"Two-fifths of Montgomery students are considered gifted on the basis of aptitude tests, schoolwork, expert opinion and parents' wishes. Officials say the approach slights the rest of the students who are not so labeled. White and Asian American students are twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to be identified as gifted."
MD edu ping
Sorting by merit is discrimination! The only fair way to sort students is by ......ummm.....uhhhh......height.
Short people are inferior.
My boys were always in the Gifted programs but I never thought they should be called that since it inflated their opinions of themselves. Both survived well enough though.
Harrison Bergeron, the protagonist of the story, has exceptional intelligence, height, strength and beauty and thus has to bear enormous handicaps. These include headphones that play distracting noises, three hundred pounds of weight strapped to his body, forty pounds of birdshot around his neck, eyeglasses designed to give him headaches, and a rubber ball on his nose, black caps on his teeth, and shaven eyebrows to hide his beauty. Despite these societal handicaps, he is able to invade a TV station and declare himself emperor. He strips himself of his handicaps, then dances with a ballerina whose handicaps he has also discarded. Both are shot dead by the brutal and relentless Handicapper General. The story is framed by an additional perspective from Bergeron's parents, who are watching the incident on TV, but because of their handicaps cannot concentrate enough to appreciate what occurs nor remember it.
Good to see the Compost writing to their reader's level.
I have a child in the ‘gifted program’. This report is absolute malarkey. This is the ‘philosophy’ as ‘not using red ink to grade a paper’...and NO COMPETITION. They just want a bunch of weenies to grow a country, huh? Good, fair competition is HEALTHY! One strives to be better (better themselves) according to one’s ability or those they aspire to be like.
Dear friends of mine had a son (now 33) who was labeled “gifted”. His parents spent $10k to $15k a year for special schooling to have him achieve his potential. This is money they sacrificed for a dream to achieve the lads potential and really couldn't afford it and went into debt. It turns out our “gifted” boy dropped out of high school in his senior year and lived as homeless person for awhile. He married an older woman with a child 5 years younger than he was and lives in a mobile home and works in a factory. He hasn't read a book in 15 years and couldn't name the vice president of the US or identify Nancy Pelosi.
“My Child is a F*****g Retard. We are all Democrats.”
The elimination of the gifted and talented programs parallel nicely the same mentality of the unions. In a union shop the workers are discouraged from excelling. The “we are all in this together” mentality states that if you excel, you will only raise the bar for the rest of us. Now we can’t have that.
It is the same in education when the terrible teachers are paid the same as the excellent teachers. When this system prevails, only the highly motivated, dedicated and moral teachers will strive for excellence from themselves and their students. This kind of teacher is hard to find and almost impossible to maintain in a climate of “just do what you need to do to get by.”
By eliminating the gifted classification, the desire to excell can be destroyed at a very young age.
Our education system spends to few resources fertilizing the productive, and to many resources fertilizing the weeds.
It is known as the dumbing down of America. It has now begun to work for the Democrats. How else could Obama get elected?
A very touchy subject, when considering a specific race or creed in ANY analysis. But my personal analysis is this, If your kid’s smarter then the average kid, GOOD FOR YOU, and GOOD FOR THEM, if your kid ain’t, HELP YOUR KID as much as you can, to be the best he or she can be, AND be gratefull that we live in a nation where eugenics, racisim, and all manner of stupid thought, was rejected by the founders of this nation. It might have took some time before our nation fullfilled what it stood for.
But I’m very proud of the fact that we did what we as a nation have done, We had a real and costly war, WITH OURSELVES! And were blessed afterwards by certain folk to make us a more whole and fair nation, NEVER FORGET THAT. Folks have given the ultimate sacrifice so that we can all have equality. In the law, (most important), and in the support of whatever YOU belive in:
Support of a candidate, check.
Support of a Church, Synagog(SP), Mosque, etc. check.
The list of our freedoms and equality goes on.
So, if you think your kid is so smart, that you HAVE to put a bumper sticker on your car, you deserve criticisim, Becase YOUR being stupid. You open yourself up to criticism, and I swear, if I see a “Baby on board” car sign again on the interstate,... well I’ll be nice, I may make a geusture or three.
makes me wanna puke... 40% of Montgomery students are considered gifted on the basis of aptitude tests, schoolwork, expert opinion and parents' wishes...since the last two don't count, i'd say it's less than 20%
If you are smart and succeed, you do not need the government for much, plain and simple. Those people always end up paying much more than they contribute, in the end.
Marxists do not like independent intellect as it debases their collective thought ideology.
I feel as if seeing right through Katie Couric, Keith Olbermann or even the New York Times isn't because I'm a raving right-wing lunatic, but bright enough to see the implicit brainwashing and toxic Communism disguised as “do-gooder” or “tolerant” behavior, when in fact, it is the opposite.
I thank God I can see through the Marxist garbage and don't want to end up in an Obama gulag for political prisoners.
perspective:
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html
I find it interesting that the other three-fifths of parents have not requested that their kids participate in the gifted programs, which are more work for the kids and for the parents, but at least some of them object to other kids getting something they don't want. That is a unique identifying feature of democrats. If a kid is getting a higher level of music or art than my talentless kids get, I think that is great. If another kid is doing something in creative writing that is being published in the school paper, magazine, or whatever, I'm all for that too. I don't feel slighted if someone else does well; I feel proud for them. I'm a conservative, and I think accomplishment is good.
And here I thought that the gifted students were being separated because they wouldn't THRIVE in the normal learning environment (or so I've heard). I thought that it was a wonder that they wouldn't die of sheer boredom in the normal environment. But here we are again...if you separate gifted students, that's RACIST!
Maryland "Freak State" PING!