History PlayingWith / BookDumb

* '''Exploited''': ???

* '''Inverted''': [[{{TVGenius}} Alice is a straight-A student -- but]] [[DitzyGenius is completely helpless in the real world]].

** Alice may be smart, but she has difficulty in reading and/or writing.

** Alice lives in a setting where standards of education are very poor and there are no opportunities, and is not expected to go anywhere. For example, no one expects girls in her country to be capable of learning anything beyond the eighth grade, and there are no work opportunities for women other than {{Housewife}}, so she gives up trying, because it's pointless.

** Alice could easily be a A+ student, but at her last school she got bullied for being "too nerdy" so she gives up trying.

** However, Alice decides to make her own path, and becomes decidedly successful in a different field.

* '''Played For Drama''': Alice's bad grades lead to her dropping out of high school and having to live on the streets. She becomes a alcoholic to cope with the pain, and during this lonely period she writes captivating, compelling, intelligent passages in her diary. After she tragically dies of liver failure before her 18th birthday, only then do the teachers who expelled her discover that she actually may have been the smartest girl in school when they read her diary entries.

* '''Parodied''':

* '''Parodied''': Alice turns into a successful scientist 5 minutes after abandoning school.

* '''Parodied''': Alice is perpetually truant and has a [[RankInflation quadruple F minus minus minus minus]], but cures the common cold.

* '''Defied''': Alice decides to buckle down and study for an important test.

* '''Implied''': While Alice's book dumbness is never explicitly lampshaded, in the background of her house you can sometimes see test scores of F-, and on the other side of the room a ''periodic table of elements'' Alice has owned since she was six.

* '''Double Subverted''': But it turns out she's been bribing her teachers to inflate her grades.

* '''Deconstructed''': Alice's poor academic performance comes back to bite her, as while she is an effective {{Schemer}}, any potential colleges/employers won't be able to look past her bad grades.

** Alice doesn't know the [[TechnoBabble jargon or the "code words"]] of the educational institution or the teacher enough to fit in, and trying to read just what she'd already taught herself to this would lead to the CentipedesDilemma. This one happens to musicians in RealLife - self-taught singers and drummers, especially, can run into ''huge'' problems trying to re-learn how to do things "right," because when one teaches oneself to sing or to play a rhythmic percussion instrument, it may have been learned far differently than how one is "supposed" to learn (e.g. a singer learning by karaoke and singing along to music and miming other singers over adolescence or older, as opposed to taking singing classes from youth and being instructed on everything from proper technique to proper terminology, or a drummer who understands time signatures but cannot discuss them and the theory behind them in depth), and trying to connect the two while actually performing = CentipedesDilemma.\\
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A variant of this, also TruthInTelevision is called the specialization of intelligence: there are plenty of people who do and use things without knowing every bit of theory or jargon or even completely how they work, and therefore, if quizzed or otherwise forced to explain their knowledge of them, would ''fail miserably.'' As a couple of examples, unless you're an expert computer hardware builder and software engineer for all platforms, you're a definite example yourself if you're reading this (and which is why if your screen becomes unreadable, you'll be looking for computer repair or googling "why does my screen not work" on another device), and it also applies to 85% or so of vehicle drivers who are not even capable of basic car repairs (which are why roadside assistance services and mechanics as a profession exist) This is that there are ''so many'' things in the world to learn and know that trying to do it all is impossible, and therefore some people learn some things (e.g. being fiction writers) and others learn others (e.g. how to fix said writer's laptop when its screen looks like a CallBack to the days of scrambled TV). This even applies to the human body itself - which is why the medical profession exists - and to human ''interaction'' in some instances - which is why the legal and law enforcement professions exist.

** Alice is suffering from education neglect.

** ObfuscatingStupidity
** BrilliantButLazy

* '''Played For Laughs''': [[CripplingOverspecialisation Alice can't do basic arithmetic, but Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates couldn't compete with her in terms of philosophy.]]

Back to BookDumb

** Alice doesn't know the jargon or the "code words" of the educational institution or the teacher enough to fit in, and trying to read just what she'd already taught herself to this would lead to the CentipedesDilemma. This one happens to musicians in RealLife - self-taught singers and drummers, especially, can run into ''huge'' problems trying to re-learn how to do things "right," because when one teaches oneself to sing or to play a rhythmic percussion instrument, it may have been learned far differently than how one is "supposed" to learn (e.g. a singer learning by karaoke and singing along to music and miming other singers over adolescence or older, as opposed to taking singing classes from youth and being instructed on everything from proper technique to proper terminology, or a drummer who understands time signatures but cannot discuss them and the theory behind them in depth), and trying to connect the two while actually performing = CentipedesDilemma.\\

* '''Played For Laughs''': [[CripplingOverspecialisation Alice can't do basic arithmetic, but Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates couldn't compete with her in terms of philosophy.]]

%%* '''Played For Laughs''': ???