I’ve been thinking a lot lately about words. The words we choose come from mental bins full of other peoples’ labels for things. In the field of education, we use some startlingly revealing words that make value statements about children. It's old thinking, but still with us. Take for example the word “gifted”. This must have some sort of puritanical root because I’d bet money that the gifter of the gift is a religious figure, let’s say…God? So assuming that is true, it would mean that for some reason some people got more of something than I did, and that makes me feel bad. I know the mysterious ways thing and it doesn’t make me feel any better.
In schools, the word gifted is usually used on a kid that flummoxes teachers to the point that they don’t know exactly what to do for them. When you think about it though, isn’t the word gifted more of a white flag term educators use when they run out of knowledge to impart at that child’s grade level? Instead of us saying we’re now flummoxed, and accept that term for ourselves, we put it on children and have them wear the “gifted” label instead. The label that says, "I won the race through the curriculum!"
Just as gifted is what students are, accelerate is what teachers do. It happens to those students who can’t slow down enough to keep up with the bulk of the class. In fairness to the many excellent teachers out there, acceleration is what good teachers do, sans the term or the prestige. We should be accelerating and decelerating every hour of every day for different students in different subjects and through different sets of circumstances. The accelerated metaphorically drive off in a Porsche while the rest of the class shows up in Chevettes. But wait, here come the decelerated , galumphing down the street on three tires and a rim. Tsk, tsk, tsk…
Words bear emotional weight. If we find ourselves seeing children as gifted or accelerated we are also seeing them as not gifted or slow. If we re-think the way we talk, who knows? Maybe we’ll re-think the way we think.
