As a follow up to the post last month about the NYC school system eliminating gifted programs: Since the science is showing that white and Asian kids are smarter than Hispanic and black kids, the science must be racist.
Why is this so? Because we know that everyone is the same. Equality, doncha know. This means that we should ignore any test results that do not agree with this basic premise. We can’t let the facts get in the way of our preconceived results.
Therefore, the only thing left to do is eliminate gifted and honors programs. There, we fixed the problem.
Let’s get one thing straight: After I was tested and found to have an IQ of 144, I was in a gifted program when I was a kid. I was always good at test taking. By the time I was in the sixth grade, standardized testing showed that I was reading at the same level as a college senior. I could read 300 words per minute with 85% comprehension.
A big deal was made of the fact that I was supposedly smarter than 98% of the population. It also sucked.
What all of that meant to me was that I was put into a class for gifted students one hour per day. It also meant that one of my other teachers, who happened to be black, led the class in making fun of me for being smart. I was constantly called out by the teacher with things like “I thought you were supposed to be gifted. You don’t seem smart to me.” The other kids would get in on it, and it made my sixth grade year hell.
I learned that the best defense was to act stupid. I began failing all of my classes, fighting, and getting in trouble. I got kicked out of school and wound up in a private school for a few years. I didn’t enjoy school again until I was in college.
As a result, when my own kids were in school, they were tested and found to also be intelligent. The school wanted to put them into gifted programs. I wouldn’t let them. They tried telling me that I was wrong, telling me that my kids would benefit from it. No, they wouldn’t.
To this day, I still wonder why a person who is talented at playing a sport is so revered, but a person who is talented at intellectual pursuits is so hated. I know what its like to be discriminated against, and putting a child in a gifted program shouldn’t be a punishment.