Should I ban my son's name from the newsletter? "Sorry, son, but you can't be in the newsletter because your achievements mean nothing since you were born with those talents and didn't work hard to win". I mean, that kind of talk leads to self-loathing; people should feel proud of who they are as well as what they can achieve.
Like some others, I really was not meaning anything like this. Where I was trying to come from with my red haired class analogy was not that kids and others shouldn't celebrate the beauty of things they were innately given that did not require work. What I was trying to get at was that, like it or not, "gifted" is a coveted label and one that engenders completion among parents and, at times, students. In a situation like that, it isn't that I want my kids to hide in order to appease others' insecurities and jockeying to be something they are not. It is that the more we make it appear to be a "club" or something which you can "achieve" through hard work or which proves you are better or your parents are better or... whatever, the more we wind up with GT programs that are exactly that.
People cheat, test over and over, prep for tests, get their kids in through any alternate means that exists, and teachers lose touch with what gifted actually looks like because they don't get many kids in the GT programs who are actually gifted. Rather than these kids not making it in these classes, what we've seen is that the programs change to meet the needs of the kids who are actually in them. I doubt that most of our GT classes and program would meet the needs of MG kids and they certainly have not for my kids, who are HG+.
Precisely-- and the reason is that they are about
status, which is bizarre when you think about it, but there it is. Anything that drives that phenomenon is probably not a good idea, in my experience.
It backfires and actually is
damaging-- because my DD's peers (and really, they get this from their parents) attempt to MINIMIZE what she is-- in order to make it more attainable, to make her seem less different from themselves. It bothers her
way less than it bothers them, let's put it that way.
Yes, she has participated in being publically identified. Heck, she was Connections' first real "face" of GT students in their print catalog years ago. But it's
always been voluntary, that identification, and she (and we) have been asked every time, and never was her placement contingent upon her agreement to be so identified.
Being placed in accordance with your educational needs is one thing. Being an involuntary poster child is quite another.
