School for the Gifted, and Only the Gifted

Social control 313
Sasha Mora #3

This article was posted in the New York Times. It discusses the regulations set upon children attending and accepted into private schools. Not only do private and gifted schools charge for children to attend their schools but they test them. One particular school in Missouri only accepts students after testing them and doesn’t have many spots open for acceptance. Most of the students tested in are in the upper 90 percent range. The outrageous part of this situation is that the students being tested begin at a very early age. These students begin as early as kindergarten. The article discusses the curriculum for these young students as involving architecture, meteorology and scientific method all before the age of seven. The students that attend Hollingworth, this very expensive gifted elementary school, only have seventeen classmates. The school is slowly growing but they are maintaining the smaller class sizes.
This article is found to be controversial for many reasons. The comments posted by the readers express concerns of labeling children as gifted at such an early age. Other parents found this article to be comical and did not understand how child could have architecture as part of their curriculum at such an early age, stating that their child still played with blocks.
I found this article interesting for many reasons. First off the number of individuals interested in these gifted school, especially Hollingworth, was extremely surprising. 1, 832 four year olds applied for 50 kindergarten seats. Then the two hundred with the highest test scores are then invited to visit and see the school. This article states that children begin learning particular learning styles at an early age and need to be pushed from the beginning or they will simply fall back to join the others. I think this relates to social control due to the labeling theory. If these kids are labeled as gifted from an early age will they act in that manner and embrace the learning style set before them and most importantly will those not accepted into gifted schools never fully achieve their learning potential?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/education/19gifted.html