> That is what it is like for exceptionally gifted children who are mainstreamed.
Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
A month or two before I dropped out, a story about one of my projects was featured in Forbes and other major publications. The same teachers and administrators who had forced me into that hellish existence were parading it around as this huge badge of honor for my little school; last I heard, it's still hanging up in the office somewhere. I never got an apology, never had anyone say "hey, we fucked up." They justified all of this in their minds; I'll never understand how.
>Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
I was in both the 'gifted' and the 'special ed' programs at the same time. the 'special' classes weren't so bad, really, if you only had to do it for two hours, twice a week, and it seems they were mostly worried about my handwriting.
It's funny, 'organizational skills' haunt me to this day, that's the other thing they tried to teach me. (and yeah, even now I'm pretty bad; I dono if I would call it a disability, but it's a big problem that holds me back.) but handwriting? the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
> the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
It works like this, in the mind of a (bad) educator:
1. I had to do this.
2. I don't do random shit, so it must be important.
3. Therefore, you have to do this.
This chain of logic breaks down at step 2, so that's where post-hoc rationalizations step in to save the day. That's why I'm going to say this explicitly: For everything you can come up with to justify handwriting classes, there's a better way to learn the same skill that also fosters things that are more important than having neat handwriting.
For example, fine motor control is better learned through PE classes that actually teach sports, which has the added benefit of promoting physical fitness. The aesthetics of handwriting is better learned through calligraphy as part of a good art class, which has the added benefit of transmitting a culture which is left out of handwriting classes.
This seems more common then I thought, because the same thing happened to me in high school. Most teachers thought I was an idiot because I never completed a single homework assignment despite getting high marks on their exams. They held me back in mathematics and wouldn't allow me to enter any honors or AP classes. After many long arguments with the guidance counselor I was able to enter AP Chemistry and AP Computer Science which I passed both with A's. It seemed the only teachers who though I wasn't and idiot at that school were those two AP teachers, go figure.
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> That is what it is like for exceptionally gifted children who are mainstreamed.
Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
A month or two before I dropped out, a story about one of my projects was featured in Forbes and other major publications. The same teachers and administrators who had forced me into that hellish existence were parading it around as this huge badge of honor for my little school; last I heard, it's still hanging up in the office somewhere. I never got an apology, never had anyone say "hey, we fucked up." They justified all of this in their minds; I'll never understand how.
>Funny story: I was in special ed classes for my last year of high school. Half my teachers wanted me to be in the hyper-accelerated program, half my teachers wanted me to be in special ed; the latter teachers won. They took my resistance to doing homework and "disorganization" as a profound learning disability, despite never getting less than an A on a test.
I was in both the 'gifted' and the 'special ed' programs at the same time. the 'special' classes weren't so bad, really, if you only had to do it for two hours, twice a week, and it seems they were mostly worried about my handwriting.
It's funny, 'organizational skills' haunt me to this day, that's the other thing they tried to teach me. (and yeah, even now I'm pretty bad; I dono if I would call it a disability, but it's a big problem that holds me back.) but handwriting? the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
> the idea of actually spending time learning handwriting strikes me as very silly.
It works like this, in the mind of a (bad) educator:
1. I had to do this.
2. I don't do random shit, so it must be important.
3. Therefore, you have to do this.
This chain of logic breaks down at step 2, so that's where post-hoc rationalizations step in to save the day. That's why I'm going to say this explicitly: For everything you can come up with to justify handwriting classes, there's a better way to learn the same skill that also fosters things that are more important than having neat handwriting.
For example, fine motor control is better learned through PE classes that actually teach sports, which has the added benefit of promoting physical fitness. The aesthetics of handwriting is better learned through calligraphy as part of a good art class, which has the added benefit of transmitting a culture which is left out of handwriting classes.
This seems more common then I thought, because the same thing happened to me in high school. Most teachers thought I was an idiot because I never completed a single homework assignment despite getting high marks on their exams. They held me back in mathematics and wouldn't allow me to enter any honors or AP classes. After many long arguments with the guidance counselor I was able to enter AP Chemistry and AP Computer Science which I passed both with A's. It seemed the only teachers who though I wasn't and idiot at that school were those two AP teachers, go figure.