As a labeled “slow kid” it really messed me up and made me so doubtful of my ability to succeed. Growing up in poverty with a single mom and being the first in my family to pursue college, it was nerve wracking as I navigated that situation. Thank you for this video!!!
My son is quite brilliant. He's been in SpecialEd since second grade. Now, he is in college, sophomore year with his first "A's". I do my best to highlight his strengths and support him. Once a social security doctor put me in the spot, had me squirming in my chair, when he pushed me to explain my son's disability in front of him. We lost services from the government then and there. But he continues in SpecialEd even in college. That doctor fucked us over, I know. But my kid doesn't doubt his intelligence or his place in the world, nor does he worry if his mum thinks he's slow.
Same. I currently behind in math by one year in a small class for math. I have -A in HN history class. I was told don’t take AP government your gonna fall behind. I’m bored in my class
I always hated that expression that 'no one is special,' because let's be honest-- it's not a measure of how interesting or valuable each individual life is: it's just another way to put people in a hierarchy. 'Not everyone can be special because not everyone can look down at all the adoring peons that are less-special than they are.'
Yeah, it's very reductive. It doesn't take into account the beautiful complexity of life, and just sees "specialness" as a sliding scale ranging from not special to very special. That's why the snowflake label has always rubbed me the wrong way, too. Like yes, every person is like a snowflake: their uniqueness and specialness may be hard to see at a distance when lost in a sea of others, but when you take the time to look at one up close, that's when you can truly understand and appreciate its individuality.
You could also look everyone and no one is special, depends in what you actually look for. Also people probably are special if they dont try to be. And just decent person. I mean as people. Not caring about that bs and just be a decent person , probably special, ironically. I know there are piveledges and that and strenghs and weaknesses,but thats what you should try,raising upright people,right?!
A term like special is always describing a relation of a noun to a perceived norm within the same category, namely, whether it is better, greater, or simply different than the norm. As such, it's a really squishy word, often papering over a whole bunch of subjective value judgements. What are we considering to be the norm? What sets the noun apart from the norm? Are we meant to understand this relationship as subjective or objective? There are a lot of inoffensive uses of the term special, especially when it's obvious you're being subjective. Special can mean just "better/different than the norm" in a statistical sense, but most folks won't take it that way unless you make it obvious. Instead, they'll assume that by special you mean "objectively and intrinsically better than the norm." When that's referring to a person or group of people, then that can be an issue. The takeaway can end up being "this person is inherently superior to other people in an indeterminate number of ways."
Well the way I think of it is that if we have marbles, all of different colors in the same ratios, there’s no one marble that is special. If there’s a lot of white marbles and one is red, another one is blue, and yet another one is cubic, you can point to those and say those are special in their different ways. In that sense, not everyone can be objectively special. At the subjective level, each marble is their own entity, so they can consider themselves special if they so wish.
I was put in "gifted classes" and labelled smart at an early age. Because of stereotypes and my need for academic validation, it took me until after high school to realize I most likely have suffered from ADHD for my entire life. I'm not entirely sure how we should fix the current ways of operation, but we need to fix it regardless
Same here! I was in the gifted classes all through my schooling. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 27. By this point I also had a masters degree and my ADHD was never identified until I had a highly pressurised job. If you’re high functioning you often don’t get help and support, or even a diagnosis.
@@amandak.4246 It's not "mean" or "cruel", it's a question since a lot of people self diagnose nowadays with the Internet all the time. Also people made up stories all the time on the Internet so you never know.
@@lagopusvulpuz1571It is rude because not everyone can afford to get diagnosed or don't have the time (or they're a child who's parents won't/can't take them to get diagnosed, but that's probably not this person)- as long as they've researched ADHD, it's symptoms, and what it's like to have it before saying they likely have it it's not really a problem. Though I do agree people can't be diagnosing themselves willy nilly without actually doing the research or basing it on like one tik tok video they watched on it.
I definitely blame the school system for these labels. I was also seperataed from my class in 3rd grade. I was simply punished for struggling with multiplication.
As a labeled gifted student only to understand how intelligence and school systems work after the fact, I see this so much. Thanks for sharing another amazing video!
OK so as a black girl, ADHD is never clocked until we’re a lot older or email goes unnoticed because it doesn’t show up the same and other people so growing up. I never necessarily thought that school was hard like yes it was difficult but I feel like the workload is what made it hard and not necessarily the work. I was put into gifted classes early on in the elementary school and later on as well but once I hit middle school, I wasn’t even anymore and I just thought that I wasn’t good at school or anything but now that I look back is not that I wasn’t good at it. It was easy and I was unmotivated cause it was boring, so I never replied myself.
Yeah the school system we grew up with graded kids low if they couldn't handle an arbitrarily high work load and if they couldn't test well. They could be academically gifted and still struggle greatly. Most of the kids I was in slow classes with had nothing wrong with their ability to learn but actually just had a bad home life that made it difficult to concentrate and gave them a low tolerance for stress.
Yeah, it was the same for me. I just had so much to do and was so used to just breezing through work that I gave up. That only made my parents upset at me, which made me want to do it even less because homework was solely associated with bad feelings now. It put me in a rut that was hard to get out of
I had undiagnosed ADHD till I was 16-17, and undiagnosed maths and reading disabilities that went undiagnosed till I was 20 years old. I bombed in middle school since my older sibs, 7, 10, and 12 years older, who basically tutored me, had left home at the same time for various reasons, and I didn't have them helping me anymore. It was just me...and my disabled brain, with unhelpful ableist teachers. RIP. I'm white so my experience is def different and didn't involve racism, but I'd guess some sexism def was apart of it for why I was diagnosed so late, along with the assumption that since my family had academics in it I was ignored and couldn't be concieved as disabled or "wrong" in the system because of that. Even had a teacher say my freshman year of HS, "Oh, I had your brother--he was great, I expect you to get the same grades as him or better." Nevermind that he was 10 years older than me, had a VERY different lived experience, and that us being siblings doesn't mean we are the same. Especially since I prob had/have brain issues from being on a ventilator for 3 weeks as an infant and he DIDN'T, lol.
I also realized I never learned how to study properly. End of high school and the beginning of college was when I started to crash. It was devastating, and it would have helped so much to know that it wasn't just anxiety messing me up, but ADHD.
"unmotivated", I only know that good grades take you to better universities or colleges. I did have my motivation, school was average in terms of difficulty or at least until Algebra ll showed up. Some people like to solve problems, but most people prefer to avoid them & get the stuff done & leave or do something else. I was allowed to read or draw after finishing something earlier. There was that too.
For me the gifted label ended up being a double edged sword. On the one hand it was nice to get more challenging work and to be recognised as special and talented. On the other hand, I had raging ADHD which never got diagnosed while I was a child, because it was seen as a personality failure because someone smart like me should be able to control themselves and behave. I was a smart kid, so I couldn't have ADHD and as a result for zero support or accommodations for some of the difficulties I was having. Later on, the gifted label gave me a huge crisis of identity because I entered adulthood expecting to change the world, only to end up with a normal job like most people (which was also seen as a disappointment since there had been great expectations heaped on me since an early age).
Lmao, my family thought I would make it big because of my artistic talent. I recently landed a job as an artist at a great games company (as in, they are a great employer). Love the stability, rare as a professional artist. My family is surprised I'm happy with that, and why I'm not a famous artist. I tell them "Because the peers around me are even better. Art isn't even considered my strength". They are boggled, while I'm just happy to have a stable, well paid-job doing art.
big relate. i was always the smart/gifted kid and did really well in school up til high school. i enjoyed the greater challenge and especially flourished in maths and sciences, but now that i'm 24, i'm much more of a humanities fan, i don't have a job, and i dropped out of college!
To be fair as a similarly labelled person, it's not like things are set up for a single individual to be labelled as anything with promise and really do something meaningful with it unless you already come from a privileged background, so I literally wouldn't even take that part of it to heart in healing from the chaos that is sorting children into basically who has potential to be a good capitalist worker and/or celebrity in the future and who's a failure out the gate. We know none of it's based on anything except "vibes" (aka wh*te suprem*cy + capitalism) and esoteric test scores, lmao! 😄
In my school they didn't label people as gifted or slow. I think some of the teachers and students still did in their mind, but since i was doing so differently in different classes, i myself never thought of that as a thing. I also have ADHD and i might have been labeled gifted as well if i was in your environment, because i was sent to math competitions and often did quite well. But my parents never really cared and i had no external pressure on me. I myself cared about grades, but i was aiming at the range of 75% correct answers, medium grades, because aiming for the highest grades did not really work out. Aiming for the medium did work because it was sufficient to do everything last minute, like 4 am in the morning of the same day, because we had a small apartment and it was impossible to concentrate while my family was awake. No one was making me feel bad about my grades. Although my parents did think i was lazy when i was so stressed out that i got kinda sick and they thought i was somehow purposefully doing it to get out of school. But doing medium in school was just normal. I still did well in math and the teachers didn't talk to each other about who they think are the "good" students, so as far as i know, no one thought there was anything strange about this situation. I'm glad that they didn't make things about identity. You can actually be given more interesting problems to solve without it defining you as a person. I had a friend who told me that my level of knowledge/understanding is all over the place and i was just like, "ah, i guess that's me then". My school time wasn't easy or without problems, but i'm glad about this at least.
omg yes, the expectations. I am a very "intelligent" person. School had always come naturally to me as a child, and just recently during my adhd diagnosis they did an intelligence test and my therapist was wowed when i ended up in the top 5th percentile (i don't believe in iq tests as a measure of hardly anything, btw. im not trying to brag, bc i see the ability to do the specific kinds of puzzles included in an "intelligence" test as one /very niche/ life skill in a sea of many). But something I've struggled so hard with in my adult life is accepting that I do not have to change the world. I do not have to do exceptional things. I do not have to take promotions or be in management. Just because people think I am capable, does not mean that I owe them my time, effort, or "talent." I am allowed to just exist, and that's enough. I'm basically a secretary now, and other than the pay, I like where I'm at. I'm comfortable.
The fact that math is often a determining factor in teachers gauging your intelligence makes me think I might have been viewed as intelligent mainly for taking more advanced math classes. I was very accommodating to adults in general, too, but I did struggle with procrastination and specific tasks like timed essays. I'm about the same age as you, but I've only recently begun looking into an autism diagnosis, because my grades were so good, nobody considered that I might have a developmental disability.
yes. youre good at math and read a book here and there and suddenly youre gifted and better than others. my school kept wantig to put me in gifted programs despite not having the grades for it but refused to put me in the basic classes BECAUSE i read a book and excelled at math
@@spookydid Honestly good grades don't mean you're gifted, and being gifted doesn't mean you have good grades. Where I live we classify giftedness as its own neurodivergence alongside ADHD, Autism spectrum and others, with notable overlap with plenty of these conditions but some key differences. School performance doesn't play into it, it has to be diagnosed by a specialised psychologist and it needs extra attention and coping mechanisms like all the others. Gifted people with mediocre to bad grades are often termed "underachievers". This is not to imply that you are wrong about not being gifted, I don't know your life. I just want to clear up a popular myth.
And yet, I knew a person or two who were good at math but unremarkable in language arts or social studies, and the same in reverse. Using math as a "catch-all" gauge of intellect makes me want to scream for this reason.
I'm excited to watch this, in large part because somebody is actually talking about the consequences of being labeled a "slow kid". The online conversation overwhelmingly dominates former "gifted students", and while those consequences are real and serious, there's almost no attention given to the opposite side of the spectrum and the lifelong trauma it instills. I'm still unlearning the learned helplessness that comes with being labeled a dumb kid (I was never dumb, not that I really believe in being dumb as a concept either, I was just undiagnosed autistic and struggled heavily with school.). Being labeled a dumb kid is to internalize that no matter what you do, nothing will ever be good enough, so why even try. It's to be taught that you can never trust yourself to be right about something, and will defer to others even if you know they're wrong, because it's been hammered into you from so early on that you are too stupid to be correct. It's to second guess each and everything you do. It's exhausting and causes lifelong damage. Anyway, thanks for addressing this. Time to actually watch the video lol
@@aperlainmyhead Not to do struggle olympics or anything but I would take being a former gifted kid than a former dumb kid any day. At least when you were a gfited kid you had people who believed in you.
I think that the consequences of being the slow kid isn't talked about as much, because most people who were called "slow" in school are often ashamed and too embarrassed to admit it, let alone talk about it, since they know that people will judge them and see them as "stupid". It's a lot easier to tell your experiences of being a gifted student, because even though being called "the gifted kid" doesn't always mean you were smarter, it still feels that way for a lot. It can also feel a bit like bragging almost when some people talk about, but absolutely no one wants to brag about being part of the "slow kid" group.
@@mynameisreallycool1 I agree. There's a lot more "glamor" in being recognized as a "gifted kid" because out society prizes intelligence. It's a lot easier to talk about failed potential, because that implies you had potential to begin with, that you had value to begin with, and that maybe you still do. Being labeled a slow kid has far more stigma. There's nothing appealingly forlorn about an adult who used to be a dumb kid, it's someone to be avoided, because our society is deeply ableist and people who have development disorders of intellectual disabilities are severely disadvantaged. Being a former gifted kid carries the implication you're still intelligent, and so you still have value. Nobody sees value in the slow kids. I saw someone say being labeled a gifted kid is a double edged sword, well being labeled a dumb kid is just being thrown into a pit.
i was in the gifted program and then dropped out of it in middle school. I felt so stupid and school was miserable for me. there was definitely an air of "we're smarter than everyone" in the gifted program which is kinda gross? i ended up having autism but i didnt know until i was 17 and at that point i was online schooled and struggling more and more. it wasnt really the work of school (other than math) that was hard, more the environment of it. it was really interesting to hear your experiences since theyre so different from mine. honestly the school system can be really demeaning and traumatic for some and i hope it can be fixed somehow.
My sister was put in the slower math class in 5th grade, which really upset her. My mom argued with the school that she should be in the average class. They told her that if my sister got an A/A+ the first quarter they’d move her over. My sister worked her butt off and achieved it. Then the school said because the classes move at different paces of *course* she couldn’t be moved, she was now behind.
I totally relate the the “realistic” art thing you mentioned at the beginning: everyone in my family is very artistic and all are good at drawing. Growing up, my sister drew stylised characters and cartoons from the jump. For me, my mom and grandma (who both were great at drawing) drove into ME the idea that my art wasn’t good unless it was realistic. It was really discouraging: when I tried experimenting and drawing stylised characters, I got the message that my art wasn’t good; when my proportions, features, shading, etc were off, my art wasn’t good *enough*. Now that I’m an adult getting back into art, I feel the lack of comfort and experience drawing how I wanted to more than ever. I pretty much stopped when I was about 13-years-old, and a decade later, I’m happy enough with my art that I can’t help but feel disappointed for 10 years of lost practice driven by not feeling “good enough.”
I feel like these issues could have been easily solved if the art tutors EXPLAINED why it was important to learn the fundamentals of art, and not just shit over students interests. ^^' I've noticed a similar pattern with other subjects in my youth, lots of pressure to perform, but no actual reason to do so. 😂 Like, we would get Chemistry experiments, but the sheet would tell us everything to expect, the whys and whats... so why bother doing it?
I can relate to your comment though, as you explained that you come from a family with an artistic background. Whichever means if you have an artistic ability to draw from creativity and imagination. You have that advantage since your family is very artistic and creative. I come from a household and family background where my family is non-artistic, I am the only artistic person in my family. I can even do portraits of people and whenever students at my school always see me draw, they always feel a sense of shock, surprise and envy because I can draw at a more accelerated level than them. I end up improving my art skills because I’m not talent, I do not have a talent. It is called patience, decadence, determination, motivation and self discipline. No one is really talented, it is called hard work. And that terminology some people like your friends, teachers and family members say to you is very ableist and eugenic. We should normalize these conversations with people around us and talk to our friends, peers, colleagues, neighbors, teachers, school board administrators, superintendents and school staff.
@@mariamart_0absolutely!! I’m actually currently writing an argumentative essay for a college class about whether we should mandate Art (anything considered to express human creativity like dance,theatre,music, poetry, sculpture;etc)Curriculum as Core classes (like Math, Science, Reading, and History). Some argue that if students take interest then they should attend those classes and not all students should take those courses. I think it’s complicated because Physical Education is mandatory and it was hell for me (it was fun for others). Should we really push non-artistic students into a field where they don’t have an interest in? Or should we instead push them into that direction in order for them to garner a new found appreciation of art (praying that they don’t become cynical of it because it was pushed upon them)? Art can actually stimulate of a lot of brain development for not only students, but for everything and it can seriously help critical thinking skills which tbh many students can lack. However even if they do gain appreciation and decide to be in a field of art, when they go to college how is it going to pay the bills and help students in the long-run economically? There is a huge Art business in money laundering so there is also a moral aspect to it if you want to become a artist you have to sell your image as an artist and cater to a specific audience. Also if you want to become an art teacher it is super difficult (especially when coming from an immigrant or lower class background). There are not as many job opportunities and it’s very difficult to follow your passion when you have to pay in order to learn more about it and get an “official” degree on it. There is just so much to explore upon this topic and of course being referred to as a gifted/non-gifted student while wanting to explore artistic opportunities that not anyone can afford to.
THIS. I was a slow kid who ended up with imposter syndrome taking ap classes and graduating with a 4.0 on honor roll. I desperately wanted to be gifted like my brother and friends were. Being slow was my deepest shame and I still struggle to not consider myself stupid. I also had undiagnosed adhd (as a woman mine presented differently than the boys did and went unnoticed)
growing up as a “gifted” kid and then losing that label as an adult destroyed my self confidence because i had no sense of self worth outside of being the “smart kid” for so long
As a former “gifted” kid, I agree with all of this! I’d also add that my “gifted” status got less and less important quickly. In elementary school it felt like I was pulled out of class to just do fun projects. In middle school the only things to do with it was either battle of the books (which I had no interest in) or occasionally board game times (idk why). By high school I did take advanced English classes, but it’s not like those were for gifted students alone. If I were a parent I don’t think I’d want my kid to be in a gifted track or labeled that way. Also, and SUPER IMPORTANTLY: I STRONGLY THINK that my gifted status hid my autism, which I’m only now learning to discover as an ADULT.
I mean not the worst but uff too. Is it that often used to not talk about neurodiverse stuff and how that makes someone, Positive but still discrimination to not adress abelism?! To " cover the good cases that would question the system"?! Itmight be pretty sinister?! If i had to rant. And i think there at, well stigma ti that too,but i get figuring it out late, sucks.
I was a "gifted" kid and my brother was a "slow" kid, and it messed up a lot of things for both of us, including our relationship to each other. My brother thought I was always "perfect" and he could never live up to me, and I saw the help he needed and internalized it as him getting more attention and love than I did (as a kid who could do well on my own in an academic setting). If we hadn't had those labels put on us at such young ages, we wouldn't have had those issues. Thanks for this very insightful video!
I was a "gifted" kid but I've only recently realized that I was labeled that simply due to my ability to mask. I'm autistic and have always been a great masker up until 5th grade when I first experienced burn out and just didn't have the energy to keep it up anymore. Everyone thought I was breezing through it but in reality I had always struggled, I just hid it well. At that point it was already too late though, they still considered me to be gifted and didn't take me seriously when I clearly needed more help.
Also as the years went on, my learning style (hands on activities and audio learning with something hands on to do while listening, like drawing) was slowly fazed out until around 6th grade until there was none of it all. Just work sheets upon work sheets and I really cannot learn well that way. OO! And the art being a natural talent thing is so real. Almost everyone just considered my art to be a natural talent but I put so much effort into learning that skill that no one really acknowledged except my mom. Sorry for the tangent lol this topic just really speaks to me.
Was anyone else the “good quiet kid” who thought they were dumb but still wanted to learn to try and become smart? But fell by the wayside cause you weren’t disruptive or didn’t ask for better? I only got diagnosed adhd at 24 through out school I was obedient and shy but still keen to learn, it just took me longer to fully grasp & I struggled to work at the same pace as others. I remember I’d just be lost in a day dream, staring into space and the teacher would smack a ruler on my desk to “wake me up”. In high school I was always put in bottom sets with naughty kids & useless supply teachers. It annoyed me so much I went above and beyond to prove to the maths and English teachers that I was capable of more, so got moved up in both 😁 Even now doing an apprenticeship in carpentry with college 1 day a week; the young lads (18-20 yo’s) still chat rubbish, when I’m trying to type and think in class, which is infuriating. I do my best to stay afloat but I’ve always struggled to motivate myself when it comes to homework/coursework… I’m procrastinating rn lol
Actually yes I was. I was considered the “good quiet kid” who was “super easy” or “simple”. Also sometimes considered more mature for my age. In reality I had severe anxiety issues and was very afraid to speak up for myself. I had a hard time understanding the people in my life and why they treated me the way they did. People in my family would often tell me that I wasn’t dumb and that I was smart and shouldn’t believe that but at the same time they never cared about me or had faith in me which was very confusing as a kid. I started to never really believe any compliments towards me were real because I never felt like they held any weight. Along with that at school I had terrible friends, they would do and say terrible things to me and when I retaliated I was made to feel like a bad person, even by the adults in my life. On top of that my friends would also compare each others grades and would be so judgmental and rude if you didn’t get a grade as good as them. I was raised to be a doormat and to never stand up for myself, I was made to feel like a terrible person who wasn’t good enough from such a young age. This lead to serious problems in my teenage years and I almost took my own life. I’m doing much better now that I am aware of how I was being manipulated and realized that what took place wasn’t my fault and that I was never a terrible person or an unintelligent one. I was always a very smart boy and I had a good heart. I wish I never suppressed who I was for so many years for no good reason.
Yep. I have a neurological disability and due to this, I couldn’t learn. I honestly should have been homeschooled but that was inaccessible to my family because both parents worked full time and it would have been too much money for a private one on one teacher. I only graduated high school because I took the ged. And my scores were above average on the ged in English and history/social studies and right on the cusp of possible with science and math. The way we do schooling in general in this country is messed up.
I’m getting ready to take my GED tests in a few months. It’s mind blowing how broken the system is. I know I was fortunate to have the opportunity to try different types of school settings after middle school, but none worked for me. Trauma and ADHD/ASD really took a toll on me by that point. Individualized learning is only truly available to the very wealthy in this country.
I was labeled “gifted” all through school. I was almost always in the advanced class of every subject and took pretty much all AP courses from 10th grade on. But because I was usually the only or one of very few African American kids in the class, my classmates often treated me, at best, like I was “lucky” to be there - and at worse, sometimes I was told that I was probably only let in because of quotas and was taking up a slot that a more “deserving” white or East Asian kid should have gotten. I graduated in ‘11, so I’ve been out of high school for over a decade at this point. I went on to a decent university and now I work at a FAANG company. I have supposedly lived the gifted “dream” but let me tell you, being an African American gifted kid is a special kind of torment that fucks with your self esteem for the rest of your life. No matter how much I accomplish, I still hear the little voice in my head telling me that I’ve only had those achievements because I’m some kind of affirmative action charity case. I second guess my decisions and competence a lot. Also doesn’t help that FAANG is low key a mass torture chamber where self hating former gifted kids go to get their souls ravaged by dementors… …But anyways, in my personal experience, the gifted program just doesn’t work out for African American kids…even when it works out for them.
As someone who had similar experiences, but did great in college and have even been a teacher, I can confirm how messed up this school system is in all of these ways. I remember in elementary and up, "gifted and talented" kids were treated like coaches treat varsity players. I think it's because they want to take some credit in case those kids become famous in the future. The rest of us are just students pushed to the sidelines. By the time I hit high school, I gave up cause I could sense it was another set of useless years in which I was taking classes that meant nothing to my future and sitting down just to listen to boring classes all day was never ideal. It's been proven many times that students, especially young men, learn better when they can get outside and get hands on experience. Being in a school building all day feels like prison to a degree. What changed me? I was able to find and interest in other languages on MY OWN time. I was forced to take Spanish early on and had no interest at that point. Plus, teachers tend to not be good at teaching you how to learn/study a foreign language. I still remember my teacher telling my coach "he tries, it's just not his strongest subject". So I automatically thought I just sucked at foreign languages and some family members would even tease me about how I technically made a D (69) in Spanish 2. A few years later, I started learning Japanese and was pretty successful, that's when I learned I was capable of learning Spanish, which is what I'm doing rn. In the end, I went from "sucking" at Spanish and ending high school with a 2.3 gpa, to finishing college with a 3.5 gpa, including 3 years of two foreign languages with a B+ or higher. These school systems have only gotten worse since then...Kids weren't meant to be in these huge buildings all day, neither were adults. It's too robotic and unhealthy for us mentally.
Wow your experience is so similar to mine. Throughout all of elementary school I was placed in remedial classes and labeled as the “dumb” kid. I also had pronunciation problems and was placed in speech therapy. It made me feel so bad about myself that I spent my entire life working to remove that label. It wasn’t till 2 years ago, in my sophomore of high school that I discovered I had Asperger. It help me to realize that there was no such thing as smart and dumb. I just learned differently from my peers and it took me longer to process material. Thank you so much for your video! It bothers me how schools today still classify children and make them feel inherently inferior if they do not meet the standard. I also hate the preconceived notions that you are lazy if you do not receive a good grade. For some of the hardest working people I have ever known have received bad grades despite the effort they put. Overall, I wish education would become less grade centric and less competitive. Honestly most the time it just feels like a rat race through lessons and rapid memorization that you’ll forget right after the test. I love learning but not like this.
I was a sort of "slow" kid, tho my school never called it that. I was put in remedial math, remedial Hebrew (this was a Jewish school), and even though I loved reading I was always given the "stupid kid" books for English class which were supposed to be easier to read (I think this was just because I did not like answering reading comprehension questions and thought they were boring). This technically wasn't a remedial class but i also noticed that me and four other students were the only ones who were not in advanced French (Canadian school). My friends are always surprised that I was not labelled as gifted because I got great grades since I started higher education, currently doing a PhD, and I am very knowledgeable about my fields of interest: psychology and education. But nope, I had an IEP and everything. I was also diagnosed with ADHD and a nonverbal learning disability, as I recently found out. I was just completely uninterested in school unless it involved me writing book reports until university. My younger sister was identofied as gifted and was put into this special gifted program, and she was in it for a couple of years before she dropped out because the gifted kids were cliquey and stuck up. She was fine getting super duper high grades in the average classes and being with her friends instead. Now, being a school psychology PhD student and my research interests being twice exceptionality (being gifted and having a disability like adhd, asd, or a learning disability) and autism, we are currently being taught that all students should be consulted on their IEPs, moving to different class difficulty tiers, whole grade acceleraion, etc. We are also learning more about how a lot of IQ tests are pretty racist and USA centric so that can cause a lot of kids to get missed. The norms for making a lot of these tests excluded looooots of groups of people. Giftedness is still being pushed as a mainly positive thing, but I am noticing that practitioners tend to not lable kids in SpEd or basic classes as stupid anymore. I am very hopeful for the new generations of educational professionals, but also aware that the education system needs a MASSIVE overhaul. One step at a time 💀
IDK I only see hope if schools offer tutoring. Cause many parents in the US aren't rich and don't understand their kids projects. I had anxiety on Essays cause there is stupid rules that my parents didn't understand. My parents grew up in a time that you just wrote a story not write a thesis and pow statement for an essay. As a slow kid who got into normal writing classes in highschool this made not doing many essays. The slow writing classes don't prepare you for regular writing classes. I failed 12th grade English. Had to repeat the 12th grade. The US school system isn't designed for slow kids to succeed. The fact that there is tutoring companies proves it.
@liesel16 I know your comment is a month old, but I agree (sorry in advance for long comment). This is also an issue with ELL (English language learner) students, whose parents are more likely to have been taught different subjects in a much different way not only because they were in school decades ago but because of how different countries teach different subjects. Hell, I'm working with an ELL kid whose dad didn't get past 1st grade and that's the furthest most of his family members have gotten in education where they were from since the schools in that country was difficult to physically and financially access. We definitely need to be able to work better with families, namely non white and non American families, so that we can help them help their kids with school work. ELL students tend to have to work much, much harder just to perform at the same level as their peers due to the language barrier, and they need their parents support in that. I also want to say that SpEd tends to have not great educational outcomes, which is why we want to put students recieving SpEd services in the GenEd classroom with their peers as much as possible. The schools I am doing practicum (aka, volunteer work experience) at have a nasty habit of trying to stick all the ELL kids into SpEd which...well that's just discrimination. My supervisor, a district school psychologist, speaks out against these decisions all the time because she desperately does not want the district to be involved in yet another DOJ case. Being ELL is an exclusionary factor to SpEd because, while you can definitely have a disability and be an ELL student, you have to have more proof to determine whether the kid actually has (for example) a learning disability or if their English just isn't great yet. Kind of like how being considered chronically absent (missing 10% or more days of the school year) is an exclusionary factor because its difficult to tell whether the kid is not doing well in school because they have a disability or because they simply have not gotten sufficient instruction. Trying to stick all the ELL students into SpEd also makes more work for educational professionals (we all have to participate in getting the data to make that evaluation) and strains the already spread-thin SpEd staff. Some kids definitely need SpEd services, but some are better served at Tier 2 or 3 instead. But a lot of teachers cannot handle teaching classes with student who are so low, and think trying to get them into SpEd will be the best for the student. Often, it is not. I am trying not to blame the teachers here, because frankly they are put under a significant amount of pressure and made to do a bunch of unpaid labor. The USA is suffering from a decline in academic performance all around. Literacy rates are wayyyyy down. And you are right, subjects are not taught to current students the same way they were taught to our parents or even to those of us in our 20s (on that specific part, I can only ask for the experiences of people I know who were educated in the US, as I was not). For example, when I was taught to read and write, we were heavily taught the alphabet and then taught to just sound out words to try spelling them right. Now kids are still taught the ABCs, but a greater emphasis is on knowing letter sounds. Kids will be taught all the letter sounds, then the class will work on different groups of words that make similar sounds (e.g., cat, bat, hat, that) and sound them out together in class to read them. It's different, and if I wasn't going into the field of education I may never have found that out. Imo tutoring services being provided at the schools could help, but I feel like that's a bit of a band aid solution. Absolutely, we should be working with families to better help them help their kids with school stuff. Absolutely, we should not just be sticking all the ELL kids in SpEd. Absolutely, kids who need that extra help should get the support they need. But I also think we need a biiiiiig overhaul on the education system. It does not support students, parents, or school staff. Everyone is getting fucked over in one way or another. I have a lot of complaints about the education system that don't even really relate to the subject at hand, and I won't get into it because it will be a novel, but I just think we need to change how we treat students, how we collaborate with families, and how we treat and compensate our staff. It all works together, or I guess in the case of the US it all fails together.
Watching this video makes me feel less insane when I say I've experienced ableism to some degree. My first language was not english but i learned english and struggled with reading ever since. Everyone else treated me like i was "slow" and i really wanted to be a "fast" reader so i stop speaking my native language and loss the language entirely. Now as an adult i realized it was racism, ableism, xenophobia, and sexism all apply to my little elementary school experiences.
I was always a model student and labeled gifted, and in retrospect I was severely traumatized and keeping myself safe by fawning and behaving exactly right. My mom had me young and out of wedlock and I thought I was only worth the struggles I caused by being born if I was gifted. Additionally, I was undiagnosed autistic and was aided academically by some autistic traits but was never allowed to stop masking. I thought I had character flaws and was failing at common sense. It’s so fucked how capitalism rewarded and encouraged behaviors that harmed me while consistently denying me the support I needed.
I found out the gifted program existed when ALL my friends went to it one day, I guess my teacher didn't think I was on the same level lol. I spent some time in a different class for a field trip and that other teacher chose me for the gifted program. It was pretty fun getting to leave regular class to do these science and art based classes. This showed me the process of being chosen for the gifted program is extremely subjective and dependent on what the individual teacher appreciates in a student.
We didn't use those labels in my school, but the structure was the same. We had tracks called "basic", "standard", and "advanced". I was in the standard track for history, and it was totally worthless. I wasn't learning anything, but I got high grades because it was all memorization, which wasn't hard for me. On the basis of those grades, it was suggested I move to the advanced track, which I did. It was a vastly different experience. It was much more engaging, and I really got something valuable out of it, but I got a failing grade that semester because I didn't have the writing skills that I needed to do the assignments. The other kids, who had been in that track from the beginning, had had time to develop those skills, but I hadn't. So I had to go back to the standard track for the next semester.
wow! thank you for finally sharing the perspective of the 'slow kid' at school, Cheyenne! everywhere I look on the internet, all I see is gifted kids perspectives and all the comments always start with 'as the gifted kid at school...' I think this is my first time hearing the other's perspective!! thank you
I went undiagnosed with autism and add until this year and always just thought I "wasn't a school person". I think racisme was a big part of it because spelling, grammar and math are my biggest problems, I got help until 3rd grade with writing and math then just extra help with math but now nothing. I am medicated for my add, but my overall mental health really took a hit. I live in Sweden and I'm 14-year-old.
i was put in gifted classes in elementary school and it formed this baseline of how i was expected to do. As soon as i hit middle school it was incredibly difficult to keep up the expectation. I consistently didn’t understand things that my classmates seemed to know intuitively, and ultimately was unmotivated to do anything. The only thing i was motivated to do was art, and this made me feel even more stupid since every single one of my gifted peers wanted to pursue a STEM career. If i was smart like them the I should be interested in a career like that too. I realize now that i might have ASD and since i did “well” in school and behaved, no one noticed (meanwhile I struggled intensely to connect with others and never spoke a word in class, even if there was a group assignment.)
Being gifted worked very differently in my country. I didn't receive any special treatment in school, in fact most teachers were annoyed with me always "asking advanced questions that would confuse the other students" What it was though was basically it's own kind of neurodivergence diagnosis on the basis of a, yes, flawed IQ test, but also evaluation by a psychologist. The recommendation was "This kid needs more mental stimulation than average so feed them with information that they are interested in. Also they may be prone to anxiety because fast mind means fast overthinking. Also they may develop socially and emotionally more slowly because people will see them as more mature than they are and they may struggle to socialize. I think in America I would probably get a diagnosis for ADHD or something, but for me the "gifted diagnosis" really helped me to grow up in a way that I would say I have my shit together 90% of the time, even if I'm clearly "not normal". (Btw, my country is Germany, but from what I heard, this is unknown to most people here, too) Edit: Actually I have to correct myself I'll write a reply to myself sharing The Truth(tm)
I completely forgot for a moment that instead of having advanced and slow classes, it's our whole school system. We have three different kinds of *schools* you get placed in after elementary. Our equivalent of Slow, Regular, Advanced would be Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium, note that about 50% of people go to Gymnasium, by force if necessary, because this is a class system that is possible but difficult to escape from. Only Gymnasiasts are allowed to attend higher education, with a few exceptions. So basically if you're not academically successful as a 9-year-old you'll get handed a note that says "Congratulations! You'll be a blue collar worker!" (Or simple office jobs) It is messed up and we definitely used "Hauptschüler" as an insult, while being ambivalent about Realschüler. It was pure classism. I think this system has since been dissolved in many places due to the stigma. My experience was speaking of my time at the Gymnasium, at which I was still considered underchallenged. My bad. I was too busy yelling at the glass ceiling to see the mud of injustice it was built on.
As someone who still gets nightmares about failing in some high school subjects, this video is very validating. If I can recall, my only motivation to study hard was so that I would be spared from my mom's yelling and constant probing about my grades :( I'm definitely guilty of looking down on my peers though for not being studious enough. It really reeked of insecurity and my need to feel "special."
As a kid with ADHD, I was flunking my regular Ed 2nd grade class. I was close to being put into special Ed. My mom heard a story about another kid who was failing his classes, but excelled once being put into gifted classes because he was no longer bored. This was exactly what happened with me. I took the test and got in. I also didn’t have many friends, so I was happy to switch classes. From the beginning I was completely aware of the fact that I was only there due to parental support. This is true for most kids. If your parents aren’t informed (ie have a lot of free time for child development, lots of parent friends, etc) then they wouldn’t even know about the option to apply to the program. I knew I was smart, but I also fully believed that was only because I had resources to learn early. This helped me a lot. It never felt inherent, just lucky. Also I was bored, but I didn’t know that harder classes would fix that until I tried it.
i really hope this works for me, my adhd is pretty severe and i have the brain of a squirrel. at least once per grading period i have something dip below 70 and it really sucks
I usually felt so stupid needing a tutor for my math classes growing up. And being placed into remedial math in community college did not help. This made me feel so seen. Much love, Cheyenne.
My feelings as a "gifted kid" with heavy heavy quotes: I desperately needed help with my learning disabilities growing up (i have adhd and I am also autistic). I got good enough grades so that teachers and admins ignored my struggles and that bubble only ended up bursting in high school when I couldn't keep it up anymore. And to be honest I'm still reeling from that trauma because I am now spat out into the adult world with no real skills. It sucks on both ends of this arbitrary scale :/
Fantastic video. Thank you for creating this and sharing your own history with these labels. I'm sure there are many people out there with similar experiences that still impact them today
I got the "slow learning" label in elementary school and also got pulled out of my regular class once a day to go into a special class, which automatically labeled me a "retard" by my peers. The slow learner label stayed on my file up until I graduated even though I don't think I had a problem with learning in comparison to the other kids around me past around 5th grade, which really sucked to say the least. I definitely agree that my label had an extremely negative effect on me for all of my adult life the least of which being that I never feel confident in learning any new skill and always feel like I'm never going to be able to do it and will probably mess something up and make myself look stupid even though that rarely ever happens.
This is such an interesting topic! I wasn't gifted (by the end of high school I was recommended to start a gifted program but I felt so unworthy of it I didn't really look much into it) but I was the kid that got the highest grades in the class so I was labeled as the "intelligent" and "nerd". I knew some gifted kids and my sister was really good at math (she won multiple competitions) so I never felt like I deserved those labels I just got high grades because the exams weren't challenging. Back then I used this label to have some sense of self-worth since my difficulty with socialization took a toll on my self-esteem. But in college, my chaotic way of studying wasn't enough, and adding to my struggle to make friends I felt so worthless I ended up in therapy and finally got diagnosed with ADHD. Right now I'm learning how to actually study, ask for help, and bounce back from academic struggles day by day.
I remember reading Night because my mom made me read it for extra credit for the upcoming high school year. I felt like I was reading that book to get into advanced English but then the teacher pretty much sent me and some other students to regular English class that I was in Freshman year. I still feel like a lot of my hard work was invalidating just because I have a hard avoiding run-on sentences.
As someone who was labeled gifted in elementary school and then struggled in middle and high in math but excelled in other classes I was constantly told "you can pass if you just apply yourself more" and that made me so annoyed. Even though I really started to struggle in math the teachers didn't want to let me move down from advanced math to normal math because they thought I was just being lazy. I only got to be in a normal level math class senior year after I straight up failed PDM junior year. I got diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and realized that I excelled in certain things I tend to hyperfixate on, but I hated math once algebra started. My brain just didn't comprehend it as fast as everyone else in the gifted classes, but I wasn't allowed to move because I was "just being lazy."
My “gifted” label really hurt me in the end. The classes were definitely taught in a way that made more sense to me, which is why they should be available to everyone and especially students who struggle with traditional teaching! Everything was a breeze for me through middle school, but when I started to struggle in high school, I absolutely panicked and had a proper identity crisis over it. All of my teachers just seemed so disappointed in me because of my “potential.” Lo and behold, I had undiagnosed ADHD and it had been totally missed because no one in my life thought that someone doing well in school could have it. I am still working through the insecurities and anxieties from this experience.
Hi Cheyenne! It's been a while since I stopped by to watch, hope you have been well. I really relate to your upbringing, I always forced myself into gifted classes because that was where we got better care. This lead to me having such a hard time picking classes for myself in college, i kept withdrawing and burned out and eventually dropped out. It's hard out here lol thank you for always covering topics that come from such a sincere place.
I always knew I was advanced at reading comprehension and related topics but yeah, felt that I was really stupid when it came to math. I learned later during testing for development disorders as an adult that apparently I have been slightly above average the whole time. In school even the teachers made me feel stupid when it came to math and I was always getting C's. IDK how that happened. Hated sitting through math anyways.
Let's give less time, attention, and resources to the students who need more time, attention, and resources, and also tell them they're inherently less capable than everyone else! That will certainly help them catch up!
Nah fr. In school I felt like the teachers were so preoccupied helping the students who very well understood the assignment vs the students who were struggling.
The mention of raw talent, especially when it comes to art is so true. I always get a little annoyed when people say I am lucky I'm so talented when it comes to art. It's true that I may understand some fundamentals better than others or have an "eye" for art but none of that was natural talent, it was only ever an interest in that particular medium of expression, picked up and developed at a young age. I will see people who supposedly don't have artistic talent draw and get frustrated with the results, assuming I don't know what they must be going through, but I do, it's just that I went through that same barrier earlier because I started earlier and pushed myself hard to overcome that obstacle earlier, at an age where people don't expect me to be a master of anatomy or perspective, so I had less critical eyes on what I would draw, making it was easier to keep going and not be so discouraged. It in no way means they can't reach the same level or even surpass "better" artists, but the insistence that talent is necessary to truly be good often makes people give up. Funnily enough despite what I'm saying I struggle with falling into the "they're just talented" mindset when it comes to things I'm terrible at like maths, and it's something I'm trying to change. No matter what the subject is, it's way more likely that the reason someone got good or even exceptional at it is because of time and effort instead of "raw talent". Thanks for the interesting video!
I relate to so much of your personal story. All of that describes exactly what I went through and what I struggled with. I was also an art kid, focusing on art because it helped me cope with the bullying and the self doubts. My reading comprehension wasn't where it was supposed to be in kindergarten..like that's wild. It's kindergarten but even kids that young are placed under a microscope and pushed into categories even though they aren't old enough to comprehend what this means. I was kept back, because my teachers suspected I had a mental disability. There is nothing wrong with someone who has mental disorders, but being placed in an environment that breeds competition on knowledge it was very hard. I remember my mom having the conversation with me in the back of our van. I didn't entirely understand the impact of the situation being that I was very young but seeing my mom cry and knowing I wouldn't be able to move forward with my twin brother it upset me and caused me to develop GAD. We later found out I had ADHD, but it wasn't treated like something I couldn't control. If I lost focus or asked for something to be repeated teachers would scold me, I was told I was a "bad student" because I lost focus easily, and I tended to have energetic spurts where I would talk or maybe move a little too much. I was separated from my peers, I had to test in a different room from everyone else, yet I was still treated like I could control my ADHD. I took medicine for a short time, it helped but it took away my personality. It made me a zombie, it made me sick and I wouldn't eat. I was forced to push myself harder in order to prove to everyone that I was more than just my disorder, and more than "the slow kid" or "the dumb kid". It was very hard, I had to learn how to cope with my anxiety at such a young age. My guidance counselor told me I wouldn't get into college because my math grade wasn't high enough, even though we had only 2 math teachers in my entire high school. Here I am now, I'm in a university, I'm studying animation and I made the Dean's list my first year. I have conquered my fear of reading and writing. I gained a really competitive scholarship with my essay submission and won first in my entire high school for an essay contest. It's so disappointing to see how the system treats children. How they teach them to put people in specific categories as if someone can't do great things if they don't meet their idea of "ideal knowledge" or can't get a degree without these things. To anyone struggling out there, you got this. You can do amazing things even if the entire world tells you otherwise.
I was placed in the "advanced" math and science classes in 7th grade. Unfortunately the summer prior I had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and while for the most part I felt no different, I was often falling asleep in class and had difficulty focusing (often signs of fluctuating blood sugar). I was suddenly getting much lower grades than years before and soon was placed out of these classes. I was made to feel so so stupid and inferior for all those years, and throughout high school I felt I had to prove that I had potential. I've only realized now that maybe, just maybe, the sudden onset of a chronic and invisible illness might have hindered my ability to adjust to school. But who knows right?
I was labelled as a slow kid but a “pleasure” to have in class because I was really quiet and well-behaved. Surprise! I was an undiagnosed autistic with inattentive adhd. I loved daydreaming and it was the only thing that made me happy due to a tough home environment. Anyways, I honestly started crying at Part 4 because pm all my teachers gave up on me expect for my flute teacher. By the time HS rolled around I gave up on all academics because it just “wasn’t” going to happen. I wasn’t “smart” enough. I also wasn’t naturally talented at music (adhd made it hard to focus) but I was determined to become a skilled musician. I practiced four hours a day for years so it really does suck when ppl say, “wow I wish I was talented in the arts.” So it really resonated with me, when you started to talk about the hard working art kids. Thank you for this video essay. It’s super validating and kind of healing for my inner child. It sucks how much our education systems hurt us in different ways. ❤ oh last thing! I did struggle with imposter syndrome for pretty much my whole life until I received my autism and ADHD diagnosis. Learning that I have a different neurotype has helped me be a lot kinder to myself. The right ADHD meds also help! So I also related to the survey participants who mentioned imposter syndrome. And you as well, ty for being so open about your experiences with us. ❤
This was so cathartic to watch. I went to a performing art school and competition against our peers, other majors, and other schools were highly encouraged and perpetuated, especially by our teachers. Plus the fact you can get kicked out for bad grades. Although for me I just felt lucky I was placed in classes at my level or just classes where busy work/participation was most of your grade. Having schools compete against one another for finite resources is such a horrible idea. Being labeled as a gifted child was great when I has low self-esteem and that's all my parents cared about. But good god, that belief fucked me up once I had to deal with getting failing grades or a couple of classes in college. It really took a toll on me mentally. The whole "If everyone was special, then no one is special." quote was a huge thing for not only my arts school to kinda reinforce but also, in my opinion, a huge belief during the 2000's. There's so much wrong with the broken school system, especially in the US. And as much as schools that don't use grades are mocked in the media, the fact that they work is amazing and honestly a direction we should go in and explore. Besides, the history of our school grading system is based on an old Prussian model iirc. Like, there needs to be changes and updates. Thanks for making this video. It helped me feel validated in my experience and feelings about the school system. It also helped me ease my mind and reminded me that I shouldn't place all my worth on intelligence and grades. Your video helped take a lot of pressure off.
hello I just stumbled on your video, I was the "super smart kid, that was wasting my intelligence." in school. I took an I.Q. test and I was put in "s.ped classes." It honestly floored me when I was told that, because I was always told that I AM SO SMART. Same as you said in a way, I hated hearing those words, they were like dangling a carrot. to this day as a 30 yr old I still struggle with compliments. I just wanted to share, because your story really spoke to me. Thank You
Worrying about been labeled slows you down. Feelings hurt and wanting to hide doesn’t help. You’ll never know your potential till you try. Many people didn’t know they could fight until that day they got tired of being bullied and fought back.
I actually had the experience of being labeled “slow”, then “average”, and also “gifted” throughout my childhood. I think it’s a really weird position to be in because I’ve seen the good and bad sides to all three. I think labeling kids in general is a terrible idea and will always lead to a hierarchy because of the negative and positive connotations that words have. Especially to kids who view the world as mostly black and white; they really don’t see the nuance.
I'm twice exceptional (high IQ with a learning disability, AuDHD and dyslexia in my case) and elementary was complete torture. My parents had to fight really hard to get me a fitting education and I'm really thankful they did. In highschool I got into a Dalton school where I got to flourish and now I'm an aerospace engineer.
My parents made the life-altering decision not to get me screened for autism because I tested into my elementary school's gifted program. When I was starting to show more signs of being autistic, they made another life-altering decision to ignore it because the private school they wanted to put me in didn't accept special needs kids. I was 'gifted', I continued to be 'a pleasure to have in class' and it honestly ruined my life and relationships because from that point on everything I struggled with as an autistic person were my personal failings.
I was a "gifted kid" growing up. My best friend was in special ed as a kid. We met as adults, and we agree that we have about the same intelligence - we have all sorts of deep, philosophical conversations. I'm just better at spelling than she is. I'm going back to school currently at the age of 32, and while there are some "slower" people in my classes, those students are also some of the most engaged and fun to have in class. They aren't afraid to ask "stupid" questions. Being separated from my peers as a kid and being held up as superior to the masses because I was good at standardized tests gave me a huge ego for a long time, which messed me up once I finished college and entered my 20s. It took multiple years of weekly therapy to unlearn the damaging attitudes I was taught by being "gifted."
I was labeled gifted and it made me sabotage myself. I would give up on anything I had to work at because I was told to be gifted was to effortlessly succeed. It was incredibly destructive to me, kept me from being diagnosed with mental health conditions, and ruined my college years because I didn't know how to study, which ruined my life.
As a gifted kid, I was an anxious mess. I was so worried about maintaining my grades, and I felt like failing to be the best in my class meant failing to be worth anything at all. In high school I sacrificed my sanity to become valedictorian, and even as a senior in college I feel immense pressure to maintain straight-A’s. I tell myself it’s so I remain the best possible candidate for grad school, but in reality, without perfect grades I feel worthless. Not sure what to do about it at this point.
Being in the Talented and Gifted program as a kid and later in high school honors classes ended up being bad for me overall. There was too much work and I didn't feel engaged with what we were learning. I had severe depression and insomnia and I could barely get out of bed. So being told I was smart while really struggling was absolutely terrible. I didn't get along with a lot of the other kids in these classes because they were smarter than I was or snobby or very conservative. By 10th grade I went back to mostly normal classes and it was a relief. I still suffer with mental illness and flunked out of community college despite understanding most of the work. Comparing my actual life to my supposedly unfulfilled potential makes it hard to feel good about any achievements I have. I'm 32 and I want to go back to college, but I'm afraid to because I failed at 19. I have imposter syndrome at my current job of over seven years regardless of promotions or raises I've received. These days I'm just trying to figure out how to be more neutral toward myself and my life. Being the most competent or smart or hardworking is not something I'm interested in, because screw capitalism and all of the harmful systems intertwined with it.
what you said about not being able to draw what you wanted to draw resonated with me so deeply- i remember when my art teacher told me i’m not allowed to use words in my art… now i use them in my art to spite her, and nobody tells me i can’t. thank you for this callout video, as an undiagnosed autistic person who’s now graduated and not wanting to pursue college (at least yet, i just escaped 12 years of hell and they want me to PAY to go back?), i’m glad i know now that i wasn’t in the wrong, the american schooling system was.
I'm white and physically disabled from birth. There were times teachers flat out said I didn't belong in the mainstream classroom in front of peers. Granted, it was mostly for classes like P. E. and Home Economics, but every time it happened it lit a fire in me. Also, it's been my experience that many teachers don't like it when disabled students take advanced courses. It's like they think disability and intelligence can't exist simultaneously. Yes, I needed extra time writing and taking notes, but that doesn't mean I didn't belong there. I often felt like I had to show off my knowledge to the point of irritating my peers as a kid, because I didn't want my teacher to think me dumb. As a disabled adult, I've learned that it doesn't matter how much education you have you're deemed useless to the state from the get go. There's no public transit infrastructure to support those of us who are unable to drive, so we live on tax dollars. I'd love to be able to teach full time, but there isn't even the infrastructure in place to teach disabled people to drive with hand controls. I'm so tired.
Looking back, I was definitely treated as a slow kid in elementary school. I was even told in HS that I had a math learning disorder that I "overcame" in HS. Still angers me that this was hidden from me in years and it explained why I was treated differently in school and struggled with math. I was also almost diagnosed with ADD when I was 3. I may have had it b/c I wasn't really interested in school from ES to MS. Our education system is garbage.
Slow as my schools often used it as a child was meant to indicate accommodations vs extra assistance. Slow was usually used to mean something like learning disability. Which is different than simply struggling in class which just means you might need tutoring. That or things like autism which make a child process things differently. Learning disability are things which are barriers in learning. Such as dyslexia, it's not that you are incapable but you have a barrier that often requires accommodations. Things like autism would often have sociol difficulty as well as other sort of issues which made functioning in a classroom harder. So slow usually was used to mean, in need of accommodation. While being behind was used to indicate 'Requires tutoring'.
I’m undiagnosed autistic and this video was really cathartic. I was always a “dumb” kid but I wasn’t loud so I blended in. I resented “smart” kids so much. It was to a point that i went out of my way to judge/ hate on smart kids because I hated that they had it good. I also had an abusive household so there’s some intersectionality there. I totally gave up on school after I realized I’m never going to be smart like the other kids Thanks for posting this
School overall was traumatic and miserable for me. I had similar experiences to you I started out in "slow" classes with classmates that had bahavioural problems in elementary then I started to work my way up to "gifted" classes in middle school but somehow I was more miserable in the "gifted" classes because classmates were way more standoffish and elitist?? I convinced my administrator to put me in average class for science because i couldn't stand the pressure of the "gifted" class 🤣but i was happy because i got to move to my favorite science teacher at the time.
Also, I want to comment on "Autism" because you did not mention it at the beginning with ADHD. I have not being diagnost and I told my parents that I think I have autism subtly but they ridiculed me plus I live in a "undeveloped" country. I have always been the kid that is extremely shy, but not the cute type of shy, the one who talks back when people don't expect it, I was told by my teacher in high shcool that I am slow, nobody never told me that before but my mom told me that back in primary school, my teacher told her that I should be check by a psycologist cuz of I did not socialize, she ignore this until middle school. I went just once and he just give some advices on public speaking. I did not want to socialize, I just want people to stop asking me to performe, I want to please them but it was hard to not feel anxiety while performing. Finally at 14 I got diagnost by the school psychologist with social anxiety. I thought "finally" but that was the beginning of me, realizing "oh sh!t am still bad at other things, not just socializing". At high school, my teachers and classmates were confused. They thought I was smart but lazy, because I knew some random facts and I read books, but I knew that I was not smart, I just have obssession, I never liked to say they were obssession but I have to admit it, even when I was so overworked, If there it was something that I liked I would get trapped on a rabbit hole for hours trying to know everything about this new topic. I even went a week trying to listen to a certain genre of music just to be able to talk with my classmates that liked that genre so I can speak to them. I accidently click in video "Do you have sensory issue? me too, lets talk about" I was so chock because I did not know that this was a austistic thing, I totally thought is just a coincidence and I close the video. But weeks or months later, I click in a video "People say that you are being rude when you think you are being polite" - I realize that I didn't know what austim was, I just assume it was a "learning disability" or any other disable thing. But again I did not finished the video because I was so close minded, I was like there is not way, but every month I would click on a video so I did my research and surprise Austim is a spectrum and is common that some adults live undiagnost.
I find a lot of what you said relatable. If anything we need a big overall on how education is done like it makes me pretty sick how many ppl fall thru the cracks due to the bias of full as adults that should know better and do better.
I was labeled gifted in elementary and middle school. I had such a "good work ethic" then. I was only a 9th grader when the pandemic began and I started seeing a droo in my grades. I used to run to the bus stop every morning and that would give me adrenaline. I was also bullied severely and had a horrible social life while dealing with depression, yet my grades back then were amazing. I struggled so badly in 10th grade because I was just getting back to walking to the bus stop every morning. I wasn't bullied by my classmates and I finally found a group of friends that I love. I was happier than I ever was when those labels were put on me, but my grades suffered so badly because of it. I'm in my senior year of highschool now and I just took my very first AP classes, AP Art and AP Physics because I love them both. It's also required for seniors to take at least 1 AP course so that's nice. I'm struggling emotionally and still dealing with depression, but I still have my group of friends that I love dearly and my grades are okay for someone like me. This might not be important but I will note it anyway: back in elementary and middle school, the school that I went to was a public charter school with majority of the students being black and surrounded by pretty dangerous neighborhoods which would explain why they were so bad and hard to deal with. I now go to a school that is diverse within the same city and different people from different parts of it. I struggled here though and I realize that I was not prepared for highschool. I have to apply for colleges now and I can barely (if at all) have a GPA of 3.0. I have a 2.0 unweighted and a 2.5 weighted because of my struggles from highschool so yeah, that's fun. I'm applying to a lot of colleges with the programs thst I want but I am not too confident that I'll get accepted into most of them.😢😢 Wish me luck 😅
I hate how so many teachers think that basically insulting kids will always motivate them to do better. I had a teacher who would tell us that we had worse grades than we actually did in order to motivate us to try harder but all it did was make me not want to try at all because I felt like she wasn’t treating us fairly anyway. While there are some children who will be motivated by being called „slow“ and basically just stupid by teachers I strongly believe that the vast majority of students are not motivated by this and are actually more motivated by getting positive feedback.
Yeah, the whole system is wild. I'm a first-gen, eldest daughter with ADHD and there are so many jokes about former "gifted" kids like us who had a very hard time transitioning to college and also just figuring out who we were when you took away all those outside incentives to learn and also met so many gifted people of all sorts (academically or otherwise) and suddenly you realize you're not special at all. I eventually found something I deeply love after working too long towards being a doctor (like I thought I was supposed to). I do have many happy memories from that time, and the more challenging classes were good for my ADHD brain, but overall, making school my entire personality took something away from my experiences being a kid.
As a “gifted” kid from early on, I’m actually kind of retroactively jealous of the “slow” class. We didn’t get any extra field trips or anything, just more work, but they got taught how to study. Entering college only to realize studying is a thing and I didn’t know how to do it was… not pleasant.
i was labeled as gifted throughout my childhood because i was hyperlexic and generally found school fun because it wasn’t too difficult for me. nearing the end of middle school though my undiagnosed adhd and autism began to catch up with me and i began to see myself as worthless and stopped trying to do anything but just graduate because i felt like i could never compare with anyone else at my snooty prep school and was often only valued for what work i could do, and i quickly became disillusioned with that and just started to hate everyone and myself. my mom also had the same expectations put on her by my grandparents and couldn’t live up to them so she was really the only one i could trust to value me for more than my grades. i also made friends on the internet outside of my school and getting to know and love people who weren’t in or part of that environment really helped me realize that i wasn’t a problem and that it was all just bullshit.
I was labeled as a gifted kid. I don't think having a "gifted" and "extra help" programs are bad ideas, I just think the way their presented/labeled is wrong. It should be presented as where you need to be, not positive or negative, just neutral. I remember getting pulled out of my language immersion math class to go to the English advanced math class and going back to class only to find out I was supposed to do the homework for both, the worst part being that I wasn't learning the terms in the other language which became a struggle. Like, I liked math and it felt like a punishment. There were maybe eight to ten of us in the main advanced class thing, and we kind of clumped together, didn't interact with the other kids, which was made worse when we would occasionally wind up missing recess or other outside time to go to the special class. It was so distressing for anxiety riddled people pleaser teachers pet elementary school to show up to class when they should be in the room and find no one there. It wasn't even that they got to go outside and I didn't, it's that I didn't know where anyone was because no one bothered telling us. I had a horrible combination of an inferiority and superiority complex where I thought that I was so much better than all the average kids, but I knew I wasn't as good as some of the other kids in the gifted program, which let me tell you, not fun. Also, once I got over that, I became friends with a couple of those other kids, and I wish I didn't wait so long, because my friend group was toxic as hell (unrelated to the gifted stuff) and I would have been better off with better friends. I had/have so much anxiety around not doing well. I got to middle school and thought if I got a B+ plus, I failed. I finally snapped when I had a horrible teacher and I realized I didn't care enough about the class to want to pass. And now I have this weird need to do well combined with this apathy and it sucks. One of my friends got diagnosed with ADHD, but they're labled as gifted so the school denied them accommodations (illegal, but they're parents didn't care enough to fight it) but the problem is they are slowly killing themself to maintain that and the school refuses to acknowledge it. Most of my friends are either gifted kid to hrun out pipeline, or they're in the "special" classes with the teachers who are worse at accommodating their neurodivergence then they're actual teachers The gifted program didn't set me up for success. And it might have been meant to, but it wasn't designed to.
I hated the labels of intelligence established by the education system. I was in the slower classes in elementary school and due to speaking anxiety I used to stutter when being called upon to read passages to the class, I was labelled slow in reading although I loved to read on my own. Due to being placed in the 'slow' reading program, my pleasure reading books like Harry Potter were confiscated from me, my teacher telling me that I can't be able to read such advanced books. I went through middle and high school being in average or slow classes whereas my friends were placed in the gifted advanced programs. This caused me to think that I was the stupid friend. When we took the SATs, I believed that with my score being the lowest out of my friends that I could never get into colleges, anticipating to join the military for the education benefits. I have been questioned by school counselor's whenever I advocated for myself to be placed in double-language courses and attending a legal academy for college credit, reminding me of how difficult they will be for me. None of my school counselors asked me about college. It was not until after I graduated high school and left those labels instilled by my very competitive school that I realized that I'm intelligent. I worked so hard to prove those teachers, counselors, even co-workers that I am smart enough for what I want to pursue academically.
I'm on a mix spectrum of this. I was "gifted" up until college. I excelled, top of my class, literally did nothing except for school. Throughout elementary and middle school, I was a tolerable problem child because I was easier. I had very severe issues at home so I was constantly being taken out of class. Instead of the anger outbursts of other students like me, I'd just burst into tears. I was more palatable to my teachers despite not really fitting the stereotypes of a gifted child. I developed this "survivor porn" complex. I was praised for my good grades DESPITE my trauma and disability, but I was so empty. I spent the end of my senior year in a psych ward. College has been rough.
will always hate the label of gifted kids and people talking abt 'gifted' kids experience bcs even now they are talked of and focused on even more than all the children who were labled as 'slow' and 'stupid'. its invalidating and just makes us feel invisible. im so happy you made this video, thank you.
BLESS Thank you fot talking about this. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child (and as a female, which was always underdiagnosed), and I was smart enough to not be in the developmentally delayed class, but wasn't quick enough to really be in the regular class. They didn't know what to do with me. Pair that up with old school Catholic teachers who were very narrow minded to learn about learning disabilites and to meet me where I was, and I had a horrid time. Thankfully I was accepted into a school specifically created for learning disabled youth for grades 7 to 12. While a boon for my esteem, it also meant that I missed out on a lot of the stereotypical highschool experience. That all being said, my feeling of "don't be sus" in elementary has followed me all my life. I've been in therapy for a year now to unlearn all my habits and perceptions about how life works to rebuild it in an image that works for me.
This video hits home fore sure. I wish I did the poll. I’ve been on both sides. Early elementary I was seen as the “slow kid” and it changed in 5th grade and I got into AP classes from then on… this vid 100% rings true and I feel so seen by this
I'm 26 now, Brazilian and autistic. I did not have access to gifted programs in my school years, as it's simply not a thing in most schools here. It frustrated me deeply and I even advocated for it during what would be "my high school" to you guys. I felt constantly bored in classes. Despite not paying attention to them (I'd work much better from home, by myself), I was very rarely allowed to exercise creative writing, reading and drawing during class, even though I was not disturbing anyone and could answer correctly to whatever the teachers tried to ask me. My grades were always As and very rarely Bs and I was one of the few students in my school that was trusted to be handled school report directly. But I couldn't have one class that challenged me. When I was little, I took a test to jump a school year and so I did, but when the opportunity was again presented to my parents, they denied, as they thought it would cost me a lot socially. However my social challenges come from autism and how hard communication and connection feel to me, not the age group I'm interacting with. In the end, I am in my third attempt in uni, because I simply was never allowed to explore my interests and passions, as the other students were. I've never had to learn a system to study, so I struggle with it. And I feel like all my potential is wasted in a daily basis.
I was a gifted kid in school but because I was going blind I became the slow kid and it got so bad I dropped out of school. Before I pitied the slow kids coz they were so kind and my friends and a lot of the stuff they got made fun of I did too 😅. Going back to school now aware of disability and abuse I only ever saw the slow kids for what they were (abused or disabled and special needs). I remember this one kid that was lovely, handsome, entertaining, talented, hardworking and charming (this child was a dream child 😂) but he just couldn't math and because of that was abused and labelled slow. I remember realizing he was disabled and I was too but for me it was a pass to struggle but for him an offense to.
I was labeled a "gifted" kid in elementary school (definitely due to autism, in retrospect), but had to be put in special education in highschool and only graduated with bare minimum grades. After being labeled as "gifted" in elementary school, I always saw myself as a failure afterwards, resulting in the typical burnout and depression that comes with it. I didn't even have to do homework or got any assistance as a "gifted" kid, because they just assumed I understood everything already, leading me to fail my foreign language class.
Interesting to see the experience of someone else who did remedial classes and enhanced classes. Before I even started school, I was considered slow because I wasn't talking at 4 years old. Teachers had extremely low expectations for me. But then I excelled in sports/games and then reading/writing were introduced and I LOVED reading and writing. I struggled to listen and talk but reading and writing were these exciting opportunities for me to communicate. And then there was maths. I cried most maths classes. The differences in subjects was extreme to the point that teachers insisted I get tested back in the 1980s when they generally didn't test kids. At least not where we lived. I was diagnosed with Central Auditory Processing Disorder, later CAPD was included under the dyslexia umbrella, only it's basically an auditory version instead of written. I struggle to isolate and differentiate sounds. I felt stupid. I rarely spoke. It took forever for me to think of something to say and then to project my voice. I felt so hopelessly stupid. My relief came in sports, English, History, etc... Even if kids weren't friendly, I was one of the first pick in gym class. I got onto teams and I could dance. But maths was daily humiliation and torture. I woke up each day feeling dread. I hated school, teachers and other kids eventually.
In school, I had an undiagnosed ADHD, autism and depression in school, and was gifted. Even though my grades were fine, I usally felt bored and unintrested, arrogant and overconfident, or stressed and like a faliure. However, I was pretty well behaved in class itself, had an alright memory, and it looked like I was engaging, so I continied being put in classes hardly representative of my internal level (not that any other level would make a difference, as I have to learn in very odd ways to get anything to stick.) The label hurt me so much at my time in public school. I was eventually diagnosed around the high school mark and put into a school that was designed around autistic kids. If you know anything about what that entails, it means every single kid that cannot be standardized is forced being taught in a standarized way (the staff was trained for behavior problems, not for actually teaching the right way.) So, lessons were dumbed down to an excessive degree, teachers either provided not enough help in a very basic manner, or way too much help, they basicallly gave up on trying to actually teach anything. Students were constantly and consistantly interrupting class, the amount of and which students would do it varied class to class, somtimes being so unbearable I could hardly hear myself think. There was PLENTY of busy work with no real purpose, which I HATED, because around this time I actually learnt how to properly motivate and engage with the lesson in a way that suits me best so I could actually learn somthing from it, but most of my learning came from home and the internet, somtimes I learnt topics relevant to the classwork, leaving me even more bored than usual, and to add a cherry on top, many teachers treated us as way younger than we actually were, which got on my nerves. However, I would say I did prefer that to before, as the teachers were very positive and friendly. Overall, the school system is a joke. Nothing but a super big waste of a childhood that either needs to be revamped heavily to the point where it barely resembles school as it is now, or just go away.
My MA k-8 local school did not have gifted programs. In the district high school every class had CP (dumb), CPA (average), Honors (gifted), and AP (easier than honors + college credit) versions with students self selecting their level. It was GREAT. Freshman year I did 4 CPA & 2 Honors because it was not recommended to take more than 2 honors. I ANNIHILATED everyone in the CPA classes Sophomore through Senior year I took exclusively AP or Honors if AP was not available. The advanced classes required work and were self selecting, so the class sizes were only 18-23 students & there were never any disruptions or behavioral problems. I then went into college with 33 credits. Im not a fan of forcing students into dumb or gifted classes. I am dyslexic, was in special ed, and couldn't read until 5th grade, then I got a 36 out of 36 on the ACT English section in high school. If there had been a forced track system, I probably would have been incorrectly assigned. Self selection + courses maintaining standards accomplishes the same thing as forced tracks & with fewer mistakes
i feel like after high school i definitely deprogrammed myself from academic competition and elitism but this video just pulled me back to when i had a complex about being in honors/AP level classes. not necessarily that i looked down on the general course levels but it was clear there were social divisions based on “academic” v. honors v. AP v. “gifted” which were all slightly different circles. even though i was indifferent to school, my only motivator in HS was titles and GPA which destroyed my sense of self. i hate looking back at how clung to my grades because i felt like i had nothing else. that’s not even getting into that i was one of few Black girls or Black students in these classes!!
I was in a high-achieving non-gifted kid who eventually caught up with the gifted kids in high school when I got into the AP/honors classes. Sometimes, I even outperformed them in some of those classes. What's weird, though, is I remember more than half the kids in my elementary classes being in gifted. The way my elementary school was structured was that the gifted and non-gifted students were taught social studies and English together but separated for math and science. When the gifted kids left for their math and science lessons, the classroom was half-empty. Not sure if this is normal or not for gifted programs to be this saturated.
i was a gifted kid/was a year ahead and was always kind of ambivalent about being labeled such. once i got into high school and got depression and my grades dropped to low/failing, i kind of lost all faith in myself and my abilities.
I had one of those ableist mothers growing up. Mild to moderate Asperger’s and ADHD, seriously if you met me at any point after my teen years you’d never notice unless I told you. But because of these labels in elementary and middle school I was pulled out of regular classes to go to the Special Ed classes which were in the trailers attached to the building that they made permanent extensions to during a construction expansion. When that happens it makes people not want to associate with you, puts an invincible dunce cap on your head and makes people think they can treat you like shit. When your two best friends in middle school don’t go to the same school as you but live within a mile of you that’s telling on how much of an outcast it makes you. When HS came around I was relieved to be able to blend in in a large crowd and interact with people less. I also had to fight the school system to get put into more mainstream classes and never took a single accelerated class in anything despite being a fairly smart kid who could do geometry in his head and was the best student in his history class. Needless to say when I first went to university and flunked out after two years because it was more of two years of teaching myself how to function on my own and building critical life skills from level zero then as a second chance from age 24-28 student when I was getting Bs on my own in 300-400 level university classes I was able to convince my mother to go from 3 classes a semester to 5-6 over the course of two years and ended up graduating with 154 credits as a double major with a Bachelors in Human Geography and Political Science when I saw I could get 90s on university level writing assignments without much effort I really started to resent my mother and the education system for holding me back so much during very critical years of my upbringing. I realized from the lack of social opportunities, self esteem and motivation growing up how much I missed out on, had my first date at 16 in a six month relationship and was single for six years after that. Went through a few fling relationships at 23-25 then at 27-29 before meeting the love of my life. Now at 33 I’m in a job making $75,000 a year and married. So yes, the special label does fuck you up. Also I told my mother off about two years ago saying “maybe if your goal had been to get me into higher level classes in middle and high school in subjects I was good at and actually enjoyed, I wouldn’t have developed a lack of motivation and gotten a false sense of higher aptitude than I actually had, maybe I wouldn’t have been a target of social exclusion, maybe I wouldn’t have had to waste the entire first half of my 20s teaching myself basic student, life and social skills most people learn all throughout middle and high school, that’s why I resent you, not because I’m ungrateful for how much you “sacrificed and helped” but because how much of an ablest martyr you are.”
I was leveled as slow in middle school... definitely made me doubt my availabilitys as a kid. I'm thankful for my family who even tho I was labeled as slow they help me to understand the value of hard work. At uni I graduated with honours which has opened for me many opportunities. Definitely hard work is needed in everything, specially if it is something you love doing.
I had the opposite happen to me. I have dyscalculia which is a learning disability that really effects math. And I always struggled in math. Freshman year I had to work really hard to get my grade up by the end of the year in algebra 2 I think and my teacher wanted to put me in honors geometry! I didn’t think that was a good idea at all and even my mom encouraged me to. Well I ended up taking it and I regret it so much. It severely hurt my gpa. It felt like I didn’t belong in there. Everyone was getting good grade and I’m basically failing even though I’m trying with everything I have to understand and do my best. I just couldn’t understand it. So yeah my teacher pressured me and recommended me to one of the hardest and least rewarding classes of my education life. Thanks mom! Even my mom agrees she was wrong to encourage me to take it now lol
This also was a lot like my story. I was always label as delayed because even in pre k I couldn’t pick up on milestones like handwriting and speech. I was put in early intervention but move to a new school that didn’t have anything other than special education. I struggled in school all my life, I failed education, socially also bullied and outcasted, and functionally. I had teachers treat me terribly and disliked because I made their jobs harder which they told me to my face and they took it as defiance and laziness vs actually struggling bc I didn’t have an documented disorder just delayed which wasn’t a diagnosis so I didn’t get any help or patience. I always felt behind bc I was. The school tried to put me in special education despite no official diagnosis or if I did have one they were unaware of it but they thought I was bringing down the class and special education would get me out the way. School was a horrible time, but at 28 I was officially diagnosed autistic which I always had a feeling something was off about me but I never could put a name to it. Looking back they were so many signs that my family and school ignored
I really like this video. I have too many anecdotes about my own school experience growing up to formulate into words here, but I really resonated with others' stories and experiences shared here, particularly comparing myself to peers and siblings, and myself, tbh. Also as a parent of two neurodivergent children, I can tell you it is difficult to navigate that as a parent and being a supporter/advocate for my kids' needs as well.
As a labeled “slow kid” it really messed me up and made me so doubtful of my ability to succeed. Growing up in poverty with a single mom and being the first in my family to pursue college, it was nerve wracking as I navigated that situation. Thank you for this video!!!
Same.
Are you rich?
@@Handlebrake2 why would you ask that
My son is quite brilliant. He's been in SpecialEd since second grade. Now, he is in college, sophomore year with his first "A's". I do my best to highlight his strengths and support him.
Once a social security doctor put me in the spot, had me squirming in my chair, when he pushed me to explain my son's disability in front of him. We lost services from the government then and there. But he continues in SpecialEd even in college. That doctor fucked us over, I know. But my kid doesn't doubt his intelligence or his place in the world, nor does he worry if his mum thinks he's slow.
Same. I currently behind in math by one year in a small class for math. I have -A in HN history class. I was told don’t take AP government your gonna fall behind. I’m bored in my class
I always hated that expression that 'no one is special,' because let's be honest-- it's not a measure of how interesting or valuable each individual life is: it's just another way to put people in a hierarchy. 'Not everyone can be special because not everyone can look down at all the adoring peons that are less-special than they are.'
Yeah, it's very reductive. It doesn't take into account the beautiful complexity of life, and just sees "specialness" as a sliding scale ranging from not special to very special. That's why the snowflake label has always rubbed me the wrong way, too. Like yes, every person is like a snowflake: their uniqueness and specialness may be hard to see at a distance when lost in a sea of others, but when you take the time to look at one up close, that's when you can truly understand and appreciate its individuality.
You could also look everyone and no one is special, depends in what you actually look for.
Also people probably are special if they dont try to be. And just decent person. I mean as people. Not caring about that bs and just be a decent person , probably special, ironically.
I know there are piveledges and that and strenghs and weaknesses,but thats what you should try,raising upright people,right?!
A term like special is always describing a relation of a noun to a perceived norm within the same category, namely, whether it is better, greater, or simply different than the norm.
As such, it's a really squishy word, often papering over a whole bunch of subjective value judgements. What are we considering to be the norm? What sets the noun apart from the norm? Are we meant to understand this relationship as subjective or objective?
There are a lot of inoffensive uses of the term special, especially when it's obvious you're being subjective. Special can mean just "better/different than the norm" in a statistical sense, but most folks won't take it that way unless you make it obvious.
Instead, they'll assume that by special you mean "objectively and intrinsically better than the norm." When that's referring to a person or group of people, then that can be an issue. The takeaway can end up being "this person is inherently superior to other people in an indeterminate number of ways."
Yea
Well the way I think of it is that if we have marbles, all of different colors in the same ratios, there’s no one marble that is special. If there’s a lot of white marbles and one is red, another one is blue, and yet another one is cubic, you can point to those and say those are special in their different ways. In that sense, not everyone can be objectively special. At the subjective level, each marble is their own entity, so they can consider themselves special if they so wish.
I was put in "gifted classes" and labelled smart at an early age. Because of stereotypes and my need for academic validation, it took me until after high school to realize I most likely have suffered from ADHD for my entire life. I'm not entirely sure how we should fix the current ways of operation, but we need to fix it regardless
Same here! I was in the gifted classes all through my schooling. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 27. By this point I also had a masters degree and my ADHD was never identified until I had a highly pressurised job. If you’re high functioning you often don’t get help and support, or even a diagnosis.
So did you get a diagnosis or do you just think you have adhd?
@@amandak.4246 It's not "mean" or "cruel", it's a question since a lot of people self diagnose nowadays with the Internet all the time. Also people made up stories all the time on the Internet so you never know.
@@lagopusvulpuz1571It is rude because not everyone can afford to get diagnosed or don't have the time (or they're a child who's parents won't/can't take them to get diagnosed, but that's probably not this person)- as long as they've researched ADHD, it's symptoms, and what it's like to have it before saying they likely have it it's not really a problem. Though I do agree people can't be diagnosing themselves willy nilly without actually doing the research or basing it on like one tik tok video they watched on it.
@@faerie5926Not to mention the medical field is extremely bias so a doctors word shouldn’t be the end all be all
I definitely blame the school system for these labels. I was also seperataed from my class in 3rd grade. I was simply punished for struggling with multiplication.
terrible! too bad you couldnt get tutored or extra help or something!
As a labeled gifted student only to understand how intelligence and school systems work after the fact, I see this so much. Thanks for sharing another amazing video!
Same, that's a very accurate way to describe at least part of my experience too.
@@TheGoodMortylllllll
Same here.
OK so as a black girl, ADHD is never clocked until we’re a lot older or email goes unnoticed because it doesn’t show up the same and other people so growing up. I never necessarily thought that school was hard like yes it was difficult but I feel like the workload is what made it hard and not necessarily the work. I was put into gifted classes early on in the elementary school and later on as well but once I hit middle school, I wasn’t even anymore and I just thought that I wasn’t good at school or anything but now that I look back is not that I wasn’t good at it. It was easy and I was unmotivated cause it was boring, so I never replied myself.
Yeah the school system we grew up with graded kids low if they couldn't handle an arbitrarily high work load and if they couldn't test well. They could be academically gifted and still struggle greatly.
Most of the kids I was in slow classes with had nothing wrong with their ability to learn but actually just had a bad home life that made it difficult to concentrate and gave them a low tolerance for stress.
Yeah, it was the same for me. I just had so much to do and was so used to just breezing through work that I gave up. That only made my parents upset at me, which made me want to do it even less because homework was solely associated with bad feelings now. It put me in a rut that was hard to get out of
I had undiagnosed ADHD till I was 16-17, and undiagnosed maths and reading disabilities that went undiagnosed till I was 20 years old.
I bombed in middle school since my older sibs, 7, 10, and 12 years older, who basically tutored me, had left home at the same time for various reasons, and I didn't have them helping me anymore. It was just me...and my disabled brain, with unhelpful ableist teachers. RIP.
I'm white so my experience is def different and didn't involve racism, but I'd guess some sexism def was apart of it for why I was diagnosed so late, along with the assumption that since my family had academics in it I was ignored and couldn't be concieved as disabled or "wrong" in the system because of that.
Even had a teacher say my freshman year of HS, "Oh, I had your brother--he was great, I expect you to get the same grades as him or better." Nevermind that he was 10 years older than me, had a VERY different lived experience, and that us being siblings doesn't mean we are the same. Especially since I prob had/have brain issues from being on a ventilator for 3 weeks as an infant and he DIDN'T, lol.
I also realized I never learned how to study properly. End of high school and the beginning of college was when I started to crash. It was devastating, and it would have helped so much to know that it wasn't just anxiety messing me up, but ADHD.
"unmotivated", I only know that good grades take you to better universities or colleges. I did have my motivation, school was average in terms of difficulty or at least until Algebra ll showed up. Some people like to solve problems, but most people prefer to avoid them & get the stuff done & leave or do something else. I was allowed to read or draw after finishing something earlier. There was that too.
For me the gifted label ended up being a double edged sword. On the one hand it was nice to get more challenging work and to be recognised as special and talented. On the other hand, I had raging ADHD which never got diagnosed while I was a child, because it was seen as a personality failure because someone smart like me should be able to control themselves and behave. I was a smart kid, so I couldn't have ADHD and as a result for zero support or accommodations for some of the difficulties I was having.
Later on, the gifted label gave me a huge crisis of identity because I entered adulthood expecting to change the world, only to end up with a normal job like most people (which was also seen as a disappointment since there had been great expectations heaped on me since an early age).
Lmao, my family thought I would make it big because of my artistic talent. I recently landed a job as an artist at a great games company (as in, they are a great employer). Love the stability, rare as a professional artist. My family is surprised I'm happy with that, and why I'm not a famous artist. I tell them "Because the peers around me are even better. Art isn't even considered my strength". They are boggled, while I'm just happy to have a stable, well paid-job doing art.
big relate. i was always the smart/gifted kid and did really well in school up til high school. i enjoyed the greater challenge and especially flourished in maths and sciences, but now that i'm 24, i'm much more of a humanities fan, i don't have a job, and i dropped out of college!
To be fair as a similarly labelled person, it's not like things are set up for a single individual to be labelled as anything with promise and really do something meaningful with it unless you already come from a privileged background, so I literally wouldn't even take that part of it to heart in healing from the chaos that is sorting children into basically who has potential to be a good capitalist worker and/or celebrity in the future and who's a failure out the gate. We know none of it's based on anything except "vibes" (aka wh*te suprem*cy + capitalism) and esoteric test scores, lmao! 😄
In my school they didn't label people as gifted or slow. I think some of the teachers and students still did in their mind, but since i was doing so differently in different classes, i myself never thought of that as a thing. I also have ADHD and i might have been labeled gifted as well if i was in your environment, because i was sent to math competitions and often did quite well. But my parents never really cared and i had no external pressure on me. I myself cared about grades, but i was aiming at the range of 75% correct answers, medium grades, because aiming for the highest grades did not really work out. Aiming for the medium did work because it was sufficient to do everything last minute, like 4 am in the morning of the same day, because we had a small apartment and it was impossible to concentrate while my family was awake.
No one was making me feel bad about my grades. Although my parents did think i was lazy when i was so stressed out that i got kinda sick and they thought i was somehow purposefully doing it to get out of school. But doing medium in school was just normal. I still did well in math and the teachers didn't talk to each other about who they think are the "good" students, so as far as i know, no one thought there was anything strange about this situation.
I'm glad that they didn't make things about identity. You can actually be given more interesting problems to solve without it defining you as a person. I had a friend who told me that my level of knowledge/understanding is all over the place and i was just like, "ah, i guess that's me then".
My school time wasn't easy or without problems, but i'm glad about this at least.
omg yes, the expectations. I am a very "intelligent" person. School had always come naturally to me as a child, and just recently during my adhd diagnosis they did an intelligence test and my therapist was wowed when i ended up in the top 5th percentile (i don't believe in iq tests as a measure of hardly anything, btw. im not trying to brag, bc i see the ability to do the specific kinds of puzzles included in an "intelligence" test as one /very niche/ life skill in a sea of many). But something I've struggled so hard with in my adult life is accepting that I do not have to change the world. I do not have to do exceptional things. I do not have to take promotions or be in management. Just because people think I am capable, does not mean that I owe them my time, effort, or "talent." I am allowed to just exist, and that's enough. I'm basically a secretary now, and other than the pay, I like where I'm at. I'm comfortable.
The fact that math is often a determining factor in teachers gauging your intelligence makes me think I might have been viewed as intelligent mainly for taking more advanced math classes. I was very accommodating to adults in general, too, but I did struggle with procrastination and specific tasks like timed essays. I'm about the same age as you, but I've only recently begun looking into an autism diagnosis, because my grades were so good, nobody considered that I might have a developmental disability.
yes. youre good at math and read a book here and there and suddenly youre gifted and better than others. my school kept wantig to put me in gifted programs despite not having the grades for it but refused to put me in the basic classes BECAUSE i read a book and excelled at math
Essays in particular will be the death of me.
@@spookydid Honestly good grades don't mean you're gifted, and being gifted doesn't mean you have good grades.
Where I live we classify giftedness as its own neurodivergence alongside ADHD, Autism spectrum and others, with notable overlap with plenty of these conditions but some key differences. School performance doesn't play into it, it has to be diagnosed by a specialised psychologist and it needs extra attention and coping mechanisms like all the others.
Gifted people with mediocre to bad grades are often termed "underachievers".
This is not to imply that you are wrong about not being gifted, I don't know your life. I just want to clear up a popular myth.
And yet, I knew a person or two who were good at math but unremarkable in language arts or social studies, and the same in reverse. Using math as a "catch-all" gauge of intellect makes me want to scream for this reason.
I'm excited to watch this, in large part because somebody is actually talking about the consequences of being labeled a "slow kid". The online conversation overwhelmingly dominates former "gifted students", and while those consequences are real and serious, there's almost no attention given to the opposite side of the spectrum and the lifelong trauma it instills.
I'm still unlearning the learned helplessness that comes with being labeled a dumb kid (I was never dumb, not that I really believe in being dumb as a concept either, I was just undiagnosed autistic and struggled heavily with school.). Being labeled a dumb kid is to internalize that no matter what you do, nothing will ever be good enough, so why even try. It's to be taught that you can never trust yourself to be right about something, and will defer to others even if you know they're wrong, because it's been hammered into you from so early on that you are too stupid to be correct. It's to second guess each and everything you do. It's exhausting and causes lifelong damage.
Anyway, thanks for addressing this. Time to actually watch the video lol
Thank you for this comment, I needed to read it. Sending you a big hug. ❤
Honestly, the whole trend of "burnt out gifted kid" is a little privileged at its core
@@aperlainmyhead Not to do struggle olympics or anything but I would take being a former gifted kid than a former dumb kid any day. At least when you were a gfited kid you had people who believed in you.
I think that the consequences of being the slow kid isn't talked about as much, because most people who were called "slow" in school are often ashamed and too embarrassed to admit it, let alone talk about it, since they know that people will judge them and see them as "stupid". It's a lot easier to tell your experiences of being a gifted student, because even though being called "the gifted kid" doesn't always mean you were smarter, it still feels that way for a lot. It can also feel a bit like bragging almost when some people talk about, but absolutely no one wants to brag about being part of the "slow kid" group.
@@mynameisreallycool1 I agree. There's a lot more "glamor" in being recognized as a "gifted kid" because out society prizes intelligence. It's a lot easier to talk about failed potential, because that implies you had potential to begin with, that you had value to begin with, and that maybe you still do.
Being labeled a slow kid has far more stigma. There's nothing appealingly forlorn about an adult who used to be a dumb kid, it's someone to be avoided, because our society is deeply ableist and people who have development disorders of intellectual disabilities are severely disadvantaged. Being a former gifted kid carries the implication you're still intelligent, and so you still have value.
Nobody sees value in the slow kids. I saw someone say being labeled a gifted kid is a double edged sword, well being labeled a dumb kid is just being thrown into a pit.
i was in the gifted program and then dropped out of it in middle school. I felt so stupid and school was miserable for me. there was definitely an air of "we're smarter than everyone" in the gifted program which is kinda gross? i ended up having autism but i didnt know until i was 17 and at that point i was online schooled and struggling more and more. it wasnt really the work of school (other than math) that was hard, more the environment of it. it was really interesting to hear your experiences since theyre so different from mine. honestly the school system can be really demeaning and traumatic for some and i hope it can be fixed somehow.
And I’d wager that those “smarter than thou” became the next teachers and administrators, thereby repeating the sick cycle.
My sister was put in the slower math class in 5th grade, which really upset her. My mom argued with the school that she should be in the average class. They told her that if my sister got an A/A+ the first quarter they’d move her over. My sister worked her butt off and achieved it. Then the school said because the classes move at different paces of *course* she couldn’t be moved, she was now behind.
But what’s wrong with ‘slower’ math class though? 😭 did it at least help her?
I totally relate the the “realistic” art thing you mentioned at the beginning: everyone in my family is very artistic and all are good at drawing. Growing up, my sister drew stylised characters and cartoons from the jump. For me, my mom and grandma (who both were great at drawing) drove into ME the idea that my art wasn’t good unless it was realistic. It was really discouraging: when I tried experimenting and drawing stylised characters, I got the message that my art wasn’t good; when my proportions, features, shading, etc were off, my art wasn’t good *enough*. Now that I’m an adult getting back into art, I feel the lack of comfort and experience drawing how I wanted to more than ever. I pretty much stopped when I was about 13-years-old, and a decade later, I’m happy enough with my art that I can’t help but feel disappointed for 10 years of lost practice driven by not feeling “good enough.”
I feel like these issues could have been easily solved if the art tutors EXPLAINED why it was important to learn the fundamentals of art, and not just shit over students interests. ^^'
I've noticed a similar pattern with other subjects in my youth, lots of pressure to perform, but no actual reason to do so. 😂 Like, we would get Chemistry experiments, but the sheet would tell us everything to expect, the whys and whats... so why bother doing it?
I can relate to your comment though, as you explained that you come from a family with an artistic background. Whichever means if you have an artistic ability to draw from creativity and imagination. You have that advantage since your family is very artistic and creative.
I come from a household and family background where my family is non-artistic, I am the only artistic person in my family. I can even do portraits of people and whenever students at my school always see me draw, they always feel a sense of shock, surprise and envy because I can draw at a more accelerated level than them. I end up improving my art skills because I’m not talent, I do not have a talent. It is called patience, decadence, determination, motivation and self discipline. No one is really talented, it is called hard work. And that terminology some people like your friends, teachers and family members say to you is very ableist and eugenic. We should normalize these conversations with people around us and talk to our friends, peers, colleagues, neighbors, teachers, school board administrators, superintendents and school staff.
@@mariamart_0absolutely!! I’m actually currently writing an argumentative essay for a college class about whether we should mandate Art (anything considered to express human creativity like dance,theatre,music, poetry, sculpture;etc)Curriculum as Core classes (like Math, Science, Reading, and History). Some argue that if students take interest then they should attend those classes and not all students should take those courses. I think it’s complicated because Physical Education is mandatory and it was hell for me (it was fun for others). Should we really push non-artistic students into a field where they don’t have an interest in? Or should we instead push them into that direction in order for them to garner a new found appreciation of art (praying that they don’t become cynical of it because it was pushed upon them)? Art can actually stimulate of a lot of brain development for not only students, but for everything and it can seriously help critical thinking skills which tbh many students can lack. However even if they do gain appreciation and decide to be in a field of art, when they go to college how is it going to pay the bills and help students in the long-run economically? There is a huge Art business in money laundering so there is also a moral aspect to it if you want to become a artist you have to sell your image as an artist and cater to a specific audience. Also if you want to become an art teacher it is super difficult (especially when coming from an immigrant or lower class background). There are not as many job opportunities and it’s very difficult to follow your passion when you have to pay in order to learn more about it and get an “official” degree on it.
There is just so much to explore upon this topic and of course being referred to as a gifted/non-gifted student while wanting to explore artistic opportunities that not anyone can afford to.
THIS. I was a slow kid who ended up with imposter syndrome taking ap classes and graduating with a 4.0 on honor roll. I desperately wanted to be gifted like my brother and friends were. Being slow was my deepest shame and I still struggle to not consider myself stupid. I also had undiagnosed adhd (as a woman mine presented differently than the boys did and went unnoticed)
growing up as a “gifted” kid and then losing that label as an adult destroyed my self confidence because i had no sense of self worth outside of being the “smart kid” for so long
No offense but imagine never getting to be seen as competent at all. Lol pls I’m tired of all y’all former gifted kids whining like shut up
As a former “gifted” kid, I agree with all of this! I’d also add that my “gifted” status got less and less important quickly. In elementary school it felt like I was pulled out of class to just do fun projects. In middle school the only things to do with it was either battle of the books (which I had no interest in) or occasionally board game times (idk why). By high school I did take advanced English classes, but it’s not like those were for gifted students alone. If I were a parent I don’t think I’d want my kid to be in a gifted track or labeled that way. Also, and SUPER IMPORTANTLY: I STRONGLY THINK that my gifted status hid my autism, which I’m only now learning to discover as an ADULT.
I mean not the worst but uff too. Is it that often used to not talk about neurodiverse stuff and how that makes someone,
Positive but still discrimination to not adress abelism?! To " cover the good cases that would question the system"?!
Itmight be pretty sinister?! If i had to rant.
And i think there at, well stigma ti that too,but i get figuring it out late, sucks.
I was a "gifted" kid and my brother was a "slow" kid, and it messed up a lot of things for both of us, including our relationship to each other. My brother thought I was always "perfect" and he could never live up to me, and I saw the help he needed and internalized it as him getting more attention and love than I did (as a kid who could do well on my own in an academic setting). If we hadn't had those labels put on us at such young ages, we wouldn't have had those issues. Thanks for this very insightful video!
I was a "gifted" kid but I've only recently realized that I was labeled that simply due to my ability to mask. I'm autistic and have always been a great masker up until 5th grade when I first experienced burn out and just didn't have the energy to keep it up anymore. Everyone thought I was breezing through it but in reality I had always struggled, I just hid it well. At that point it was already too late though, they still considered me to be gifted and didn't take me seriously when I clearly needed more help.
Also as the years went on, my learning style (hands on activities and audio learning with something hands on to do while listening, like drawing) was slowly fazed out until around 6th grade until there was none of it all. Just work sheets upon work sheets and I really cannot learn well that way. OO! And the art being a natural talent thing is so real. Almost everyone just considered my art to be a natural talent but I put so much effort into learning that skill that no one really acknowledged except my mom. Sorry for the tangent lol this topic just really speaks to me.
Was anyone else the “good quiet kid” who thought they were dumb but still wanted to learn to try and become smart? But fell by the wayside cause you weren’t disruptive or didn’t ask for better?
I only got diagnosed adhd at 24 through out school I was obedient and shy but still keen to learn, it just took me longer to fully grasp & I struggled to work at the same pace as others. I remember I’d just be lost in a day dream, staring into space and the teacher would smack a ruler on my desk to “wake me up”. In high school I was always put in bottom sets with naughty kids & useless supply teachers. It annoyed me so much I went above and beyond to prove to the maths and English teachers that I was capable of more, so got moved up in both 😁
Even now doing an apprenticeship in carpentry with college 1 day a week; the young lads (18-20 yo’s) still chat rubbish, when I’m trying to type and think in class, which is infuriating. I do my best to stay afloat but I’ve always struggled to motivate myself when it comes to homework/coursework… I’m procrastinating rn lol
Actually yes I was. I was considered the “good quiet kid” who was “super easy” or “simple”. Also sometimes considered more mature for my age. In reality I had severe anxiety issues and was very afraid to speak up for myself. I had a hard time understanding the people in my life and why they treated me the way they did. People in my family would often tell me that I wasn’t dumb and that I was smart and shouldn’t believe that but at the same time they never cared about me or had faith in me which was very confusing as a kid. I started to never really believe any compliments towards me were real because I never felt like they held any weight. Along with that at school I had terrible friends, they would do and say terrible things to me and when I retaliated I was made to feel like a bad person, even by the adults in my life. On top of that my friends would also compare each others grades and would be so judgmental and rude if you didn’t get a grade as good as them. I was raised to be a doormat and to never stand up for myself, I was made to feel like a terrible person who wasn’t good enough from such a young age. This lead to serious problems in my teenage years and I almost took my own life. I’m doing much better now that I am aware of how I was being manipulated and realized that what took place wasn’t my fault and that I was never a terrible person or an unintelligent one. I was always a very smart boy and I had a good heart. I wish I never suppressed who I was for so many years for no good reason.
Yep. I have a neurological disability and due to this, I couldn’t learn. I honestly should have been homeschooled but that was inaccessible to my family because both parents worked full time and it would have been too much money for a private one on one teacher. I only graduated high school because I took the ged. And my scores were above average on the ged in English and history/social studies and right on the cusp of possible with science and math. The way we do schooling in general in this country is messed up.
I’m getting ready to take my GED tests in a few months. It’s mind blowing how broken the system is. I know I was fortunate to have the opportunity to try different types of school settings after middle school, but none worked for me. Trauma and ADHD/ASD really took a toll on me by that point. Individualized learning is only truly available to the very wealthy in this country.
I was labeled “gifted” all through school. I was almost always in the advanced class of every subject and took pretty much all AP courses from 10th grade on. But because I was usually the only or one of very few African American kids in the class, my classmates often treated me, at best, like I was “lucky” to be there - and at worse, sometimes I was told that I was probably only let in because of quotas and was taking up a slot that a more “deserving” white or East Asian kid should have gotten.
I graduated in ‘11, so I’ve been out of high school for over a decade at this point. I went on to a decent university and now I work at a FAANG company. I have supposedly lived the gifted “dream” but let me tell you, being an African American gifted kid is a special kind of torment that fucks with your self esteem for the rest of your life. No matter how much I accomplish, I still hear the little voice in my head telling me that I’ve only had those achievements because I’m some kind of affirmative action charity case. I second guess my decisions and competence a lot. Also doesn’t help that FAANG is low key a mass torture chamber where self hating former gifted kids go to get their souls ravaged by dementors…
…But anyways, in my personal experience, the gifted program just doesn’t work out for African American kids…even when it works out for them.
As someone who had similar experiences, but did great in college and have even been a teacher, I can confirm how messed up this school system is in all of these ways. I remember in elementary and up, "gifted and talented" kids were treated like coaches treat varsity players. I think it's because they want to take some credit in case those kids become famous in the future. The rest of us are just students pushed to the sidelines. By the time I hit high school, I gave up cause I could sense it was another set of useless years in which I was taking classes that meant nothing to my future and sitting down just to listen to boring classes all day was never ideal. It's been proven many times that students, especially young men, learn better when they can get outside and get hands on experience. Being in a school building all day feels like prison to a degree.
What changed me? I was able to find and interest in other languages on MY OWN time. I was forced to take Spanish early on and had no interest at that point. Plus, teachers tend to not be good at teaching you how to learn/study a foreign language. I still remember my teacher telling my coach "he tries, it's just not his strongest subject". So I automatically thought I just sucked at foreign languages and some family members would even tease me about how I technically made a D (69) in Spanish 2. A few years later, I started learning Japanese and was pretty successful, that's when I learned I was capable of learning Spanish, which is what I'm doing rn. In the end, I went from "sucking" at Spanish and ending high school with a 2.3 gpa, to finishing college with a 3.5 gpa, including 3 years of two foreign languages with a B+ or higher. These school systems have only gotten worse since then...Kids weren't meant to be in these huge buildings all day, neither were adults. It's too robotic and unhealthy for us mentally.
Wow your experience is so similar to mine. Throughout all of elementary school I was placed in remedial classes and labeled as the “dumb” kid. I also had pronunciation problems and was placed in speech therapy. It made me feel so bad about myself that I spent my entire life working to remove that label. It wasn’t till 2 years ago, in my sophomore of high school that I discovered I had Asperger. It help me to realize that there was no such thing as smart and dumb. I just learned differently from my peers and it took me longer to process material. Thank you so much for your video! It bothers me how schools today still classify children and make them feel inherently inferior if they do not meet the standard. I also hate the preconceived notions that you are lazy if you do not receive a good grade. For some of the hardest working people I have ever known have received bad grades despite the effort they put. Overall, I wish education would become less grade centric and less competitive. Honestly most the time it just feels like a rat race through lessons and rapid memorization that you’ll forget right after the test. I love learning but not like this.
I was a sort of "slow" kid, tho my school never called it that. I was put in remedial math, remedial Hebrew (this was a Jewish school), and even though I loved reading I was always given the "stupid kid" books for English class which were supposed to be easier to read (I think this was just because I did not like answering reading comprehension questions and thought they were boring). This technically wasn't a remedial class but i also noticed that me and four other students were the only ones who were not in advanced French (Canadian school). My friends are always surprised that I was not labelled as gifted because I got great grades since I started higher education, currently doing a PhD, and I am very knowledgeable about my fields of interest: psychology and education. But nope, I had an IEP and everything. I was also diagnosed with ADHD and a nonverbal learning disability, as I recently found out. I was just completely uninterested in school unless it involved me writing book reports until university.
My younger sister was identofied as gifted and was put into this special gifted program, and she was in it for a couple of years before she dropped out because the gifted kids were cliquey and stuck up. She was fine getting super duper high grades in the average classes and being with her friends instead.
Now, being a school psychology PhD student and my research interests being twice exceptionality (being gifted and having a disability like adhd, asd, or a learning disability) and autism, we are currently being taught that all students should be consulted on their IEPs, moving to different class difficulty tiers, whole grade acceleraion, etc. We are also learning more about how a lot of IQ tests are pretty racist and USA centric so that can cause a lot of kids to get missed. The norms for making a lot of these tests excluded looooots of groups of people. Giftedness is still being pushed as a mainly positive thing, but I am noticing that practitioners tend to not lable kids in SpEd or basic classes as stupid anymore. I am very hopeful for the new generations of educational professionals, but also aware that the education system needs a MASSIVE overhaul. One step at a time 💀
IDK I only see hope if schools offer tutoring. Cause many parents in the US aren't rich and don't understand their kids projects. I had anxiety on Essays cause there is stupid rules that my parents didn't understand. My parents grew up in a time that you just wrote a story not write a thesis and pow statement for an essay. As a slow kid who got into normal writing classes in highschool this made not doing many essays. The slow writing classes don't prepare you for regular writing classes. I failed 12th grade English. Had to repeat the 12th grade. The US school system isn't designed for slow kids to succeed. The fact that there is tutoring companies proves it.
@liesel16 I know your comment is a month old, but I agree (sorry in advance for long comment). This is also an issue with ELL (English language learner) students, whose parents are more likely to have been taught different subjects in a much different way not only because they were in school decades ago but because of how different countries teach different subjects. Hell, I'm working with an ELL kid whose dad didn't get past 1st grade and that's the furthest most of his family members have gotten in education where they were from since the schools in that country was difficult to physically and financially access. We definitely need to be able to work better with families, namely non white and non American families, so that we can help them help their kids with school work. ELL students tend to have to work much, much harder just to perform at the same level as their peers due to the language barrier, and they need their parents support in that.
I also want to say that SpEd tends to have not great educational outcomes, which is why we want to put students recieving SpEd services in the GenEd classroom with their peers as much as possible. The schools I am doing practicum (aka, volunteer work experience) at have a nasty habit of trying to stick all the ELL kids into SpEd which...well that's just discrimination. My supervisor, a district school psychologist, speaks out against these decisions all the time because she desperately does not want the district to be involved in yet another DOJ case. Being ELL is an exclusionary factor to SpEd because, while you can definitely have a disability and be an ELL student, you have to have more proof to determine whether the kid actually has (for example) a learning disability or if their English just isn't great yet. Kind of like how being considered chronically absent (missing 10% or more days of the school year) is an exclusionary factor because its difficult to tell whether the kid is not doing well in school because they have a disability or because they simply have not gotten sufficient instruction. Trying to stick all the ELL students into SpEd also makes more work for educational professionals (we all have to participate in getting the data to make that evaluation) and strains the already spread-thin SpEd staff. Some kids definitely need SpEd services, but some are better served at Tier 2 or 3 instead. But a lot of teachers cannot handle teaching classes with student who are so low, and think trying to get them into SpEd will be the best for the student. Often, it is not. I am trying not to blame the teachers here, because frankly they are put under a significant amount of pressure and made to do a bunch of unpaid labor.
The USA is suffering from a decline in academic performance all around. Literacy rates are wayyyyy down. And you are right, subjects are not taught to current students the same way they were taught to our parents or even to those of us in our 20s (on that specific part, I can only ask for the experiences of people I know who were educated in the US, as I was not). For example, when I was taught to read and write, we were heavily taught the alphabet and then taught to just sound out words to try spelling them right. Now kids are still taught the ABCs, but a greater emphasis is on knowing letter sounds. Kids will be taught all the letter sounds, then the class will work on different groups of words that make similar sounds (e.g., cat, bat, hat, that) and sound them out together in class to read them. It's different, and if I wasn't going into the field of education I may never have found that out.
Imo tutoring services being provided at the schools could help, but I feel like that's a bit of a band aid solution. Absolutely, we should be working with families to better help them help their kids with school stuff. Absolutely, we should not just be sticking all the ELL kids in SpEd. Absolutely, kids who need that extra help should get the support they need. But I also think we need a biiiiiig overhaul on the education system. It does not support students, parents, or school staff. Everyone is getting fucked over in one way or another. I have a lot of complaints about the education system that don't even really relate to the subject at hand, and I won't get into it because it will be a novel, but I just think we need to change how we treat students, how we collaborate with families, and how we treat and compensate our staff. It all works together, or I guess in the case of the US it all fails together.
Watching this video makes me feel less insane when I say I've experienced ableism to some degree. My first language was not english but i learned english and struggled with reading ever since. Everyone else treated me like i was "slow" and i really wanted to be a "fast" reader so i stop speaking my native language and loss the language entirely. Now as an adult i realized it was racism, ableism, xenophobia, and sexism all apply to my little elementary school experiences.
I was always a model student and labeled gifted, and in retrospect I was severely traumatized and keeping myself safe by fawning and behaving exactly right. My mom had me young and out of wedlock and I thought I was only worth the struggles I caused by being born if I was gifted. Additionally, I was undiagnosed autistic and was aided academically by some autistic traits but was never allowed to stop masking. I thought I had character flaws and was failing at common sense. It’s so fucked how capitalism rewarded and encouraged behaviors that harmed me while consistently denying me the support I needed.
I found out the gifted program existed when ALL my friends went to it one day, I guess my teacher didn't think I was on the same level lol. I spent some time in a different class for a field trip and that other teacher chose me for the gifted program. It was pretty fun getting to leave regular class to do these science and art based classes. This showed me the process of being chosen for the gifted program is extremely subjective and dependent on what the individual teacher appreciates in a student.
Your empathy for your childhood bullies is so admirable!
We didn't use those labels in my school, but the structure was the same. We had tracks called "basic", "standard", and "advanced". I was in the standard track for history, and it was totally worthless. I wasn't learning anything, but I got high grades because it was all memorization, which wasn't hard for me. On the basis of those grades, it was suggested I move to the advanced track, which I did. It was a vastly different experience. It was much more engaging, and I really got something valuable out of it, but I got a failing grade that semester because I didn't have the writing skills that I needed to do the assignments. The other kids, who had been in that track from the beginning, had had time to develop those skills, but I hadn't. So I had to go back to the standard track for the next semester.
wow! thank you for finally sharing the perspective of the 'slow kid' at school, Cheyenne! everywhere I look on the internet, all I see is gifted kids perspectives and all the comments always start with 'as the gifted kid at school...' I think this is my first time hearing the other's perspective!! thank you
I went undiagnosed with autism and add until this year and always just thought I "wasn't a school person". I think racisme was a big part of it because spelling, grammar and math are my biggest problems, I got help until 3rd grade with writing and math then just extra help with math but now nothing. I am medicated for my add, but my overall mental health really took a hit. I live in Sweden and I'm 14-year-old.
i was put in gifted classes in elementary school and it formed this baseline of how i was expected to do. As soon as i hit middle school it was incredibly difficult to keep up the expectation. I consistently didn’t understand things that my classmates seemed to know intuitively, and ultimately was unmotivated to do anything. The only thing i was motivated to do was art, and this made me feel even more stupid since every single one of my gifted peers wanted to pursue a STEM career. If i was smart like them the I should be interested in a career like that too. I realize now that i might have ASD and since i did “well” in school and behaved, no one noticed (meanwhile I struggled intensely to connect with others and never spoke a word in class, even if there was a group assignment.)
Being gifted worked very differently in my country. I didn't receive any special treatment in school, in fact most teachers were annoyed with me always "asking advanced questions that would confuse the other students" What it was though was basically it's own kind of neurodivergence diagnosis on the basis of a, yes, flawed IQ test, but also evaluation by a psychologist. The recommendation was "This kid needs more mental stimulation than average so feed them with information that they are interested in. Also they may be prone to anxiety because fast mind means fast overthinking. Also they may develop socially and emotionally more slowly because people will see them as more mature than they are and they may struggle to socialize. I think in America I would probably get a diagnosis for ADHD or something, but for me the "gifted diagnosis" really helped me to grow up in a way that I would say I have my shit together 90% of the time, even if I'm clearly "not normal".
(Btw, my country is Germany, but from what I heard, this is unknown to most people here, too)
Edit: Actually I have to correct myself I'll write a reply to myself sharing The Truth(tm)
I completely forgot for a moment that instead of having advanced and slow classes, it's our whole school system. We have three different kinds of *schools* you get placed in after elementary. Our equivalent of Slow, Regular, Advanced would be Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium, note that about 50% of people go to Gymnasium, by force if necessary, because this is a class system that is possible but difficult to escape from. Only Gymnasiasts are allowed to attend higher education, with a few exceptions. So basically if you're not academically successful as a 9-year-old you'll get handed a note that says "Congratulations! You'll be a blue collar worker!" (Or simple office jobs) It is messed up and we definitely used "Hauptschüler" as an insult, while being ambivalent about Realschüler. It was pure classism. I think this system has since been dissolved in many places due to the stigma. My experience was speaking of my time at the Gymnasium, at which I was still considered underchallenged. My bad. I was too busy yelling at the glass ceiling to see the mud of injustice it was built on.
As someone who still gets nightmares about failing in some high school subjects, this video is very validating. If I can recall, my only motivation to study hard was so that I would be spared from my mom's yelling and constant probing about my grades :( I'm definitely guilty of looking down on my peers though for not being studious enough. It really reeked of insecurity and my need to feel "special."
As a kid with ADHD, I was flunking my regular Ed 2nd grade class. I was close to being put into special Ed. My mom heard a story about another kid who was failing his classes, but excelled once being put into gifted classes because he was no longer bored. This was exactly what happened with me. I took the test and got in. I also didn’t have many friends, so I was happy to switch classes. From the beginning I was completely aware of the fact that I was only there due to parental support. This is true for most kids. If your parents aren’t informed (ie have a lot of free time for child development, lots of parent friends, etc) then they wouldn’t even know about the option to apply to the program. I knew I was smart, but I also fully believed that was only because I had resources to learn early. This helped me a lot. It never felt inherent, just lucky. Also I was bored, but I didn’t know that harder classes would fix that until I tried it.
i really hope this works for me, my adhd is pretty severe and i have the brain of a squirrel. at least once per grading period i have something dip below 70 and it really sucks
I usually felt so stupid needing a tutor for my math classes growing up. And being placed into remedial math in community college did not help. This made me feel so seen. Much love, Cheyenne.
My feelings as a "gifted kid" with heavy heavy quotes: I desperately needed help with my learning disabilities growing up (i have adhd and I am also autistic).
I got good enough grades so that teachers and admins ignored my struggles and that bubble only ended up bursting in high school when I couldn't keep it up anymore. And to be honest I'm still reeling from that trauma because I am now spat out into the adult world with no real skills. It sucks on both ends of this arbitrary scale :/
Being label 'slow' in school is frustrating.
2:56
yeah, the smaller class sizes were nice and much more helpful. I liked those a lot more than the main major classes.
Fantastic video. Thank you for creating this and sharing your own history with these labels. I'm sure there are many people out there with similar experiences that still impact them today
I got the "slow learning" label in elementary school and also got pulled out of my regular class once a day to go into a special class, which automatically labeled me a "retard" by my peers. The slow learner label stayed on my file up until I graduated even though I don't think I had a problem with learning in comparison to the other kids around me past around 5th grade, which really sucked to say the least. I definitely agree that my label had an extremely negative effect on me for all of my adult life the least of which being that I never feel confident in learning any new skill and always feel like I'm never going to be able to do it and will probably mess something up and make myself look stupid even though that rarely ever happens.
This is such an interesting topic! I wasn't gifted (by the end of high school I was recommended to start a gifted program but I felt so unworthy of it I didn't really look much into it) but I was the kid that got the highest grades in the class so I was labeled as the "intelligent" and "nerd". I knew some gifted kids and my sister was really good at math (she won multiple competitions) so I never felt like I deserved those labels I just got high grades because the exams weren't challenging. Back then I used this label to have some sense of self-worth since my difficulty with socialization took a toll on my self-esteem. But in college, my chaotic way of studying wasn't enough, and adding to my struggle to make friends I felt so worthless I ended up in therapy and finally got diagnosed with ADHD. Right now I'm learning how to actually study, ask for help, and bounce back from academic struggles day by day.
I remember reading Night because my mom made me read it for extra credit for the upcoming high school year. I felt like I was reading that book to get into advanced English but then the teacher pretty much sent me and some other students to regular English class that I was in Freshman year. I still feel like a lot of my hard work was invalidating just because I have a hard avoiding run-on sentences.
As someone who was labeled gifted in elementary school and then struggled in middle and high in math but excelled in other classes I was constantly told "you can pass if you just apply yourself more" and that made me so annoyed. Even though I really started to struggle in math the teachers didn't want to let me move down from advanced math to normal math because they thought I was just being lazy. I only got to be in a normal level math class senior year after I straight up failed PDM junior year. I got diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and realized that I excelled in certain things I tend to hyperfixate on, but I hated math once algebra started. My brain just didn't comprehend it as fast as everyone else in the gifted classes, but I wasn't allowed to move because I was "just being lazy."
My “gifted” label really hurt me in the end.
The classes were definitely taught in a way that made more sense to me, which is why they should be available to everyone and especially students who struggle with traditional teaching!
Everything was a breeze for me through middle school, but when I started to struggle in high school, I absolutely panicked and had a proper identity crisis over it. All of my teachers just seemed so disappointed in me because of my “potential.” Lo and behold, I had undiagnosed ADHD and it had been totally missed because no one in my life thought that someone doing well in school could have it. I am still working through the insecurities and anxieties from this experience.
Hi Cheyenne! It's been a while since I stopped by to watch, hope you have been well. I really relate to your upbringing, I always forced myself into gifted classes because that was where we got better care. This lead to me having such a hard time picking classes for myself in college, i kept withdrawing and burned out and eventually dropped out. It's hard out here lol thank you for always covering topics that come from such a sincere place.
Did anyone else have a “you’re either good at science/math or at English/history, but never both” dichotomy?
I always knew I was advanced at reading comprehension and related topics but yeah, felt that I was really stupid when it came to math. I learned later during testing for development disorders as an adult that apparently I have been slightly above average the whole time. In school even the teachers made me feel stupid when it came to math and I was always getting C's. IDK how that happened. Hated sitting through math anyways.
Let's give less time, attention, and resources to the students who need more time, attention, and resources, and also tell them they're inherently less capable than everyone else! That will certainly help them catch up!
Nah fr. In school I felt like the teachers were so preoccupied helping the students who very well understood the assignment vs the students who were struggling.
The mention of raw talent, especially when it comes to art is so true. I always get a little annoyed when people say I am lucky I'm so talented when it comes to art. It's true that I may understand some fundamentals better than others or have an "eye" for art but none of that was natural talent, it was only ever an interest in that particular medium of expression, picked up and developed at a young age. I will see people who supposedly don't have artistic talent draw and get frustrated with the results, assuming I don't know what they must be going through, but I do, it's just that I went through that same barrier earlier because I started earlier and pushed myself hard to overcome that obstacle earlier, at an age where people don't expect me to be a master of anatomy or perspective, so I had less critical eyes on what I would draw, making it was easier to keep going and not be so discouraged. It in no way means they can't reach the same level or even surpass "better" artists, but the insistence that talent is necessary to truly be good often makes people give up.
Funnily enough despite what I'm saying I struggle with falling into the "they're just talented" mindset when it comes to things I'm terrible at like maths, and it's something I'm trying to change. No matter what the subject is, it's way more likely that the reason someone got good or even exceptional at it is because of time and effort instead of "raw talent".
Thanks for the interesting video!
I relate to so much of your personal story. All of that describes exactly what I went through and what I struggled with. I was also an art kid, focusing on art because it helped me cope with the bullying and the self doubts. My reading comprehension wasn't where it was supposed to be in kindergarten..like that's wild. It's kindergarten but even kids that young are placed under a microscope and pushed into categories even though they aren't old enough to comprehend what this means. I was kept back, because my teachers suspected I had a mental disability. There is nothing wrong with someone who has mental disorders, but being placed in an environment that breeds competition on knowledge it was very hard. I remember my mom having the conversation with me in the back of our van. I didn't entirely understand the impact of the situation being that I was very young but seeing my mom cry and knowing I wouldn't be able to move forward with my twin brother it upset me and caused me to develop GAD. We later found out I had ADHD, but it wasn't treated like something I couldn't control. If I lost focus or asked for something to be repeated teachers would scold me, I was told I was a "bad student" because I lost focus easily, and I tended to have energetic spurts where I would talk or maybe move a little too much. I was separated from my peers, I had to test in a different room from everyone else, yet I was still treated like I could control my ADHD. I took medicine for a short time, it helped but it took away my personality. It made me a zombie, it made me sick and I wouldn't eat.
I was forced to push myself harder in order to prove to everyone that I was more than just my disorder, and more than "the slow kid" or "the dumb kid". It was very hard, I had to learn how to cope with my anxiety at such a young age. My guidance counselor told me I wouldn't get into college because my math grade wasn't high enough, even though we had only 2 math teachers in my entire high school.
Here I am now, I'm in a university, I'm studying animation and I made the Dean's list my first year. I have conquered my fear of reading and writing. I gained a really competitive scholarship with my essay submission and won first in my entire high school for an essay contest. It's so disappointing to see how the system treats children. How they teach them to put people in specific categories as if someone can't do great things if they don't meet their idea of "ideal knowledge" or can't get a degree without these things.
To anyone struggling out there, you got this. You can do amazing things even if the entire world tells you otherwise.
I was placed in the "advanced" math and science classes in 7th grade. Unfortunately the summer prior I had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and while for the most part I felt no different, I was often falling asleep in class and had difficulty focusing (often signs of fluctuating blood sugar). I was suddenly getting much lower grades than years before and soon was placed out of these classes. I was made to feel so so stupid and inferior for all those years, and throughout high school I felt I had to prove that I had potential. I've only realized now that maybe, just maybe, the sudden onset of a chronic and invisible illness might have hindered my ability to adjust to school. But who knows right?
I was labelled as a slow kid but a “pleasure” to have in class because I was really quiet and well-behaved. Surprise! I was an undiagnosed autistic with inattentive adhd. I loved daydreaming and it was the only thing that made me happy due to a tough home environment.
Anyways, I honestly started crying at Part 4 because pm all my teachers gave up on me expect for my flute teacher. By the time HS rolled around I gave up on all academics because it just “wasn’t” going to happen. I wasn’t “smart” enough. I also wasn’t naturally talented at music (adhd made it hard to focus) but I was determined to become a skilled musician. I practiced four hours a day for years so it really does suck when ppl say, “wow I wish I was talented in the arts.” So it really resonated with me, when you started to talk about the hard working art kids. Thank you for this video essay. It’s super validating and kind of healing for my inner child. It sucks how much our education systems hurt us in different ways. ❤
oh last thing!
I did struggle with imposter syndrome for pretty much my whole life until I received my autism and ADHD diagnosis. Learning that I have a different neurotype has helped me be a lot kinder to myself. The right ADHD meds also help! So I also related to the survey participants who mentioned imposter syndrome. And you as well, ty for being so open about your experiences with us. ❤
This was so cathartic to watch. I went to a performing art school and competition against our peers, other majors, and other schools were highly encouraged and perpetuated, especially by our teachers. Plus the fact you can get kicked out for bad grades. Although for me I just felt lucky I was placed in classes at my level or just classes where busy work/participation was most of your grade.
Having schools compete against one another for finite resources is such a horrible idea.
Being labeled as a gifted child was great when I has low self-esteem and that's all my parents cared about. But good god, that belief fucked me up once I had to deal with getting failing grades or a couple of classes in college. It really took a toll on me mentally.
The whole "If everyone was special, then no one is special." quote was a huge thing for not only my arts school to kinda reinforce but also, in my opinion, a huge belief during the 2000's.
There's so much wrong with the broken school system, especially in the US. And as much as schools that don't use grades are mocked in the media, the fact that they work is amazing and honestly a direction we should go in and explore. Besides, the history of our school grading system is based on an old Prussian model iirc. Like, there needs to be changes and updates.
Thanks for making this video. It helped me feel validated in my experience and feelings about the school system. It also helped me ease my mind and reminded me that I shouldn't place all my worth on intelligence and grades. Your video helped take a lot of pressure off.
hello I just stumbled on your video, I was the "super smart kid, that was wasting my intelligence." in school. I took an I.Q. test and I was put in "s.ped classes." It honestly floored me when I was told that, because I was always told that I AM SO SMART. Same as you said in a way, I hated hearing those words, they were like dangling a carrot. to this day as a 30 yr old I still struggle with compliments. I just wanted to share, because your story really spoke to me. Thank You
Worrying about been labeled slows you down.
Feelings hurt and wanting to hide doesn’t help.
You’ll never know your potential till you try.
Many people didn’t know they could fight until that day they got tired of being bullied and fought back.
I actually had the experience of being labeled “slow”, then “average”, and also “gifted” throughout my childhood. I think it’s a really weird position to be in because I’ve seen the good and bad sides to all three. I think labeling kids in general is a terrible idea and will always lead to a hierarchy because of the negative and positive connotations that words have. Especially to kids who view the world as mostly black and white; they really don’t see the nuance.
I'm twice exceptional (high IQ with a learning disability, AuDHD and dyslexia in my case) and elementary was complete torture. My parents had to fight really hard to get me a fitting education and I'm really thankful they did. In highschool I got into a Dalton school where I got to flourish and now I'm an aerospace engineer.
My parents made the life-altering decision not to get me screened for autism because I tested into my elementary school's gifted program. When I was starting to show more signs of being autistic, they made another life-altering decision to ignore it because the private school they wanted to put me in didn't accept special needs kids. I was 'gifted', I continued to be 'a pleasure to have in class' and it honestly ruined my life and relationships because from that point on everything I struggled with as an autistic person were my personal failings.
I was a "gifted kid" growing up. My best friend was in special ed as a kid. We met as adults, and we agree that we have about the same intelligence - we have all sorts of deep, philosophical conversations. I'm just better at spelling than she is.
I'm going back to school currently at the age of 32, and while there are some "slower" people in my classes, those students are also some of the most engaged and fun to have in class. They aren't afraid to ask "stupid" questions.
Being separated from my peers as a kid and being held up as superior to the masses because I was good at standardized tests gave me a huge ego for a long time, which messed me up once I finished college and entered my 20s. It took multiple years of weekly therapy to unlearn the damaging attitudes I was taught by being "gifted."
I was labeled gifted and it made me sabotage myself. I would give up on anything I had to work at because I was told to be gifted was to effortlessly succeed. It was incredibly destructive to me, kept me from being diagnosed with mental health conditions, and ruined my college years because I didn't know how to study, which ruined my life.
I'm glad you went with the word "slow" and not the slur I, probably you and a lot of other kids got and get labeled with, "ret@rded".
As a gifted kid, I was an anxious mess. I was so worried about maintaining my grades, and I felt like failing to be the best in my class meant failing to be worth anything at all. In high school I sacrificed my sanity to become valedictorian, and even as a senior in college I feel immense pressure to maintain straight-A’s. I tell myself it’s so I remain the best possible candidate for grad school, but in reality, without perfect grades I feel worthless. Not sure what to do about it at this point.
Being in the Talented and Gifted program as a kid and later in high school honors classes ended up being bad for me overall. There was too much work and I didn't feel engaged with what we were learning. I had severe depression and insomnia and I could barely get out of bed. So being told I was smart while really struggling was absolutely terrible. I didn't get along with a lot of the other kids in these classes because they were smarter than I was or snobby or very conservative. By 10th grade I went back to mostly normal classes and it was a relief. I still suffer with mental illness and flunked out of community college despite understanding most of the work. Comparing my actual life to my supposedly unfulfilled potential makes it hard to feel good about any achievements I have. I'm 32 and I want to go back to college, but I'm afraid to because I failed at 19. I have imposter syndrome at my current job of over seven years regardless of promotions or raises I've received. These days I'm just trying to figure out how to be more neutral toward myself and my life. Being the most competent or smart or hardworking is not something I'm interested in, because screw capitalism and all of the harmful systems intertwined with it.
Yeah, I remember when I was in school. People made fun of all the kids that had to ride the short bus.
what you said about not being able to draw what you wanted to draw resonated with me so deeply- i remember when my art teacher told me i’m not allowed to use words in my art… now i use them in my art to spite her, and nobody tells me i can’t. thank you for this callout video, as an undiagnosed autistic person who’s now graduated and not wanting to pursue college (at least yet, i just escaped 12 years of hell and they want me to PAY to go back?), i’m glad i know now that i wasn’t in the wrong, the american schooling system was.
I'm white and physically disabled from birth. There were times teachers flat out said I didn't belong in the mainstream classroom in front of peers. Granted, it was mostly for classes like P. E. and Home Economics, but every time it happened it lit a fire in me. Also, it's been my experience that many teachers don't like it when disabled students take advanced courses. It's like they think disability and intelligence can't exist simultaneously. Yes, I needed extra time writing and taking notes, but that doesn't mean I didn't belong there. I often felt like I had to show off my knowledge to the point of irritating my peers as a kid, because I didn't want my teacher to think me dumb. As a disabled adult, I've learned that it doesn't matter how much education you have you're deemed useless to the state from the get go. There's no public transit infrastructure to support those of us who are unable to drive, so we live on tax dollars. I'd love to be able to teach full time, but there isn't even the infrastructure in place to teach disabled people to drive with hand controls. I'm so tired.
Looking back, I was definitely treated as a slow kid in elementary school. I was even told in HS that I had a math learning disorder that I "overcame" in HS. Still angers me that this was hidden from me in years and it explained why I was treated differently in school and struggled with math. I was also almost diagnosed with ADD when I was 3. I may have had it b/c I wasn't really interested in school from ES to MS. Our education system is garbage.
Slow as my schools often used it as a child was meant to indicate accommodations vs extra assistance. Slow was usually used to mean something like learning disability. Which is different than simply struggling in class which just means you might need tutoring. That or things like autism which make a child process things differently. Learning disability are things which are barriers in learning. Such as dyslexia, it's not that you are incapable but you have a barrier that often requires accommodations. Things like autism would often have sociol difficulty as well as other sort of issues which made functioning in a classroom harder. So slow usually was used to mean, in need of accommodation. While being behind was used to indicate 'Requires tutoring'.
I’m undiagnosed autistic and this video was really cathartic. I was always a “dumb” kid but I wasn’t loud so I blended in. I resented “smart” kids so much. It was to a point that i went out of my way to judge/ hate on smart kids because I hated that they had it good. I also had an abusive household so there’s some intersectionality there.
I totally gave up on school after I realized I’m never going to be smart like the other kids
Thanks for posting this
School overall was traumatic and miserable for me. I had similar experiences to you I started out in "slow" classes with classmates that had bahavioural problems in elementary then I started to work my way up to "gifted" classes in middle school but somehow I was more miserable in the "gifted" classes because classmates were way more standoffish and elitist?? I convinced my administrator to put me in average class for science because i couldn't stand the pressure of the "gifted" class 🤣but i was happy because i got to move to my favorite science teacher at the time.
Also, I want to comment on "Autism" because you did not mention it at the beginning with ADHD.
I have not being diagnost and I told my parents that I think I have autism subtly but they ridiculed me plus I live in a "undeveloped" country.
I have always been the kid that is extremely shy, but not the cute type of shy, the one who talks back when people don't expect it, I was told by my teacher in high shcool that I am slow, nobody never told me that before but my mom told me that back in primary school, my teacher told her that I should be check by a psycologist cuz of I did not socialize, she ignore this until middle school.
I went just once and he just give some advices on public speaking.
I did not want to socialize, I just want people to stop asking me to performe, I want to please them but it was hard to not feel anxiety while performing.
Finally at 14 I got diagnost by the school psychologist with social anxiety.
I thought "finally" but that was the beginning of me, realizing "oh sh!t am still bad at other things, not just socializing".
At high school, my teachers and classmates were confused. They thought I was smart but lazy, because I knew some random facts and I read books, but I knew that I was not smart, I just have obssession, I never liked to say they were obssession but I have to admit it, even when I was so overworked, If there it was something that I liked I would get trapped on a rabbit hole for hours trying to know everything about this new topic.
I even went a week trying to listen to a certain genre of music just to be able to talk with my classmates that liked that genre so I can speak to them.
I accidently click in video "Do you have sensory issue? me too, lets talk about" I was so chock because I did not know that this was a austistic thing, I totally thought is just a coincidence and I close the video.
But weeks or months later, I click in a video "People say that you are being rude when you think you are being polite" - I realize that I didn't know what austim was, I just assume it was a "learning disability" or any other disable thing. But again I did not finished the video because I was so close minded, I was like there is not way, but every month I would click on a video so I did my research and surprise Austim is a spectrum and is common that some adults live undiagnost.
I find a lot of what you said relatable. If anything we need a big overall on how education is done like it makes me pretty sick how many ppl fall thru the cracks due to the bias of full as adults that should know better and do better.
I was labeled gifted in elementary and middle school. I had such a "good work ethic" then. I was only a 9th grader when the pandemic began and I started seeing a droo in my grades. I used to run to the bus stop every morning and that would give me adrenaline. I was also bullied severely and had a horrible social life while dealing with depression, yet my grades back then were amazing.
I struggled so badly in 10th grade because I was just getting back to walking to the bus stop every morning. I wasn't bullied by my classmates and I finally found a group of friends that I love. I was happier than I ever was when those labels were put on me, but my grades suffered so badly because of it.
I'm in my senior year of highschool now and I just took my very first AP classes, AP Art and AP Physics because I love them both. It's also required for seniors to take at least 1 AP course so that's nice. I'm struggling emotionally and still dealing with depression, but I still have my group of friends that I love dearly and my grades are okay for someone like me.
This might not be important but I will note it anyway: back in elementary and middle school, the school that I went to was a public charter school with majority of the students being black and surrounded by pretty dangerous neighborhoods which would explain why they were so bad and hard to deal with. I now go to a school that is diverse within the same city and different people from different parts of it. I struggled here though and I realize that I was not prepared for highschool. I have to apply for colleges now and I can barely (if at all) have a GPA of 3.0. I have a 2.0 unweighted and a 2.5 weighted because of my struggles from highschool so yeah, that's fun. I'm applying to a lot of colleges with the programs thst I want but I am not too confident that I'll get accepted into most of them.😢😢 Wish me luck 😅
I hate how so many teachers think that basically insulting kids will always motivate them to do better. I had a teacher who would tell us that we had worse grades than we actually did in order to motivate us to try harder but all it did was make me not want to try at all because I felt like she wasn’t treating us fairly anyway.
While there are some children who will be motivated by being called „slow“ and basically just stupid by teachers I strongly believe that the vast majority of students are not motivated by this and are actually more motivated by getting positive feedback.
I wish that these things didn't matter because I don't mind making mistakes, but I can't risk it because I don't want people to think badly about me.
Yeah, the whole system is wild. I'm a first-gen, eldest daughter with ADHD and there are so many jokes about former "gifted" kids like us who had a very hard time transitioning to college and also just figuring out who we were when you took away all those outside incentives to learn and also met so many gifted people of all sorts (academically or otherwise) and suddenly you realize you're not special at all. I eventually found something I deeply love after working too long towards being a doctor (like I thought I was supposed to). I do have many happy memories from that time, and the more challenging classes were good for my ADHD brain, but overall, making school my entire personality took something away from my experiences being a kid.
As a “gifted” kid from early on, I’m actually kind of retroactively jealous of the “slow” class. We didn’t get any extra field trips or anything, just more work, but they got taught how to study. Entering college only to realize studying is a thing and I didn’t know how to do it was… not pleasant.
i was labeled as gifted throughout my childhood because i was hyperlexic and generally found school fun because it wasn’t too difficult for me. nearing the end of middle school though my undiagnosed adhd and autism began to catch up with me and i began to see myself as worthless and stopped trying to do anything but just graduate because i felt like i could never compare with anyone else at my snooty prep school and was often only valued for what work i could do, and i quickly became disillusioned with that and just started to hate everyone and myself. my mom also had the same expectations put on her by my grandparents and couldn’t live up to them so she was really the only one i could trust to value me for more than my grades. i also made friends on the internet outside of my school and getting to know and love people who weren’t in or part of that environment really helped me realize that i wasn’t a problem and that it was all just bullshit.
This whole video just has me thinking about Malcom in the Middle
I was labeled as a gifted kid.
I don't think having a "gifted" and "extra help" programs are bad ideas, I just think the way their presented/labeled is wrong. It should be presented as where you need to be, not positive or negative, just neutral.
I remember getting pulled out of my language immersion math class to go to the English advanced math class and going back to class only to find out I was supposed to do the homework for both, the worst part being that I wasn't learning the terms in the other language which became a struggle. Like, I liked math and it felt like a punishment.
There were maybe eight to ten of us in the main advanced class thing, and we kind of clumped together, didn't interact with the other kids, which was made worse when we would occasionally wind up missing recess or other outside time to go to the special class. It was so distressing for anxiety riddled people pleaser teachers pet elementary school to show up to class when they should be in the room and find no one there. It wasn't even that they got to go outside and I didn't, it's that I didn't know where anyone was because no one bothered telling us.
I had a horrible combination of an inferiority and superiority complex where I thought that I was so much better than all the average kids, but I knew I wasn't as good as some of the other kids in the gifted program, which let me tell you, not fun. Also, once I got over that, I became friends with a couple of those other kids, and I wish I didn't wait so long, because my friend group was toxic as hell (unrelated to the gifted stuff) and I would have been better off with better friends.
I had/have so much anxiety around not doing well. I got to middle school and thought if I got a B+ plus, I failed. I finally snapped when I had a horrible teacher and I realized I didn't care enough about the class to want to pass. And now I have this weird need to do well combined with this apathy and it sucks.
One of my friends got diagnosed with ADHD, but they're labled as gifted so the school denied them accommodations (illegal, but they're parents didn't care enough to fight it) but the problem is they are slowly killing themself to maintain that and the school refuses to acknowledge it.
Most of my friends are either gifted kid to hrun out pipeline, or they're in the "special" classes with the teachers who are worse at accommodating their neurodivergence then they're actual teachers
The gifted program didn't set me up for success. And it might have been meant to, but it wasn't designed to.
I hated the labels of intelligence established by the education system. I was in the slower classes in elementary school and due to speaking anxiety I used to stutter when being called upon to read passages to the class, I was labelled slow in reading although I loved to read on my own. Due to being placed in the 'slow' reading program, my pleasure reading books like Harry Potter were confiscated from me, my teacher telling me that I can't be able to read such advanced books.
I went through middle and high school being in average or slow classes whereas my friends were placed in the gifted advanced programs. This caused me to think that I was the stupid friend. When we took the SATs, I believed that with my score being the lowest out of my friends that I could never get into colleges, anticipating to join the military for the education benefits. I have been questioned by school counselor's whenever I advocated for myself to be placed in double-language courses and attending a legal academy for college credit, reminding me of how difficult they will be for me. None of my school counselors asked me about college.
It was not until after I graduated high school and left those labels instilled by my very competitive school that I realized that I'm intelligent. I worked so hard to prove those teachers, counselors, even co-workers that I am smart enough for what I want to pursue academically.
I'm on a mix spectrum of this. I was "gifted" up until college. I excelled, top of my class, literally did nothing except for school.
Throughout elementary and middle school, I was a tolerable problem child because I was easier. I had very severe issues at home so I was constantly being taken out of class. Instead of the anger outbursts of other students like me, I'd just burst into tears. I was more palatable to my teachers despite not really fitting the stereotypes of a gifted child.
I developed this "survivor porn" complex. I was praised for my good grades DESPITE my trauma and disability, but I was so empty. I spent the end of my senior year in a psych ward. College has been rough.
will always hate the label of gifted kids and people talking abt 'gifted' kids experience bcs even now they are talked of and focused on even more than all the children who were labled as 'slow' and 'stupid'. its invalidating and just makes us feel invisible. im so happy you made this video, thank you.
BLESS
Thank you fot talking about this. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child (and as a female, which was always underdiagnosed), and I was smart enough to not be in the developmentally delayed class, but wasn't quick enough to really be in the regular class. They didn't know what to do with me. Pair that up with old school Catholic teachers who were very narrow minded to learn about learning disabilites and to meet me where I was, and I had a horrid time.
Thankfully I was accepted into a school specifically created for learning disabled youth for grades 7 to 12. While a boon for my esteem, it also meant that I missed out on a lot of the stereotypical highschool experience. That all being said, my feeling of "don't be sus" in elementary has followed me all my life. I've been in therapy for a year now to unlearn all my habits and perceptions about how life works to rebuild it in an image that works for me.
This video hits home fore sure. I wish I did the poll. I’ve been on both sides. Early elementary I was seen as the “slow kid” and it changed in 5th grade and I got into AP classes from then on… this vid 100% rings true and I feel so seen by this
I'm 26 now, Brazilian and autistic. I did not have access to gifted programs in my school years, as it's simply not a thing in most schools here. It frustrated me deeply and I even advocated for it during what would be "my high school" to you guys. I felt constantly bored in classes. Despite not paying attention to them (I'd work much better from home, by myself), I was very rarely allowed to exercise creative writing, reading and drawing during class, even though I was not disturbing anyone and could answer correctly to whatever the teachers tried to ask me. My grades were always As and very rarely Bs and I was one of the few students in my school that was trusted to be handled school report directly. But I couldn't have one class that challenged me. When I was little, I took a test to jump a school year and so I did, but when the opportunity was again presented to my parents, they denied, as they thought it would cost me a lot socially. However my social challenges come from autism and how hard communication and connection feel to me, not the age group I'm interacting with. In the end, I am in my third attempt in uni, because I simply was never allowed to explore my interests and passions, as the other students were. I've never had to learn a system to study, so I struggle with it. And I feel like all my potential is wasted in a daily basis.
I was a gifted kid in school but because I was going blind I became the slow kid and it got so bad I dropped out of school. Before I pitied the slow kids coz they were so kind and my friends and a lot of the stuff they got made fun of I did too 😅. Going back to school now aware of disability and abuse I only ever saw the slow kids for what they were (abused or disabled and special needs). I remember this one kid that was lovely, handsome, entertaining, talented, hardworking and charming (this child was a dream child 😂) but he just couldn't math and because of that was abused and labelled slow. I remember realizing he was disabled and I was too but for me it was a pass to struggle but for him an offense to.
I was labeled a "gifted" kid in elementary school (definitely due to autism, in retrospect), but had to be put in special education in highschool and only graduated with bare minimum grades. After being labeled as "gifted" in elementary school, I always saw myself as a failure afterwards, resulting in the typical burnout and depression that comes with it. I didn't even have to do homework or got any assistance as a "gifted" kid, because they just assumed I understood everything already, leading me to fail my foreign language class.
Interesting to see the experience of someone else who did remedial classes and enhanced classes. Before I even started school, I was considered slow because I wasn't talking at 4 years old. Teachers had extremely low expectations for me. But then I excelled in sports/games and then reading/writing were introduced and I LOVED reading and writing. I struggled to listen and talk but reading and writing were these exciting opportunities for me to communicate. And then there was maths. I cried most maths classes. The differences in subjects was extreme to the point that teachers insisted I get tested back in the 1980s when they generally didn't test kids. At least not where we lived. I was diagnosed with Central Auditory Processing Disorder, later CAPD was included under the dyslexia umbrella, only it's basically an auditory version instead of written. I struggle to isolate and differentiate sounds.
I felt stupid. I rarely spoke. It took forever for me to think of something to say and then to project my voice. I felt so hopelessly stupid. My relief came in sports, English, History, etc... Even if kids weren't friendly, I was one of the first pick in gym class. I got onto teams and I could dance. But maths was daily humiliation and torture. I woke up each day feeling dread. I hated school, teachers and other kids eventually.
Sitting still and being quiet is a hard job for a lot of adults as well
In school, I had an undiagnosed ADHD, autism and depression in school, and was gifted. Even though my grades were fine, I usally felt bored and unintrested, arrogant and overconfident, or stressed and like a faliure. However, I was pretty well behaved in class itself, had an alright memory, and it looked like I was engaging, so I continied being put in classes hardly representative of my internal level (not that any other level would make a difference, as I have to learn in very odd ways to get anything to stick.)
The label hurt me so much at my time in public school. I was eventually diagnosed around the high school mark and put into a school that was designed around autistic kids.
If you know anything about what that entails, it means every single kid that cannot be standardized is forced being taught in a standarized way (the staff was trained for behavior problems, not for actually teaching the right way.) So, lessons were dumbed down to an excessive degree, teachers either provided not enough help in a very basic manner, or way too much help, they basicallly gave up on trying to actually teach anything. Students were constantly and consistantly interrupting class, the amount of and which students would do it varied class to class, somtimes being so unbearable I could hardly hear myself think. There was PLENTY of busy work with no real purpose, which I HATED, because around this time I actually learnt how to properly motivate and engage with the lesson in a way that suits me best so I could actually learn somthing from it, but most of my learning came from home and the internet, somtimes I learnt topics relevant to the classwork, leaving me even more bored than usual, and to add a cherry on top, many teachers treated us as way younger than we actually were, which got on my nerves. However, I would say I did prefer that to before, as the teachers were very positive and friendly.
Overall, the school system is a joke. Nothing but a super big waste of a childhood that either needs to be revamped heavily to the point where it barely resembles school as it is now, or just go away.
My MA k-8 local school did not have gifted programs. In the district high school every class had CP (dumb), CPA (average), Honors (gifted), and AP (easier than honors + college credit) versions with students self selecting their level. It was GREAT.
Freshman year I did 4 CPA & 2 Honors because it was not recommended to take more than 2 honors. I ANNIHILATED everyone in the CPA classes
Sophomore through Senior year I took exclusively AP or Honors if AP was not available. The advanced classes required work and were self selecting, so the class sizes were only 18-23 students & there were never any disruptions or behavioral problems. I then went into college with 33 credits.
Im not a fan of forcing students into dumb or gifted classes. I am dyslexic, was in special ed, and couldn't read until 5th grade, then I got a 36 out of 36 on the ACT English section in high school. If there had been a forced track system, I probably would have been incorrectly assigned. Self selection + courses maintaining standards accomplishes the same thing as forced tracks & with fewer mistakes
"Maybe these academic labels, as dictated by the school system, really just work to separate who can be useful to the state, and who can't."
PREACH.
i feel like after high school i definitely deprogrammed myself from academic competition and elitism but this video just pulled me back to when i had a complex about being in honors/AP level classes. not necessarily that i looked down on the general course levels but it was clear there were social divisions based on “academic” v. honors v. AP v. “gifted” which were all slightly different circles. even though i was indifferent to school, my only motivator in HS was titles and GPA which destroyed my sense of self. i hate looking back at how clung to my grades because i felt like i had nothing else. that’s not even getting into that i was one of few Black girls or Black students in these classes!!
I was in a high-achieving non-gifted kid who eventually caught up with the gifted kids in high school when I got into the AP/honors classes. Sometimes, I even outperformed them in some of those classes. What's weird, though, is I remember more than half the kids in my elementary classes being in gifted. The way my elementary school was structured was that the gifted and non-gifted students were taught social studies and English together but separated for math and science. When the gifted kids left for their math and science lessons, the classroom was half-empty. Not sure if this is normal or not for gifted programs to be this saturated.
i was a gifted kid/was a year ahead and was always kind of ambivalent about being labeled such. once i got into high school and got depression and my grades dropped to low/failing, i kind of lost all faith in myself and my abilities.
I had one of those ableist mothers growing up. Mild to moderate Asperger’s and ADHD, seriously if you met me at any point after my teen years you’d never notice unless I told you. But because of these labels in elementary and middle school I was pulled out of regular classes to go to the Special Ed classes which were in the trailers attached to the building that they made permanent extensions to during a construction expansion. When that happens it makes people not want to associate with you, puts an invincible dunce cap on your head and makes people think they can treat you like shit. When your two best friends in middle school don’t go to the same school as you but live within a mile of you that’s telling on how much of an outcast it makes you. When HS came around I was relieved to be able to blend in in a large crowd and interact with people less. I also had to fight the school system to get put into more mainstream classes and never took a single accelerated class in anything despite being a fairly smart kid who could do geometry in his head and was the best student in his history class. Needless to say when I first went to university and flunked out after two years because it was more of two years of teaching myself how to function on my own and building critical life skills from level zero then as a second chance from age 24-28 student when I was getting Bs on my own in 300-400 level university classes I was able to convince my mother to go from 3 classes a semester to 5-6 over the course of two years and ended up graduating with 154 credits as a double major with a Bachelors in Human Geography and Political Science when I saw I could get 90s on university level writing assignments without much effort I really started to resent my mother and the education system for holding me back so much during very critical years of my upbringing. I realized from the lack of social opportunities, self esteem and motivation growing up how much I missed out on, had my first date at 16 in a six month relationship and was single for six years after that. Went through a few fling relationships at 23-25 then at 27-29 before meeting the love of my life. Now at 33 I’m in a job making $75,000 a year and married. So yes, the special label does fuck you up. Also I told my mother off about two years ago saying “maybe if your goal had been to get me into higher level classes in middle and high school in subjects I was good at and actually enjoyed, I wouldn’t have developed a lack of motivation and gotten a false sense of higher aptitude than I actually had, maybe I wouldn’t have been a target of social exclusion, maybe I wouldn’t have had to waste the entire first half of my 20s teaching myself basic student, life and social skills most people learn all throughout middle and high school, that’s why I resent you, not because I’m ungrateful for how much you “sacrificed and helped” but because how much of an ablest martyr you are.”
I was leveled as slow in middle school... definitely made me doubt my availabilitys as a kid. I'm thankful for my family who even tho I was labeled as slow they help me to understand the value of hard work. At uni I graduated with honours which has opened for me many opportunities. Definitely hard work is needed in everything, specially if it is something you love doing.
I had the opposite happen to me. I have dyscalculia which is a learning disability that really effects math. And I always struggled in math. Freshman year I had to work really hard to get my grade up by the end of the year in algebra 2 I think and my teacher wanted to put me in honors geometry! I didn’t think that was a good idea at all and even my mom encouraged me to. Well I ended up taking it and I regret it so much. It severely hurt my gpa. It felt like I didn’t belong in there. Everyone was getting good grade and I’m basically failing even though I’m trying with everything I have to understand and do my best. I just couldn’t understand it. So yeah my teacher pressured me and recommended me to one of the hardest and least rewarding classes of my education life. Thanks mom! Even my mom agrees she was wrong to encourage me to take it now lol
This also was a lot like my story. I was always label as delayed because even in pre k I couldn’t pick up on milestones like handwriting and speech. I was put in early intervention but move to a new school that didn’t have anything other than special education. I struggled in school all my life, I failed education, socially also bullied and outcasted, and functionally. I had teachers treat me terribly and disliked because I made their jobs harder which they told me to my face and they took it as defiance and laziness vs actually struggling bc I didn’t have an documented disorder just delayed which wasn’t a diagnosis so I didn’t get any help or patience. I always felt behind bc I was. The school tried to put me in special education despite no official diagnosis or if I did have one they were unaware of it but they thought I was bringing down the class and special education would get me out the way. School was a horrible time, but at 28 I was officially diagnosed autistic which I always had a feeling something was off about me but I never could put a name to it. Looking back they were so many signs that my family and school ignored
I really like this video. I have too many anecdotes about my own school experience growing up to formulate into words here, but I really resonated with others' stories and experiences shared here, particularly comparing myself to peers and siblings, and myself, tbh. Also as a parent of two neurodivergent children, I can tell you it is difficult to navigate that as a parent and being a supporter/advocate for my kids' needs as well.