Some people might not like what follows. It's about the institutional elitism and racism of the so-called "gifted" education. Such programs exist in many countries, often with the political reason to calm down (mostly white) middle- and upper-middle class parents who, otherwise, would prefer to place their kids in private schools.
Some parents believe that their kids are superior to their peers and therefore deserve to follow premium programs. These parents have the power and the money to pressure school boards to create a special curriculum for their "gifted" kids. The problem is that, most of the time, the school boards which manage the budgets are also made up of privileged people.
To know if this kind of racism is incidental or intended is not important, but the outcome does matter. According to the demographics, a category of students (privileged and overwhelmingly white) get a tailor-made program, while a second category, the less advantaged students (mostly poor and of color), get stuck in the budget bus.
Ideally, no school board and no parents should have the right to label some kids as "gifted" based on criteria fixed by the parents themselves, and to consign the underprivileged kids to programs for the "not gifted". This is however what happens in many many regions of the world.
Actually, the gifted children concept is a myth; at birth, all children in good hearlth are gifted for practically anything, regardless of their race, social status, family income, etc. Despite this evidence, the school authorities, as well as the parents themselves, continue to favor the already-advantaged kids, to the detriment of others.
Picture: All children are gifted (Donna Grethen / Op-Art)
