Gifted Children Find Heavy Metal Comforting 585
An anonymous reader writes "The Daily Telegraph is reporting that intelligent teenagers often listen to heavy metal music to cope with the pressures associated with being talented, according to research.
Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent "metalheads" are extremely bright and often use the music to help them deal with the stresses and strains of being gifted social outsiders."
Punk (Score:5, Interesting)
However, stepping back from the cynicism, I would note that this was always my experience with the punk scene. Specifically, most people I knew in the scene were incredibly talented, highly intelligent and for the most part more articulate than average. I always wondered how it was that we seemed to find one another, self assemble and take part in a scene that was a retreat of sorts from lives and upbringings that were in most cases not "Leave it to Beaver" or "The Cosby Show" type lives.
I program to metal (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't think that it necessarily helps me deal with stress, but it helps me focus or tune out everything else.
A lot of metal like Maiden revolves around scales -- aeolian, pentatonic, etc. Maybe its that structure that "gifted" people like.
Of course, some metal has a groove to it, like Back in Black. Now that I think about it, I program more against the classical based metal than the blues based stuff.
anyone else get into metal later in life? (Score:1, Interesting)
I just discovered metal a few years ago, and am big into it now - love Godsmack and even some harder bands like Cradle of Filth. But it seems like most people get into it at a much earlier age. Any other of my fellow old farts just develop the taste for it recently?
Gifted children aren't a monoculture. (Score:5, Interesting)
Gifted children: is there a single type of gifted children? Gifted in what? You can be very gifted in certain areas and suck in other areas.
Also, it's funny that the fellow Slashdot commenters which listen to heavy metal read this as "you listen to heavy metal, so this confirms you're gifted". I don't blame anyone for putting on his rose glasses though. It's only natural.
For the record, gifted children are not a monoculture. There are some gifted children who listen to heavy metal to deal with stress of being a teenager. Nice. There are also gifted children who don't listen to heavy metal, and heavy metal listeners that aren't gifted.
You're walking away from this article slightly less mentally gifted. Slashdot, you suck.
Re:It's so true. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's so true. (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:possible explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
When you are dealing with profoundly gifted kids, it is a safe bet that any antisocial behavior is mostly intentional and the kid is fully aware of how other people interpret those actions. I've known at least one kid who could fool most any psychologist into thinking he had Asperger's, at first glance.
Re:Rap on the other hand... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there were the preps. They dressed like the wiggers (because that Nike and sports stuff was expensive and the preps had to flaunt money) and usually listened to rap/hip-hop/etc but at least they didn't usually come up to you and call you G or tell you they were a blood or crypt.
I remember at a small gathering one time a so called blood was bragging about his brotherhood and status. A friend shaped a 'B' out of a wire hanger and branded him with it. Convinced him that it would show his loyalty. The following day he spread it around town that so and so was his bitch and he had branded him to prove it. The kid showed his 'B' all over town and it was a good month before he found out why everyone thought it was so funny.
Misleading headline (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Heavy metal as a detox? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've also noticed that the Mozart Effect [wikipedia.org] can apply to certain non-mozart music, as well. It seems to be based on the idea of a 60 Hz beat (now I'm doubting that, since Wikipedia didn't mention it. Someone else back me up?), which most of Mozart's stuff provides. Rob Zombie's "Never Gonna Stop Me" features a baseline that follows this pretty exactly.
Re:Punk (Score:4, Interesting)
No.
It depends on your definition tho, the recording industry puts a lot of music out that they call Heavy Metal. It is quite easy for the avid Heavy Metal listener to filter out that crud.
In other words, what they call Heavy Metal just ain't Heavy Metal :). Just look at Strapping Young Lad [centurymedia.com], those ugly old bastards are a PR/records label nightmare!
*favourite genre* (Score:4, Interesting)
Singer-songrwriter Folk
Bluegrass esp. New Acoustic/Newgrass
Celtic (stronger toward Scottish or Newfoundland)
Blues, Polka, Jazz, Klezmer, old Country, slightly harder New Age (Jean Luc Ponty or Ralph Towner), Scandinavian (NorthSide records artists), Jam Bands, etc etc.
You know, the stuff that is categorized as "Other" and not even counted in such surveys. Mostly I'm sad that the "gifted" kids have such limited horizons that 80% answered "eh... rock, I guess".
YEAH BABY!! METAL AS FUCK!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
I will say that while I fit the "geek who's into metal" profile, not a whole lot of the "gifted" people I knew (no lack of them in engineering school) were into metal.
I listen to other music of course, but mostly still Metal. I just don't "get" Hip-Hop. I think? it mostly sucks but I have no real frame of reference to judge this. I hate what passes for "R&B" these days, and I KNOW it sucks.
Some people like soothing music to calm them down.
Some people like perky music to cheer them up.
I happen to like music that makes my adrenaline pump, my heart race, my fists clench, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and my brain boil with the mad urge to kill!!!
PS - Lemmy is God!
PPS - go get the Twisted Sister Christmas Album. It rocks. Seriously.
Re:RTFA, baby. (Score:5, Interesting)
Mozart was more rock star than metal.
Re:anyone else get into metal later in life? (Score:2, Interesting)
Gus
Re:Punk (Score:2, Interesting)
It has been increasingly annoying to see the radical left and right adopt a stance against moderates and contribute to the sort of discourse on political leanings that makes your post such a breath of fresh air.
Everything's not black and white, right or left, good or bad. We seem to often forget that there's two sides to every coin, and an edge, there's a middle ground (at least in theory if not in practical impelmentation, somewhere)
[rant] I'm American (I'm not going to assume my whole audience is) and fairly liberal but when i see things about Democrats calling for the impeachment of the president I despair a little, why not work to fix things instead of waste time punishing the president for the massive f***ing mistake that is Iraq. We're there and trying to remove the president won't stabilize the country, won't bring anyone home, won't bring back the dead or restore limbs. [/rant]
Re:Marilyn Manson (Score:5, Interesting)
"As a side note, I've seen a couple interviews with Marilyn Manson and he comes across as surprisingly intelligent and well-spoken, even while still wearing the freaky makeup."
Florence Henderson (the mother in The Brady Bunch) said almost the exact same thing after meeting Marilyn Manson on Bill Maher's former show, Politically Incorrect. She was doing an interview and was asked how she felt about the incongruity of the two of them participating in a round table discussion, and she replied that she thoroughly enjoyed talking with him. She said that she was struck by how intelligent and articulate he was, and that she found him to be extremely charming.
Re:Gifted label used to control (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Heavy metal as a detox? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like most great creations, Rammstein's best work is about drugs, death, joy, confusion, power, discovery, and/or fucking.
And it's not always silly, but often quite serious, even after being translated. Oftentimes, their music is downright ugly. Sometimes, it helps to know that things could always have been worse.
Courtesy of herzeleid.com [herzeleid.com]:
what does a man do
who can't tell the difference
between human and animal
what
He will go to his daughter
she is beautiful and young in years
and then, like a dog, he will
mate with his own flesh and blood
What do you do
What do you feel
What are you
but an
animal
What does the woman do
what does the woman do
who can't tell the difference
between animal and man
She dips the quill in his blood
and write herself a letter
lifeless lines to her childhood
when her father slept by her
What do you do
What do you feel
What are you
but an animal
Re:Gifted label used to control (Score:5, Interesting)
I was one of those kids who was labeled as "gifted" fairly early on in my education. My school didn't have a tag program until 6th grade due to budgetary constraints. I can't speak for every school in the country, but your descriptions don't match my experience and they largely seem the product of philosophical / political beliefs.
- My tag program was comprised entirely of real academics. In the 6th grade we did high school chemistry, some astronomy and physics, learned about stock trading, wrote research papers on 20th century history, read some difficult books, started a debate team, and so forth.
- My experience in high school people was like pretty much any experience with other people. One or two teachers were brilliant, most were just getting by, a few were misleading, and one was downright malicious. Sure, my school didn't seem to be able to provide for me very well, but it was due to a lack of resources, not any kind of malice or conspiracy.
- No matter what you want to believe, some people's brains just work faster than others. One of my best friends in high school was also in the tag program. I did my homework during class, never studied a night in my life, blew away standardized tests without preparing, and spent my nights hacking on linux. She was doing the same work, getting pretty much the same grades, but studying 6+ hours a night to keep it up. Some people couldn't have kept up if they studied 8 hours a night, 7 days a week.
That last link goes into a lot of conspiracy theory bullshit about how the idea of varying intelligence amongst people is an artificial concept, which it coyly blames on some great conspiracy between the Rockefellers, Dewey, Rousseau, blah blah blah. Frankly, a lot of the links you've posted seem politically or philosophically motivated.
Bottom line:
- Some people are smarter than others. These categories are not the product of propaganda, conspiracy, or a bunch of fat rich white men smoking cigars and drafting up a "system of order."
- Teachers get paid shit so many of them are there because the hours are good, or because the competition is not exactly fierce, or because they are genuinely benevolent, caring individuals. At the end of the day, though, I believe far more of them give a shit than most people believe; I suppose it's more comforting to think that you're dealing with a conspiracy or institutionalized malice than to confront the fact that most of what we encounter in life is the product of people doing the best they can under the circumstances.
Re:RTFA, baby. (Score:5, Interesting)
He was also a womaniser, always lusting after rich influential peoples wives and daughetrs. As i recall it was some sexually transmitted disease that finally finished him off.
He used to play free gigs in graveyards to the poor as well, that probably helped his 'metal' image.
Re:Not quite heavy metal... (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be interesting if the study included classical pieces as well, as in studying how many gifted teenagers like both modern "complex" metal and "complex" classical. A close friend and I like both kinds, it would be nice to know we weren't the only ones who mix Ride The Lightning with Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
Re:Gifted label used to control (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt [newciv.org]
"The first lesson I teach is confusion."
"The second lesson I teach is your class position."
"The third lesson I teach kids is indifference."
"The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency."
"The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency."
"The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem."
"The seventh lesson I teach is that you can't hide."
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life."
It may be a long journey before you are willing to admit you have been bamboozled by the very people who proclaimed to be your salvation. It was for me.
As I said in the title, the Gifted label is used to control. If you are a standard product of school, even of a "gifted program", you have been controlled -- neutralized -- domesticated. You have been shaped to fit into a 19th century Brave New World industrial model of how society should be. OK, so you were tracked as an Alpha, so what? You were still controlled -- and limited -- against your wishes. Those very wishes were shaped to fit the perceived needs of that industrial order.
It does not matter if many or most teachers are caring individuals -- they remain the agents and prison wardens of this system; their range of behavior is limited by the system they are embedded in. That is one reason so many of the most caring ones burn out early.
I have no doubt that people vary in interests, experiences, or potential. Consider Howard Gardener's work Frames of Mind. The theory of multiple intelligences: __
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm [infed.org]
"In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings - initially a blank slate - could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early 'naive' theories or that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii)"
There may well be people who excel at everything. You may be one of them. But so what? How does that justify "compulsory schooling" of anyone? Except to control them. To neutralize any potential benefit of that intelligence on social structure. Even if kids need to be in day prisons because their parents are forced to work to survive (even in this age of abundance):
http://www.whywork.org/ [whywork.org]
why not "Free schools"?
http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/overview.shtml [albanyfreeschool.com]
On conspiracy, if you read the rest of that online book, you will see that Gatto does not believe in "conspiracy" in a large sense. As he says here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ [johntaylorgatto.com]
Re:Gifted label used to control (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_i
So this suggest you are correct to start making distinctions, like between IQ and EQ. One can go a lot further than that, according to Howard Gardner.
Even if some people are just smarter about everything (including ethics?), so what? How does that justify compulsory schooling of everyone? Perhaps "Gifted programs" skim off those who might be troublemakers and keep them occupied in relatively unimportant pursuits and direct their thinking away from social reform?
As I said, following on the point of the parent post I responded to, the "Gifted" label is used to control. Why not reflect on how those labels, even "high IQ", are being used to control you? Even if it implies it will get you the goodies academia has to offer?
Doesn't it bother you to be reduced from a unique individual to a label?
By the way, IQ was originally designed to detect and provide help for people below the norm in most areas, it's not clear it has any real meaning for people above the norm, since it is essentially ability divided by age. What happens when people get older?
Comparison to general statistics (Score:3, Interesting)
About the author of the paper [nagty.ac.uk]: Webpage is updated at least this year. So the author of the survey called "psychologist at the University of Warwick" in the Telegraph article does not have a master degree yet. Hmm...
Re:Not quite heavy metal... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you, as consumers of News for Nerds, used to have the black t-shirt and jeans standard issue uniform but have since "grown up", I strongly encourage a revisit to the used bin at your local record store, you won't regret it, and your code will improve! (Ok maybe not, but in the spirit of TFA, my code improved therefore the whole population's will as well Q.E.D.)
Re:Gifted label used to control (Score:3, Interesting)
As the son of two teachers, I call B.S. on the hours bit. The hours for teaching are not that great. Did you think that machines grade papers for them? Did you think that they just wing it each day instead of having to submit detailed lesson plans to the administration? Just because all the kids go home doesn't mean that the teachers do too.
Over 40 hour weeks are pretty common, and summers aren't work-free either. Most people go into teaching because they like working with children and put up with the pay and the parents. Anyone who thinks teaching is a short-hours job gets disabused of that by the time their student teaching gig is over.
Also, competition for teaching jobs is harsher than you'd think. It's not a job with high turnover past the first five years, and the amount of teachers that can be hired is directly tied to the number of rooms available in school buildings and the latest budget crunch. Most people I know that graduate from college to be teachers don't end up working in their hometown and have to move or commute a good distance to work. This can be a problem when the only openings are in a community that doesn't offer good opportunities for their spouse as is the case with many rural school systems.
I know you're trying to be understanding of the stresses that teachers undergo in their job, but you've got the motivations to teach in the first place all wrong in my experience with my parents and their co-workers.