Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Does this offend?

Post Deleted - poster's request

I don't see anything wrong it, other than the yellow color used for part of it that makes it hard to read .

I am fine with it as well

I don't think it's offensive (I agree that the yellow is hard to read).

FWIW, the thing I don't like here is that someone wants to censor you because s/he doesn't like your tagline. Too bad! You're not advocating illegal actions, you're only expressing an opinion. If no one was allowed to say something that might be offensive to someone somewhere, no one would be allowed to talk.

_______________________________

Just because you put tap shoes on an elephant does not mean it can dance.

Mmm... I guess we need to ask (and it would be good to hear from the person who PMed) whom it might offend, and why. It's not likely to offend us the regulars here, who have dancers, with or without tap shoes ;-) I could imagine that it might, however, offend someone who happened on the post, e.g., by it turning up in a google search. Posts here *do* turn up on google searches, including those that have nothing to do with giftedness, so this is not far-fetched. (We - not you specifically, but this forum - are the second hit for ALEKS problem-solving, which is the first example that came to hand.)

Suppose you are a parent of an ND child who is e.g. considering whether to use ALEKS to help that child learn to do better at problem-solving. (The conclusion would be don't, of course!) Suppose you google this and land here, and suppose you light on that signature. Aren't you going to feel as though someone might be telling you *you* were putting tap shoes on an elephant, by taking a hand in the education of your child? Of course you aren't, and that isn't the intention of the signature - but still.

It's sort of the wrong way round, really; the quote is about the truth of the reaction
tap shoes + elephant -> dancer
but you're more interested in asserting that there are ways to have a dancer other than having put tap shoes on an elephant (regardless or whether or not it is even possible to make a dancer by putting tap shoes on an elephant, which question is not really all that relevant, right?) I don't know how to turn this into a pithy sig, though... [ETA: maybe I do!]

I think that someone could easily read it in a way that puts parents of gifted kids in a bad light. It seems to me to have the flavor of a put down of parents who do work with their kids, and I've seen a lot of parents of ND, bright and gifted kids work with their kids for all the right reasons and in a respectful way.

Just because people accuse you of working with your kid to 'make him how he is' doesn't mean that we have to buy into the implied put down. I would encourge folks to parry with -
"Thanks for noticing, Buffy so enjoys learning" and leave it at that.

Parents seem to get blamed no matter what course they take.

((shrugs))
Grinity

Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that you don't have enemies.

I'm not offended by it, but I'm hard to offend. I have been accused of "hot housing" as a reason why my son is so advanced...which for everyone who knows me and has watched him over the past 8 years knows couldn't be farther from the truth...but the quote I think would only offend those who are trying to make someone something they are not....jmo

To me the quotation implies that the speaker of the quotation has assumed the right to judge whether other people have really gifted kids, or are putting tap shoes on elephants. In my reading, it doesn't say "I'm not hothousing"-- it says "stop hothousing YOUR kid, because you're being ridiculous, you'll never make them gifted."

Which may or may not be true. But in my view, judging other people's parenting is pretty much fraught with peril, and the condescension of the quotation is perhaps unnecessarily provocative.

DeeDee

I'm reading all the replies.

Thinking....