The very thin, subjective line between giftedness and learning disability in the U.S. educational system
Here are two real people. Both girls, both White, both middle class, from the same cultural area of the U.S., both with mothers very motivated to secure the best possible education for them. Both are eight. Both demonstrate thinking and speaking at early college level.
One of them has a phenomenal ability to think in three dimensions; she designed and built detailed cardboard models in Kindergarten, while the other kids were struggling to draw flat houses and flat dogs. She is a very strong visual learner, easily navigating diagrams, maps, and picture encyclopedias; what's more, she can synthesize conclusions from context and present them orally to a degree that astounds her teachers. However, she struggles with anything having to to with small flat shapes on paper. Reading and writing are both a slog. Math beyond single-digit arithmetical operations is simply impossible without a calculator.
One of them is absolutely abysmal at three-dimensional thinking. She can't even do basic estimation by sight: everything must be measured. However, small flat shapes on paper are her jam. She gobbles up books of all kinds and draws conclusions from context almost without effort. She has trouble talking about what she finds so interesting because she has a mild speech impediment, but she writes as easily as she breathes, astounding her teachers. She doesn't hit her personal math wall until senior calculus. Before that it's all easy--except geometry.
Guess which one is routed into gifted and talented classes and continually praised. Guess which one is instead routed into classes for children with learning disabilities, where she is not allowed to learn anything new until she develops the miraculous ability to do what she cannot do.
