Children who are underachieving
Being lazy and dumb are the two labels for students with poor grades ever since time immemorial. Parents and sadly many teachers are led to accept these as the reasons for poor academic performance. In actual fact, many children with considerable academic ability fail at subjects in which they should succeed. That’s why one often see on school reports these dreaded stereotyping comments such as ‘Not working to potential’, ‘Lazy’, or worse still, ‘Dumb’ but in disguised terms.
Why they are so many children work below their capacity? Underachieving is not a simple problem and should certainly be a matter of great concern for parents and the education system.
They are two types of situations under achievements are often identified. The first is where children only achieve on occasions when the mood takes them. It seems when an emotional crisis erupts: a relationship breaks up; a family crisis; a personality clash with a teacher, all these can trigger their refusal to work or put themselves forward.
The second situation is potentially much more serious. The child may have many characteristics that give him a label hard to remove. They may become aggressive, giving vent to their frustration by causing trouble or they may become sulky and withdrawn and refuse to develop their talent.
Sadly, over eighty percent of identified underachievers are boys! Studies within the western world’s education and cultural setting even indicated a range of 25-75% among these under achievers are are actually gifted children!
Generally, these children have few long-term problems if they can get immediate help to overcome their difficulty and their progress at school is closely monitored. In the western world, there have started some boarding schools cater the teens with this aim, to help the many underachieving children from fallen victim to the expectations of society and of their families.
Filed under Education |
Leave a Reply
