Were you a "bright child who didn't apply him/herself"?

I think i got more of the mental handicaps that go along with
high IQs than anything else lol social awkwardness and all.
A high IQ and the inability to tolerate repetitive boring
sitting does not work out well at all. I always got the old
"your so intelligent if you would just do things our way"
speech.

Like no one could ever understand why my
grammar or handwriting is terrible. Thing is no one
ever believed that i cant even understand why its
that way. I just cant force my hand to write coherently
so far as neatness is concerned and with grammar i just
don't have the ability to retain the information for some
reason that escapes me... ::sigh::

The reality is that IQ or intelligence matters little in the
long run, social ability is more so valued.

Yes I was one of them. I have great intelligence, but I must admit, I consider myself a dumb-ass for being lazy through school. My teachers would always tell my parents about how I score high on tests, but my homework grade is bringing me down to a C average. I didn't care as long as I passed. After a while of this, I started to spend more and more time outside the classroom and basically never touched a homework assignment. You know, I couldn't be bothered to pencil in such mundane waste of my time. I had weed to smoke and fires to start. I'm pretty successful now, but it's been a long road; one which could have been a lot shorter if I would have just conformed and done my damn work.

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
Albert Einstein

reply to post by _R4t_


You sound like you were like my son. His passion, though, was apparently sociology. Now, imagine a rather natural sociologist with a high iq in a regular school setting. By the time he was in middle school, he had made for a very "uncomfortable" situation in the classroom after a teacher had treated one of his students unfairly. My son debated with the teacher on his actions in a such a manner that the teacher didn't toss him out the door to the principal's office. Instead, the teacher was forced to defend his actions and debate with my son, losing horrifically. By the end of the exchange, the teacher admitted fault and the class went into an uproar. Full anarchy. I got called in and it was the funniest thing. The staff was so uncomfortable as they explained to me what happened and said that, although my son was correct, he was still wrong to have openly questioned the teacher's actions. To their surprise, both my son and I agreed but afterwards, he and I had a little talk about toning it down a bit and, not going to lie, a little praise, too.

In his first year of high school, he managed to get the entire cafeteria to worship an orange and give it offerings like a citrus pied piper. Luckily for him, the staff had already become aware that this kid was very smart and very bored. He slept in class all day, stirring only for tests and when there was a disturbance in the classroom. They tried so hard to cookie cutter him but he was openly disdainful, debating the validity of being forced to do the homework assigned when it was clear that he understood all the concepts based on the tests. No great surprise, it wasn't long before they told me that it was either a. special small magnet school with a completely different learning style and 100 students for three grades or college. It was a tough decision. He's 17 and about to finish his second year in college. He's likely going to major in sociology--no great surprise.

That's what they do today for kids like us. I wasn't any different when I was in high school. Seemingly quiet and shy until an injustice took place where I quietly contested it. I was also behind some of the most well known pranks in the school such as a little physics experiment I played with slime made in chemistry and a very large fan. I never got pinned on any of them. When it came time for the all important senior prank, my graduating class turned to me to come up with something. The funny thing was that the principal guessed that I would be the ring leader on it and begged me, half assured already, to not do something that would be terribly destructive. I assured him it'd be easily removable and it was. Hundreds of for sale signs littered the grounds along with carefully worded and appealing ads in the newspaper to great all the parents and the school board for a graduation function. Carefully worded and appealing ads in the newspaper of a "palatial residence with multiple rooms, large windows, atrium, very large kitchen and dining area, tennis courts, and full gym (equipment included)" that resulted in the principal taking calls for a couple weeks from interested buyers. That's right. I tried selling my school and even got the sheriff's department in on it with a promise of returning the stolen for sale signs the next day.

I think my principal was pretty darn happy to see me go. Honestly though, I have no idea why they sometimes wrote "has issues with authority" on there. I was a good kid. I just didn't always obey. It's just funny that they now take kids like us that are troublesome in a cautious way and isolate them from their peer group either through magnet school or college. At the same time, this does work out for the kid, too. My son has been very happy to be in college.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


We are definetly here. Personally, I went to private school k-12, have an I.Q. of 155 and never went to college. I turned my back on education when I realised just about everything told to me was a lie. I turned to drugs and alcohol and never looked back. I was accepted to the NAVY nuclear program when I was 18 but failed the physical due to a previous injury. After that happened I gave up. Nowadays I just smoke pot to dull my senses and blend in with the rest of the sheep. Somehow it turns off my ability to care. I have no ambition in life. I truly don't care about what people think of me.

VforVendettea
Low grades do not equal stupid not by a long shot.

The Education System is meant to turn out slaves not inventors, dreamers or anything but low paid button pushers. If you could actually see that school was a prison and rebelled you were labeled 'bright but didn't apply yourself' why should you? you were not getting paid for your time or effort you were in effect being forced to work without pay last time I checked that was the very definition of slavery.

If you had qualified teachers like we did (every teacher had degree in their field at that time), and they were giving out useful information for free, and making the course simple to understand, then it was a bargain.

But if you were stuck in classes where others just messed about, then it was a prison. The place I dreaded the most was "the overspill room", where due to the fact that there were too many students with a free period for the library, everyone would be sent to a spare classroom where we weren't actually taught anything, and sometimes not even the supervising teacher would turn up. So I just bunked off those classes.

Most common response from any adult who felt the need to judge me: "you are so bright, if only you weren't so lazy". Yet, I can sit for 9hrs straight creating in pointillism or reverse engineer a Walkman.

I gave up by 4th grade and by high school my books never left my locker from the first day. I wouldn't have remembered the combination to the locker anyway or even which one was mine. Yet, never flunked a grade and just passed by the skin of my teeth. Sometimes I was so uninterested in what was being taught Id write my name on the test and take a nap.

My economics teacher collected the notebooks at the end of the year. We were all required to copy word for word his notes from the chalkboard everyday. He grades them as a percentage of your final grade. My notebook had one day of notes and the rest, front and back, was covered in drawings and doodles. If I remember correctly, he gave me a 72. He must have appreciated some of my work. :p

The school system, especially in hindsight, is laughable.

When I was in elementary school I wouldn't do my schoolwork. My mother was told I did was stare out the window. The teachers thought I might be slow so they started doing tests. They tested my IQ and in some areas I excelled and in others I lacked. My memory tests were off the charts and I had a near photographic memory.

In high school I did horrible because I wouldn't apply myself. I never studied or did my schoolwork but I shocked the hell out of my teachers when it came to the final exams. I was failing all year in science class and I took the final exam. My science teacher pulled me aside on the last day of school and told me I had the highest score of anyone in any of her classes.

nixie_nox
I have a genius IQ who was a C average in school. I hated school. Parents obsessed with the Mozart syndrome who think they want prodigies don't realize that half of geniuses utterly fail at life.

The school systems teach to the average. Until no child left behind, it failed both geniuses and those who struggled. Now it just fails geniuses.

I was continually tested for AP because they couldn't figure out why my IQ was so high, yet, I was not excelling. Because school was so boring.

There is a great book for bright children who can't handle the social system and school, and how parents can help them.

The Edison Trait

edit on 20-2-2014 by nixie_nox because: (no reason given)

Oh how I could have done with this book when my middle son was in school. It was a constant battle getting him to do any homework and he found school totally dull and boring. It was the same for me... I was one of those labelled as bright but not putting enough effort in, could achieve so much more, bla, bla. I found dealing with my son and school was really difficult because I totally understood his frustration. He was also tested for Aspergers around the age of 5 or 6.

He's now doing a 4 year apprenticeship to become a proverbial 'rocket scientist'! Well, an aerospace engineer. He loves it and is achieving amazing grades in both his 'hands on' and written work/tests. He chose the apprenticeship route, rather than university, because he thought uni would just be an extension of school and he'd fail miserably. He's much more accepting of the written work he has to do, because he gets plenty of hands on work too. Every day is a challenge and he loves it because there's no time to get bored!

Rocket scientists are one of more than a half dozen types of specialized engineers, such as aerospace and propulsion engineers,

work.chron.com...

All this "gifted program" stuff annoys me

Its like a way to make the kids who where not popular at school now make up for it by saying "I was in the gifted program", which to me is a code for "I was bullied, the other kids thought i was wired, but really i was just "Gifted"".

Most on ATS will tell you they were in the "gifted program", most were not they just know how to use the codes, I bet if you asked every ATS member their IQ it would be about a average of 155 or something like that. Its a grandiose arrogance that comes with the cyberweb, why not, nobody else who matters will ever find out so go ahead, tell people you were on the gifted program then worked spec-ops (which you cant talk about) and told the CIA to beat it when they asked you to work for them.

Everyone could have applied themselves more at school, if i knew that first time round (or even second time round) I would have had a much more productive live thus far.

But guess what, kids at school like to skip class, act out to impress friends/ the opposite sex.

I done it, my mum n dad done it and my kids will probably do it to then learn the life lesson in there 20's that hits most of us like a sack of bricks.

To get anywhere in life you need to apply yourself and work hard.... shocker

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


This isn't about being gifted or labelled gifted though so you're barking up the wrong tree. This is about if your report card said "so and so is a bright child but does not apply him/herself". It's not exclusive of the gifted though some may have been labelled as such. It's about sharing experiences and thoughts on why we got labeled "bright but doesn't apply" and also considering that it's apparently been a persistent and unresolved issue within the US public school system for almost 100 years.

It's not asking "were you gifted?"--there's an entire other thread for that.

I was always classified under that. I chose the dark side meaning alcohol and drugs . I'm doing ok now pretty good career but I always felt if I may have had more guidance thing would have been more different. Just me :x

I was so bright, my daddy called me .....son!

Yeah I didn't apply myself at all in grade school.

I hated it - every second of it.

I sucked at math (following directions) especially lol - I was good at art - the ONE thing that doesn't count lol.

Went to college in 2006 for art - because I enjoyed it - I'll be paying for that for the rest of my life.

I've never felt dumb - but I've never felt intelligent either.

First world problems - just glad I have food and fresh water.

Yep, been there, done that.

Problem is schools often have a certain criteria and plan to teach to, and it's not always what is interesting to students. I know I definitely slacked off in classes that I didn't find interesting. Kept up good grades in math and science clases or elective courses, but C's and D's in history and English classes. (Frankly you can only read and do reports on the same Shakespeare plays or small selection of American classic literature so many years before you become entirely bored with it. Y'know, like reading Great Gatsby yet again for what seemed like eleventy-billionth time.) Funny thing with English classes is that I had no problems reading stuff and could explain it, but didn't care enough to put in the effort to write about them. Instead I would spend the time doing course work for other classes which I found both interesting and challenging. And speaking of the more challenging classes, they seemed to like loading students with busywork rather than making sure there was enough comprehension as to how the material could be applied. And once you realize the difficulty comes from spamminess and ability to keep up, there's only so much to do before tiring of it.

If the education system could change aspects of school such that students could direct their own coursework more, it's likely the kids would apply themselves better. They might not be as well rounded in terms of exposing themselves to everything, but in turn they'd be more successful with those things they've chosen for themselves to focus upon. Of course doing things in a more individualized way means you can't really teach to a fixed curricula, which would likely make things difficult for textbook publishers and others that treat education more as an business rather than a time of learning.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


This thread is about being gifted, your quote event talks about the "superior child" a very elitist term if i ever heard one.

And like I said, most on ATS will want you to think of them as the "special gifted kids" even though it is quite apparent by most of what they post that there probably should be more emphasis on the "special" part of that phase.

All kids in school could apply themselves more, and all most all kids fail do apply themselves to there full potential because when you are 14 and suddenly finding a attraction to boobs, footballs and internet porn, the last thing on your mind is what Pythagoras had to say about the hypotenuse of that triangle.

It has nothing to do with being "superior" or "gifted" any attempt to illustrate it as such only demonstrates a shocking arrogance

If you are going to tell me this is not another "ooooo I was in the "gifted program"" threads then why dont you go tell that to all the fantasists who have showed up to tell us about how "special" they were in school.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


I'm gonna take it that you weren't in the gifted program. jk! I just think that in this rough and tumble world, people just want to feel appreciated. I think that people get comfort out of sharing their life experiences even if nobody cares. Because, a lot of people who are sharing their story here, are simply sharing it, and on the side may read someone else's... if they have time.

I was in the gifted program (G.A.T.E. it was called) in my middle school years. By the time I got to high school, however, I began to have serious problems, some due to boredom, others due to social problems (later diagnosed as BPD...still don't know about that one, though).

Constantly told I needed to apply myself until I tuned them out. Not sure what they were babbling about after that.

Barely graduated. Joined the Marines. Folly ensued.

reply to post by pauljs75


I was thinking along those lines the other night after reading all the posts on this thread. Self directed learning in the schools would be really interesting to see in action, I think, and honestly, it might make teachers work harder to make their subjects more interesting through competition and more applicable to the real world. I think the other really big issue with the schools is a matter of funding. They've been on a shoe string budget for years, which just boggles my mind. 57% of all of our federal spending is allocated to National Defense but the education of our children ("our future") is just as pivotal to national defense as any bomber.

If I could run a "dream school", then how much more interesting could even a boring lit class be if, let's say, kids got into the mood of a book through decorating the classroom to match the setting or what have you. Basically, making things more immersive and interesting. I had an odd class in public high school called Humanities that did this kind of thing. First thing we'd all do at the start of class was move the seats into a big circle and we'd do odd/funny stuff like assigning roles for stories as if it were a play, regardless of gender (imagine a guy wearing a nun's hat and speaking in falsetto). Or looking at fine art while listening to Led Zeppelin or Suicidal Tendencies. The class was a blast and the number of doodles I made on my peechee during it numbered at 0. As much as I hate how buzzwordy it sounds, we were all pretty engaged in the class.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


I'm the author of this thread so I'm pretty sure that I actually know what I meant by starting this thread a lot better than you do because, well, I authored it. If it were about being gifted, then, logically, I would've asked the question in the already pre-existing thread on the subject. My remarks about what got me thinking about this was identifying the original source of where I began to note it. It's called providing context for an assertion. If I felt that "bright but doesn't apply" was exclusive to those labelled gifted, I would've simply asked it there. However, I don't think the term is exclusive to those labeled gifted and it looks like I'm right. Yes, there are a number of people responding that were labelled gifted but there are just as many, if not more, that were not labelled as gifted.

The link to the "superior child" quote was simply the earliest reference that I could find to the "bright but doesn't apply" phrase being used in education from nearly 100 years ago. It was posted to provide information to show how long this lack of engagement/interest has been going on. No more, no less. The quote is used to basically outright note that there has been nearly 100 years of failure on the part of our educational system.

I agree, the phrase is full of elitist douchebaggery but if you'd like to discuss the whole "gifted" aspect, I'd be more than happy to meet you on the thread about the gifted program. This thread is NOT about being labelled gifted. It's a whole other label in its entirety.