What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.
What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’s not merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the ‘unworthy’ rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.
As my personal experience, I only agree with B.
I don’t feel I was ever denied the chance to socialize with peers because of a gifted classification—as I was fortunate to go to a school with a heavy investment in gifted programs, so I had tons of friends in my classes, and I also took some general classes as well. Not only that, I followed that same path (with my friends) my entire compulsory educational career, so I had the same close friends around me the entire way (as well as opportunities to meet new ones both inside and outside of the gifted classes).
Likewise I’m not sure what useful life skills I was denied the opportunity to learn? My middle and high schools had plenty of electives, none of which were limited to gifted or general populations. Our fifth grade teacher taught us how to balance a checkbook. In middle school I took art classes and band and theatre arts as well as home ec (I was a cross-stitching MACHINE and used to be able to operate a sewing machine without a hitch). In high school I continued to take band and had opportunities to take several foreign languages, and I also took computer science where I learned to code. All of this while still doing just fine in my gifted classes.
So for me, the burden of the gifts label had nothing to do with feeling othered or denied opportunities at learning useful life skills at all. If anything I had MORE opportunities because of that, as the non-gifted schools in my area are among the worst in the state.
This is all anecdata of course. But yeah my issues stem more from high expectations and struggling to meet them, then feeling like a failure when I do okay/good but not GIFTED good.
Unless I’m misunderstanding this post?
I think what's also important to note here is that OP is stating "many educational systems" in acknowledgment of the fact that there are cases that are not like this, as in yours.
In mine, I do relate a lot to all of the points in the original post because I went to a school that didn't really accommodate for students taking advanced courses in quite the way they should have.
I was allowed to remain ahead in my classes, but I did so at the cost of interaction with other students in my grade from the time I was 7. At first, I studied independently or (in one class) with a small group of about 5 other students, and when I was finished with my work, I was often sent to the library to help shelve books instead of rejoining my classmates. At 9, I was sent to a classroom of older students instead, and at 10 the trend continued with me having to walk to another school to attend the classes that I was ahead in. When I was 11, I tested into a freshman level math class on top of my other classes (when other students my age wouldn't even take the test until the year after), which meant I had jumped from being in a classroom with students a year older to three years older. On top of that, I was given a "study" period during the hour the rest of my assigned homeroom class took math because my own math class didn't coincide with the normal study/elective periods my year had. On one occasion I was even asked by the principal what I had done to get in trouble because I was sitting in the hallway grading tests for my teacher.
By 14 I was taking college classes and not only did the age gap grow, but I was completely unprepared for the structure of the classes and dropped them after two years because they were affecting my grades and my prospects of actually getting into the program I wanted to be part of (something I never did end up being able to do). I thought it would be better for me to take a step back, but by that point I was actually in classes with younger students in order to accommodate the classes I had been meant to start taking as a freshman as well as classes that I didn't really need by then.
(For example, it just wasn't possible for me to take two years of a single foreign language simultaneously, which I needed to graduate. I didn't have the opportunity to begin them until my junior year because the first year was only offered in the morning, which was also the only time I could take my college courses until my junior year. Conversely, I had to retake a math class in my senior year that I had already completed because I was told I had to take one despite already having 6 credits when the graduation requirement was 4, and I had completed all the classes they had to offer.)
As for the third point, I do feel it's less of a point associated strictly with gifted students and more the failings of a lot of schools in general, but it is still a point of concern for a lot of people. I know many people (myself included) who have gone into adult life not knowing many of the things being an adult requires unless we learn from our parents because it just wasn't something school taught us.
Despite all this, I do want to make it clear that I'm actually very glad to hear about the healthier ways that some schools do treat gifted children. My goal in sharing my own experiences is mainly just to express the things that I went through in relation to OP's points as something that does happen even if it's not an entirely universal situation.
