Underachievement - a bit of my story

[davewitley]

> Shaun wrote (about identifying underachievement):
> 
> > What we gain is an insight into what we need to do to help them. 
> >If they are underachieving because they lack particular skills - 
> >study skills are a big area - we can help them learn them. 
> 
Cindy replied:

> In the limited world of academics, this idea might have some 
merit.  
> If a child wishes to achieve a certain grade in a subject or 
mastery 
> of a certain subject, and they are being frustrated by poor study 
> skills, then helping them learn appropriate study skills sounds 
like 
> a good idea.
> 
> But again, why frame it with the term "underachievement" in this 
> example?  I would think that parents and other professionals could 
> determine whether a child has poor study skills without reaching 
the 
> question of whether child is or will be an underachiever.  If it is 
> simply a matter of augmenting the gifted child's skill set so that 
> they wind up where they want to be, can't the inquiry be framed in 
> exactly that way?  
> 
I don't wish to enter the main debate here, but this little exchange 
does illustrate something about myself that I have only recently 
realised.

When I went to Grammar school at age 11 we started to have English 
lessons.  I always used to get poor marks in my homework.  In one 
sense this was not for want of trying: I would sit for a long time 
wondering what to write.  Yet my teacher reported to my parents that 
I participated well in lessons - lots of good ideas and insights - 
but he couldn't understand why I didn't reproduce it in my homework 
or, later, in exams.

It was only much later that I realised that the answer is 
probably 'study skills', which I first came across when my son hit 
age 11 and had one lesson a week in these.  I naturally think it an 
excellent innovation for all pupils, not only the gifted.

Looking back, I don't think I was ever told what was expected of me 
in my homework, or how to go about it, or how to, for example, 
structure an essay.  Although I'm a bit hazy now, I think we were 
just set a title or question and expected to get on with it.

I righted myself enough in four years (and possibly the 4th year 
teacher was more personally congenial for me) to scrape through my O 
Levels.  The English education system then ensured that I did not 
need to do any English at all thereafter.  (US people note: my degree 
was maths, *no* minor, *no* distributional requirements.  For A level 
I had to write up experiments in sciences, in maths I never wrote 
anything at all except symbols and short sub-sentence connecting 
text.)

Whatever we think about the connotations of the word, or about my 
degree of giftedness, I now think I underachieved in that period.  I 
think I missed out on a lot of pleasure in intelligent reading that I 
am only just now beginning to understand through HPFGU.  Naturally I 
do not hold myself blameless - the depiction of Harry as somebody who 
would never dream of approaching a teacher if in difficulty is spot 
on for me - but, looking back, I think it's fair to say that the 
disconnect between my class behaviour and my written work was an 
indicator of something that could have been done better by the 
school - an indicator capable of being so understood at the time.  
And I think something that would sound like 'study skills' might well 
have been the answer.

Now, I had no idea about any of this - I thought I was bad at the 
subject and did not really desire to do any better (except insofar as 
I did not like receiving poor marks), did not believe I could do any 
better either.  It seems to me that what might have helped was for 
someone to try to find out why my written work 'underachieved' my 
oral promise.

David