A friend of mine commented regarding the Gifted Label, saying that she doesn't like labeling people, but prefers to label needs.
I wrote this in response to her comment: I have been thinking about your comment and its implications. While it may semantically make a difference, I don't see that, in
practice it makes much difference. "Children with learning
disabilities" and "learning disabled children" seem remarkably similar
to me.
In addition, in the case of gifted children, labeling their needs is
actually restrictive. Gifted children don't simply need extended
curriculum, they need social and emotional support that isn't generally
offered in any curricula.
In
a way, I see it as analogous to the movement in the autistic community.
At first, many people welcomed the designation of "person with
autism", which emphasized the person first and the autism as a
qualifier. But then a significant number of autistic people decided
that their autism was so central to them as people that they would
actually prefer to be labeled "autistic people". Their whole being
needs to be interpreted through the lens of their autism.
Sure,
gifted people have needs that can be labelled, but, for me, at least,
there is a lot more to it than just the needs. It is acceptance of the
whole person where the giftedness cannot be separated out from the
whole. d
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Further thoughts/comments:
For most services offered in schools, we do not label the service, but we DO label the child. He is ELL; she is LD. They are deaf; they are BD.
How could we label the needs of gifted children without labeling the child? "Children who need extended curriculum"? - true, but not the whole story. "Children who need emotional support for their advanced learning differences"? - also true, but the same type of problem that the word "gifted" has. Would it make a difference to label the service and not the child?
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