The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by hn_version_0023 on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @01:33PM (#31671007)

Knowing nothing about this topic other than hearsay and the opinions of my elderly parents… both of them teachers in public high schools…

Do these per-pupil funding numbers have any meaning when your home and community are broken and one or both of your parents is an addict or incarcerated? Because it seems to me we’ve been acting with intent as a society to keep the families, homes, and communities of everyone not white and already wealthy a complete and utter shambles.

How can we expect decent, equitable outcomes given that the home life of significant percentages of students is essentially a path right to prison?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by calculatte on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @01:53PM (#31671373)

Every group claims the same targeting. "Everyone not white" is just being divisive. Go to a poor white area and you'll see the same drug addiction, broken home, incarceration problems. Is this your job to fix? Do you think the government has the inclination or the possibility of success in addressing these issues?

All that shows is the natural tendency toward persecution complexes and blaming failure on factors out of your control. Finding ways to make society promote personal responsibility, atomic families, etc would actually help. But that is the opposite of current culture of hedonism and "smashing traditional family structure" that gets complete entertainment and political backing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by social_quotient on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:25PM (#31671898)

I agree and it seems we are learning the cost and complexity of the state trying to fill the vacuum of parent/family responsibilities.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by swearwolf on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @05:05PM (#31674159)

You see the same things in both places because people are poor in both places. Often due to structural issues that the government could absolutely influence. For example, they could not sign a deal like NAFTA and keep manufacturing jobs within their borders. The could also provide social housing, subsidize medical care and education, set a reasonable minimum wage, etc. The government has enormous potential to positively impact people’s lives, but it doesn’t. It used to, but not anymore, because we’ve all been infected with Reagan’s “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.” brain worm. This mythology is bone deep in our national consciousness, to the point that we can’t even imagine an alternative anymore, even though examples of other countries doing it are scattered around the world. Government intervention can absolutely address the nihilistic tendencies you’ll often find amongst the multi-generational poor! It can do so by actually giving them an opportunity (en masse, not as the one person who made it out) to be participants in a world where they have dignity and inherent value, which is not the world they live in today. They won’t be fixed overnight, but they didn’t get that way overnight either! It took decades of disinvestment and neglect, and it will probably take a generation to make a meaningful impact. But it can and should be done.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by zozbot234 on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @01:45PM (#31671237)

> Do these per-pupil funding numbers have any meaning when your home and community are broken and one or both of your parents is an addict or incarcerated?

It's a vicious cycle, which can only be broken by building strong communities in those places. And we've mostly forgotten how to do this, because "lifestyle anarchism" has been way more popular than a genuine community orientation among intellectuals and influencers, since the 1960s or so. School funding is a band-aid.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by dec0dedab0de on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @01:45PM (#31671235)

Do these per-pupil funding numbers have any meaning when your home and community are broken and one or both of your parents is an addict or incarcerated?

No, school budgets only help the schools, they don't solve any other problems.

it seems to me we’ve been acting with intent as a society to keep the families, homes, and communities of everyone not white and already wealthy a complete and utter shambles.

Maybe I'm older, but it seems to me the exact opposite is happening. Over the last 40 years there has been an increasing number of minority families that have moved to wealthier, historically white neighborhoods. I think this is because of education, affirmative action, and a general shift of society to be less racist.

How can we expect decent, equitable outcomes given that the home life of significant percentages of students is essentially a path right to prison?

nobody has ever expected that.

There is still a lot of work to be done, but things have been moving in the right direction for a while now. It took a few hundred years to get here, don't expect it to be fixed in just over half a century.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by ryandrake on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @03:00PM (#31672344)

My parents (and one step-parent) were also public school teachers, and after the first round of parent-teacher conferences, they could usually easily tell which students would sail through and excel, which ones would try but struggle, and which ones were going to actively harm the classroom environment--simply by meeting the parents (or for the latter group, observe that the parents never even showed up). This heuristic had nothing to do with school funding or the race of the student or parent.

[ Parent | on HN ]