To be pissed off that people who are not academic are branded as thick!

[teamcullen]

Why is it that people/children who are not academically clever are constantly branded as Thick, stupid or the underclass of society.

A person can leave school at 16 with little qualifications and work every day of their lives in McDonalds or a shop or as a labourer. They pay taxes. They contribute to society. Yet people constantly make comments on how you must be thick to work in those proffessions.

There are options in schools for children to take vocational courses, but I am always seeing comments like "No way Id let my DC take a deploma or vocational course." Or those subjects are only for the thick kids!

I understand that if a child is likely to go to uni, they need to take the traditinal route of GCSEs and A levels, but the world ecomony would quickly cease if everybody took this route.

Just because somebody is not academic, does not constitute being thick. Creative skills, patience, common sence, empathy and listening skills to name just a few are things that may not come naturatly to those with letters after their name, but are needed in many proffessions.

If a child who is not academic goes into the world at 16 and works hard in a job which needs no or little qualifications is it not unreasonable to treat tham and their proffession with a bit of respect.

I think the problem with teaching is quite frankly you're never going to get rich on a teachers salary and for a massive consideration in career choices is how much they will earn relative to say house prices for example.
To buy a starter home locally my children in todays money would need to earn £40k, so selfishly I am adding up the cost of student debt and dividing it by however many years they need to save a deposit x by house prices otherwise I'll have them under my roof until I'm 60.

academia is a place where people get an opportunity to demonstrate how clever they are. Not the only place by any means, but one place.

People who are not academically successful have not demonstrated their brains in that way - although i would agree that does not mean 'not clever' necessarily, it means they haven't proved it in that way.

Btw, I meant to ask earlier, what exactly is wrong with the OP's sentences? I've seen much worse, and those accusing her of poor writing aren't exactly shining examples of literacy either ...

One could say it is a bit of cheap point scoring. Personally, I say the pedants should keep that stuff to their corner .

I still fail to see why having 10 A GSCE's seems to be the only measure of a child*'s achievement that means anything anymore.

I tell my dd, (6) that the most important things in life are that you are honest, and that you try your best at everything. We don't all need to members of Mensa to be something in this life. (DH is incidentally, but I think he was in the ear queue the day God was handing out common sense )

Many moons ago when footloose and fancy free I left University (the 1st in the family to go to one) and as I wandered forth with my degree and closed the gate on the halcyon groves of academe my little attache case packed with all my "belle lituistic bon mots", I noticed 2 things: 1. nobody gave a fuck that I had BA Hons after me name and 2.) I could not get a blardy job. So I signed up for the Manpower Services Scheme. I then moved to the big smoke and worked as a receptioist for the same firm for 7 glorious years. A friend from University who was then at Bar School told me I had "sold out" and should have gone on the milk round at uni and be "trying to get my foot in the door of a publishing house as a graduate trainee." She just assumed I had not been bothered and I couldn't be arsed to tell her that my little attache case was now stuffed full of "Dear John" letters of rejection. I took the first good job that was offered to me(and it paid £4000 pa more than a graduate scheme ) I chose the filthy lucre
and in those days it seemed like a lot of money, so why not? I did bump into her in the Inner Temple in the 90's striding across the quad with some of her "hi falutin" friends and I said hello. She was fine with me until she asked why I was in her Manor so to speak and I told her I was temping as the relief telephonist in a Chambers there for 2 weekS I was genuinely pleased to see this girl as we had shared some good times a Uni and she did the usual we must meet up etc etc. I did make several phone calls before duh! I realised I was getting the brush off I just did not move in the same rarifed circles, and I was firmly over the other side of the invisible divide, it would probably have been cramping her style if she had been seen lunching with some "blue collar" pleb. So YANBU op some people are real "academe snobs".

I swear strong social skills and self-confidence will take you much further than brains on their own. Have seen evidence. These are the traits I encourage in my child.

True Milly, true. Although I still think that to be a 'good' teacher you need academic knowledge and ability, and the ability to interpret your subject for a wide audience which takes an intellectual skill in itself. But I guess I can see where some might be coming from.

I also wholeheartedly agree on the salary thing (obviously!), but the potential is there to make a reasonable salary in management etc, which isn't a very popular thing to say in many circles! I don't think I would have gone into teaching fresh from uni, I'm glad I experienced the 'outside world' and earned private sector salaries first! Without them I probably wouldn't have been in the position to drop salary as rapidly as I did as I wouldn't have been able to make the property investments that I did, when I did. (And I must admit that I'm luck the husband has always been very savvy in this respect as well so has 'carried' me a little.)

Anyway, I have completely wandered off on a tangent, put it down to having a head full of cold and pregnancy hormones. As you were.

Academic achievement is nice but highly overrated IMO. Social skills and lots of general knowledge and non-specialist skills greatly enhance life.

I agree with the OP, and from my own experience, I often make typos galore when MNing, esp with DCs distracting me and often because I am tired, which I then cringe over later when I re-read my own posts. These are not representative of my level of spelling and grammar generally, just of my concentration at the given time.

If its being an intellectual snob to expect your childs teacher to have a little more than good social skills you can call me one as long as you like.
Social skills they can learn anywhere, I have this bizarre notion that teachers are meant to help them learn things like maths and chemistry. For which I would hope they had some academic ability and a qualification. I wouldn't have thought that would be an unusual opinion, but there you go.

Lequeen - 'Such people' makes you sound worse than a snob: it makes you sound like a colonialist considering the natives and justifying mistreating them because they are so different to 'us' - appalling.

I'm no rocket scientist myself but I am a hard worker and have a strong set of morals. I admire people who are very clever and envy them their brains but I don't feel subservient to them. I hate it when people look down their noses at me for any reason so I try not to do it to others.

I do look down on people who lie, cheat and bully no matter what their IQ.

Runnybottom, lots of people don't have excellent social skills, and not everyone can learn them. Teachers do have to have some academic abilities - it is a graduate profession. But unless you think like David Cameron, there is no reason why someone who gets a third or a lower second should not make an excellent teacher.

What do you consider to be your own areas of expertise, LeQueen?

I woule expect you to need higher than a third to be an excellent teacher. You can get a third by turning up and spelling your own name right.

Why is being academically intelligent such a bad thing? I can't see anyone, here or in RL, stating the opinions characterised in the OP. I can see plenty of people sneering at academia as if being proud of qualifications makes one elitist.

Ahhhh LeQueen, now I agree with you again! Especially on the teaching front. If I hadn't felt that I had a way above average knowledge and understanding of my subject it wouldn't have crossed my mind to become a teacher. When I was at school (admittedly an expensive one) the teachers were all absolute experts in their field with proven academic achievements and the ability to communicate these effectively. Which is where my expectation and impression of teaching comes from. I will admit to having worked with a few teachers whose lack of knowledge astounded me, move slightly past the shallow remit of the 'C' grade response and they were floundering. I suspect it is this kind of teacher that gives the profession a bad name.

Anyway, I've wandered off topic...again.

Le Queen

'If you're highly intelligent you don't have to stand around discussing fiscal policy to prove it (and how dull a conversation that would be). But it's the fact that your brain processes at a faster speed and that you have better mental dexterity etc, etc.'

A fact, is it? Well, if that's how you chose to define intelligence, then fair enough. But processing speed is usually considered to be only one component of intelligence, and I doubt you could tell whether someone had high or low processing speed simply by having a casual conversation with them.

I have a very low processing speed and feel quite irritated with your remarks - not least because I do have a sneaky feeling that you're not quite as intelligent and scintillating as you'd like to imagine.

Oh, and I am very proud of my academic abilities (although I will not profess to having the most common sense or spatial awareness for example), but I hope I don't judge others for their lack of them. I think that'd make me a rubbish teacher for a start, and I didn't re-train to merely be average!

having a degree these days really does not indicate intelligence higher than others - every other person has one. Makes them worthless really - they mean not-a-lot to employers unless from the right university.

Yours might be worthless, the one I almost have after several years hard slog as a mature student will not be, I can assure you. Either to me or the college I hope to get into for a postgrad that will finally get me a career instead of a dead end low paid job.

This is going to sound controversial - a person who wants and aspires to work somewhere like MacDonalds is probably generally going to be a bit thick.

There are many people who work rubbish jobs out of necessity so I am not saying that everyone who does these jobs are thick (otherwise I would be talking about myself) - however, someone who is bright would most likely do the best they could to do something more interesting or at the very least take up hobbies that reflect intelligence (eg, reading).

Also, I do think LeQueen's point is valid in that it is far better to do something you are good at than to be mediocre at a job that causes stress and sleepless nights because it is just too hard.

Do you think anyone really aspires to work in McDonalds though ? They probably think it's a stop gap until they win Xfactor.