First of two posts to show that class divisions isn’t just for others:
When I was…7, we moved to the house I was raised in, and that was 2nd grade in public (free) elementary school.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, partway through the school year, my teacher and the school principal pulled my parents aside, said they thought I might be “gifted,” and wanted to get me tested, and depending on the results, put me in advanced schooling.
My parents said no. Part of the reason was cost (it wasn’t totally free), transportation (no school-bus), but the main reason was, I found out later, my dad’s insistence that something like that “ain’t fer people like us!” - he always saw formal education as something to be suspicious of, as all the people who seemed to take the most advantage of other people were “highly educated,” meaning lawyers, bankers, and politicians, and there was no way he was going to facilitate any kid of his possibly ending up as one of those.
It never upset me to find that out, as I sailed through school with very little effort, and my personality type is not one that likes a high-pressure, competitive environment like that would have been (had I indeed been selected as gifted - I may have flunked all the testing, who knows?) - I’m not particularly driven or ambitious, so that would have been disastrous for me. I have enough anxiety as it is.
When I was…7, we moved to the house I was raised in, and that was 2nd grade in public (free) elementary school.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, partway through the school year, my teacher and the school principal pulled my parents aside, said they thought I might be “gifted,” and wanted to get me tested, and depending on the results, put me in advanced schooling.
My parents said no. Part of the reason was cost (it wasn’t totally free), transportation (no school-bus), but the main reason was, I found out later, my dad’s insistence that something like that “ain’t fer people like us!” - he always saw formal education as something to be suspicious of, as all the people who seemed to take the most advantage of other people were “highly educated,” meaning lawyers, bankers, and politicians, and there was no way he was going to facilitate any kid of his possibly ending up as one of those.
It never upset me to find that out, as I sailed through school with very little effort, and my personality type is not one that likes a high-pressure, competitive environment like that would have been (had I indeed been selected as gifted - I may have flunked all the testing, who knows?) - I’m not particularly driven or ambitious, so that would have been disastrous for me. I have enough anxiety as it is.