To ask what makes a dc academic

[ThisMintTraybake]

Is there any particular characteristics or habits that the academic high flyers have in common? What are some ways to improve your academic achievement?

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Year Six teacher here. All my most academically able kids have been read to and read with from an early age. They have also been talked to and included in adult conversations.

Wide variety of family wealth and family stability, but books and talk are a consistent feature.

Can improve with hard work. DD is averagely intelligent but she studies really hard, not last minute like I always did but every day when she has an exam coming up she'll spend an hour or so studying, sometimes even gets up early (and she is not a morning person!) to fit in some extra studying.

What do you want to know? My eldest is academic - he got a string of As at school and is now a PhD in a very academic subject. He was always naturally bright, had a huge vocabulary at 2 and could read at 3.
We just encouraged him by talking with him a lot, reading to him, taking him to places that interested him, like castles and museums, doing puzzles and playing board games. Nothing he didn't enjoy and nothing that put pressure on him. No special tutoring or extra homework.
You can't stop a naturally academic child from learning, and you can't make a child academic if they are not made that way. Our second DC is not academically able at all. It's just the way they are.

A lot is innate, processing speed, short term and long term memory etc etc etc.
Then an environment that supports and values learning will help.
Then personality.

You can influence the second on my list, not so much the first and third.

I want to know how you can achieve more academically. I am 15 not in the UK.

You can achieve more by good study habits, by taking an interest in the world around you. By spending time interacting with people and the world rather than mindless scrolling on you tube tik tok etc.

Reading yes, but remember what reading does, ie aside from exposure to new words, sentences, ideas, you can achieve some elements of the reading through other mediums...

Both my dc have vastly different learning styles, one is an incredible reader the other has struggled but I would class turn both as academic.
To support reading expose them to good films with subtitles on, ask them about the story in the film, what will happen next and anything you can do with books.

Obviously not to the degree where it's impossible to watch.

Getting 11 plus word bank flash cards and do a couple every week.

Dicuss concepts and plots etc all in a fun way... As fun as you can make it.

Go to school every day
Follow the teachers instructions
Do all your work
Find interesting extea curricular activities that you enjoy and do them regularly

I'm not sure that makes someone academic ,as a child I was always reading ,anything and everything from the Sunday Times at 8/9 years old to Enid Blyton ,I'm of average intelligence and have good general knowledge, but i.cartainly wasn't academically very able

My eldest is academic to her core.

My youngest has dyslexia, slow processing and is not academic at all.

Same environment, same love of books.

I think "academic" often means good results to lots of people and where I live at least, you have to be school shaped and fit the methods of learning and testing. DD absolutely does. DS, however, struggles immensely due to his challenges and on paper, will never achieve in compulsory education. I have vague hopes for once he's navigated high school.

You simply have to try your best, prioritise learning when appropriate, accept help and find study you love.

To me academic is someone who enjoys and is good at learning theoretical stuff over practical stuff. So they might like learning about art rather than doing art. A lot of english and maths at school has an element of both..

I guess whether you enjoy theoretical stuff will depend on things like whether the level of challenge is exactly right for your abilities like processing speed and memory and how interesting /relevant you find the topic. Any work needs to be achievable but stretching so its not boring. you then get absorbed by doing it so its fun.

I mean academic by achieving good grades at school. I love reading, but its mostly fictional. I am not sure if it really helps though. I do everything instructed by school. I am decently academic but not top knot.

I'm a 6th form teacher and it's so hard to put your finger on what has made a student academic. We have students who didn't achieve great GCSE results and/or don't seem to have a 'natural' ability, however, they work really hard, they act on feedback on their work and they prepare for exams using quality, active revision. Equally, we have students who arrive with 8s and 9s at GCSE, then try and coast through their A-Levels, and by the time they realise they need to put in more effort it's often too close to the exams to really make much difference.

What is the feedback that you are receiving on your school work to improve it?

Study

So are scientists not academic? Practicalities and experimentation are key, science would get nowhere is everyone just learned and hypothesised in theory and no one actually did anything. The vast majority of science academics are slogging away in labs every day, not sitting in a library.

academic kids to me are ones who learn easily, and can achieve average to decent results without much effort. Of course if they don’t put any effort in chances are the kid who’s not as academic but puts a lot of work in will do better. So it’s not just about results.

i got distinctly average results at school. I found it easy so didn’t bother learning anything, and that way of learning didn’t suit me. Got to uni and flew, with several PhD offers and post docs around the world after that. I didn’t enjoy it though so got a “normal” job.

Ask the teacher if you don't understand and then keep asking if you still don't understand. Actually academic achievement is less and less linked to being rich. Find something you are interested in and follow that. Practical jobs can earn more in rich countries nowadays and can be more stable. Many academic jobs are under threat of being overtaken by computers (AI)

As i said, some things are both an academic and practical but i still feel the academic bit is the theory of how/ why rather than just the practicing the thing over and over so you get better at it.

Develop a good work/life balance. You need to study, ideally engage in reading/doing beyond the curriculum (for some subjects such as engineering and comp sci there's a lot you can do) . For some subjects, at an appropriate point you need to practice by doing the past papers. But your body needs to be healthy too - eat proper food, do some sort of enjoyable physical activity and get enough sleep.

You may or may not be naturally 'academic' - aim to fulfill your own potential not try to force yourself into a mould that may not fit.

That happened to me. I found school really easy, just coasted along without putting effort in and then found out that A Levels aren't so easy!

I think being an “academic” is as much of a trait as something that can be learned. But it can also be a value. It can be learned if it doesn’t come naturally - but it’s like teaching someone who isn’t a natural born musician m, music - doable but takes more effort.

Im from a “working class” background - mainly because parents migrated here. Studying has always been a “value” in our household. Always do your best, do your homework etc etc. I’d say me, my siblings and even my daughter (teen) are all academic but it’s a mixture of upbringing and having a genuine interest in studying. We were all in top or second set at school and we all did well at uni and post grad. I love reading, so does my DD, love debates and deep conversations, we watch documentaries and find them interesting. I read research papers for work and genuinely enjoy doing it. Whenever we have a questions no matter how stupid we research it and practice critical thinking as a family (it could be as basic as why is grass green). I also leave channels like LBC on when they have appropriate debates and my DD listens and we talk about it.

When parents ask me “how do you get your DD to study” (her closest friends are not academic according to their parents - except one who is in top set with her - I have never paid for a tutor and neither has the other but that’s because I can’t afford it). I tell them it’s a mix of her personality, she is curious and we do lots together and bring maths, English etc in our daily lives - cooking, calculating change, questioning everything really.

Those that arnt academic are usually skilled in other ways - maybe it’s creative, maybe it’s manual labour; could be music, business and entrepreneurship. I think it’s a shame that the education system just pushes the academic type. Not everyone cares - when you tap into whatever an individual cares about, you can get so much more out of them.

Reading. And more reading. And even more reading. Generally a love of books.

I teach on a secondary school and was really surprised at how many kids didn't get read to as a child! Particularly those in my lower sets!

I read to mine for 30 minutes every night then they also read in bed.

This would be my definition as well.

I think you can be academic inclined but struggle at school as the school system tends to be one size fits all.

It's a tricky one. Personally, I think we ought to broaden our definition of intelligence to include things like humour, empathy and love of beauty. We've all met people who excel at logic and mathematics yet fail to get a joke or pick up on someone's feelings. And we've all known people who are clever, with a string of qualifications, yet feel nothing when they walk around an art gallery or watch the snow fall.

Even within academia there are types of intelligence. I studied art history at university, and it was funny to walk through the economics department then the literature and art department. The economics professors were often nerdy little men with bow ties. One, I remember, looked like something out of a bad Hollywood comedy, with trousers that were too short for him and a funny little walk. Then you'd get to the art department and the lecturers would be dressed like characters out of Oscar Wilde or Withnail and I! OK, those are crude stereotypes, but you get my point.

My brother is a good example of how difficult it can be to pin intelligence down. He was hopeless at maths and science (I don't think he even turned up to his maths GCSE), yet he excelled at literature and was reading Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a teenager. Today, his house overflows with books on Shakespeare and Chaucer and so on. Ask him to use a laptop, however, and he's helpless.

The key is to identify their passion. The child has to love a subject, or forget it. I have known very, very intelligent people with zero academic leaning. They are clever, but there is no particular subject that captivates them. If you want to raise an 'academic' child, inspire them with a love for something. Take them to art galleries, museums, bookshops, plays, etc, and wait. Something might just light the fuse. Brian Cox, for example, said it was watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos on TV. I know someone who is doing a PhD in Latin who swears he would not be where he is had he not watched I Claudius as a child. And I once read an interview with a philosopher who traced his career back to reading A Hitchhiker's Guide as a boy.