gifted vs "ordinary" folk

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Home : 2003 : January : 2

gifted vs "ordinary" folk
By Nadja

I agree with you it's horrible that people use their kids as pawns to bolster their own status; it's even worse when GATE is an excuse for class and racial exclusion. But, I take issue with the idea that the programs' benefits
aren't worth the harm the "stamp of status" causes the kids.
For one thing, it's the _adults_ that make it a status thing. For a kid, at least one that hasn't been sucked into adult expectations, all he or she wants out of school is to learn something interesting at his or her own level and pace. If a GATE program is the proper place for any given child to get that, then the

child shouldn't have to wait until adolescence for it to happen! Crazy parents are always going to be with us, but that has no bearing on the needs of the kids we teach.

Being "subjugated" to the standard curriculum in a regular classroom may be just as elitism-inducing, anyway. A kid who always finishes first and always knows more than the rest of the kids is _not_ learning to get along with "ordinary folk;" she's learning to feel superior to them! On the other hand, being with their intellectual peers knocks humility into gifted kids pretty fast!
And why should gifted kids have to spend their "free" time trying to get what other kids have handed to them at school? Sure, sometimes adults take a "money job" they don't like, because what they'd like to be doing won't pay the rent, but should a _kid_ have to do that? Sit at school five days a week for the purpose of making sure they can fit in with those "ordinary" people, and on the weekends try to fit in a real life?

GATE programs full of hothoused rich kids are laughable, but if they are serving at least some kids who would be "underserved" elsewhere, at least that's something.