Preface
Some people find it difficult to either envision what the path of the mythic “underachiever” looks like, or gain insight into what that journey looks like to the underachiever! Some envision explanations which properly “blame the victim” (or their parents) for not being able to better manage or participate in the educational process. Some see under-achievement as a byproduct of [lack of] motivation, hard work or gumption.
You see, the underachiever is someone with “potential,” an individual who has received an assessment, sometimes formally sometimes informally, in which he or she has been judged “capable” but unwilling. He or she is somehow ‘stuck’ regarding his or her ability to initiate those behaviors which would result in being successful academically.
Parents, modeling explanation of teachers past and present, point to her/his academic areas of success and draw misleading conclusions of cause and effect! “You see, you CAN do it when you try, when it is a subject you like, or a teacher you like…WHY can’t you do it ALL the time?” They MISS all of the relevant clues, add two plus two and repeatedly get five!
Sometimes the rationales for getting stuck are attributed to [lack of] motivation, failure of parents to participate in their child’ education as it relates to overseeing homework and participation in the child’s educational comings and goings.
Let it be known that the anonymous author of the following essay is neither learning disabled, comes from a broken home, is of a lower socio-economic status, has uncaring parents nor is unmotivated. To him, the label “under-achiever” was from day one a puzzle. However, he later came to wear that label as a badge of honor, one he wore with pride…nor was he stupid!
Come enter the world and mind of the Under-Achiever. Discover what he or she knows…That to be capable yet unable to fulfill that potential within a forced daily regiment of academia, even when one tried their hardest is a self-esteem draining and marginalizing experience.
But to be spit out by an educational system which takes no responsibility for its failure AND have the blame squarely placed on his or her shoulders as the cause of that failure while being labeled an underachiever is the cruelest of mislabels and the saddest of worlds within which to live…
Confessions of an Underachiever
That “unwilling” yet somehow capable student
who appears to participate in his or her own failure,
who accepts his fate yet is unable to successfully intervene in
recovering from his own academic failure spiral…
By Anonymous
“If he’d only work harder” my High School Counselor would tell my parents during MANY unpleasant such session, “he has the ability; he’s a bright boy; he could do it if he was motivated: he could do it if he tried…”
… report cards I was always afraid to show. Mama’d come to school,
And as I’d sit there softly crying, teacher’d say, “he’s just not trying,”
He’s got a good head if he’d apply it, but you know yourself, its always somewhere else…
[so] I built me a castle with dragons and kings, and I’d ride off with them as I stood by my window and looked out on those… Brooklyn Roads”
Brooklyn Roads by Neil Diamond
*****
“I’m the kid who ran away with the circus, now I’m watering elephants.
But sometimes I law awake in the sawdust, dreaming I’m in a suit of light…
I’m the kid who always looked out the window, failing tests in geography, but I’ve seen things far beyond just the schoolyard, distant shores of exotic lands…
Time was talking, guess I just wasn’t listening, no surprise if you know me well.
I’m the kid who has this habit of dreaming, sometimes gets me in trouble too.
But the truth is I could no more stop dreaming
then I could make them all come true.
“The Kid” by Buddy Mondlock
Performed by Peter, Paul & Mary
In the car on the way home from the school meeting there was no room to run, no room to hide. My sincere promises to work harder were met with skeptical glances and stone silence. My parents retaliated with ever more improved methods of instituting “real” accountability on my part over completion of assignments, handing in homework, etc…and denial of any and all privileges as forms of persuasion.
There was no doubt that school sucked!
I stand before you an Underachiever, apparently more interested in punishment than performance, unable to “leap” apparently leap-able academic barriers established by my teachers. Apparently unmotivated, or at least that is what everyone believed! How else to explain my preference for all forms of parental torture re: denial or privileges and access to fun and frolic and my complete unwillingness to achieve almost any form of positive attention or reward? Boy did I have it backwards!!
In truth I am no more interested in having my privileges taken away than any other kid. I want to go out on weekends, drive the car, or come home later than 10:00PM. Yet I can’t put my finger on why I am both smart and academically out of phase: it certainly feels stupid. But everyone tells me I’m not…stupid that is. I’m not in favor of goofing off and I Do care: these attitudes aren’t what have gotten me into this situation. In fact I feel very strongly about my intelligence, my abilities and the difficulty of getting these two factors in line with my doing better in school. I AM trying!
And I HAVE tried…I have…over and over, over and over! But I fail as often as I succeed, and I can’t tell you why! But I KNOW it is not for want of trying…it is some “thing” else but the problem is ALWAYS me. I work hard…maybe not smart but hard, and I can’t for the life of me tell you when that hard work will or won’t pay off! It’s a mystery!
Could be hormones (girls): I like girls! Could be family problems at home. Could be a behavior problem or some sort of emotional or psychological difficulty. Could be the Full Moon but I doubt it! Please stop guessing, stop “interpreting!” No; my only problem is that I chronically underachieve. Now, if I only knew that to do about it...
My parents try to help; they offer me compliments veiled with threats; “I know you’re a smart boy, but if you don’t get better grades by the end of this term…” I hear them mutter. OR, they just offer threats; “If your grades don’t go up forget about going to the movies with your friends over the weekend...” Swell: we have a deal!
My school offers me ineffective even if well-meaning assistance; “Why don’t you come in after class and we’ll go over those math equations again…and again…and again.” We could go over them a thousand times and those darn equations still wouldn’t make any sense. I’m making no connection, learning nothing ANF frustrating BOTH the teacher and I! But no one seems to notice that perhaps the problem could just as well be in the teaching not the learning…especially since, as I’ve been told numerous times, I have potential and I’m not stupid…
“But ALL the other kids are learning…what make you different?” I hear repeatedly. No one seems to notice that people learn differently from each other, and that teachers teach differently; talk about challenges!
So they sermonize and generalize; “you seem to do well in English and Social Studies… A’s even! That shows me you could do the same in Math and Science…” as if Math and Science teachers were the same kinds of people, used the same teaching methods as English and Social Studies teachers. As if the requirements upon which grades are based parallel each other and were interchangeable!
Even I can see this; why can’t they? I know when I am being condescended to! When the math and science teacher can’t adjust their teaching to my learning needs, they grow frustrated; they speak more slowly, insult my intelligence, lower their (and my) expectations and I despair. I no longer want to take part in class. They point to me and call me unmotivated, but I ask you, “Which came first, my lack of motivation or my lack of understanding and achievement? And how come it’s my fault? I’m not the professional educator; I am only the kid scared of failing…”
Schools characterize my problem by pointing their finger at me. They label me (or, more accurately mislabel me) as an “Underachiever; unmotivated, immature… as having family problems, being the product of a single parent, a broken home, a home without the economic resources to get me “extra help, .etc.” These are all labels I’ve heard which schools used to shift the responsibility for poor school performance to me and away from the school itself…how do they get away with it? Since when is a poorly manufactured “product” the fault of the product? What did I do to tick them off so much?!
Early on my parents were propagandized to believe that problems in my learning and acquiring skills and knowledge like the other kids were centered on me the student and their failure as responsible parents. They were told early on that things would get better, and when they didn’t they started to accept the view the school provided.
“Why can’t you be like your younger sister; she never has problems like these” they’d protest and look at me sidewise.
How did my parents give up on me? They’re smart, professionals; how could they think that somehow I got the lazy dumb genes while they and my sister carried on the family tradition of academic excellence? Why didn’t they or the school look more closely?
My parents were seduced into Blaming the Victim, their child, for the school’s shortcomings. Of course I didn’t see it that way at the time…the above comes from years of psychotherapy :>)
And the sequence went something like this…
As a student, I entered our local school system in Kindergarten at 5 years of age or so. All the school "screeners" wanted to know when I was screened was what I knew not how I knew it. I am my parent’s first child. Maybe I shouldn’t have blamed them so much yet I felt abandoned by them; they always seemed to take the side of the school against me. But my parents had little to no experience with school systems other than their own experience, and neither of them ever experienced what I was experiencing! They weren’t “local: they live in a school district different than the one which they grew up and attended. They couldn’t see past the nurturing and welcoming group of teachers who teach early elementary school. All they could see was my failure to learn as fast and as successfully as the other kids. What was wrong with me? What was my problem?
So to continue…
Throughout elementary school I began to experience difficulties regularly: I couldn’t/wouldn’t stay in my seat; I wasn’t acquiring skills as rapidly as the other children, etc. I DID have my successes but these were in art, music, expressive writing (although I never got that grammar “thing” down). Early memories of conferences, babysitters for my younger sister, conferences which made my parents leave work early, complaints about how I was disrupting their lives…Dejection, sadness, feelings of being overwhelmed, a palpable sense of failure mixed with tears and a commitment to try harder, to work harder, to do better. I KNEW I was the problem…what to do, what to do?
Middle School yielded new challenges on which to bump my head. Everyone expected me to act more mature and be more responsible. I couldn’t organize my way out of a paper bag! And I wasn’t all that mature to be honest.
On step up day we toured the new Middle School, marveled at the nifty desks covered in something which stopped Middle School kids from writing on them…wow! What they did tell me but I didn’t “get” was that now I had a bunch of teachers, and almost all had very different teaching and personality styles. Some liked my sense of humor and talkativeness: some disdained my thinking that I had a sense of humor and something to say!
And “they” expected me to be organized, to be able to handle the multiple teachers and schedule changes which comprised Middle School. For me this was asking too much!
I must admit, however, that High School was the real battlefield within which I “the Underachiever” dramatically failed (or achieved recognition as an underachiever…you choose). High School represented for me the ultimate challenge. How learning was to take place and how learners were to demonstrate course material mastery were written in cement. There was no place to run, no place to hide for a boy with alternative learning needs.
It was “My Way or the Highway,” and indeed the highway looked good on many occasions when I had to bring home my Report card for my Father’s signature. I learned to walk REAL slow and procrastinate until the last moment getting that darn card signed.
And should someone like me believe he or she can “win the battle,” we rapidly
became aware that we were sadly misinformed and mistaken. When you fight the law (as the song tells us), the Law always wins!
Fast Forward to my Senior year. My Senior Thesis in English was due, and I was excited by what I had developed, an interesting comparison of Walden by Henry David Thoreau and Walden II by B.F. Skinner. You can only imagine how bewildered I was when I received a “C” after all, in English at least I was an “A” student. But I let it go as I was finally graduating and knew that I needed to get as far away from my disconfirming years as quickly as possible.
But after a triumphant, affirming first semester in college, I got up the nerve to return to my high school and confront my now irrelevant English Teacher. This confrontation did not come easily, but I had an ace up my sleeve. It was during that first Freshman semester in college that a friend who was a year behind me in school and had the same English teacher and called to tell me something which blew my mind.
She recounted how this teacher who had given me a “C” had used my thesis for “illustrative” purposes. He had pulled it out, told them it was the best paper he had ever received from a student, but because certain procedures hadn’t been followed to his satisfaction, he had demoted the grade from an “A” to a “C!”
I was startled, since he had never shared this explanation with me, and I was startled because the issues he pointed out were trivial, at least to me. It was apparent that it had been much more important for this educator to teach me a lesson than to validate any ability I had.
Get the point?
I learned at almost every juncture that were highlighted as failures that underachievers are nourished minimally in their areas of strength but punished regularly for their areas of weakness. I DID have teachers who told me I had “something on the ball,” but what chance does this Greek Chorus have of drowning out the angst and assault that all of the failure visited upon me? What could I expect if I couldn’t even figure out how to consistently succeed? Was it my fault?
So! What were the real-world, lifelong negative consequences and penalties of Underachievement for me across my Elementary to Middle to High School years?
What were some of the effects on me as a child of ignoring the biased, one sided approaches to education which are now the status quo of society? Here are just a few…
My Life Long Consequences and penalties include, among many:
- significant negative effects on my self-esteem
- significant negative effects on my self-confidence. I still shudder when I am forced to compete with what I think of as “sharks,” those students with BOTH the ability and the dominant learning style: I only had one of those…
- I acquired a negative self-image as it pertains to education: the likelihood that I would ever successfully or fully acquire academic skill sets commensurate with my intelligence. Instead, many skills were acquired at a superficial, less than optimal or competitive level.
- I had a diminished sense of academic competitiveness: I was unable to view myself as competent and worthy.
- I had Low to No expectation that I would be admitted to advanced academic opportunities to order to become a “professional”
- I had a narrow sense of my options re: access to future work-related opportunities and promotions
- I found an outlet or desire/need to seek attention through other less relevant or productive pursuits…after all, the squeaky wheel DOES get the grease!
- I begged off re: risk-taking within most intellectual, job-related, or academic environments…why compete when you have no chance of winning?
And I learned that:
- most “societal institutions” which had fixed criteria for admission, criterion methods of higher learning which enabled one group at the cost of disabling another were not open to me in any realistic sense
- Schools as a representative of societal values accepted and distributed a set of standards, values, and criteria which validated one group at the expense of another equally capable group of individuals. Although to this day, I am not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg…
- An insidious mislabeling of ability which confirms the superiority of one group at the expense of another is taking place on a daily basis. That a sotto voce process continues to maintain the inaccurate blaming of under-performance as a function of race, gender, socio-economic, or individual motivation, maturity, or inherent inability to achieve rather than properly placing the responsibility on the system itself.
My Plea?
For those who experience this very fundamental societal bias, the effects are chronic and lifelong.
I can attest to that...
Help Stamp out Underachievement…
Ask What You the Teacher or School can do
THAT WORKS to help each child succeed!
Don’t just pin the problem on the student!
You say you have the tools: give them to the child…