Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Names

Last week's news (what else would you expect from me?) included a survey claiming that teachers often looked at their class lists for the new year and made judgements on what the pupils would be like, purely on the basis of their first name.

The article was clearly inspired by my award winning game Top Set, Bottom Set. What really shocks me though, is that only 49% admitted to judging by name, indicating a worrying decline in the IQ of new teachers.

10 comments:

The TEFL Tradesman said...

So little Mohammed is forever regarded as a potential suicide bomber? That's OUTRAGEOUS!!

Anonymous said...

And poor little Osama has to live up to something as well.
Ever met a nice, well-behaved Chantelle?
Or a highly intelligent, hard-working Dwayne?

phatboy said...

I'm planning to call my son (due in Jan 10) Dexter.

Just out of interest, what would your instant judgment of him be?

Anonymous said...

But it is not all bad news, with 57% of the teachers surveyed saying the naughtier children tended to be more popular than their better behaved peers.

...and that's a good thing?

Anonymous said...

We've got a Dwaine who is both hard working and intelligent!! Do you think the different spelling makes the difference?

Anonymous said...

Phatboy.
I taught 4 Dexters last year, 3 bottom set ( all pleasant kids though), 1 top set. Hope that helps.

Margaret English said...

I have yet to met a Caine/Cane/Kane, a Chelsea or a Savanah who are not anti-social little brats with feckless parents.

Mr Natural said...

In their book Freakonomics , Dubner and Levitt look at the effect of a child’s name on his or her success in school and beyond.

They give the example of one unfortunate child who was given a name pronounced Schu- taid , but spelt Shithead. What a start in life that is; I do hope she made good.

Nick said...

I think that Jack is being unfairly judged here. As one of the most common boy's names, most teachers could probably reel off as many top-set, well-behaved Jacks as they could bottom-set trouble-makers.

As for the rest of those names - they're evil. Every last one of them.

But pity any boy called Jordan, even though he probably will not be deserving of your pity...

Anonymous said...

Yeah, outrageous, but you can be fairly certain that little Sh'nay, D'moron, Dimonay et al are gonna give you trouble. If not them, their parents.