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Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

The article seems a bit vague, after reading it I still don't really get how schools `stigmatize gifted children`, besides of the perception that `gifted children schools` are elitist, a perception not from the schools but from the general population.

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I was also in a 'Gifted Program' that had me out 1 day of every week. I was told that I was expected to keep up with ALL of the normal assignments, plus the Gifted Program assignments as well. I managed, easily, but some teachers weren't satisfied with that.

One of them decided that because I was in Gifted, I'd have to make sentences with my spelling words. Nobody else had to do this, and it wasn't part of the program. When that proved no problem, then I had to stand up and read them out loud to the class. I even got bored with that and started writing stories with the words. When I got bored with that, I started writing stories with the words, using the order they were given to me.

Right from the time I had to stand up and read, and I was the only one, the trouble started. I was bullied for years, and it only stopped when I started fighting back.

So yeah, they turned a peaceful, gifted child in to a violent child because they couldn't handle the situation.

There are definitely problems with how they handle the whole thing.

Having said that, having the class was still a LOT better than not having it. If I could go back and skip the class and miss out on the bullying, I wouldn't. I'd keep things as they were.

Growing up I was in 3 different 'gifted' classes, one for each level of school before high school (elementary, middle, junior). There was definitely a bit of a stigma involved -- against us by the people not in the gifted class, and within the class against whoever was deemed not as smart as the majority of the class. Nothing horribly damaging, but definitely present.

I can tell you my experience. I was placed in a gifted program in the 4th grade, iirc. From day to day we would skip a different class and attend the gifted program instead. One day I failed to turn in an assignment for a one if my "regular" classes. I didn't know about the assignment because I wasn't in class the previous day. The teacher told me that I should have been able to keep up because I was in the gifted program. I hated every minuted of it and ended up dropping out in fairly short order. Although I'll admit in retrospect that the program certainly could have been run better.

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