☕️ + gifted kid discourse?
I believe the following things are all true:
"Gifted" is not a marginalized identity. "Anti-intellectualism" is not a real thing. You are not oppressed for being "smart" or being wronged by having to share space and power with people you consider "less smart." You are not a temporarily embarrassed philosopher-king.
Sometimes kids who are neurodivergent, queer, or otherwise socially marginalized will have well-meaning adults tell them that they're being bullied or excluded "for being gifted."
I'm reminded of the exchange I still think of from The Imitation Game:
"It's because I'm cleverer than they are, that's what Mother says."
"No it's not, it's because you're different."
The solution is for kids who are marginalized and excluded to find solidarity with other marginalized and excluded people, not to comfort themselves with the myth that Actually They're Superior.
Of all the students in mainstream public education, the students classified as "gifted" are the most privileged. They're also generally privileged in relations with adults outside school.
The fact that most "gifted" kids experienced school/family life negatively in spite of this privilege should give them pause to think about how much worse it was for all other students/kids. Schooling and childhood are miserable even for the most privileged groups of kids, which is an argument for radically restructuring the concepts of education and childhood.
Hierarchy works by keeping people in line with the threat of dropping them to a lower, worse-treated tier of the hierarchy. "Gifted" kids, at the top of the hierarchy, are kept in line with the omnipresent threat that if they don't perform perfectly at all times, they'll lose their privileged "gifted" status and be reduced to the garbage status of "average" kids. This applies not only in the classroom, but in general life interactions -- adults may treat you with a degree of conditional respect if you're "so smart" and "so mature for your age," but the second you express interest in a popular cartoon instead of a Great Novel, you can see their opinion of you drop in real time! You're relegated back to "Kid (Inferior)."
This works all the way down the hierarchy. "Average" kids are kept in line with the threat of being reduced to "remedial" ("slow" "immature" "babyish" "special ed"). "Remedial" students are kept in line with the threat of more segregation, more restrictive environments, or institutionalization.
I'm reminded of the quote from Lori Granger in The Magic Feather:
"Every time a child is called mentally defective and sent off to special education for some trivial defect, the children who are left in the regular classroom receive a message: No one is above suspicion; everyone is being watched by the authorities; non-conformity is dangerous."
Tl;dr -- "Gifted kid discourse" is just an example of the phenomenon where the most privileged subset (kids labeled "gifted") of a marginalized population (children, students, neurodivergent people) are framed as representing the entire population and have their legitimate marginalizations falsely attributed to their privileged status ("These kids deserve to be treated as superior, because they're gifted" rather than "The way all kids are treated is inherently oppressive").
