Dang! I just went into the "gifted and talented" thread

[Dukkha]

[JohnKleeb]

1. I never expected it to get that way when I started it

To tell you the truth.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Just a problem child

that's what you are.

Did you notice someone started another thread today? :)

[JohnKleeb]

9. Yes

I posted some personal testimonal about never being tested individually for it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. They did something to test you

You probably just don't remember. Ask your mom. I am sure she will remember.

[JohnKleeb]

18. Would it have been in class?

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. Probably not

Usually they are individualized tests. But they also could have looked at a report your teacher filled out. Or your parents could have taken you to a doctor (like a psychologist or psychiatrist) to be tested. Nowadays, they are not testing as much as they used to. But back when you were in elementary school, they were still testing kids to diagnose LD.

Another thought - If you were on any meds, a doctor may have tested you.

Ask your parents. I feel certain they will remember.

[JohnKleeb]

24. Hmmmmmm I got diagnosed I believe before elementary school

started.

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. Then most likely it was a doctor

Schools are very reluctant to test kids before about 2nd grade.

[JohnKleeb]

26. Ive had the same doc for most of my life

Maybe my next physical I should ask.

[proud2BlibKansan]

29. It wouldn't have been your regular doctor

but a specialist. However, your regular doc may have a report from that specialist in your file.

You know you also have the right to have copies of your official school records. Since you are graduating, it may be a good idea to get those. Ask the counselor at your school how to go about doing that. If you are 18, I think you can request them yourself. If not, your parent can make the request.

[redqueen]

4. It was the "asshats" comment that got my ire up.

Sorry! Was fun, though. :)

[JohnKleeb]

7. Its all good

I may not have been in GT and stuff but I have been mocked for having some intellucualism in me mostly by my brother but hes a douchebag. I think most people who like you were in the program understood my point, maybe didnt understand why I find it a little upsetting because you guys were often ridiculed. I have to say though, they need to find a way through special education to have the kids realize that having a learning whatever is not a sign of weakness.

[davidinalameda]

19. you didn't expect people to rage about imagined slights from 20 years ago

[JohnKleeb]

20. I didnt expect it to get so big

simply put.

[ohiosmith]

2. That'll learn ya.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. With grammar like that

you'll never make it in to the Gifted Program.

[ohiosmith]

6. I love my grammar, and grampar too.

[jeff30997]

8. Grampar Simpson:

[WeRQ4U]

10. 'Twas a good discussion...

So many years later, and still no love for the geeks. Oh well. lol.

[JohnKleeb]

11. You geek, I am a geek

Ok so unlike the majority of geeks, I cant do advanced math, I cant tell you what Ervin Schrodinger did for the atom but I can tell you he had a cat fetish, but I can also tell you the signifance of Gideon Vs Wainwright, I can tell you about poverty in Appalachia. I am a geek too, and I can also tell you sports stats too.
Note: Ervin Schrodinger had that quantium mechanics model thingie.

[WeRQ4U]

13. You weren't really doing the bashing...you just started the thread.

Didn't mean to insinuate anything. Sorry if I did.

[JohnKleeb]

16. Its ok

I dont have a problem with smart people at all never have really, I think people are absolute morons to be jerks to smart people, maybe things have changed since most people were in school but people have always respected my abilities at history and always wanted my study guides.

[sniffa]

12. is it gone?

[JohnKleeb]

14. unfortunely no

Stupid mouth of mine.

[NoSheep]

21. I started something a coupla days ago and I asked for it to be locked!

unreal the anger and venom in GD. :wtf:

[JohnKleeb]

22. Yeah GD is nuts, been out of it ever since January mostly

Unreal how they can be huh.

[NoSheep]

27. They were taking up for the republicans! I was floored!

Kept my sense of humor though! That's the great thing about being older, you don't really care if someone disagrees with you.:7

[uppityperson]

37. I think they finally locked it.

amazing what gets it all going. Hi NoSheep and Kleeb, you rabble rousers. (how is "rousers" correctly spelled?)

[JohnKleeb]

38. ha I am just defending my people

the little guy from the oppressive giants.

[u4ic]

15. .

[redacted]

32. LOL -- but its so true, with me at least.

[distantearlywarning]

28. What shocked me about that thread:

how angry some people in that thread were (presumably) 10-20 + years later about not having been in Gifted and Talented programs or about "gifted" kids. I was really kind of floored.

And all this time I thought _I_ was still overly angry about the whole jock/cheerleader mentality of my high school and needed to get over it. Sheesh. My mild-but-still-pathological grudge-holding about that has nothing on some of the people in that thread. I bet some of you DUers out there were cheerleaders in high school, but if we had a thread about that, I would never feel or express the vitriol I saw in that thread about "smart kids" to you.

I think that thread is a very small representation of a very large divide in this country, and one of the reasons why John Kerry maybe wasn't as appealing as the Shrub last November, and why there is a constant battle over science (global warming, evolution, for example). I think there are a lot of pretty angry people out there who literally HATE intellectuals/academics/GAT kids/people they think are smarter than them, and would like nothing better than to take what they perceive as control of our country back from those people.

[redacted]

30. Exactly. Asshat? Would you prefer I self inflict a brain injury

for your self-esteem. It _would_eliminate a few IQ points -- or should I use my intelligence to do good things in the world? Hmmmmm let's think about it.

[JohnKleeb]

34. we dont have problems with your inteligence

we have a problem with the implication youre somehow superior to people because of your higher IQ, I have a higher htan average IQ you know what hte label I got for grade school, I got labeled disabled and until middle school I thought I was weird because of it, until the teachers finally put it in a way that didnt make me feel like a dumbshit.

[redacted]

43. You know it's funny cuz . . .similar thing happened to me.

I was in 2 schools in one I was GT and in the other I had a learning disability. When the new school found out I was GT in the old school (when they finally tested me.) I was labeled as lazy and ridiculed.

I have ADD -- female type, no hyperactivity. This is not unusual for ADD'ers.

I'm sorry you went throught that. It's the way the edu system handles it -- really I think they don't know who to handle "different" kids of any type. Public education is designed to deal with the masses.

And I suspect that in many schools the GT program is filled with the kids of amibtious or prestigous/wealthy parents.

I know, myself, that by the time I got to high school -- they just let me take classes with the seniors -- and then they threw me into the local 4-yr college as soon as I could drive there. That is what finally saved me from self-destruction.

[Skittles]

31. some of us just don't think it's a good idea to label kids like that

I don't even remember TAG stuff being in existence when I was in school - I took a lot of "accelerated" programs in the U.S. probably because I grew moving back and forth between England and America and England's studies were a bit accelerated anyways compared to America.

[JohnKleeb]

33. Thank You Skittles

and its the fact that those labels suggest that those kids are superior to the others and meanwhile others like myself and I know I am repeating myself but I think its sick that you have kids who are basically the same labeled one thing that sounds like youre more better than everyone else and then people like me get the opposite end of the coin, "learning disabled", I am not learning disabled, I have a little bit of a hard time with math and the sciences but I am not disabled. It has nothing to do with resentment towards smart people even though some of them think that my post was, it was that I think its insulting to do that because while those kids may be smarter than most their age, they've got more in common with their peers than they dont. Thats what pisses me off, its the idea that it feeds off that theyre better than me somehow because they're "gifted and talented" and whether you believe it or not but "learning disabled" makes you think youre not as smart as everyone else, I no longer feel like this but for the longest time I did.

[Skittles]

35. I absolutely understand

they try to label us dissenters as "jealous" but they just don't get it - I actually DID take the advanced math courses in high school but it would have irked me to be labeled TALENTED AND GIFTED - it is f***ing BULLSHIT.

[JohnKleeb]

36. Its not jealously

in fact I am glad I took regular classes and with the ones I was good at, I helped people out who couldnt understand the material. They appreciated it.

[Bouncy Ball]

45. Some of us don't give a shit WHAT you label them

I don't give a shit IF you label them at all.

Call them whatever the hell you want.

Just don't take it away. I'd have to homeschool or something, and I have to work full time.

[uppityperson]

39. Our local GAT progam is not just based on grades

some kids are in it because of grades or IQ, many for artistic or writing or other such esoteric non-testable reasons.

[JohnKleeb]

40. thThats different than our program, I still think its unfair

and I think its really absurd that some of the former GT people are accusing some of us of having grudges, its not about a grudge, its about a false perception of superiority, the GT kids I went to school with turned out for the most part like everyone else. It would have been neat if the school had realized my talents but they instead had me labeled from an early age as learning disabled, I hate that term so much, its so insulting. Ive never realyl had a problem with the individuals in the program, did once but that was becasue the asshole was mistreating my brother.

[uppityperson]

42. They gave the money allocated to 7/8 grade to whole class

Paid for part of an arts (writing, acting and visual arts) camp class for the entire class rather than divying it up amongst specific people. We started calling it "highly capable" in our house, said in a snotty tone, after getting some such pc bs in the mail.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

41. my bad. . he he my bad

:hide:

[Rabrrrrrr]

44. The fear of and bigotry toward smart people being showed there is amazing

I'm utterly aghast at the vitriol being poured out toward those who are above average intelligence who ask for nothing more than "please, teach me at my level".

And this coming from supposed liberals and progressives.

[Bouncy Ball]

46. Can you imagine

if someone said things like that to a person who needed help from the other direction? A 17 year old who reads and thinks at a 7 year old level gets help, support, certainly no vitriol, certainly no "WHY should you have any SPECIAL HELP???

But if a 7 year old reads and thinks on the level of a 17 year old?

Fuck 'em, right? I mean a kid with a tested IQ of 135 in kindergarten doesn't need one BIT of help with sitting in a classroom all day that is aimed at kids that are closer to the 70 or 80 level, right? Piece of cake, right? Bullshit.

I've noticed my daughter trying to hide her true abilities lately and that saddens me to no end. She's already gotten the message, loud and clear, that she isn't acceptable the way she is.

And if I had a buck for everytime a parent or teacher acted shitty and pissy about it, damn.

[TimeChaser]

47. Those kind of sentiments made my life hell when I was younger.

I was labeled "gifted" when I was in second grade. And while my district's gifted program was wonderful in elementary school, I put up with hell from my fellow students. It's no wonder that I ended up in therapy before I was in middle school.

Middle school gifted, by the way, was a joke. We learned nothing new, unlike in elementary school, where they started teaching us algebra in 3rd and 4th grade (and naturally, the school expected us to be good kids and sit through a year of pre-algebra anyways). Several of us stopped going to gifted all together because it was just a joke.

Fortunately, high school was better. Since most of us were free to take the most challenging classes we wanted, gifted was more of a resource (which anyone was free to take advantage of btw, gifted or not).

I still dealt with a lot of shit, even to the point of depression. Once, I even lost a best friend because of the anti-gifted attitude of her father.

[Rabrrrrrr]

48. It really is funny, isn't it?

We had some exceptional athletes in my school who were basically worshipped by our community.

Even the kids who were really good at music were highly appreciated, if not sometimes looked at as a bit nerdy and weird, but otherwise appreciated.

But the smart ones - the smart ones were treated poorly by other students (mostly the athletes and the sub-par idiots), treated poorly by the administration, and even more sadly, treated badly by our community - treated with suspicion, derision, and fear. "Why do you have to read books?" "Why do you have to be such a know-it-all?" "Why do you have to think of yourself as so superior?"

All that shit.

But someone excelling at baseball, or basketball, or football, that was just seen as normal and natural and "of course people want to excel at things like that".

But redaing books and knowing things - that's just fucking dangerous and weird, apparently.