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 did A level maths in 6 weeks and got an A and an S level (showing my age there!). got a 1st at engineering. highest starting salary on my high fliers degree course. very good income now.

my only negative experience at school was with an inadequate male teacher who would probably have thought i was his star pupil...except i was female..... so he ignored me. LOSER

High achieving and socially awkward will sometimes go hand in hand. If you are spending a lot of time reading and learning stuff, you are going to have interests, vocabulary etc that other people don't have. You are then going to make an effort not to speak about things you are interested in, or use more precise language, because it will be at odds with other people's interests.

It will then require better social skills to socialise in a way that fits in, just like if you are very different in some other way. The majority want others to be just like them. Not everybody will have these social skills, so may appear odd or arrogant.

I notice this with my neighbour. He is very bright and I notice him making a huge effort not to correct other men when they say things that are factually incorrect, because they wouldn't understand the answer if he told them it (and neither would I for that matter).

My DS is academically gifted, and has never been mocked for it - he went to a very ordinary primary school, where his intelligence was just part of who he is. He stood out quite dramatically in all academic subjects with the exception of english, and it was never a big deal - it sounds as if he was very lucky.

Having said that...he's never thougth he was anything special, maybe because DH and I have always been very matter of fact about it. Yes, he's very clever. Yes, things come easily to him - but that's no more special than the fact he's taller than average to us - it's just the way he's made.

The things we 'show off' about are the things he's worked at - when he brought his english marks up to match the rest of the others, through hard graft - that was something we made a bloody big deal of to everyone who cares about him, and why wouldn't we celebrate something that was an achievement, rather than something that was just innately there in him?

He's now at a very academic grammar school, and is still quietly top of all his classes. Again, we just accept it, remind him he still needs to revise, and that even though he thinks art is 'wank', there's no excuse for not getting A grades for effort.

The experiences on this thread are the main reason why I think academically bright children will, in general, do best in an academically selective environment.

Ok, I don't have any statistics to back that up. Just my own experience. I went to a very academically selective school. My straight As were nothing particularly out of the ordinary. I never, never got picked on for doing well or working hard. I don't think anyone else who did well did either. The worst that happened was the odd teacher who got fed up with questions that she didn't know the answer to used up a lot of classroom time. Fair enough.

I think it really helped that exam results were never made public, so competitiveness was not encouraged.

Oh, and if (in the earlier years) I'd finished all my work, I was given more. (or at least a book to read). Not left to get bored.

I have to say, I'd never really thought my school was all that, but looking at this thread, I have a new found respect for it.

I was a gifted child and had no problems from others really, at least not that I was aware of. I went to grammar school so in my teens that probably helped.

I think some teachers (and indeed anybody, but teachers are the relevant group in this case) can be threatened. My music teacher in yr8 mentioned Scott Joplin and I said how much I loved playing the entertainer, and she immediately said I couldn't possibly play the proper version she did that with a couple of other pieces too. It's weird, as there were people much more musically advanced than me at the school, she just didn't seem to like the fact I was good at it

I've also had a college tutor tell the class that anyone who got over 150 on an IQ test we all took (psychology lesson) must statistically have cheated - after finding out my score was higher. I wouldn't have minded if he'd said it was probably a fluke, as it may well have been, but he actually said I must have cheated.

Those two things irk me a little, but probably just because they are the only times I've felt like the description in the OP.

i just asked DS 16 if he thought
a) bright kids get bullied for being bright
b) to teachers like bright kids

He is top set in an ordinary but well run comp, supposed to be oxbridge material, but has dylexic problems. Type of boy who takes full role in class discussions, so not shy at all, but I do think he can be self effacing and modest without hiding his brightness.

He said it depends on the character of the child!

The only problem ds has had with bullying is from an equally bright child.
This boy comes across as very arrogant and does have problems with teachers, but that is because he can be rude and thinks he knows it all. DS who is equally as bright has the same teachers and has no problems with them at all.
When DS was at primary I had a parent moaning at me that her son misbehaved because he was bored. He had been moved up a year for some work, but he was still misbehaving.
He then moved to a school where I knew a TA. She said he was the most obnoxious child she had every met. He was also very sly and mean to other children.

DD 14 also very bright rather exasperates her teachers because she has the attention span of a gnat, but I do get the impression they enjoy teaching her because she enlivens the class but still gives mature and thoughtful input.
She gets stick from others for being an "emo" but never for being clever.

I was also one of the top performers at my old comp and never remember having problems for beng academic. I was quiet but had a nice circle of friends and probably wasn't on many of the other kid's radar.

MillyR is talking sense. It isn't so much intelligence per se that seems to get people's backs up for some reason, it's being really interested in things.

Having read this whole thread, one thing stood out to me - all of the self professed "bright" people seem to regard academic "cleverness" and sporting prowess to be mutually exclusive. Can you not be good at academic subjects AND clever? If you're good at sport, MUST you be bad at core subjects? And what on Earth happens if you are unacademic AND unsporty? (me - what am I meant to boast about, for God's sake??).

Sorry - can you not be good at SPORTS/CREATIVE activities and clever, not academic subjects and clever - told you I was fick, and my post proved it!

cathy I am useless at everything.

I don't think that is the case Cathy. I know a few very academic kids who also excel at sport/art/music. I used to laugh though when one of my friends quite happily told me how her ds was on tryouts for england for his sport but spoke in hushed tones about his academic success. Sporting achievement is acceptable but academic achievement was something to hide. Not sure why?

I was mocked and punished and physically hit. I went to a secondary school. We didn't have a grammar in my town.

I have always found being bright is to be noticed...and frowned upon. In America they tell their kids they could be President, here they tell us not to 'show off'.

My adult life is a little better - now. I retain information, except I am a little slower now. My mind is a mine of useless information!

My son is the same except he is not afraid to speak up for others and is doing well, he is still bullied occasionally, mainly by jealous kids. He is in an Academy backed by a private school - I moved him from an ordinary school which then went into special measures and he is so much happier now he is being encouraged.

Of course you can be good at both! Some kinds of physical activities seem to be done by disproportionately by academic children. I doubt either is down entirely to aptitude.

I think the point of comparing them is that it is generally the case that it is considered more acceptable to make a big deal of sporting achievement than academic achievement.

When my mum was at (state) school she won the French prize in the fifth year. Do any schools even have such things anymore? Yet there are still plenty of sporting prizes and awards.

I know this isn't always the case. My son's school has huge posters of each high achieving academic sixth former from the year before, with a large picture of them, which university they went to, what grades they got and what other extra curricular stuff they did. The posters then go up in the corridor of the appropriate department. So the ones who have gone to do engineering or Medicine are up in the Science department and so on. Having just looked around a number of schools with DD (year six), I didn't see any stuff about individual academic achievement in the other schools, but plenty of stuff about people who were good at sport.

"When my mum was at (state) school she won the French prize in the fifth year. Do any schools even have such things anymore"

Prizegiving is alive and well at Dc's school. Only two prizes per subject per year group, and two form prizes, not a prize for everyone affair.

I think it depends on the school. There was a wide range of abilities at my school but most of the "popular" crew were reasonable smart, some of them would have been amongst the cleverest in the year. I don't remember anyone getting any grief for being smart, it was viewed in a neutral or positive way really. This was a comprehensive though perhaps a little calmer as it was in a rural area.

I was pretty good at most subjects at school and generally found the teachers very encouraging. I didn't feel pressure from the other kids from that - the total disinterest in fashion was the bit that was more problematic! My brother went on to do a phd and post doc at Oxford and is now a professor at a Russell group university - again I don't recall any sneering either from teachers or his parents friends. However, my mum has often recalled the headmaster of our primary school describing my brother as "clever enough not to let the other boys know just how clever he is" so maybe he did feel restricted, at a young age at least.

I do come at this from two ways, because I have a dd who is both physically disabled and G&T and I just can't see that her giftedness creates anything like the kind of problems her disability does.

In fact, she has never, ever had a teacher moan about her being bright- quite the contrary- but in her last school she was constantly made to feel what a nuisance it was having to deal with a child in a wheelchair, with frequent absences and lots of medical appointments. In that context, I think she would laugh at the thought that being smart was hard work.

Hard work was being expected to crawl up the stairs, not being able to fit your wheelchair into the loo, having to explain your attendance record to the Education Welfare Officer while the head kept muttering "We have never seen any evidence of these problems", finding that the school had inexplicably "forgotten" to arrange for transport that could fit her chair in on the school trip. Those are hurdles. Not getting your name in a newsletter simply isn't something she would recognise as a hurdle- that's how life is for most children.

*cathy trips over her uncoordinated, rubbish at all games feet whilst trying to change the programme on the telly to something nice and entertaining whilst her "intellectual" partner has a bath, thus enabling cathy to watch something other than subtitled films which have "good reviews".

I think theres a certain culture in this country that doesn't like anyone who stick out for somehow being 'better' than others.

You can see it throughout the press - they love to build up a celeb and take joy in then taking them apart at the slightest thing. The England football tea is the ultimate example of it.

I don't think we are encouraged to succeed in the way that Americans are. You have to downplay things and be positively apologetic about it. We regard it as arrogance - they regard it as confidence.

My son's a bit thick. There you go. Not terribly so, not going to make him stand out, but yeah. I said thick deliberately, as that's still what kids say when talking about their peers, especially the BRIGHT ones. Luckily, he is popular, self confident and good looking lovely, so, unless I am a grandmother by 38, or he ends up in prison, that's all good. I adore him. I value all of his achievements and am constantly amazed by his social awareness and capacity to get on with people.

He has a certain "bright" friend who had to come to his birthday sleep over, who insisted on pointing out to the assembled group (6 kids, my son in lowest sets of all of them), X wouldn't know about that, though, as only set 1 kids like us did that activity.

It is not that child's cleverness I object to...

I don't think it is the bright children who people mind so much as it is their parents - some of whom revel in the reflected glory

Hopefully nobody would suggest that being clever was in any way the same as having a disability, needing to use a wheelchair and not having your needs met.

There is also the matter of making remarks that are appropriate to the person you are directly addressing. I wouldn't complain about DH's disability to somebody whose husband had recently died. That doesn't mean my complaint isn't justified in another situation.

But that is not the same as the things people have concerns about on this thread. It isn't okay to bully people because they are different in any way, including being clever or intellectual. There is a culture of this in some situations but not others. It shouldn't be an acceptable sentiment that someone with XYZ who got bullied must have been at fault because the poster knows somebody with XYZ who has is Miss popularity.

And it shouldn't be okay for people to sneer at academic interests, particularly not in schools. Yes, there are other important qualities, like being a compassionate person, or being a creative person. But having an active intellectual interest should be seen as something of real value, because without it, democracy is pretty much fucked.

I went to school with a v v v gifted person whose entire family are g&t. They didn't boast and kept their heads down but the boy did run rings around most of the teachers which made enemies of them by picking apart their lessons etc.. Of course he left school with all As, went to sixth form and got all As despite a crap and un-stimulating secondary education.

Sad thing is that everyone thought he was a twat (except me who thought he was the bee's knees), not because he was clever but because he didn't have any humility about his intelligence. Now some 12 years on he's a sad and lonely drug addict with no friends and no job after being kicked out of two universities for not trying/attending lectures (saw his mother recently). I wish I'd someone had taken him to one side and told him that in the UK you aren't rewarded for being the cleverest, just playing the game gets you the spoils, but I was just a kid too.

I have heard that it is very common for really exceptionally intelligent children to end up in poorly paid jobs as adults. If that is the case, I wonder if that is because of lack of support in the education system, issues like bullying, undiagnosed special needs like ASD, or because sometimes clever people are clever enough to realise that 'playing the game' can actually make many people comfortably off but very unhappy.

But - my brother was and is the cleverest, has a great circle of friends, a top job, and is enjoying the spoils of his amazing intellect - and he DID have his picture in the paper, not for sport - best "A" levels in the county (7 As, before A* was invented). He has a first class degree in PPE and a dPhil from Oxford university. No massive disadvantage to cleverness here that I can see.

Except for his poor sister who was in the same year at school....; ) (I think I probably felt it most as I am the closest sibling in age to wunderkind; I think my other brothers were less bothered.)

I agree with you - I had terrible experiences at school, and I'm not even some kind of genius, just top of most of my classes.

DD1 is in reception, and already I'm finding that other parents will ask each other what homework, reading band etc thier child is on, then if I answer honestly I get somehow looked down upon. Again, she isn't some kind of prodigy, and I don't even know if she is top of the class, but the parents I speak to are having simpler homework sent home. I have already started just agreeing with what they say (DD gets what their kids get, plus extension stuff) about the stuff every child has had and evading questions.