Those alpha kids

What traits distinguish boys and girls at school as the alpha kids? The Times takes a crack at it. You'll be shocked - shocked! - by their conclusion: the most popular children are good-looking, social and funny, get good grades but make it look effortless, and usually have a zany sidekick.

Except for the bit about school ties, I'm re-living four years of high school inadequacy right this minute. I was never even alpha enough to rate the job of sidekick! Read on, please, while I go and breathe into a paper bag.

Academic achievement seemed to be performed relatively effortlessly, at the same time as socialising in class.

"In this sense they are notably different from the high achieving but not popular pupils, including those delineated 'boffins' or 'geeks', who tended to be far more exclusively focused on the demands of learning," said the research.

While alpha pupils were assertive, their behaviour was not excessively disruptive, involving good-humoured "cheek" and "attitude" rather than overt confrontation.

I'm better now. Um, "boffin"?

Boffin was a common colloquial term used in Britain during WW2 for the technical experts, the backroom boys, who were helping to win the war.

An affectionate term, but with some practical fighting man's scorn for the academic brain worker.

Hmm. Do we still deride boffins here in the U.S. anymore?  These days, Americans seem to have a collective crush on web geeks. Or is it a different story at the grade school level?

Comments

[Miss Grace]

I think I'd like to name an animal Boffin. A parakeet perhaps?

[Hattie]

You know what's really scary about this? It was the same 50 and more years ago when I was in high school. So where is the change we keep hearing about these days? Sure not in the halls of secondary education!