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Don't judge her by her command of French.
"You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well, mine are even worse!"
Many main characters in children's shows (and in adult's shows featuring children) are explicitly shown as doing very badly in school, despite showing themselves to be of at least average intelligence in most other areas of life. This isn't inconsistency on the part of the writers, though. The kid is just Book Dumb.
Making your child character Book Dumb is seen as a great way to appeal to the masses (because You Suck) without having to show them being outsmarted by other characters on a regular basis. A Book Dumb character will usually show excellent "street smarts" and is often very good at problem solving most of the time, but he ( and it is almost always a boy) is no good at functioning within the regimented learning system of our schools. Maybe he's just not good at that type of learning. Maybe he's clever, but can't resist an opportunity for mischief. In extreme cases, he may even be a genius or inventor at home, but devolves into a functionally illiterate bad boy as soon as he enters through the school gates. Maybe he's just Too Dumb To Fool.
On the other hand, some writers will try the opposite rationale and use it as a criticism of the school system, either claiming that schools are staffed by incompetent idiots who don't know intelligence when they see it, or that schools are deliberately designed to stifle innovation and free will in order to turn kids into mindless future wage slaves.
Some characters are book dumb due to having been denied a formal education for various reasons. They might not be in any way stupid or lazy but a lack of opportunity has simply restricted their progression.
His own attitude to his schooling varies considerably, often within the same series. One episode may call for him to seem to care about his problem, and try very hard to get the work done, whereas another episode may show him really not caring about schoolwork at all. This doesn't matter; as long as the writer gets across that this character isn't some kind of fancy intellectual at whom the audience should sneer, then the Book Dumb has done its job.
In shows with high school characters, Book Dumb overlaps with Troubled But Cute.
This is also common among adults, who will be portrayed as not having done very well at school, even though today they may be a famous novelist, celebrated artist, top sportsman, or nuclear safety inspector. If the character is doing a non-creative job, he will usually be just as ineffective in his job as he was at school (though always managing to avoid George Jetson Job Security), while displaying considerable intelligence in other areas of their life.
More or less the polar opposite of the stereotypical Geek, who does excellently in school but is shown as being almost completely incompetent in all other areas of life. Both can be very intelligent people, but only in certain circumstances. The different attitudes of most people to each type of character betray our society's mistrust of intellect.
This trope has quite a bit of Truth In Television. As any teacher can tell you, there is something about the school system that does alienate a certain portion of otherwise intelligent children, although the pervasiveness of this trope frustrates some students that are held to Teen Genius standards by their parents, wondering why nobody that actually does well in school is ever the main character. Also, Your Mileage May Vary if you apply this to yourself in real life, since it's quite possible to be Book Dumb without being street-smart. Most troublingly, this trope is popular among anti-intellectuals , who argue that academic smarts are entirely worthless.
Contrast TV Genius, who only seems intelligent in the classroom. Compare Brilliant But Lazy, which underlies this most of the time, and Everybody Hates Mathematics, the roughly mathematical equivalent.
Examples:
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- Tomo, Osaka and Kagura from Azumanga Daioh play this one to some degree. The three of them are pretty much as intelligent as any high school girl, yet their scores are so low, they once added them and got 104, or in American, an A++ (if Chiyo, Sakaki and Yomi did that, it would be roughly a 270 / AAA++++++). This is mostly justified, though, because Tomo is a Genki Girl with the attention span of a squirrel, Osaka is a Cloudcuckoolander with the attention span of a squirrel, and Kagura is a Jock with the attention span of a squirrel.
- It's actually played with until the end of the series, where Tomo, Osaka, and Kagura all pass their entrance exams to college before the pseudo-Geek Yomi (complete with a Lampshade Hanging from the teacher on how weird that is).
- Perhaps Yomi was aiming too high, whereas Tomo et al aimed low and got it.
- Nope. Tomo actually got into the same prestigious school Yomi was going for. It's mentioned in one of the last episodes that Tomo is capable of great intelligence and hard work, but her only motivation is competing with Yomi. That's how she also got into the same high school as Yomi.
- Yue Ayase from Mahou Sensei Negima is one of the smartest girls in the class, not counting the Mad Scientist or the Time Traveller. She adores reading, especially philosophy. It's just that reality is so incredibly pointless that she doesn't care to try at all, which places her in the lowest grade percentile of the class. (The so-called "Baka Rangers.")
- When she starts studying magic, however...
- Also, arguably fellow Baka Ranger Kaede Nagase, who actually seems to be a very wise girl for her age. Perhaps the Ninja training just gets in the way of her studies.
- Both Asuna and Ku Fei (also of the Baka Rangers) Have both shown impressive tactical skills and Asuna is very good at judging the emotions of others. Admittedly Ku Fei has to work with the handicap of a less than perfect grasp of Japanese (you try learning to speak language A taught in language B when C is your native tongue), and it is widely speculated that what ever spell keeps Asuna from remembering her past also interferes with her general memorization skills. In fact of the five only Ensemble Darkhorse Makie is arguably just plain dumb.
- Inversion: Despite being an apparent Delinquent and shonen lead, Ichigo Kurosaki of Bleach has one of the highest grade point averages in the school, to the chagrin of his normal friends who are upset that he betrays his stereotype. He replies that he gets enough flak from the teachers for getting into fights and his strange hair colour, so he studies hard to make sure that at least they can't complain about his grades. However, in battle he tends to charge in without a plan, and ignore his allies plans.
- It's the same with Chad (who gets a higher score than Ichigo), except he's not so much of a delinquent anymore.
- Then there's Orihime, who, despite her space-case tendencies, manages to get at least 3rd in their entire grade.
- Naruto routinely comes up with winning strategies for his squad, yet placed dead last in the exams (the databooks give his intelligence score pre-Time Skip as 1.5 out of 5) and one scene implied that he is barely literate. It seems he can only think properly under life threatening danger, but has apparently grown out of this after the Time Skip (said score has gone up to 3).
- Sakura's something of an inversion in Part I, as she aces every test in the academy, but rarely puts her intelligence to practical use in the field (for example, she doesn't see through either of the fake Narutos in the Forest of Death before Sasuke, who has 1.5 fewer intelligence points in the databook, pointed them out).
- Despite being in a school practically designed to take advantage of his abilities, Yuki Judai from Yu-Gi-Oh GX is perpetually stuck in the lowest dorm of Duel Academy due to his low scores...at least, with any of the written or studying parts; during the actual field exams, where he actually gets to duel, he excels greatly. This does appear to be partly by choice, as he's turned down promotion at least once on screen. Perhaps the writers just think he'd look horrible in Yellow or Blue...
- Sho was also like this for a while, being a fairly competent duelist and student whose fear of failure always sabotaged his efforts in season 1. By season 3, he is temporarily promoted to Blue, but goes back to Yellow because he doesn't believe himself worthy yet. In season 4, though, he accepts the promotion.
- Slightly altered in Code Geass. Lelouch Lamperouge purposefully does worse than he could and skips school...but only because he's an exiled Britannian prince secretly plotting an underground war by manipulating the resistance groups in Japan to overthrow Britannia, and he would rather not have his would-be excellent grades attract unnecessary attention.
- Suzaku Kururugi, on the other hand, just isn't terribly bright (Might be a Justified Trope since he's a deconstruction of the typical shounen hero). To compensate, however, "Spinzaku" got the Charles Atlas Superpower, whereas Lelouch is very much the incarnation of a Non Action Guy.
- While Suzaku thinks more with his very convoluted feelings and is stuck in a world full of Magnificent Bastards, This Troper dopesn't remember him shown as utterly Book Dumb in the Ashford circle.
- If anything Suzaku is Book Smart. He and Kallen both get excellent grades in school. However they aren't very cunning or politically savvy, and they tend to look straight foward at situations rather than around it 3 ways. This means they are constantly outsmarted by the various Chessmasters in the series.
- Jotaro Kujo from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is an outright delinquent who skips school regularly (although this may be due to the fact that all of the girls at his high school can't stop fawning over him), but at the same time has incredible intuition and detective skills (which, in a rather odd Shout Out, he attributes to his obsessive watching of Columbo as a child). Jotaro actually ends up being a marine biologist (of all things) later on, which goes to show he isn't as dumb as he seems.
- Kyon from Suzumiya Haruhi is clearly intelligent and knows a lot for his age, as displayed by his continual references to widely varied aspects of culture, history, mythology and advanced scienctific concepts, many of which a high schooler would have no reason to know, but is barely average as a student, possibly due to his cynical and apathetic personality. In the novels, he ends up needing Haruhi's help on at least one assignment.
- Lampshaded by Kyon himself: "Why is it that I can be so smart when it comes to reading Nagato's facial expressions or Koizumi's hidden clues, but fail to answer every single test question?"
- In addition to knowing a lot, he has a damn sharp mind, as evidenced by his deduction of what really happened on their summer trip at the end of book 3.
- Tsukasa from Lucky Star is a hopeless lazy ass capable of sleeping from 10:00 PM to 2:00 PM, while Konata is so otaku she actually forgets to do her homework. In fact, Konata admits in one particular episode that's she perfectly capable of achieving high marks, but her obsessive and procrastination habits just fill in more than academics. The minor character Misao is similar to Konata, but she'd more inclined towards outdoor activities.
- Konata got into this locally prestigious high school by the lure of a PS 2 and a PC.
- In one episode she demonstrates her ability to cram for a test with a single all-nighter; she manages to get the same good score as Kagami, despite of that the latter studied for the same test well over a week.
- That was before the author's proclaimed characterization change of Konata.
- Yu Yu Hakusho features Yusuke, who is incredibly Book Dumb. He once got a twelve (yes, twelve out of 100) on a test. However, on the battlefield, he's a fairly competent strategist, and in one episode, he correctly applies the principle of light reflection to defeat Hiei. There's also Kuwabara, who starts out Book Dumb (he got a seven on that same test; Yusuke was bragging that he was smarter), and, as part of Character Development, studies hard and gets into a prestigious high school.
- Fruits Basket both subverts and plays this straight. Kyo is a subversion, he has the personality of a delinquent, is obsessed with fighting, sort of, and is, oddly, a good student. Played questionably straight with Tohru, who tends to struggle (though not due to lack of effort). And then there's Saki, who's smart, but simply doesn't give a damn (except when faced with the threat of summer school in non-air conditioned rooms, when she makes sure to avoid failing grades).
- Subverted by Miyako in Hidamari Sketch. She may have all ADHD traits, but her junior high grades were so good that she entered Yamibuki with the academic part of the entrance exam exempted. (She still have to pass a drawing test though) Just that others would rather believe her "I came in through the backdoor" joke.
- A Slam Dunk episode features four members of the Shohoku Five Man Band failing their exams with ridiculous results. They had to stay up stufying in Captain Akagi's house all night long. Hilarity Ensues there.
- Luffy in One Piece is a textbook example. He's a complete idiot most of the time, yet he's extremely good at coming up with the best ways to use his Devil Fruit powers to their fullest in various situations. One that particularly sticks out in this tropers mind is when he out-smarts Eneru's Mantra mind-reading ability... by out-dumbing him. He intentionally thinks of nothing (The name of said technique translating to "Rubber Rubber Idiot"), then starts bouncing punches off a wall so that he has no idea of what they'll hit, making it impossible for Eneru to dodge them by reading his mind.
- Gear 2 and 3. End of story.
- One of the rare female examples is Maya Kitajima from Glass Mask, who is able to memorize full scripts and acknowledges lots of acting techniques, but is barely average at school. She lampshades this by thinking she's just not interested in academic prowess.
- Hajime of The Kindaichi Case Files is a great detective and has the IQ of 200, yet he has no interest in schoolwork and his chance of getting into a college is precarious, to say at best.
- Inverted with Firo from Baccano! who, while having over two-hundred and fifty years of scientific and alchemical knowledge locked away in his head after consuming Szilard, insists that he's too stupid to understand or make any use of it.
- Keiichi of Higurashi has an interesting case of this, it's revealed that whilst his grades are standard to mediocre, he has a rather good to great understanding of the real life implementations of whatever is being done.
- Kagome Higurashi from Inuyasha is a female example - at least when it comes to Math, a subject that she's always shown to be struggling with. Apparently not a complete BD as she manages to graduate from high school at the end of the manga. However, it doesn't seem like she has the usual over-the-top excellent battle skills that most BDs have; her heroicness seems more emotionally based, even after she does take a badass level.
- Sawada Tsuna from Katekyo Hitman Reborn. To an extreme. In the beginning, he's pretty much the school's Butt Monkey that gets the worst grades. And for the longest time, it really did look like he was all-around useless. However, after the series got more serious, he's shown to not actually be stupid - when he's determined and tries, he's very smart about fighting and utilizing his abilities in combat.
- Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic. He doesn't tend to do very well in school. Granted, it's not like he has a lot of street smarts in relation to normal people's survival and lives either, but... he sure is good at fighting and surviving in the combat zone. Not to mention his knack for rescuing people.
- Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi is a borderline female example. You'd think that all the stomach thinking and putting herself needlessly in danger would reflect in dis-interest for studies, but her grades aren't abysmally bad and she's shown having an interest in studying so she can get in a good highschool, like Yui. This is even more accentuated in the manga, where it's explained as her way to seek for the approval of her Education Mama.
- Ends up subverted at the end of the TV anime series, when its revealed that Miaka passed the entrance exam to Jonan while Yui, who's more traditionaly smart, did not. They both end up going to a different high school together.
- A particularly interesting case is Odamaki Sapphire - the girl is almost illiterate to the point she had to ask an assistant how certain words sounded during the intellectual portion of Roxanne's qualification exam, but due to certain aspects of her upbringing she's much smarter than she appears. Roxanne lectured her on learning how to read after the test was finished... only for her brain to crack when she realized the girl scored the highest of everyone in the room! The look on Roxy's face was priceless.
- Ermengarde in Shokojo Sera, like her original incarnation, is portrayed as scatterbrained and scholastically backward; in a flashback, we also see that this may be related to neglect by her father, a university professor. However, she is also portrayed as good-hearted and generous, loyal to Sara even after she loses both father and fortune, and nurses Sara when she falls seriously ill. She also is the only person, apart from Sara, whom Lottie can relate to, at least to some extent.
- Kotoko Aihara and the others in Class F in Itazura Na Kiss.
- Ash from Pokemon inevitably ends up like this any time he's placed in a traditional school setting; A recent episode of DP has him failing miserably during a Pokemon quiz, leading another character to question how a trainer with such poor academic knowledge of pokemon could have earned 6 badges. The episode eventually leads to an Aesop about how learning theory in school doesn't necissarily make one good at actually doing something in real life.
Comic Books
- Chase Stein from Runaways, despite being the child of genius inventors, has no scholastic aptitude whatsoever and is easily the dumbest member of the group (including the 11-year-old):
Chase: Hey, I may not be book smart, but I am street smart!
Gert: Which street? Sesame?
- Yet when on his own, he was clever enough to come up with a simple plan to deal with the Gibborim; find and threaten those smart enough to help. His "anonymous white van" idea also shows some he has some degree of cleverness.
- Worth mentioning that in recent books, Chase shows a skill with fixing and using tech devices close to his parents, and is as skilled with the Staff of One as Nico, the resident spellcaster herself.
- Batgirl III (Cassandra Cain) is one of the top martial artists in the DC Universe, but barely able to speak and illiterate.
Film
- Bill and Ted in Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure will apparently mature into musical geniuses, display a high degree of creativity, and have a surprisingly sophisticated vocabulary. However, they are failing history and clearly have not paid much attention in school.
- They also get a quick grasp on manipulation of events via time travel.
- Jean-Baptiste Grenouille of Perfume displays a high level of intelligence in addition to his brilliance in perfume making. However, he was raised as a simple tanner's apprentice and has no education at all. At times he must ask simple questions like, "What's a legend?"
- This could be accounted for more readily than instances of this trope set in modern times if we consider that in 18th-century France the educated were a very small segment of society and many, many intelligent people born of working-class origins would slip through the cracks.
- Huckleberry Finn from The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is the EPITOME of this trope. He's able to come up with elaborate plans on-the-spot to turn the tables around in a bad situation but he can't even spell his own alias correctly.
- D'Artagnan from Dumas' The Three Musketeers is very perceptive and good at Indy Ploys, but "had never been able to cram the first rudiments of [Latin] into his head, and [...] had by his ignorance driven his master to despair".
- In William King's Warhammer 40000 Space Wolf novel Grey Hunters, Sven's marked lack of interest in history and the archives makes a Foil for the more studious hero, Ragnor. At one point he drags Ragnor away from the hologlobe for beer.
- Julia from 1984 is barely literate, yet able to guess the Party's innermost goals almost intuitively, and evade capture by a fascist regime for ten years.
- Terry Pratchett loves this trope as much as any of them.
- In Maskerade, Granny Weatherwax is described as "grudgingly literate but keenly numerate".
- Though in an early book, she initially couldn't comprehend the un-reality of a local play.
- Cohen the Barbarian is illiterate, though he loves books (they make for good lavatory paper), but he's got so much cunning and guile it doesn't matter.
- It is a trait he respects in others, though. He had a Geography teacher as part of his retinue and trusted adviser in Interesting Times.
- Leonard of Quirm, despite being possibly the most well-read and brilliant man on the Disc when it comes to what we Roundworlders would call "actual" science, seems to think that an excess of education or training can be a bad thing, leading to a flaw he calls "learning the limits of the possible"—i.e., a failure of imagination. He failed the Alchemists' Guild exam due to doodling complex devices in the margins and absently correcting the questions.
- Could Rincewind possibly qualify? Always failed exams, dreadful at magic, but he does have a certain cunning. Of course, his main problem appears to be not that he has trouble with studying as such, but rather that he is to magic as a bumblebee to a bicycle, to paraphrase.
- Perhaps the finest example of this in Discworld, however, is Harry King, who like Cohen tends to use certain kinds of paper for lavatory use (his wife likes newspaper when it's recycled, but King himself prefers to "cut out the middleman"). He was born a poor street kid and eventually came to be the waste management consultant in Ankh-Morpork. William de Worde, by no means stupid and possibly the most well-read person in Ankh-Morpork outside of the Patrician, had the "uncomfortable moment when an educated man realizes the illiterate person sizing him up could probably out-think him three times over".
- Ronald Weasley of Harry Potter fame relies heavily upon Hermione's help with schoolwork to keep from failing but is an excellent chess player who has come up with some extremely clever ideas in a pinch. Similarly, his older brothers Fred and George do abysmally in their exams and drop out of school in the fifth book but are capable of developing extraordinary magical products and run a proper shop by the sixth book. Harry himself also qualifies, he's not interested in schoolwork and relies on Hermione almost as much as Ron, and admits to not having paid attention to his books or his teachers on several occasions, but is intelligent and can think quick on his feet.
- Of course, according to Word Of God, Harry becomes an Auror after school, which requires several high marks on their exit exams/NEWTs.
- Actually, does Word Of God ever say if Harry went back to school to complete his seventh year? I mean, after everything he's done in his life, and in the last book in particular, the guy could just go to the Ministry of Magic and say "I want a job" and they'd have to be idiots to not hire him.
- Word Of God states that Harry joined the Auror Department at age 17. He was already 17 at the end of the book, and if he'd gone back to school he wouldn't have graduated until he was 18. So it can be assumed that he didn't bother going back.
- Well the Ministry of Magic isn't famous for making smart decisions.
- But the wizard being appointed as Minister of Magic at series' end is quite competent.
- The world of Temeraire features several people like this, though it certainly wouldn't be uncommon as public schooling was all but unthought of during the Napoleonic wars. Laurence forced himself to cram the necessary mathematics to be a sailor into his head when he was a boy, but was not much skilled beyond that, and had little love for books. Laurence, though, is not a slow man by any means. However, it's subverted when Temeraire's love of books and joy in reading and knowledge infects Laurence. Laurence also insists that his adolescent ensigns and cadets do their schoolwork, when he's not so busy he forgets, and though they perform their duties ably and, as children and youth are wont to do, pick up languages faster than the adults in the crew, they show great resistance and dislike of it. Similarly, uneducated dragons, even from breeds not particularly renowned for thinking, prove quite capable of debating advanced mathematics with Temeraire. The trope is also inverted in a minor character, a lieutenant who, "If ships could be sailed by figures could sail around the world without fear" but when called to order others around habitually gives the wrong order.
- Claudia Kishi from the Babysitters Club series is this trope. Basically her entire personality, and many of her plotlines, revolve around the fact that she does poorly in school despite being talented at art and having generally good judgement and social skills. In the early books she's just uninterested in school, but she seems to get dumber as the series goes on, even going so far as to be sent back to a grade she had already completed.
Live Action TV
- Calvin of Calvin And Hobbes is shown to be very far behind his classmates academically, but is a loquacious philosopher in his spare time, showing a vocabulary and critical thinking skills far in advance of what you could expect from a normal 6-year-old. In this case, it's an explicit criticism of the school system.
- Bill Watterson has also said that he enjoyed having Calvin use big words to describe stupid ideas.
- Its also implied Calvin, while intelligent, is not simply motivated to apply himself.
- Dennis the Menace (the British version, at least) is an example of this being taken to a ridiculous degree. In the comics these days, Dennis even has a futuristic car that he designed himself, with protective armour and water cannons, and yet is shown to be completely (and cheerfully) lost at school.
- In For Better Or For Worse, one word: Gordon. While Gordon graduates high school with average grades, he is a gifted mechanic who turns out to have a decent head for business. He goes to work for a local outfit, and within ten years all but owns the place, it being sold to him when the owner retired; he then takes the store from a local landmark ("Oh, right, that place") to a thriving business which, the last time it was seen before the strip's conclusion, may well have been threatening to become a franchise.
- Peppermint Patty in Peanuts. She would rather be playing sports than sitting in a classroom, compounded by not getting much sleep weeknights because she waits for her father to get home from work at night. On the other hand, any girl her age who could be capable of mistaking a dog obedience school for a human school to the point of enrolling in it, "studying" with the dogs, graduating and being so sure that she doesn't have to go to regular human school because of that "diploma" is on her own level of stupidity.
- That's nothing. She already thinks Snoopy is a 'little kid with a big nose' and treats him accordingly.
- Remember, with Patty, we're quite far into Jock territory, too. As if she didn't have enough downward pressure on her grades.
Video Games
- Lan (or Netto for you purists) in Mega Man Battle Network has defeated evil organization after evil organization with Mega Man countless times, which obviously requires a lot of problem solving. However, he receives poor grades in school. Somehow he becomes a scientist, just like his pop 25 years after the games
- Kyo Kusanagi of The King Of Fighters may be an excellent fighter (having won the titular tournament at least 7 times), but because of this, he's been kept out of school for so long that he's at least 25 and has yet to graduate (not counting the time he was kidnapped and missing for at least a year). The problem being that, despite the successive year appellations, he hasn't aged—nor, for that matter, has the rest of the cast. No wonder they changed the sequel labeling style.
- Luke, the protagonist of Tales of the Abyss goes well beyond Book Dumb to not knowing nearly anything, being completely ignorant about his own world or the way people live. While he is observant and resourceful and clearly fairly intelligent, having lost all his childhood memories coupled with his belligerent attitude makes it difficult to teach him anything. Of course, this functions as a convenient way for the other characters to explain even the most basic common knowledge about the game world to the player.
- Tales Of Symphonia's Lloyd Irving is like this, also. Starts off
seeming like he's being completely clueless, but by the time Martel shows up you get the feeling that Lloyd has figured out exactly how to plow through the Thirty Xanatos Pileup. Dawn of the New World pretty much confirms this, because even when you consider that most of the evil deeds that Lloyd was blamed for were actually Decus in disguise, the real Lloyd is still pretty much running his own Xanatos Gambit, as evidenced by his demanding the cores and then running away when he realizes he's outnumbered by his former friends, rather than just joining up with them. Yet, despite now being in his twenties, academics-wise, he's still only managed to get around to memorizing his multiplication tables, as revealed in a skit with Raine.
- Tales Of Vesperia has it's own protagonist, Yuri Lowell. Though he is the one that keeps the party steps ahead of the other groups throughout the game, he states outright that he has little patience for reading. While most of the others in the party tend to be experts in their (book) researched fields, they each end up relying on Yuri for his street smarts.
- While not strictly educationally relevant because of the world it takes place in, Phantasy Star IV has Chaz. Whenever he's presented with anything technically complex, it's mostly lost on him, and he's easily impressed and surprised by technology (a particularly dumb moment is when he's impressed that Demi— who is an android— is adept at handling machines). He even lampshades this, pointing out that Rune has basically had to explain everything to him since he joined the party. However, his understanding of people is top-notch, and he's usually aware of other characters' feelings and thoughts before they express them; this also leads him to his Crowning Moment Of Awesome when he recognizes the hypocrisy inherent in his destiny and chooses to Refuse The Call.
- Rosie of Valkyria Chronicles finished her education (and therefore military training) at middle-school level. Nonetheless, she is one of Welkin's Sergeants and proves capable multiple times over.
- Just about the entire Investigation Team in Persona 4. The only characters that aren't constantly getting horrible marks on their exams are Yukiko and if your playing well the Protagonist. Especially Kanji who can barely follow the case your working on at times and more or less just asks for a target to go beat up.
Web Original
- Solange of the Whateley Universe is cunning, smart enough to see how to apply her father's business practices to ruling her high school, but Book Dumb because she's already a billionaire heiress who is never going to have to work for a living. There's nothing any teacher has to tell her that she sees any value in learning. Too much work.
Western Animation
- In The Fairly Oddparents, Timmy Turner is incredibly resourceful and able to outsmart adults, fairies, pixies, snarky genies, aliens and all sorts of other beings many times his age, but the series goes out of its way to ridiculously illustrate how bad he is with anything that involves language arts and math.
- Though given the asshole teacher he has to "Work" with, it's no surprise.
- Danny Fenton in Danny Phantom, while similarly portrayed to be resourceful and clever in intense situations, is the standard C-student male teenage protagonist commonly seen in shows with High School settings. Of course, this is at least partially attributed to the notion that fighting ghosts constantly interferes with his studies. Nevertheless, his attitude towards his studies was subject to much varying.
- However, it's been subverted once or twice, explaning why he didn't just do the obvious thing in a given situation (IE: Wishing a ghost who's playing genie into her containment) and instead spends the episode doing as he is want to do.
- With his exaggeratedly short attention span and prodigy for playing mindless video games, Yang of Yin Yang Yo is almost a blue anthropomorphic rabbit version of Timmy, complete with Jerkass tendencies. This is especially apparent when compared to his naturally more studious and level headed twin sister. The three shows share writers and directors, so it's not much of a surprise.
- While the title character of Kim Possible is shown to be anything but Book Dumb and able to maintain A-average grade (but not at Teen Genius levels mind you), Ron is yet another example of the typical C-student male protagonist.
- Yet Ron regularly assists in saving the world.
- And is an amazingly talented chef.
- And while evil was the best villain in the series, invented several doomsday devices. Also built one when kidnapped by Drakken using stuff lying around, and gave Senior Senior Senior the ideas to build traps.
- Subverted in the last episode of Fillmore, where the main suspect in the kidnapping of a class tarantula seems to be a Book Dumb kid who was often kept behind after class to look after it. The character's Big Secret is that, against his image, he's an A student, and was looking after the tarantula because he wanted to.
- Will from WITCH is a rare female example. She appears at least as smart as anyone else the rest of the time, but her grades are so bad she tries to hide them from her mother.
- Pete, from Goof Troop, could fit this trope. They make it clear a few times that he didn't even finish High School, yet he runs a successful used car lot, and would probably be considered upper-middle class in economic standards.
- That probably has more to do with his ConMan personality than actual intellect. Sales are about convincing people, not solving equations.
- But he's more than *just* a car salesman, he owns the whole business, and apparently runs it by himself. Selling the actual cars would only be one (although admittedly vital) part of the whole job.
- Jade Chan from Jackie Chan Adventures is generally Book Dumb on the basis that at times it could be argued if she even cares about school, for she would rather be on Jackie's adventures, see Adventure Rebuff. It doesn't help that at school she is often talking about said adventures instead of learning. Outside of school however Jade possess a smart and cunning mind and seems to be a very good problem solver, not the mention the ability to break into underground military installations. She is definitely street smart to the point that it scares Jackie how clever she is, at times it seems like he would have to be cunning himself to outsmart Jade. The leader of the super-spy organization Section 13 gave her a standing offer to join when she gets old enough. He was laughing at the time, but it is uncertain if he was joking.
- Well, since we see future Jade and she's the leader of Section 13, yes, it was completely serious. Also, there was an early scene (when she breaks into the military installations for the first time) where Captain Black said to Jackie, in all seriousness, that she could become an agent when she was old enough.
- Matt Stone and Trey Parker have admitted that Eric Cartman is a genius: the smartest character in South Park. He refuses however to care about anything that does not immediately help him, especially school. He never pays attention in school and remains ignorant. Despite this problem, he forms very detailed plans, considers complex issues and is a brilliant manipulator. Despite this, he demonstrates frequent belief in totally ungrounded assumptions (which, given the nature of the South Park 'verse, are sometimes proven true.)
- Baloo and Wildcat on Disney's series Talespin are good examples of Book Dumb characters.
- Wildcat seems pretty unintelligent, but give him any mechanical task to work on and he shows his true genius. Give him a broken telephone and he can fix it in ten seconds flat.
- Baloo is revealed in one episode to be poor at spelling, and in a later one that he never even finished primary school. He is, however, a top-notch pilot and is capable of coming up with some cunning strategies when dealing with the various villains in the series.
- Not terribly uncommon in the 1930s when the show takes place (based on in-show dialogue and clues). Back then getting a HS diploma would be like getting a BA now, and getting a BA was very uncommon of outside of the brilliant or rich until the GI Bill.
- Todd Daring from The Replacements is shown to be brilliant schemer, but seems to have an aversion to anything to do with schoolwork. At his most extreme, he replaces his German teacher with someone who only speaks German so his father cannot find out how badly he his doing.
- Brendan Small from Home Movies is a parody: Everyone claims that he is very intelligent but in reality, he is egotistical, incompetent and a failure at everything.
- An episode of Ozzy and Drix (the spinoff show of the movie Osmosis Jones) emphasized the importance of book learning in a painfully Anvilicious way. After Book Dumb Osmosis spends the entire episode berating Drix for not having any street smarts to offset his prodigious book smarts, it is ultimately Drix's book smarts that save the day. Ozzy, realizing for the last thirty seconds of the episode that book learning can sometimes go a long way, asks Drix to educate him. Drix obliges by quoting well known sciency things ("Well, for example, E=MC2") without offering anything resembling context, to which Ozzy reacts with obnoxiously exaggerated excitement.
- TJ from Recess is perhaps the perfect embodiment of this trope. While his grades are notoriously average/below average, once on the playground he can pull off elaborate schemes from (quite literally) under his hat.
- Luanne Platter from King of the Hill did terribly in school but she is a gifted mechanic, a good example of this was in an episode where Hank's truck is taken apart for evidence when a delinquent broke into it and Luanne puts it back together in less than two days, however this side of her is rarely shown in the later episodes mainly due to flanderization.
- Most of the male characters in The Simpsons fit either the child or adult versions of this trope to some extent, including Bart, Homer, Barney, Nelson, etc.
- Bart Simpson is clearly an excellent example of this - at school, he is falling behind everybody else, barely managing to stay in his own grade, whereas in his spare time he thwarts criminals and solves mysteries, often displaying intuitive thinking skills on a par with his sister Lisa.
- Even Ralph Wiggum, despite having a trope on stupidity named after him, could fit this. Although he's as Book Dumb as one could possibly get, numerous scenes have been dropped throughout various Simpsoncentric media from the comic, to the series itself that he's possibly creatively gifted. When his head's on somewhat straight(er than usual) anyway.
Real Life
- This video shows an amazing, real example of this trope. A poorly educated Chinese man with no electrical training builds complex robots out of stuff from junkyards. His creations are amazing. Had he received better education and been recognized by the scientific community he might have been an amazing, world changing inventor. He is clearly ingenious and clever.
- A classic real-life example is Dave Thomas, the founder of the Wendy's restaurant chain: ridiculously successful restaurateur, philanthropist, advertising icon and high-school dropout. He finally got his GED in 1993 (at sixty-one, mind) because he thought his success might encourage others to take the wrong lesson and drop out like he did.
- Bill Lear - if his name sounds familiar it's because he invented the personal jet that bears his name - and he never even had an opportunity to drop out of high school as he never went beyond the 8th grade. The Wright brothers themselves were simple bicycle mechanics who possessed what amounted to only a basic education for that era (which wasn't much).
- A real-life subversion - a common fact cited is Bill Gates' failure to complete college. Keep in mind he dropped out from an Ivy League university, and his reason for doing so was that he found it so boring and un-challenging that he decided tinkering around with computers was more worthwhile - and of course, the rest is history.
- From a study that was quoted on The Colbert Report: out of all the billionaires in America, 5% come from Harvard while 35% come from "the college of No College Education".
- As quoted above, Albert Einstein supposedly wasn't successful at school, and thus ended up as a clerk in patent office. Fortunately, this gave him plenty of time to daydream, and while Einstein wasn't a particularly fast thinker, he was a very deep one, which in turn led to his discovery of the theory of relativity. This is, in fact, a 100% thoroughly debunked myth (except about the speed/depth of his thoughts—depending on his knowledge of trivia, he might have done very well on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire but poorly on Jeopardy!). Einstein did extremely well in school. Einstein was actually a child mathematics prodigy who was doing both differential and integral calculus by age 12. It is true, however, that he didn't like the then-very-militaristic German schools. The myth may have arisen because the grade rankings in Switzerland (where he was born and went to school) are opposite to the ones in Germany (where he lived later). In Germany, 1 is the best grade, 6 the worst. In Switzerland, 6 is the best and 1 the worst. It could be assumed some Germans heard that Einstein "only" got 6s and came to the wrong conclusion. Also, when he first tried to apply the ETH Zürich (a science and technology university) he did not pass the entrance exam, but he got exceptional marks in mathematics and physics.
- Especially talented and intelligent children may tend to get bored with school, because it is too easy for them. They could easily have good grades, but they don't care about it.
- To diverge along the "school sucks" route, there is increasing consensus that intelligence manifests in many different ways. For example, a kid that has good tactile intelligence might not know addition from subtraction, but could assemble machinery in his sleep. A girl with good interpersonal intelligence can manipulate others to do those things which she is herself incapable. The implication is that teaching styles that only address certain kinds of intelligence put certain children at a disadvantage.
- Alternately, they simply already know this stuff. Which goes a bit further than it being too easy.
- To diverge a bit further, there are people out there that retain and learn things on their own faster than they do in school, yet when it comes time to take the "dreaded test," they fail or barely pass due to this particular fear/discomfort.
- A lot of MySpace users, under the "Interests" section of their profiles, will enthusiastically list their favorite movies, TV shows, and bands, but under "Books" will be a little quip on how much they hate reading.
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