I’m trying to figure out what the common denominator was for selecting children for the program and think it may be Asperger’s Syndrome. I was never diagnosed as an aspie as a child. Please bear with me...
I don’t know/remember how I was selected to be a part of GATE. I was in it during elementary school in the late 80s. I was a part of the program around 2nd grade with maybe 10 other children of the same age. We would be taken out of normal class and met in a room that (I think) had no windows. There were a lot of complex board games to play like an electronic Stratego, small and colorful tiles in geometric shapes that we were tasked with fitting into different pictures (house, bird, etc.) and a lot of logic quizzes like this:
There wasn’t a lot of structure to the class; which seemed to last for an hour. I remember the same adult coming to my class, she would stand at the front door and I would leave in the middle of whatever lesson was being taught. I was always excused from whatever work my normal class was doing. This happened once or twice each week.
They also had you do a lot of “hearing tests” where you raise your left or right hand, depending on which ear you hear a beeping sound. I put that in quotes because I don’t think it was an actual hearing test - who needs a hearing test every other week? I don’t remember how or why the were used but I remember the shapes on cards: a star, squiggling lines, a square and a circle. A lot of what we did there is a blur. It feels like my memories of it were “wiped” from my mind.
We did mind/logic exercises as 8-10 year olds that would have been difficult for teenagers. Does any of this sound familiar to any of you?
In many states the money for these programs come from the same pool of funding, yet a disproportionate amount goes to “special education.” Why waste money to get a developmentally challenged individual as close to “average” as possible, when we can spend the money on ensuring that highly intelligent students have every opportunity to make the world a better place? I am not saying that the “intellectually impaired” are useless and do not deserve help. We need to help them but not at the expense of the truly “gifted.”
Ask yourself this, is the world a better place because we helped an intellectually deficient person develop the skills to be a grocery store clerk or if we were able to help an intellectually advanced person develop a cure for cancer or some other world-changing technology/innovation?
Made a sandpit in the back garden for my twins and this is what they came up with...
https://preview.redd.it/0ltt4sedyuc31.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=23cdd3b11587f67db9a6884249fcbffbb5c0e927
Unlike a lot of em fans I gave MGK credit when he dropped his diss. It was kinda cheesy but he had some enjoyable bars and I cut him some slack considering he’s one of the first relatively big artist to have the balls to go at Slim Shady.
BUT then KILLSHOT dropped and it’s like two completely opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to diss track quality. The slick writing, the crazy schemes, the top notch vocal work it’s all so fucking good and masterful I sound like a stan but fuck he just gets me so damn excited lmfao
Title, but if you want to know why I’m bringing this up just read the posts about how being put into gifted and talented in elementary school causes people to do no work but still excel in their little 4th grade classes. This causes them to never develop a work ethic and get discouraged if they’re not good at something immediately, as their elementary school classes were really easy to understand. I should know, I was one of them. If elementary schools abandoned the gifted and talented program, perhaps this problem would be solved for future generations so they’re prepared better to take on the real world. Plus, being in gifted and talented in elementary school means nothing down the line, colleges and jobs obviously don’t care. What do you guys think? Put your answers in the comments and vote on the strawpoll: http://www.strawpoll.me/17989196
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
It really made no sense. They were doing at least 12th grade math, because I remember they were talking about differential calculus once. But then the next year it was like they forgot about it and they never really made it clear where the students stood in regards to the rest of the school. I remember it was mentioned once in season 12 when Alli trying to graduate early...thats about it
One of my favorite CG questions!
Just pondering this one...similarities, differences, tell tale traits....does it even matter? Doesn’t to me but if it should from the child’s perspective I’d rather know. 10 year old girl if that makes any difference...
