At best a manic phase.
At worst, sociopathy or narcissism.
I taught a bunch of gifted kids my last year of teaching. The gifted programme had run its course, but a bunch of them took one of my computer classes.
âBut Iâm giftedâ was used as a regular excuse for skipping tests without telling me and going to do some club event, or not handing something in on time, or just generally being an asshole in class.
They didnât entirely believe me when I said Iâd been in the gifted programme too, 'cos you know, I was just a lowly teacher, and their parents had assured them all their lives they were going to do something special.
And yup, white, suburban, and middle-upper-class to the last one.
I was in a mix of gifted, regular, and eventually special ed. I didnât notice much difference among the students. More among the coursework.
Especially in black-and-white, it looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie.
I have written this before but will again, my mother was a gifted ed teacher. The whole idea behind gifted ed is that gifted students are at risk. They are the ones who drop out because they are bored. They are at higher risk of doing drugs. They are at higher risk of committing suicide. Many gifted students are not the teacherâs pets - they are the opposite - the rowdy students that the teacher hates because they are bored out of their skulls in a regular classroom.
When my mom was teaching, it quickly became a badge of honor to be in the gifted program, and all the straight A studentsâ parents - the students who were actually being served perfectly well by the regular classroom - started advocating to the principal that their little special bundle of joy get into the gifted program. And of course the administrators wanted to please. So all those people got in and the poor, reckless, rowdy kids didnât get tested because the classroom teachers were the gatekeepers to the test, and how could a D- student be gifted, amirite?
This synchs well with something I learned in teachers college â that 80% of school dropouts are more intelligent than the ones who stay in school.
Fun fact: when I was in the middle of the process of skipping from Grade 2 to Grade 3 (took about four weeks, felt longer), I sometimes did classes with the Special Ed kids. Bear in mind this was a rural 300-student school, half of which were French Immersion students. In retrospect itâs amazing we had the resources we did.
So that had everyone freaking out because a âbrownerâ was in with the so-called slow kids (only a couple of which were actually slow). The only people who were nice about it were the Special Ed kids. And then my Grade 3 teacher, but that was after she got a chance to teach me.
Thereâs gonna be a lot of avatar change today.
Itâs a IRL mupppet!
+1
I was in the schoolâs TAG program. I got a mix of As and Fs. I got held back a year, skipped forward a year twice, and spent a lot of time in the principalâs office, ISS, or detention. They didnât know what to do with people like me. One teacher had a separate hall pass printed and told me to just go to the library or whatever I wanted to do for the rest of the year, as long as I passed the tests and didnât disrupt the class. (I skipped the rest of the year except test days and aced that class.) At the start of the year they gave us each a copy of the school handbook with the rules in it and out of boredom I would use it as a checklist of things to try to get away with.
Towards the end, I would smoke right outside the office in order to get caught and suspended so I could stay home for a few days. In Chemistry, I skipped the first 12 chapters and had an F when I finally decided it sounded interesting. Did all 12 chapters of homework during the two weeks we were on chapter 13, asked the teacher if I could make up the tests, and brought my grade up to an A. Then I turned in my textbook and told him I was dropping out. I donât know if Iâve ever seen anyone look that sad and disappointed. I had no idea that he cared, but he did. He had seen me turn around and take interest and then to see me drop out was a huge hit to him.
In adult ed, they did a placement test to see what you still needed to learn to be able to get a GED. I tested as second-year college level, so they didnât know what to do with me either. Some of them assigned me to tutor the other dropouts, which was good. Helped someone go from arithmetic level âI hate math!â to able to ace an algebra/geometry/trigonometry test and ready for precalculus in just a few months. But some of the teachers didnât have anything for me, so I hung out with the kids who drank and did drugs a lot, and did my share. Got in a bit of trouble.
College was a little better; there were some interesting, challenging classes with involved professors, and I could at least drop the ones that werenât. Unfortunately, a bunch of those were required courses in my major, so I ended up dropping out of college and not getting my degree. But it wasnât a total waste.
One of my favorite memories was of a non-major elective, where a bunch of us were struggling and started meeting up and doing study sessions and discussions in an empty hallway before class and collectively brought our grades way up. The professor was late one day and happened through us all sprawled around having an impassioned discussion about the topic and he looked genuinely puzzled. Told us to just continue but come on in and start the test whenever we were done. 
Some of the kids thought he was a hardass and were talking about what professor they should try to get for the next semester. I think I convinced at least a few to stick with him, because although he did grade hard, he actually made us think and told us how we were wrong or insufficient in presenting our ideas and how we could improve. I got a lot out of that class. I also got the hardest math professor and made sure to get her again for the next class when other students were making sure to avoid her. I talked at least one of our study group into joining me in that too.
My memories of the TAG program arenât all that great. It was a mix of a few of us weirdos and several upper-middle-class kids who were doing just fine with the normal school structure (mixing oil and water). Mostly playing puzzle games, mock UN debates, and mock trials; things like that. Nothing to really prepare us for how college would be different than high school, let alone how different a career would be. Once out of school, you canât succeed by picking which things youâre interested in and just going in once a month (hungover or still high) to ace a test. It probably shouldâve had more of a counseling component, and some way to find and plug the interest gaps.
One thing I noticed was that, at least for people like me, when we werenât interested in something we wouldnât waste our time on it, but when we did find something interesting, then weâd dive all-in and thatâs how we went from Fs to As by doing a yearâs worth of study (or more) in a short time. I saw several people do that. Finding what triggers that kind of interest in people isnât easy. Maybe that is what they were trying to do, and I was just unlucky in that none of it happened to click with me at the right time. But in retrospect, maybe what we needed most of all was for someone to teach us coping mechanisms for how to adapt to the daily grind of boring stuff and get through it even when youâre not interested.
ETA: Apologies for wall of text due to walk down memory lane. Last line of last paragraph is effectively the TLDR.
I read the whole thing, and found your story fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
I ended up in special ed, too, mainly because the grade 1 teacher blew it in diagnosing my learning disability. She zeroed in on me spacing out in the reading portion of class (when we were restricted to grade-level reading texts) and informed my parents that I couldnât read, and that they were in denial.
I was bored as fuck because I was at a grade 5 reading level. I can (and could even then) read an upside down book almost as fast as I can the right way. What it did do was gloss over the fact that I genuinely do have attention issues. And organisational issues and fine motor skills deficits (I worked hard to get my handwriting up to snuff). Fun fact: AD(H)D (did I mention that I was hyperactive as fuck, but I was a girl, so I learned not to act out like boys did) means your brain can just switch between foreground and background sounds? So one second the teacher is talking about 3+5, the next all you can hear is the kids outside playing kickball. Itâs not a drift or daydream, your brain simply switches over. When it switches back, youâve missed half of what the teacher said. I did (and still do) get accused of being inappropriately loud, because I think I have to talk over a room that isnât anywhere near as noisy to those I am talking to.
Long story short (too late!), I learned early on that special ed wasnât just for the âslowâ kids. It was for anyone who didnât fit the mold.
My First Grade teacher was pissed at my mom that I was already reading and already at Fifth\Sixth grade level.
That teacher had issues.
I have a similar problem with background noise drowning out voices, or even drowning out my thoughts. Itâs one of the reasons I have so much trouble with phones. And with policies which mandate phones.
I realize this is going to be a controversial opinionâŚ
These are men who have committed terrible crimes and hurt many people. Theyâve been sentenced to federal prison for a reason.
But Iâm actually heartened to hear that this particular place exists, and I would hope (but doubt) that there could be similar places for other minority religions as well.
Rehabilitation needs to be a goal, and one of the ways to support that goal is to support peopleâs faith.
On the one hand, cool. On the other hand, as is vaguely pointed out in the interview, this is highly simplistic.
The most glaring point is that âselfishnessâ was and is one of the worst things you can fling at a woman. Women, especially wives and mothers, are supposed to be infinitely selfless and self-sacrificing. Thatâs an attitude that goes back to before the Enlightenment but really hits its stride in the 18th and 19th centuries. Not to mention how âpleasure-seekingâ women are still viewed in society to this day.
Every time they mentioned âpeopleâ or âhumansâ in the article, I kept thinking about how women had to be legally declared people by an act of Parliament in Canada.
Also love how they didnât even mention modern slavery and how it was at its height right smack in the middle of the time period being discussed.
âPeopleâ are selfish and pleasure-seeking, sure â if their society deems them to be of the demographic permitted to be so.