In fourth grade, after a considerable struggle, my parents managed to get me admitted to the district's gifted program. This program, like most others of its sort, was a bit of a joke. "Gifted" education consisted of taking us out of class for one day a week (they're smart, surely they can afford to miss a day of class and still do their homework!) to pursue topics of our own interest--not that we got a whole lot of flexibility in the matter. To be fair, most of the ideas I floated were terrible and demonstrated a real lack of grounding in the world, but what do you expect from the son of two Mensans dropped into the slag heap of public education? Anyway, we got most of a day off each week for "gifted" education...then half a day...than an hour each day...then an hour each day if we could find time in our schedule.
I haven't seen what special needs education looks like, but I imagine they have much the same problem. Maybe they get more attention--my impression is that most attention directed at both ends of the bell curve is focused on making sure we look and act normal, and special needs tend to be more visible than gifted. But in either case, the central notion is people should behave like everyone else, you shouldn't be different, egalitarianism.
The school district couldn't afford, politically though possibly financially, to take all the gifted kids and shove them in their own corner. That would imply they're better than everyone else, and deserve more attention. How dare you imply my Johnny isn't as important!
Similarly, there's not many options for dealing with special needs kids. There isn't enough money to give them the attention needed to sort out those with potential from the duds. You've basically got two choices: take all of them and shove them in a corner to be neglected (How dare you imply my Johnny isn't as smart as everyone else!) , or leave them in the general population, slowing everyone down.
It's not popular to say this, but people are different. Some are faster than others. Some learn in one way, some in another. Some top out in third grade and some are graduating from Harvard at the same age.
Most of them are in the middle. Our educational system functions okay for these people. But we should realize that some people are faster than others. I'd argue we should have different school tracts for the various segments of the population--three to five should do. In a sense, we already have this, through Honors/AP classes, "regular", and the more remedial courses.
Why can't we say this publicly? I've been particularly surprised by the resistance I get towards these motions, even among those who would benefit from such an arrangement. I've long wondered why.
Enter typical mind fallacy.
Many smart people naively assume that everyone else is just as smart as they are, provided you can poke and prod them the right way to make their inner intelligence show. There's some validity to this--certain people function terribly in environments that others do fine in--but some are just not as mentally capable.
At the other end of the spectrum, it's common to see assumptions that the gifted students aren't actually that much better, just catered to. I'd be just as good, they say, if only someone gave me a chance.
Typical mind fallacy is at play here. It's uncomfortable to admit that some people are just put together differently than you. It's even more difficult to admit that these people-not-like-you are still people, if history is any guide.
Telling people that they aren't like each other, and that some of them are better than others, is not really viable in a democracy. And thus we get our current school system, where only the very rich have the option of taking their children out of the cesspool of public schools and families are slaving against Moloch to live in better districts.
Maybe we should just admit that people aren't actually equal, and make an effort to live with that uncomfortable reality, instead of fighting it.
