Um, seriously?
This is freaky. I am actually asking David to hold me down so that I can't climb on my soap box, but I'm shouting anyway. Gifted and talented? For kindergarten? Let the kids be kids, for goodness' sake. How insane. And how privileged. And how wrong we are as parents to buy into the hype that our 4 year olds need to be "ranked and rated" to somehow achieve more. Blech.
8 comments:
I just threw up a little in my mouth. I seriously couldn't even finish that article it was awful.
i think they should have a gifted in gab, gifted in negotiating, gifted in oppositional behavior programs. Lucy would NOT even need a freaking boot camp, she'd be so in that program.
Oh don't even get me started. I wish this was the first I'd ever heard of this. OH, and if you ever meet my sister.....don't bring this up. I happen to have 5 year old "gifted" niece who tested above the 90%. Oh and they're wealthy. Double Blech.
Sigh. Lots of thoughts on this one. Lots and lots. Need to go thank my parents again for leaving the choice up to me.
Makes me sad to give the kids that pressure so early. I'm all about setting them up to be successful human beings, but I would agree that ranking at age 5 or 6 sure doesn't seem like a great idea.
My kindergarten goal for Banany was to learn some social skills and how to be in a classroom environment...and ENJOY SCHOOL.
No Kinder Garden in the Lubbock Public Schools. Thus, I was not rated average but underachieving. (That would come in high school.)
Oh I could go on.
This, to me, is the PERFECT illustration of institutionalized class oppression in our society. Take, for instance, our neighborhood gifted-and-talented school: It serves an area that is probably 50-60% African American. The percentage of African Americans at the gifted school? 8. Most of the students come from a wealthy (and very white) suburb-in-the-city that happens to have been mapped into the same district. And how do the kids get into this school? By testing into advanced kindergarten AT THE AGE OF 4 (!), which we all know has nothing to do with giftedness or talentedness, but everything to do with parents' education and socioeconomic status. Even the school district knows this, which is why they don't do gifted testing until a year later—at which point there are no spaces left in the school, because all the slots have been taken up by the kids who were deemed advanced at the age of 4.
Oh my, apparently I could and did go on. Perhaps I need to do my own blog post.
oh my i love you.
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