have feelings wouldn't have occurred to me as a point worth considering.

Dd in a situation like that would be thinking more about how that would feel from the teacher's pov and would go to great pains not to upset anyone or cause any disruption- she is just naturally more into other people.

Also, I have spent a lot of time training her in social situations and teaching her to think about other people's reactions: my mum wasn't very into that kind of thing and would probably have thought it served the teacher right if she was silly enough not to know everything (she was a teacher herself and had a low opinion of many of her colleagues).

cory - but should a child have to expect to be punished for having poor social skills? IMO social skills are learnt - being academically able doesn't mean you automatically have them, and as you say, some parents may not be great at teaching them.

I don't think aceademically clever children are mocked - I've never seen it.

I have however seen parents who are being quite tactless and OTT re their child's abilities mocked.

My son is intelligent apparently! and shrewed according to his teacher. But is also struggling socially (although catching up) and possibly has SpLD like dyslexia. I wouldn't expect anyone to comment but if I went around boasting about what the teacher said I would expect people to respond to my tone iyswim?

I'm sorry you had such a hard time though.

DD1 hasn't ever been mocked, though she's only 6yrs. It is me who has been mocked by health professionals simply for asking for help with her behaviour. I'd very much like to know why nobody was willing to help me and why I was continually told everything was down to her being gifted and that I should just be grateful for that. There was no support or parenting classes available to help deal with what we were going through as a family. At 3yrs I seriously want sure whether she'd still be alive at 5yrs due to her reckless behaviour.

I always thought it was a hv's job to help parents struggling with a child's behaviour and it still makes me angry 3yrs later.

Just because you've never seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen

"I don't think aceademically clever children are mocked - I've never seen it."

AnonWasAWoman Wed 02-Nov-11 18:59:08
"cory - but should a child have to expect to be punished for having poor social skills? IMO social skills are learnt - being academically able doesn't mean you automatically have them, and as you say, some parents may not be great at teaching them."

Not punished for a first offence, no. Or at least not any more than a child who pushes a friend or uses rude words to the teacher- which again, they may not have been taught at home not to do (plenty of parents not being great role models at this). But it should be pointed out to them that we don't behave like that here, and explained why.

Personally I think it would have done me a world of good if someone had taken me to one side and explained that what you are doing is neither big nor clever, it is making the teacher feel uncomfortable in a way in which you wouldn't like to be made uncomfortable, and you are taking far more than your fair share of the teacher's attention. It was only years later that I realised that some of my classmates probably resented me hogging the attention and taking up teaching time that should have been given to their needs too.

Not all bright kids hog attention. I was meek (my mother was quite abusive and had me toeing her line).

I find it a bit gobsmacking that on a thread where people are talking about having been mocked and bullied by both adults and children, someone says "well I've never seen it." Can you see how that looks?!

That makes sense cory.

I completely agree with you about the explaining. IMO this is a big problem though - teachers not realizing that a child does not always know he or she is being rude, or in some way socially inpet, even if that child is academically able.

I wasn't an academically able young child; I was (I am) dyslexic and learned to read very late, so it is perhaps different. But I remember feeling awful that, early on, they had told me so insistently that it was good to get the answers right and to work hard (this was back when children who didn't learn to read were 'lazy'), and it seemed so confusing when, in turn, later on that became the course of action that was punished.

I do think often people make the assumption that a child who's good at schoolwork, or some area of schoolwork, is really just not trying if he or she can't get the hang of the social rules. I'm sure it's not always really the teacher wanting to punish a bright child, but it might feel like that to the child is she or he doesn't understand what was done wrongly.

Just thinking about it really.

Cory-couldn't agree more about social skills. Sounds as if you and I were pretty similar when younger. I definitely wish I'd been told off for being a smart a**e and for doing that irritating thing of trying to squeeze an extra mark out of an already high mark from inaccurate marking. I think it's nearly as important as dealing with bullying, although the victim and perpetrator are the same person. My dd is not super bright but I an certainly seeing education in social skills as very important and my job to keep an eye on. They've just introduced ability groups and I'm watching out for any kind of issues around that. It's hard sometimes I think when academic success is obviously rated and praised not to run away with yourself.

Fwiw, I'll be really aware of it when I go back to classroom teaching eventually. Reading "the unwritten rules of friendship" at the moment. Wish my mum had!

IME it isn't ability that marks you out for taunting. It's behaviour. So it's very cool in my school to be a high achieving boy (and this bit does tend to apply to boys rather than girls), but only if it is apparently achieved with little effort. Now, I mark their coursework, and I know that they have put in the hours, but they will never admit it. So, in effect, they are claiming almost to be brighter than they are - so clever they don't have to try. What isn't cool is a boy slogging away to get a good grade. It's the slogging that's frowned upon, not the good grade.

I don't think it is ability not behaviour though.

When I got ticked off by my teacher for bringing her finished work too fast, it was because I had the ability to finish it fast, and didn't have the awareness that she felt this was showing off. But when I was struggling, I was encouraged to hurry up with my finished work and praised for trying hard.

As adults we can see why in one situation this is perhaps a bit annoying for the teacher/upsetting for other children, whereas in the other it's not. But I don't think children automatically recongize that sort of thing.

When I think back to what I was like at school - kept quiet, faked not knowing answers, hardly ever put my hand up........it's quite hard to read a blanket opinion that 'it's all about behaviour'. I mean, I'm not stupid, I can see I was unlikeable for something but it wasn't being cocky about my test results. I guess every school environment is different. GOOD.

I don't think it is as much that 'bright' children are mocked; it is that anybody, regardless of brightness, who has an interest in anything intellectual is mocked. Britain is an incredibly anti-intellectual country.

I think that is really sad; we all get a free education and then sneer at people who are excited about a John Keats poem or some fact about radioactivity.

I honestly wasn't trying to start some kind of G&T vs SN war...

I find that bright children have hurdles put in their way that simply wouldn't be there if we as a society valued academic ability as highly as, for example, sporting activity. In the adult world we mostly do, but being a smart child is hard work. I was good at sport so got lots of recognition for that but not a word in any newsletter, assembly or conversation about the fact that one girl in my yeargroup (not me) got full marks in all her key subject GCSEs, or that x number of children had sat the SAT extension papers and scored among the top 5% in the country.

I was high achieving and unpopular at school, but I was really uncomfortable with being brainy, and it was social awkwardness that marked me out for sure.

I teach in a challenging school, lower than national average results (although good CVA), the kind of school where you might expect to see a culture of knocking the bright, but that is not my experience.