Guest guest Posted June 20, 2006 Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 Perhaps more educated than the person making the comment? It seems a bit like a put down of people who are " too smart. " I have heard the word " overqualified " to mean something specific. I knew someone who did hiring and she specifically did not hired someone she said was overqualified because 1) he would be bored 2) he would tend to want to do things his way 3) they didn't want someone that smart in that position. Rhonda > > Hello all, > > Do you know the real, finer meaning of " overeducated " > in the US sense ? Over- educated compared to what ? > Maybe a polite way of referring to something like AS ? ;-) > > Because that's the way they refer to my favorite hobby > of historical war gaming: " the Hobby of the Overeducated " : > www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/BriefHistory.shtml > > Thank you for thinking about this, > Mircea Pauca > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 20, 2006 Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 Mircea wrote: >Do you know the real, finer meaning of " overeducated " >in the US sense ? Over- educated compared to what ? >Maybe a polite way of referring to something like AS ? ;-) If " overeducated " is used in a derogatory or humorous manner, I suspect it can have much the same meaning as when someone says, " He obviously has too much time on his hands " to describe someone passionately involved in an activity that the speaker considers either very abstruse/esoteric or silly. It may also be used to refer to someone seen as over-complicating or over-analyzing something. Jane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 20, 2006 Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 People get a specific education as training for a profession. Certain professions advance a person or provide larger salaries to people with more than one degree; otherwise one or maybe two degrees is considered sufficient. Some people like to learn, some people have more than one consuming interest so they acquire more than one or two degrees which other people consider exorbitant. I don't think " overeducated " is a compliment. I visited the link you gave, and the term appears to be used descriptively; but still it's not complimentary. ~Bonnie - - - .... historical war gaming: " the Hobby of the > Overeducated " : > www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/BriefHistory.shtml __________________________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 20, 2006 Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 > Because that's the way they refer to my favorite hobby > of historical war gaming: " the Hobby of the Overeducated " : > www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/BriefHistory.shtml There's not really much to read into it. I think it's just a reference to people who are highly educated. It implies that the person has more education than is needed for some imagined purpose. It's another way of saying " educated elite " . In terms of the article, " Wargaming has become the hobby of the overeducated " probably refers to highly educated people, or perhaps people who are too educated to watch some stupid TV show. - s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 21, 2006 Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 Thank to all who responded... The inventor of the expression " Hobby of the Overducated " was gamer and prolific designer F. Dunnigan, overeducated himself... so that may be sort of a self-joke... If it really means " too much education compared to results in economic and social status advancement " then a related notion would be " underachieving " ?? Then what exactly does an " achiever " " achieve " ? Dictionaries do not tell... Yes, I've communicated (electronically) with many gamers, and they seemed all intelligent and knowledgeable (not necessarily in official ways), likely much above typical US citizens ;-) Most had keen ritual competitiveness but impeccable fair-play. None I know (other than me) was *diagnosed* on the Spectrum but from their general comments and reactions when I showed them the 'nice' site: http://www.as-if.org.uk/criteria.htm a good number of them seem with fairly close traits. We enjoy the 'gratuitous' competition, bound by historically descriptive rules that seems to be exactly the opposite of real-life phony-interested-required-friendliness... Thank you for thinking about this, Mircea Pauca Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 21, 2006 Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 In today's society, the answer would typically be: money, power, influence and social prestige. > > If it really means " too much education compared to results > in economic and social status advancement " then a related > notion would be " underachieving " ?? Then what exactly > does an " achiever " " achieve " ? Dictionaries do not tell... > > > > Thank you for thinking about this, > Mircea Pauca > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 22, 2006 Report Share Posted June 22, 2006 > >Do you know the real, finer meaning of " overeducated " > >in the US sense ? Over- educated compared to what ? > >Maybe a polite way of referring to something like AS ? ;-) > If " overeducated " is used in a derogatory or humorous manner, I > suspect it can have much the same meaning as when someone says, " He > obviously has too much time on his hands " to describe someone > passionately involved in an activity that the speaker considers > either very abstruse/esoteric or silly. > It may also be used to refer to someone seen as over-complicating or > over-analyzing something. I don't think so. I use the term overeducated a lot, and it has a very specific meaning to me. It means people whose formal education *obscures* their ability to actually understand the subject matter they've supposedly been educated in, or people who have passed a lot of tests in a formal education setting for a subject but don't understand it. Most autism " experts " are overeducated. They have learned a lot of theory about autism, often in great detail, but don't actually understand autistic people at all, even some of the really basic information about how and why we do certain things. (I'm not talking about particularly in-depth information about us either.) Oftentimes what they have been told about us obscures their ability to understand us, since it contradicts what's actually true about us. My (autistic) father was a self-educated electronics engineer (which is what he did for a living, as well as a hobby). He had much less formal training than the graduate students who often worked for him at SLAC. Much of their training was ostensibly to prepare them to design circuits, but what he often found was that they didn't know some of the basic information necessary to do so -- including things that were probably included in their courses, but that they only memorized for long enough to pass tests. However, the same people tended to claim more advanced knowledge than he had, because they had years more schooling than he'd ever had. That's what I've always heard meant by overeducated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 30, 2006 Report Share Posted June 30, 2006 It was 22 Jun 2006, when alfamanda commented: > I use the term overeducated a lot, and it has a very specific meaning > to me. It means people whose formal education *obscures* their > ability to actually understand the subject matter they've supposedly > been educated in, or people who have passed a lot of tests in a formal > education setting for a subject but don't understand it. > > Most autism " experts " are overeducated. They have learned a lot of > theory about autism, often in great detail, but don't actually > understand autistic people at all, even some of the really basic > information about how and why we do certain things. (I'm not talking > about particularly in-depth information about us either.) Oftentimes > what they have been told about us obscures their ability to understand us, > since it contradicts what's actually true about us. This seems strangely reminiscent of part of the definition of hyperlexia - - picking up a lot of intelligent-sounding words and phrases, without much understanding of their actual meaning. I wonder if such a flawed understanding might come from such experts tending to be on or near the spectrum themselves -- and tending to believe and take literally what they read and hear about their professional " perseveration. " -- B. , another satisfied user of Pegasus Mail Client and Mercury MTA <http://www.pmail.com> <ftp://ftp.usm.maine.edu/pegasus/winpmail/w32-431.exe> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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