Another Thing Wrong With The Former Gifted Kid Discourse, Since I Can't Stop Thinking About It:
people have such an unhelpful tendency to universalize their own experience when talking about the plights and struggles about Gifted Kids™—and what they are talking about is not necessarily invalid, but they're more often talking about their individual responses to their particular schools' policies. This Is Not A Systemic Analysis. it's helpful; i sympathize with you. But You Are Not Dismantling The Inequities by saying this or that happened At Your School when you were a child, and it affected you this or that way because of Who You Are.
example. i always see people talking about neurodivergence in this conversation, which is actually helpful in spotlighting how the Gifted Kid discourse often glosses over such complex intersectional issues. you can talk about how you were Gifted & Neurodivergent and how those experiences lead you to future disappointment. this is, i must stress, valid. but your analysis of your own life Is Not A Systemic Analysis. your experience alone will never speak for how the educational system and trends in policy among schools across the united states affect ALL neurodivergent people negatively because there are neurodivergent people who are Different From You. not to mention that when people point out that very often "Gifted Kid" usually correlates with some degrees of privilege, people push back and go nooooo I'm neurodivergent. people across all other marginalized identities who are systemically disadvantaged by the educational system can be neurodivergent. this does not make you, initially, when you were as a young Kid determined to be Gifted, NOT also in fact privileged.
if you are not ready to discuss experiences that were different from your own growing up, you aren't really engaging in the discourse of how to improve public education in the united states. it's a diiii-verse country we live in. not only in the ways we traditionally think of. when we think of "marginalized" or "oppressed" people, some specific and historically significant groups come to mind. when it comes to advantages that set up a child for future educational success, these broad categories often leave gaps because they lead people to generalizations, and ultimately, fatalism.
but there's really so much hope in early childhood education if we were to make things more equitable, ie like i always say UNIVERSAL PRE-K. these kids who are determined as "gifted" more often than not were just from more enriched home environments that prepared them for learning how to read, write, and do math. it's often not special innate abilities that leads to differences in outcomes for different students, but That's How The Kids Interpret It When Some of Them Are Called "Gifted." they're more often than not, not doing something that's truly exceptional or precocious for their age. they're displaying signs of age-appropriate development, when often, the kids who may be lagging behind them skill-wise just Haven't Practiced Those Skills As Much.
so yes, that's why there's a correlation in things like upper- and middle-class white kids being seemingly more successful in school (and more commonly deemed "gifted") at a young age. it's from privilege. it's not even just the implicit biases of their educators already working in their favor for their race and class. it's the fact that being more privileged, generally, means their family and parents had all of their basic needs provided for. they had more time to read with you. they could buy more development-promoting toys. they probably had better mental health to cope with the demands of child-rearing. if they suffered chronic or sudden physical health issues, they were insured. privileged children are usually less exposed at a younger age to the harshnesses of this world, as every child should be. ALL of these little advantages build up, in terms of what a child can be provided with before they go to school. anything that's going wrong in a child's family system can negatively impact them without them even being old enough to understand it.
you may not think of yourself as Privileged. you might prefer to think of yourself as Gifted. Gifted is so nice, even if it's demoted to Former Gifted. at one point you were told you were superior and it felt really good. and You, reader, i do not know You. i'm not calling You privileged, even if you are! hell, everyone's privileged in some way. i am at the point in the post where for transparency's sake i think i should say I Could Be What Some People Call "Former Gifted". i was called smart as a kid and given special homework sometimes etc. i'm not calling any Former Gifted people stupid for not realizing this either. what i mean is that this kids Are Not Usually Actually Gifted. this is a compliment given overwhelmingly to children who were just simply not deprived. when people say they were once Gifted, they're more often than not saying I Had The Early Opportunities To Learn Everyone Should Have, But Doesn't. this doesn't make you an outlier. It Might Just Be A Sign of Privilege.
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muna goddman saved my life… i was in such a terrible place and i wasn’t full actively suicidal but i was just clinging onto things that would get me though but not actually living. and fuck. they truly showed me that it is all about love and community and friendship and being horny and wanting someone and being silly and vulnerable and real enough for someone else to recognize that in you. for once i feel hopeful that there is something better and that i’m not broken for taking longer to figure out how to love
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