calledforhelp:

prokopetz:

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.

d. A child has been treated as overly intelligent the entirety of their younger educational years and thus fails to learn any skills that will assist them in studying so their grades nosedive upon entering high school, inevitably leading to everyone being disappointed in them and a child who doesn’t understand how to ask for assistance or learn the basic skillsets their peers have because their teachers and parents thought they didn’t need it and now they’re fucked.