Hey, if you’re a liar than no, people shouldn’t believe you.
I’m not a liar.
I take the truth very seriously, and I have far better things to do than go inventing a past and then opening Pit threads about it.
~shrugs~
Disbelieve the truth all you want.
Awwwwww. You’re critiquing my prose! That’s so cute!
Oh, and, wanna address the fact that your claim was full of shit and retract it? I don’t use ‘coward’ and ‘disagree’ as synonyms. Or do you not have enough intellectual honesty? Just checking is all.
Oooh! Contentless snark. You should be so proud. Now, care to stop being an asshole and actually point out anything I’ve said which was wrong?
You have got to be kidding me. This thread is about academic situations. If you really want an indepth discussion of linguistics in society I’d advise you to start a GD thread. I’ve answered a few questions put to me about society in general, but that isn’t the focus of the thread and I don’t intend it to be.
Yes… and I explicitly stated that the problems were over how children are treated in school. I addressed points that aren’t germane to that discussion as a courtesy, not because they’re within the scope of the topic.
Start a new thread. I’ve been talking about life in school, and the stigma placed upon intelligence in some-but-not-all highschools. If you want to discuss how Fred the Pharmacist should go about talking with his buddies outside of work, you’re more than welcome to start a new OP.
Please try again at comprehending that your posts have little to nothing to do with the topic. You really want to talk about the social dynamic for people working in the real world? Start a new thread.
Oh, and, are we actually going to quit snarking now? Or would you like to talk some more about my ‘supposed’ life and ‘lack of comprehension’? Seriously, I assume that we’re proceeding under the framework of you having accepted my offer to cease hostilities. If that’s not the case, you should make it plain.
Choosing one’s words so that they connect with someone is not changing who you are. I talk differently with my friends than I would in a job interview. When I tell my mother about my day at work, I use different words than when I tell my very smart wife. It’s all about what works empirically – fairness is 100% irrelevant. Sometimes you’ll come across best talking exactly as you would normally, and sometimes you’ll come across like an American in Paris who insists on loudly ordering in English. In both cases, you could argue that you’re just being yourself, but in the latter case you look like a jerk.
That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not discrimination or bigotry to dislike someone who appears to have an unpleasant personality trait, whether or not they actually even have that trait. No one has to like anybody.
Besides, everything I’ve been talking about has been based on the assumption that one is coming across falsely and wants to come across better, e.g. situations where people may assume you’re a pretentious asshole trying to make them feel dumb when you’re in fact just trying to talk. You could either ignore the reality and just expect people to know intuitively that you’re not a pretentious asshole, but experience shows that it won’t work. Alternatively, you could make an extra effort to dissociate yourself from the pretentious asshole title, e.g. by making sure to express interest in the abilities and opinions of others. (Pretentious assholes rarely do this, except as a jumping-off point to talk about themselves some more.)
If one is in fact a pretentious asshole, then none of this really applies. Eventually people are going to figure you out, so why not just revel in it, ya frickin’ asshole? (That last part is only directed at pretentious assholes.)
If we’re talking about a high school context of choosing your words so that you don’t offend dumb kids, then yes, it is.
But all this has nothing to do with a child’s time in high school. I won’t argue that out in the real world sometimes you need to modify your speech or writing in order to reach a different audience. But that’s not the same thing as smart kids in school being afraid to use words they know for fear of getting beaten up.
Makes sense from where I sit…
Of course it is, because intelligence ≠ those unpleasant personality traits.
Using a large vocabulary ≠ being pretentious.
Thinking those things is bigoted.
Would you say that it’s okay to dislike black people because to someone they ‘appear to have an unpleasant personality trait’? I’m sure that just the way people mistake intelligence for arrogance, people mistake a group of black kids who’re friends for a gang. Does this make it right?
This is ignorance, pure and flat out. It should be fought, not coddled. It is discriminatory and it is bigoted to dislike someone simply because they’re smart.
I’m confused… we talking about school or society in general here? In school if it comes down to getting your A and making sure the teacher is on your wavelength, or not coming across as an asshole, I say take the grade. If we’re talking about the ‘real world’ then yes, you have a point. But, by the same token, in addition to modifying your behavior, we can educate future generations to avoid this bullshit.
I’d also say that you can simply choose a bette circle of friends.
As an addendum, oddly enough I’ve never been called pretentious in meatspace. I’m generally pretty quiet and a very good listener. I hate talking about myself.
Just an aside, but I think we use the word ‘pretentious’ far too often in this society. Pride and pretentiousness are not the same. Being good and knowing it, is not the same as thinking you’re hot shit when you’re not. Too often I’ve heard ‘pretentious’ applied to someone who knows what they’re talking about, or is confident, or what have you. Can we define this term before we bounce it around much more?
I’m not talking about high school, at least not specifically. I’m talking about the realities of how one comes across to others in general, and what I think is a reasonable way to deal with those realities. This is just as relevant to high school as later life, with the exception of actual bullying. Bullying is a special case scenario, to which none of what I’ve said applies.
You’re wrong. I’m talking about disliking a single, specific individual based on that individual’s personality. That’s not bigotry, by definition.
Being intelligent may make one more likely to be assumed to be pretentious, but it doesn’t force one to be so nor does it prevent one from coming across as likeable. If people assume you are pretentious, they aren’t discriminating against you for being smart. They are drawing logical, although perhaps incorrect, conclusions based on your behavior and their own empirical experience. That this is unfair to non-pretentious smart people is 100% irrelevant, as long as annoying, pretentious people actually exist and continue to make smart people look bad.
If you disagree with this, I think that’s probably just a difference of opinion and/or life experience and we can agree to disagree. I have no dog in this fight – I primarily joined the discussion to clear up what I thought was a misunderstanding about Bob Ghengis and others’ point of view, which I happen to agree with.
See, that’s the thing. In general I’d agree with you about the ‘real world’, but high school is its own artificial little pocket dimension.
But in my mind, that’s what changes everything. If you’re brilliant and use jargon, you might turn off some potential friends in real life. If you’re brilliant and use ‘big words’ in highschool, you risk verbal and physical abuse.
(No, you’re wrong! )
But it isn’t. It’s disliking an individual because you assume that people who are smart and know it are arrogant, or that people who use ‘big words’ are pretentious, or what have you. If they were really getting to know someone’s personality then there wouldn’t be a problem. It is bigotry, as bigotry is intollerance and prejudice. If one is intollerant and prejudiced against anybody with a good vocabulary, that’s bigotry.
Unless the only reason they assume you’re pretentious is that you’re smart and not ashamed or hiding that fact.
So the person who sees a group of black kids and assumes they’re a gang isn’t prejudiced or bigoted?
If they are a bigot, why then is it right to assume that any smart person you meet who knows they’re smart and isn’t ashamed of being smart, must be pretentious?
But that’s my point… judging all people who’re part of a parituclar ‘group’ as being equal because of bad experiences with a few members of the ‘group’ is bigoted.
Fair 'nuff, but if you don’t mind waiting a minute before escaping back into cyberspace, would you mind definining pretentiousness? As I understand it, it can be applied to someone who, for instance, knew more about a particular subject than other people and claimed as much. Surely it’s not pretentious for a physicist to state that he knows more than a lay person about physics? I’m just curious as to what definition you’re working under.
The difference is this assumption is based solely on their membership in a particular group, not on them as individuals. Now, if someone got to know a black person and learned that they only wear certain clothes, hang out with certain people and occasionally participate in drive-by shootings, then it wouldn’t be bigoted to assume they’re in a gang.
I’m using pretentious to mean someone who goes out of their way to unnecessarily promote themselves when talking to other people. For example, dropping little details about oneself when talking which serve no purpose apart from saying “I’m great and/or better than you”. If a physicist wants to answer the physics question of a layperson, it’s not pretentious to first let them know that they are in fact a physicist and thus can be expected to know the answer. To mention that one is a physicist in a completely unrelated conversation, or to use one’s credentials to try to win an argument about physics, is pretentious.
According to you. High school is also important for social learning and development, to practice and obtain exactly the same skills of getting along with people that you seem to decry.
I would posit that the same dynamic is at work with intelligent people, or those with a good vocabulary in high school, or what have you. The assumption is made, at least sometimes in high school, that a smart person is a loser, that someone with a good vocabulary is showing off, etc… Thus, an assumption is made only on someone’s membership in a particular group (being smart, well read, whatever) and not on them as individuals. If it was made on the basis of individuals, than people would get to know a person before deciding that someone who thinks in ‘big words’ is a showoff.
This dynamic is bigoted as far as I see it.
Oh and definition noted and stored, if not agreed with 100 percent.
High school is a place of learning, yes, but it is also a social environment. A goodish percentage of time spent in high school takes place outside of the classroom. Most kids pick friends among their classmates. That’s why high school often sucks for kids with book smarts but no social skills. And you know what? I think they should be encouraged to develop those skills.
Just as it would do a kid with a poor vocabulary to “smarten up”, it also does a kid with a good vocabulary to know how to appropriately code switch so as not to alienate, confuse, or piss off their audience. As a person interested in language, you should know this. It is strange that you don’t.
If I’m presenting research, I will not hesitate to construct a sentence like “Macrophytes, both submerged and emergent, elicit measurable responses in a variety of avian species, and in conjuction with physical parameters, they shape the nesting and foraging ecology of most aquatic fauna.” Informative, it is. And formal.
But would I talk like that in front of my mother, who is educated but does not possess a background or interest in my field? If I decide to pare down the heaviness of my scientific prose so that she may be able to understand me, aren’t I just being considerate? Why would my identity suffer just because I decide to swap “avian” for “bird” and “elicit” for “cause”.
There is no reason that a ten-dollar word has to roll off the tongue with more ease than a normal, everyday word. In a lot of cases, eloquence demands simpler, less flowery language.
I’m having a hard time imagining that people, even kids, could be so cruel as to beat up a kid JUST FOR the way he talks. I say this as someone who was teased and bullied in school and has some brains.
It is unfortunate that kids who are smart but not cool get harrassed. But so do the dumb kids. Guess who reveled in calling me “retard” because I wasn’t in super-duper AP calculus? Those kids with the wonderful vocabularies, that’s who.
School is tough for anyone who is different.
It isn’t easy to mistake intelligence for arrogance. Most of the people I know and have encountered in my life have not struck me as being arrogant. Those who are arrogant all possessed the same qualities:
They talk about their accomplishments much more frequently than the norm, and in circumstances where it isn’t particularly relevant.
They are hyper-critical and judgemental when it comes to other people’s qualifications, accomplishments, or ideas.
They are condescending, assuming that their audience does not or will not understand whatever it is they are talking about. They expect their word to be taken as gospel, no questions asked.
They do not take criticism well. They assume they are right, damn everyone else who disagrees.
Intelligent people are more likely to display these traits because they generally DO know more about things than other people, and they usually have a bunch of accomplishments (published papers, degrees, awards, etc.) to bolster their egos. But an arrogant person displays all of these things consistently and unapologetically. They are easy to spot, IMHO.
I do too, but fortunately school is more like the real world than that. A kid who makes a straight As but has no friends and gets harrassed daily will have a more miserable life than a kid who makes “ok” grades and has lots of pals. If the option isn’t there to change the kid’s environment (like, by placing him in classes with kids more at his level), then that kid will need to change something. Language and style is one way. We can whine about how much society sucks, but whining won’t change what happens to us right now.
You can be a “know-it-all” and actually know it all, and yet people will still hate you. The problem isn’t knowing it all–that’s a good thing. The problem is presenting knowledge in such a way as to make people feel as if you’re beating them over the head. When I meet someone, I want to feel that I can teach them as much as they can teach me. A pretentious, “know it all” robs that feeling from me.
Yes, that’s right… high school is only viewed as being different from ‘real life’ by me, and it’s certainly not a valid statement. Why, in ‘real life’, we’re also crammed into small rooms with the same people year after year and no chance of changing the enviornment or moving without parental permission, you don’t have a way to earn money, you don’t have the right to independence from your parents, you don’t have the right to go or not, and there are cliques, cliques, cliques… It’s just like the real world. Yep.
No, I’m not decrying getting along with people, I’m decrying that children should have to hide how they talk for fear of getting assaulted. Pretty crazy proposition, aint it?
Actually a good number of schools have taken steps to reduce or eliminate the social enviornemnt, based on the pedagogy that kids are there to be learning, not hanging out. I also fail to see how kids picking friends from their classmates factors into anything.
:rolleyes:
I’ve already said several times, in this thread, that it’s important to be able to write and talk to your audience.
And no, it does no good to hobble a child’s academic career because otherwise it will “alienate, confuse, and piss off” some idiots in the class. If a bully is pissed off because a smart kid knows the answer, he’s an asshole, not the smart kid.
Again… if you’re presenting your research to a teacher in school, and you get beat up after class because you used the word “macrophyte”… is that right? It’s your fault for not code switching, right?
I’ve already said that, several times in this thread.
But, also, you could always use the right words and teach your mother the background required. There are always options.
Funny… as eloquence is a ‘ten dollar word’.
Putting that aside, sometimes the ‘big words’ are precisely the right ones that preserve the nuance of what people are thinking. It’s also less long winded. I can talk about “The pedagogy of remedial classes.” or I can talk about “The theories and practicies associated with teaching in regards to classes for those who have fallen behind.” I know which I’d choose.
Dunno what to tell ya. I’d wager if we spoke to more Dopers, we’d hear more stories of people who were abused one way or another for knowing the answers in class, or having a large vocabulary, or what have you. Remember the people who you ‘alienate, confuse, or piss off’ by making them feel dumb when you know things that they do not?
I’m sure the social structure varies school to school. But as always, difference is one of the prime angles for attacking someone. You were different from your peers, so you were mocked.
Couldn’t agree more.
That’s the difference though. Sometimes an intelligent person might do one of those things with good reason, like as you point out that they do know more than the people they’re talking to. The problem arises when people (especially in high school) take any example of someone knowing more than them as that person being arrogant.
Maybe… maybe not. The kid who makes straight A’s might very well get into a great college and find out that there people don’t harass him for being smart. Although studies have shown that children who grow up with close friends end up showing fewer signs of depression in later life. (for some reason, siblings don’t factor into this equation.)
I’m not talking about whining, I’m talking about changing the status quo. If you can’t move a kid to a new class, you sure as hell can crack down on any students who bully him for being smart.
And yet, if they’re a ‘know it all’, and can back it up, you might very well not be able to teach them a damn thing. Is it really right to treat them worse because you can’t get selfish pleasure out of teaching them?
Pride and pretentiousness have nothing to do with each other, you’re right. A confident person has no need to prove that they are intelligent; they just behave that way. A confident person doesn’t worry that people will mistake him as a mediocretin for not reaching for the more obscure vocabulary words; he knows how to code switch without feeling like a sell out or a phony. A confident person doesn’t always talk about his own intelligence, either; in fact, he doesn’t much think about it.
A pretentious person has rigid criteria for intelligence, and must always judge people according to how well that stack up compared to him. Everyone who doesn’t score in the same percentile as the pretentious person is automatically lesser in their eyes. Everyone who did not take AP calculus is dumb. Everyone who prefers watching movies over reading is anti-intellectual. Everyone who chooses to do anything other than go to college after h.s. is a slacker and intellectually lazy. Anyone who would rather be a plumber than a doctor or lawyer is inherently less intelligent and should be looked down upon, as should anyone who didn’t make straight A’s in school. A pretentious person doesn’t define success by how happy and comfortable someone is; they define success by how many impressive credentials and accolades they have.
See a difference? Pretentious people love to talk about things like how well they stack up to the average SAT score of incoming freshmen at Harvard. They always like to remind people that they tested into the gifted program in elementary school and was doing calculus in fifth grade whild everyone else will still working fractions. Confident people understand that their intelligence shows through naturally; pretentious people have to make sure people know they know what they’re talking.
They provide no evidence at all for this claim. Frankly that site doens’t look like they put any indepth research into the circumstances around the suicides.
Again I don’t see where they got that from. They linked to an article that said Peart may have been raped. I would wager that had more to do with his suicide than being bullied. I don’t really know and I don’t think that website really knows either.
Those kids were bullied for refusing to allow someone to cheat off of them on a test not becuase they were intelligent.
That study was about children aged 5-12 not high school students. It also seemed to me that the problem wasn’t this childrens intelligence rather it was their advanced emotional and mental states. For example she said that children try to seek out friends on 5 different emotional levels or stages. By the time these kids reach highschool these difference largely have subsided and no one is still looking for a “playmate”.
Just a nitpick, but mediocretin, as defined in this thread, would mean those who’re jealous of any showing of intelligence. As such, I doubt someone would worry that they’d be called that. Then again… trancespouting is valid and we’ve got our Divine Excuses… Then again, I doubt many children have heard of the Church of the SubGenius.
And, just as a curiousity, but where are you getting that from? I’ve never, ever, heard of anybody being mocked for not knowing ‘ten dollar words’. I’ve heard a hell of a lot mocked for knowing 'em.
Oh, I see… a confident person won’t feel like a sell out for purposefully dumbing down what he was just about to say because some kid at the back of the room would beat the shit out of him after class otherwise. Check. There’s nothing wrong with hiding who you are so you don’t get physically abused, and confident people know that. Check check.
So, if one were using scientific guidelines and could knew about the study of intelligence… he’d be pretentious? Sorry, I don’t like your definition. I think I’ll stick with Giraffe’s.
Okay, now your totally mangling the word. What does being pretentious, have to do with varying schemes of value? This is part of the problem with how the word is thrown around. If someone thinks that sucess lies in giving back to the community, or in academic sucess, or in religion, that doesn’t make them pretentious.
This seems like a fairly accurate description. Sorta…
Ah well, I can provide you with more anecdotes if you really want. Although why you’re so dead set against believing this, I have no idea.
You… serious? They were asked to cheat, because they were intelligent. And they were bullied if they refused. You don’t see how this sets up unfair pressure on children who’re good at academics?
…
Do you think they killed those children once they hit twelve years of age?
The point is that there are developmental differences between high IQ kids, and lower IQ kids. In addition, if you have a situation where the same kids are together in grade school, middle school, and high school, then it’s certainly not beyond the pale to say that a kid could carry over a reputation.
Are you kidding me?
What do you think caused their advanced mental state? Gamma radiation?
What do you think would happen if a kid wasn’t able to find someone their own developmental age and never had a close friend by the time they were 12?
Anyways, I’ve got beer to drink and miles to go before I sleep. Catch you cats lata.
I really am finding it hard to believe that you require cites to prove that children who are different are picked on. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go get more for you.
)