Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that there will be no more gifted and talented programs in the New York City schools. A lot of parents will be PO’d about this. Let’s say that your child is clearly gifted and talented and will be bored in a regular classroom. If you have big money, and we are talking a LOT of money, you can send the child to one of New York’s prestigious private schools. But if you are a parent of lesser economic status and you can’t afford Horace Mann or Fieldstone, you may suspect your kid will not be educated and cultivated in an appropriate manner. Let’s face it — with 35 students in a class, we can give lip service to doing right by your bright child but in most cases, it really isn’t going to happen. On his way out, de Blasio is obviously playing to those whose children are not, at any early age, gifted and talented.
This brings me back to my own particular situation back at Joan of Arc Junior High School on 93rd Street so many, many years ago. That’s where I learned my original lesson in gifted and talented. You see, there was this thing called the IGC or Intellectually Gifted Class. That’s where all the brightest children resided. Not only were they tracked to that class, but they would also be “rapidly advanced.” That meant that instead of staying in Joan of Arc for three years, they would do it in two. I was NOT one of those kids. Instead, my mother, who knew my limitations, thought I should be in the next level down in the orchestra class. That was terrific and served me well for the rest of my life.
However, the story continues. Mrs. Blauvelt, the teacher of the of the IGC Rapid Advance Class, was very partial to her bright students and gave them all the rewards she could. She was also in charge of the school’s General Organization and every year she would be proud of the kids from her class who ran for school wide office.
Well, I decided I wanted to be president of the General Organization, so I ran for office. To cut to the chase, Mrs. Blauvelt decided I wasn’t smart enough to be allowed to do that. Two of her favorites from the IGC would run against each other. That way, there was the presumption an election, and Mrs. Blauvelt declared that I was out of it.
Well, my teacher was a wonderful woman named Rosalyn Halperin. She was infuriated and suggested I bring my mother into the case. My mother talked to her friend, Dr. Stella Sweeting, the principal, who apparently told Mrs. Blauvelt where to get off. My twin brother, Lewis, became my campaign manager (shades of Robert Kennedy) and we did it right, with posters and parades, and I won. So much for the different kinds of intelligence and the rapid advance class. Most of those IGC kids have done very well in life, but the kind of arbitrary snobbishness that was going around was just awful.
When I saw that de Blasio, who is not my favorite politician, had ruled out gifted and talented classes, my mind raced back to Mrs. Blauvelt and the kind of classism that comes out of these things. My wife, a talented former full professor of education, has written on this, calling for teachers to be able to meet the individual needs of everyone in their classes. We have high schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech and City College and Hunter College, where I eventually went. Pretty special places. Obviously, de Blasio thinks he can make political hay with this trick. He thinks he will win points with all of us who didn’t make it into specialized classes. But cheap politics is just that, cheap politics. As for me, I remember Mrs. Blauvelt. Not only did she oppose my election, she went on to booby trap everything I did as class president.
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October 16, 2021 at 11:01AM
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