I think there's the perception that kids who are achieving are doing so due to some special unfair advantage, and there even seems to be a hint that achievers do so at the expense of the other kids.
But the assumption is ubiquitous. If you look at reports of test scores or graduation rates or whatever, they typically focus on closing achievement gaps between the rich and the poor, as though wealth was the ONLY reason for the gaps. NOW, I'm not saying that poverty doesn't affect school and work performance, because it clearly has a huge effect. The problem, IMO, is that substantially ALL performance gaps get attributed to the rich/poor divide and ignore the fact that some people are just really smart. And some people aren't. (And both groups are in all SES classes.)
I suspect that there are many educators/researchers who simply don't like to admit that some 1) people are simply born smart and 2) you really can't turn average (innate) talent into giftedness. In part, and IMO, ideas about educational equity and everyone being able to go to college aren't just made-up PC fantasies. I think they stem in (large?) part from outsourcing skilled and semi-skilled jobs that used to be a route to the middle class in this country.
Unfortunately, this situation puts a large chunk of people into a corner, where they're told that they MUST go to college in order to find a decent job. It's possible that MG+ kids are a nasty reminder that equal educational outcomes are simply a fantasy.
Except that unfortunately, the gifted kids are not "haves" and the failing kids are not "have nots". Gifted kids are not really greener grass! But for some reason, it's popular to bash them. I hear from teachers all the time about how they don't like the GT kids because they ask too many questions and their parents are too pushy. What about celebrating kids who want to learn and parents who want to encourage learning?
Actually, the grass is greener, and gifties are "haves" in the world of generally applicable ability. Gifted kids learn faster and better. If you don't teach elementary-level mathematics properly to a gifted kid, she can self-teach what she doesn't pick up by osmosis.
Other kids can't do that. Yes, there is also the disaster that befalls gifties when they don't learn how to approach something that's cognitively challenging. It's just that the horror of this problem may be hidden because the gifties can function naturally at a level considered normal. Non-gifties may have a much harder time with that if they haven't received a good education.
Really, this is the double-edged sword that is the US educational disaster. And it's helped along by narrowed opportunities for people who wouldn't have gone to college 50 or 60 years ago (including gifties) but who would have led good lives doing good jobs that paid good money. All without student loans.
And as for asking too many questions, yes, that makes us a PITA at school. I'm not justifying the school's negative reaction or excusing ignoring MG+ kids (and really, above average kids, too) at school. But, in my opinion, it's not super-realistic to expect that a teacher or administrator with average-ish abilities will be able to
really understand a very bright person who sees the world in a fundamentally different and more nuanced way. Again, I'm not excusing the system, but am offering an explanation for why things don't work on an individual level. As a person who sees a lot of nuance, you think you're making such a reasonable argument or request, but in the eyes of people who've never or only rarely seen a kid like yours,
and who probably don't think like you do, you're coming out of left field and challenging ideas that have worked at that school for years or decades.
Who do you think you are, anyway?
