The Art of Teaching Children by Phillip Done

Author:Phillip Done
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2022-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

Enrichment

I hesitated writing this chapter. In fact, I considered asking my publisher to make the font size on this page so small that you’d skip over it like people do when reading documents with too much fine print. You see, I’m sure some readers are going to disagree with what I say here. How do I know this? When I wrote my first book, I expressed a similar opinion to the one I’m about to share, and some people got pretty hot under the collar. One woman went so far as to hunt down my unlisted home address so she could send me a letter expressing her disagreement. In her letter, she also scolded me for using the word damn. Well, sometimes in life you just need to say what you believe in even at the risk of being unpopular. This is one of those times. Actually, right now I feel like Kathy Bates in the film Fried Green Tomatoes when she purposely smashes her car into a younger woman’s vehicle in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie supermarket. When the young car owner screams, “What are you doing?” Bates famously replies, “I’m older and have more insurance.” Well, I’m old now, and my insurance is pretty good. So, here goes.

The issue I want to discuss is pullout enrichment programs, also known as gifted programs. I’ll just say it: I’m not a big believer. Before you start looking for my home address, please understand me here. It’s not enrichment that I’m against. I’m all for enrichment—when it is offered to everyone.

Let me explain how enrichment programs work in many schools. In grade school, when children are identified as “gifted,” what often happens is that they leave their regular classrooms and go to the enrichment class. This isn’t a problem for students who are pulled out. It’s not good for the children left behind. In fact, it’s detrimental. If kids see their classmates leave for enrichment, they feel bad. They don’t understand why they do not get to go too. They don’t feel smart. To children, if they were smart, they’d also get to go. In my career, I witnessed this many times. It breaks your heart, and I think it’s terrible that we do this to children. In education, we like to say that all students are gifted. It sounds nice. But our actions don’t match our words. If we really believed this, then why do we only send a select group of children to the pullout class? Why wouldn’t we send them all?

So why do we offer gifted education anyway? One reason is that there is a huge lobby behind it. It’s extremely well funded. Another reason is that it inflates self-importance. Moms and dads can say, “My child is gifted.” Throughout my career, I listened to many an upset parent when their children didn’t get into the enrichment program. I knew parents who spent a lot of money getting their kids tested outside of school when told that they didn’t qualify.

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