To think that you've either got it or you haven't when it comes to school

[blubberball]

I wasn't any good at school (obviously). I daydreamed my way through, never fitting in. Neither clever nor naughty enough to be noticed.

My older brother was very clever and good at school. Schools would thank my parents for sending him there, and would predict him doing great things when he grew up. He passed exams, went on to higher education and university, at a time when grants were still available, otherwise my parents would not have been able to afford to send him, and he now has a high status, high paid job and is happy.

My mum was clever and good at school.

My ds is 12 and seems very similar to me. Really not engaged or interested in school. Trying to get him to try harder and do his homework, and put any effort in at all. He couldn't care less.

So do you think with school, you've either got it or you haven't? If you're going to be good at school, then you will be naturally. If you're not good at school, no amount of trying is going to get you any better? I guess we can't all be good at school. I don't know.

I don't like to look at it as my parents failed me. I have to take the wheel on my own life, and secondary school is probably where that should start to happen.

Green tulips - not every child who doesn’t work or succeed at school has a learning difficulty. We need to move away from labelling children with low iqs. Some people just aren’t suited to academic work, it doesn’t mean they won’t be successful. We put too much pressure on children to be “ good at school “ .

I'm on the fence whether it's an innate ability or if environmental influences come in to play.

For me, I did exceedingly well when highly motivated and excited about learning but completely flunked come GCSE time when I was depressed and couldn't even string a sentence together let alone write coherently. I grew up severely abused by family and bullied at school. I felt like an outcast as I had no one to turn to inside or outside the home. I just stopped caring about life and that included my interest in what the world could offer through education.

I think some people fare better than others in school, I feel that the education system is very much one size fits all and if you don’t fit you can easily fall by the wayside.

I opted not to use that system for my own children.

Thanks FET2020. I will keep trying that at least. Just starting to feel that it's all meaningless.

This was also my thinking at school: "We're all going to be dead one day soon, so what's the point of worrying about all this? It's all meaningless"

Not a great attitude really. Still have it now tbh. I have depression.

I agree. I think some things just come more naturally to certain people. I can say I'm good at certain things, but I'm not fantastic at anything.

No, I definitely don't think you've either got it or you haven't. I also don't think being good at school is always a good measure of intelligence, and certainly being bad at school work is no proof at all of a lack of intelligence.

You might have an undiagnosed learning difficulty (lots of people do). You might have been taught in a way that really doesn't suit you.
You might have given up a bit (I don't mean this nastily - I think it's easy to do), and you might be passing that on to your daughter.

I think not caring is a bigger problem. That sounds like attitude rather than ability, and I would say it is a worry. It might be that the way he's being taught really turns him off, but I don't think you can just say it's because he's like you and therefore won't ever be good at school.

I teach at university, and so, so many people come back as mature students who didn't do well at school or didn't like it. Sometimes they've just grown up a bit, but sometimes something in their adult lives sparked off the motivation to study, or they found evening classes just seemed to work better for them than school ever did.

I remember a woman I taught when I was starting out, who always seemed to be full of energy despite being a single mum with a part-time job as well as a degree course. I asked her how on earth she managed, and she told me she'd got so bored at school because she never felt she was doing it right, and she always got the impression her ideas were stupid. She never thought education was for her. Then she had her children and, in her words, 'stopped giving a fuck about what other people thought' and stopped worrying about people thinking her ideas weren't worth listening to.

My problem at school was, I was so desperate to fit in, I stopped trying and started messing around, hanging about with people that didn't give a shit. This was mostly down to being so insecure from a couple of years of relentless bullying.

Green tulips - not every child who doesn’t work or succeed at school has a learning difficulty. We need to move away from labelling children with low iqs.

I agree with you here, but, some people do have learning difficulties, and low IQs don't necessarily mean you're not academically inclined.

SarahandQuack, that's a great story about the mum going back to education in later life. I've really given up and don't believe in myself at all. I struggle to put words together, struggle with every day tasks, find life difficult to cope with in general and I'm hopeless at retaining and applying knowledge.

That sounds really rough, @blubberball. But I bet you're not hopeless. You write perfectly coherently and structure an argument logically (and not everyone can do that, god knows most days I can't). You're clearly not stupid at all. Please don't do yourself down so much.

Iminaglasscaseofemotion Sorry to hear you were bullied at school. I was too. Right from infants all the way through. It was just normal and a way of life to me. I'm always shocked when any one says anything nice, and assume that they must be taking the piss, and know that I'm too stupid to realise.

Thanks SarahandQuack. X

I feel that the education system is very much one size fits all and if you don’t fit you can easily fall by the wayside.

I also cometly agree with this. My ds 11 has struggled with reading and writing, especially writing, since he started school. He was my first so I wasn't really sure how quickly they were supposed to pick things up, but did always think it was taking him longer than it should. Half way through primary 3, when he would have been around 7, I mentioned this to the teacher at parents night. She had noticed, but thought the best thing to do would be practising more at home. Fine. By primary 4 I was getting a bit concerned but still his teacher didn't see a problem. I brought it up several times over the next couple of years at meetings and was fobbed off as he just needs to do extra work and practice more. P6, they eventually relented and decided to send him for visual stress tests a the hospital. Hospital said it wasn't really a concern, gave him coloured iverlays to see if they helped. Then the school wanted to text for the same thing, then they wanted to send me to the hospital to have him tested on the same thing again. Hospital were a bit confused as to why I had been sent again as was I. We are now 4 months away from him starting high school and they are onky just beginning to collect evidence to try and determine if he is dyslexic. His teacher for this year was apparently under the impression he was dyslexic, and when I brought it up his spelling again at parents night, she looked as me as though I was a bit mean for mentioning his spelling was really bad and I was concerned. Thank god someone finally took some notice of me.

There's a big myth that you'll 'do well no matter where you go to school' if you are bright. Yes and no. You still have to put effort in. No effort means you don't rise as high as you could. And if you mess about you will get the bare minimum your current brain contents merit.
OP, it seems you psyched yourself out of working to achieve all those years ago, (were you afraid to try in case you failed?) and because you had/have that attitude, your DC feels it is ok not to try either.
From your writing on here you are clearly not stupid.
I'm sorry you are depressed.
It would be great for you and for your DC if you felt the urge to go and study a course at college, and get yourself a qualification.

Oh and apparently they think that's he was just accidentally over looked at and wasn't picked up on. I had onky been flagging it up for about 4 years!

I think your wrong.

My DH worked very hard and did well because he worked hard.

I did well because I was bright but didn't work hard.

Our son struggles in some aspects but is bright and quick to learn in others.

Everyone is different but I think working hard is more important than being successful at school.

Obviously I've always had low status jobs.

OP, you're answering your own question! Never mind status, but it means you're doing low-paid work, with few options or opportunities. Getting an education opens all kinds of wonderful doors, and you can then choose which ones you want to walk through.

Unskilled manual work is getting worse and worse, as so many people can do it that there's no pressure on employers to improve pay or conditions. Don't condemn your son to that, or help him to condemn himself.

It's not some magic or genetic thing that your brother's got -- it's just a question of deciding to work at his studies, and doing the work, and maybe finding out along the way that he actually enjoys exercising his brain and stretching his abilities! Do encourage him.

Are you friendly with your brother, and would he have a chat with your son? or get to know DS better and show him what he could aspire to?

@Reginabambina Schooling is very very dumbed down these days.

Are you a teacher?

Intelligence comes in many forms. Someone may not do well at school but that doesn't mean they are not intelligent.

I know a number of people with degrees who are actually not very bright at all and I know many people who don't have a degree who are extremely bright.

Bullying is awful. Especially when people don't take it seriously. I had so many days off school because of it, it was unbelievable. I think one year my attendance was just over 50%. That certainly didn't help my learning. I hope you find a way through your depression.

I don’t think it’s true that you either have ’it’ or don’t. Both my DDs have some subjects that they excel at (English, humanities, languages) and others that they genuinely struggle with (sciences, PE, music, art). They are average at maths. They accept this. They know that most people have some talents and that few people are gifted at everything. They work hard at all their subjects, get varying results and enjoyed the time when they could use their GCSE choices to drop some of the things they aren’t good at.
One is at university and I expect the younger one will go become she seems to expect it of herself. We are lucky, I think, that they have relatively ambitious friends. They’re not all academic but they all seem to want to achieve something and seem aware that their life choices can potentially be enhanced or diminished by whether they make an effort or just dick around.

in general and I'm hopeless at retaining and applying knowledge

Also a dyslexic trait

Green tulips - not every child who doesn’t work or succeed at school has a learning difficulty

Absolutely - but I can spot a dyslexic child a mile away.

www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia/test-for-dyslexia-37-signs/