Recently, I was reading a discussion board about women dating men who are less intelligent than themselves. When asked, many women will list intelligence as one of the top characteristics they look for in a mate. What was funny about this discussion was these women were equating intelligence with the ability to write well via instant messages and email.
What does this have to do with parenting? Well, I’ve been researching special education recently and that discussion board makes something glaringly obvious—society’s ideas around intelligence are inherently wrong. If the ability to read and write with flare means someone is intelligent does that make many engineers, physicists and the people who actually structure our societies less intelligent?
Yes, I know I’m giving in to stereotypes and clichéd thinking but I happen to know a lot of engineers who can blow me out of the water in terms of intelligence but can’t write a sentence without major spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. They just think differently from me. They think in shapes, numbers and design while I think in words. No one is better, we’re just different. However, people who think differently are at a disadvantage today because we have become a text-driven society.
This brings me to the kids. With blogging, IMs, and social sites becoming the major forms of communication among kids today, where do the kids who learn and think differently fit? If grown women today judge potential mates on their ability to woo them electronically, what’s going to happen in 20 years when these kids grow up?
When my engineer friends were growing up, they may have been in special education or needed a little extra help, but the fact that they had trouble with words never impacted on their social lives or their relationships because most communication was over the phone or face-to-face.
Now I fear kids won’t have the same opportunities because they won’t be able to socialize with their peers in a way that doesn’t accentuate differences. That opens the door to bullying and a new kind of segregation.
What can be done? I don’t know. Maybe spell-check and online slang make my point moot. Maybe kids today don’t care about words in the same way those women do. What do you think? Do you have kids who are going through this?
