Why teachers fear Callum, Chelsea, Connor and Crystal As teachers eye the register on the first day back at school this September, they'll be nervously keeping a sharp look-out for certain names which "strike fear into the nation's tutors". The list of those likely to make mischief includes young 'uns dubbed Aliesha, Brooke, Brooklyn, Casey, Chelsea, Connor, Crystal, Demi, Jack, …
Common biblical names = Boring middle class (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Daniel)
Uncommon biblical name = Slightly demented religoes (Noah, Job)
Old fashioned name = attempt to appease grandparents (Frederick, Henry, Gordon, Clarence)
Weird foreign name (on white kid) = attempted nod to ancestry (Henricus, Paolo, Prince)
Trans-gender names = intellectually lazy parents (Terry, Bobby, Lee)
Mis-spelt names = drunk father at registry office (Stefon, Daved)
Every "Sharon" is invariably butch
Every "Wayne" is usually thick
Every "Eugene" is a nerd
Already done by "Frank Chalk" but nonetheless an interesting premise.
I'm quite surprised at how bad the Jason's are on here, I was a shy kid, bullied a lot too because of my surname (Indian) and that I was quiet and somewhat cleverer than most, though not the brightest.
I don't know about trouble really, there was a Quinn who threw a table, but that was it. One guy did have two kids by the time school finished for A-levels, so who knows...
Plus 1 for this poster since what he/she posted describes me to a t
It is no fun at school when as part of a book study is to read a chapter for 45 mins then answer questions about it.
But in the 45 mins allotted you've read that chapter and the 4 following ones, then you answer the question "what was the author's motivation is writing about such and such a character?" with "to sell books and make money"
But can you guess what I'm like just by my name?
It seem to me that the issue here should be more about the prejudice that the teachers are following in regards to names.
Being inappropriately treated like a "bad" child for even a few days may very well have a lifelong effect on what would have been a "good" child.
That teachers, as people, experience these sentiments is normal, however giving in to and acting on such prejudice is abhorrent and they should be ashamed of themselves.
I'm noticing a startling tendency for those names appearing on the naughty list also cropping up early in the earlier half of the alphabet. I present the hypothesis that there's a correlation between not being able to raise good kids and not being able to make it more than half way through the big book of baby names.
Saying that, there's also an early-alphabet trend amongst the good kid name list too, maybe it's the people who compiled the list who can't be bothered to finish reading things about names...
- Nigel, an ex-(spectacled, unpopular maths-kid)
Anybody notice that 3000 respondents is pretty thin for basing conclusions on hundreds of different names? I can't find the study details, but just suppose that each respondent listed 10 "worst" names, and there are 1000 names total to choose from. That's 30000 total votes, or 30 votes per name on *average* (i.e. an implicit random error of about 20% on each). But the rare names will have fewer counts, with an even greater uncertainty...is that why the most fearsome ones tend to be rare, because randomness happened to boost their relative scores?
Regardless, I can't imagine trusting the final sorted list too much with errors like that floating about: the top-ranking ones could just be dumb luck, until we know the details.
"If the parents haven't started them off with appropriate social skills then it is improper to burden the Teacher and other children with them. Or am I being a bit harsh here?"
Quite. What happens is that when said brat first enters the education system as pre-school, his/her parent(s) then end up enrolled on the school's parenting class (and Social Services also begin to take an interest), at least until said brat no longer demolishes the classroom or thumps the other children during a tantrum. It's quite a common complaint from teachers that much of their work these days is to try to raise these brats into something a little more tolerable, when really it should be the parent(s)' job, but from what I've observed, there's little parenting taking place with children seen as "friends".
There's a French blog called "tribulations of a checkout girl" in which she tells a great story of a young couple who've just paid for their shopping, and call to their young twins: "Clara, Morgane, we're going home now".
The checkout girl had great difficulty keeping a straight face, the parents seemed blissfully unaware that "Clara Morgane", now a singer, is probably better known for her past as a hardcore pr0n actress... Wait until those kids reach high school
My Mum tended to cop a bit at school because asian was close enough to Japanese during the post-wartime for some people. A friend of hers copped it very bad from a teacher (who in hindsight more-than-likely had post-POW PSD) for having a German first name (the friend - was actually 4th-gen Australian and the name had been chosen from a popular singer 4 years before WWII began).
From my short stint as a primary teacher, I found that surnames are often even worse for a kid, especially uncommon ones. If the oldest child was a brat, 90% of the time the rest of the kids from that family will be treated like brats from day-one too. At least half the time they aren't... at least until they work out that, if you are going to get in trouble regardless of your actual nature/behaviour, may as well as live up to the adults' expectations.
Bright kids are often troublesome - sometimes they are just brats that happen to be bright, but mostly I feel it to be a side effect of the "No child allowed ahead" policies popular at present. (I was an exception, but I was effectively living under my desk with undiagnosed chronic depression). I'm all in favour of giving every child every opportunity possible and am well aware of problems with academic streaming (grouping kids into graded classes), but you can't expect a smart child not to invent their own amusements when the classroom is set up to cater for future consumers of daytime soaps and reality TV. I never finished highschool for that reason - fortunately I found a much more educationally healthy environment in trade-college, where half the class was already in the workforce and training for career progression, and anyone against letting others learn could be escorted off the premises by security.
You know, there seems to something to this... I pre-dated Steve Ballmer's efforts by two decades; I, too, was punished in class for chair-throwing (the teacher refused to do anything about the kids throwing spitballs at me, so I sent a chair their way!)
Troublemakers names at school (70s - early 80s) were Wayne, Rick, Glenn and Robin. A surname I had problems with was Spencer: I was bitch-kicked by a girl called Nadine Spencer as a child in the UK, bullied by a boy called Robin Spencer in one school, and another called Scott Spencer in another - and none of these Spencers were related (except perhaps by some 15th century ancestor?)
So here's a beer for all the chair-throwing Steves out there. Let's have a reunion party at Ikea!
we were strolling casually round our local ned heaven / shopping "mall" some time ago, surveying the plebs from our morally/socially high brow platform of aloofness, when we spied the best there can possibly be.
An obviously new born wee unfortunate (for reasons soon to become clear), smothered in pink frills, and pink frilly cushions in her shiny new silver cross baby bucket/pram, being paraded round her soon to be playground by the obviously proud parents, attired solely in "sports" gear, with said trackies tucked into their sparkling white socks, just below the knee. Oh, let's not forget the burberry hats at a jaunty angle either. Or the cheap-looking gold hanging off the pair of them.
We chanced to spy that one of the cushions had the wee girl's name stitched into it, along with her dob (primitive form of ID card I guess) , and this is where it gets groovy.
What does the research suggest about this wee one's life/school performance? <wait for it>
She appeared to be named "Chantelle Latrine".
erm...getting me coat before it gets rifled....
Unfortunately It dose seem that there are three types of bright kids. Those who work hard and are loved by the teacher, those who go mental through lack of stimulation, and those with mental health problems who never get the help they need (PTSD from years of bullying and Dyslexia in my case, called laziness by my teachers, and ME in my wife’s, called skiving by her school, because she couldn’t move for days or weeks on end).
...when they named the girl at my child's school "Ikea"
My fear is that was where she was conceived.
Wayne and Waynetta Slob:
Wayne "You can't call her Spud-You-Like-Ah"
Waynetta "It's pronounced Spud-ewe-lick-a. It's exotic, innit?"
[Other furniture outlets are available. I don't think she has a sibling called MFI, but I could be wrong.]
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