680. Why Should We Protect Gifted and Talented Programs? The Case for Merit in Education

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today I want to continue a conversation we had a handful of episodes ago about merit and merit-based education. What merit is, what merit means is being deserving, being rewarded for something, earning something because of a skill you have, right? So being the best at soccer, winning a soccer game because you practice and you're really good at soccer, not winning a soccer game because, I don't know, you come from a poorer family than the other team and so they say, you know, it's not fair for a poorer team to lose so we're going to let the poor kids win and the rich kids are going to be losers because blah, blah, blah.

So right, that's not merit. That would be the opposite of merit. That would be people doling out rewards and giving out privileges based on something you didn't earn, right? So merit is when you earn something but you earn it correctly.

And one of the biggest wars on merit right now because there is a war on merit and there's a great book that kind of talks about it a little bit in, of course, The Tuttle Twins and we talked about it a few episodes ago but I wanted to share it again because it's really important. But so what I would like to talk about today is merit in terms of what is called the gifted and talented programs. So gifted and talented education or specialty programs are things that exist in public schools that offer an advanced curriculum or a little bit higher, a little bit more advanced workloads.

So sometimes I know that in my schools in California, you had to take these state tests every year that assessed basically just how much the kids in your school are learning. General aptitude, just general intelligence basically, how much of a topic you know and kids would take it and if you scored really high, they'd ask you to take a test to get into the gifted and talented program. So gifted and talented was reserved for, I don't want to just say like, oh, the smart kids because I do believe that there are many different kinds of smarts, you know, there's street smarts as you hear, there's different kinds of intelligence and not everyone is, you know, sometimes having business savvy doesn't mean that you got the best score in a science class in high school.

So there are different kinds of ways to be smart and so I don't want to say it was for the smart kids but I guess you could say it was for the book smart kids. But so these classes help set kids up for success, right? And it gives them a chance to have access to a higher learning education that in the regular classes they're just not getting and you know, public school systems, sometimes they like to dumb things down and so if you are an accelerated learner, you're not getting the most out of your education, you might be bored. There's a lot of kids that like the class clowns that like distract classes and it's not because they're dumb or that they don't, you know, they're not capable of doing the workload.

Sometimes it's just because they're so smart, they're done with their work and they have other things to do. So gifted and talented programs have a very rich history in our country and in New York City specifically, gifted and talented programs have helped people from, you know, kids from all sorts of backgrounds get ahead and help set them up for success. And over the years there's been this war on gifted and talented programs because, and this is so funny, if you were to tell me this would be the case 20 years ago, I wouldn't believe you.

Now people are saying that these programs are racist, that they're discriminatory. And the reason this is coming up again is because there is a candidate, I talked about him a bit ago, named Zoran Mamdani and he is a democratic socialist and as most democratic socialists they want to pretend that everyone is equal or should be equal and there shouldn't be rich people and everyone should have an equal shot and all this good stuff we're used to hearing from people like Bernie Sanders. But his recent thing that he said is that he wants to abolish all the gifted and talented education programs in the city of New York.

And this is not a new battle, this is not a new thing he said, because this has actually been going on for a long time in New York and there was a former mayor, two mayors ago after this election, who was de Blasio and de Blasio actually succeeded in some of this. So prior to all this, I think it was, I want to say it was within the last decade and possibly a little shorter than that, but there were gifted and talented programs and you took a test in pre-K, so you took a test before kindergarten, just a general aptitude, just general knowledge test and if you scored high in it then they would suggest that you get put into this program and there wasn't, there's not unlimited spots, there's only a certain amount of spots to go to the gifted and talented program. So this has worked and this is great, but then all these politicians were saying, well, this is racist because of course the kids that are privileged, the kids whose parents want to put them in tutoring, they're going to have access to this and blah, blah, blah.

There's a few funny things about that to me. One, if you're filthy rich and privileged, you're probably going to a private school, so that shouldn't matter. And two, trying to say that, so basically they were saying it wasn't even just about hiring tutors, they were saying the kids that have family members who speak English in the home or do this and that or even have a family where the parents aren't working, like you have one parent at home, that's a privilege and other kids who don't have that aren't going to get the chance and other kids who don't have that are clearly from other races who aren't white.

And that was funny to me because they were basically saying that if you don't live in a white household, then clearly you don't speak it and your parents must not speak English or maybe both your parents have to work. It was just a lot of silly assumptions that at their core, the assumptions themselves were pretty racist because they were making judgments on kids based solely on their race. And they were trying to say, hey, one race, I think one guy said, you know, there's not just one race that has a monopoly on this, on education and getting a good education.

So there were all these different things floated about. There was one program, I think it was called the Discovery Program or something to that extent where they were going to let people in, basically they let a certain amount of kids in without having to have that high test score. And it was kids from certain backgrounds, right? So it was not equality for all as the constitution promised where color and race and gender are not considered.

It was, no, we're going to pick people based solely on their background, their race. It was really crazy. But they also wanted to abolish this test for kindergartners.

And some people even proposed, let's abolish the test and let's just give every kid advanced learning. That's just to solve the problem, right? If we just give every kid advanced learning, then every kid is going to be set up for success. But there's some problems with that because that makes people think that we live in a society where every single person has equal skill sets.

And that's not what equality means, guys. So equality means in the terms of like equality before the law, that we are all treated equal by the government, that the government cannot deny us certain privileges because of our, again, gender or race. That's equality.

But equality isn't guaranteeing that all of us get into the same school. It's not guaranteeing that all of us get onto that soccer team. The best are going to get on.

The best are going to get into the good schools because that is the way the world works. Okay? So saying that they were going to just offer advanced learning to all the kids, that's actually quite harmful to children. Because the thing about advanced courses is you have to be ready to take them on.

If instead of starting kindergarten, you immediately went to fifth grade, can you imagine how confused you'd be? You wouldn't know how to do the math that they're doing. You probably wouldn't have the vocabulary or know how to read the same amount of words that they're reading. So you would sit there and you'd probably get very discouraged and overwhelmed.

And you might just give up and then you'd start hating school and you'd start associating school with learning, which as we know are different. And then you're in a situation where nobody, nobody wins because you're sitting there and you're missing out on education. And all because you wanted to say that everybody should have these advanced learning courses.

Not everybody is ready for advanced learning courses. As a kid, I may have been ready for advanced English and advanced history, but I was not great at math or science. I would not have thrived in those classes.

And so it's really important that we make sure kids are challenged. We want students to be challenged, but we don't want them to be so overly challenged that it's too hard and they give up. And there is a very fine line and there is a difference.

So this was the solution and that plan didn't go all the way through. So they didn't end up giving gifted and talented courses to everybody. But what ended up happening is they got rid of the test for the pre-kindergarteners.

So there's no longer a test. They do some other assessments. It's like a holistic approach is what they call it.

So they look at a bunch of different factors. But now, and Donny's coming around and he's saying, no, I want to get rid of this entirely. I don't want to do this, you know, telling a kindergartner that they're smarter than somebody else and they're turning it into a race issue when it's not a race issue, which is really interesting to me because historically, some of the largest numbers of kids who get into these gifted and talented programs in New York City come from Asian American households and from Asian households where their parents are immigrants and their parents don't speak English.

And even even though their parents don't speak English, they still studied and they were still able to keep up with this course load. And a lot of that is there's this really great spirit among, you know, immigrant families where they really, truly believe that studying and working hard is going to get you ahead in life and in many Asian cultures. And when we say the term Asian, that's kind of misleading because the word Asian is it covers so many different countries that it's so silly because it would be like lumping in America with South America also when we have entirely different cultures.

So that word in itself is a little bit too broad and generalized. But there are many cultures within that umbrella where education is is very much prized over other things. And so, yes, maybe families that come from those parts of the world are going to treasure and to value education more.

And maybe the parents are going to sacrifice to give tutors instead of vacations or trips here, you know, so there's priorities, there's different things they want to spend their time on. And it's not about the privilege of having an English speaker because those homes don't have it. It's it's a matter of of raw talent and it's a matter of what your priorities are and what your family values.

So it's there's so much more to it than just race, but it goes back to this whole war on merit and this attack on on not wanting people to earn things with their own talents and their own skills. People just want to be given things because they're mad. Other people have them.

And that, to me, is kind of at the heart of democratic socialism. And so this has been going on in New York for, like I said, several, several years now, which is so sad to me because New York has this rich history. And you know what? When we think of New York, we think of the if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere slogan of the old, I think it's Frank Sinatra song because it was this belief that like New York was a place not for the faint of heart.

You had to be tough. You had to be gritty. And you had to be willing to work for whatever dream it was you were trying to achieve.

And now people don't want to do that work. They want it to be given to them because something bad happened to them or because they think they come from a, you know, oppressed group of people. And this is a really dangerous, dangerous territory to be getting into.

And it really just negates and belittles how much work you have to put into to get into these programs. Like I said in the beginning, if you were on a really elite soccer team and somebody who never practiced got on just because their parents made less money and people thought that was unfair, that's that's setting him up for failure, too, because if he's not good enough to be on the team, he's not going to do well and he's going to feel bad about himself. And he's probably going to have, you know, self-esteem issues for, wait, why wasn't I good enough? And it's just really it's a it's a slippery slope to go down.

And it really scares me because for for those who really are truly meant for gifted and talented programs, they have given them so many opportunities and they've set them up for success and taught them how to study hard. So this war on merit is a little bit scary. And I think, you know, pay attention.

I try not to watch the news a lot, but I have to sometimes just to know what's going on. And I saw this headline about the gifted and talented education program in New York and what the mayoral candidates are saying. And it did frighten me a little bit because I think this is so important.

So, yeah, if you do watch the news, you know, pay attention to this election. It's going to be interesting to see what happens. I feel like a lot of the rest of the world has gotten more sold on the idea of merit.

And then you have places like New York City, of course, and probably California, for all I know, who are looking at ways to dismantle it. So we will wrap it up there. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast.

And until next time, I will talk to you later.