DADWAGON

DadWagon’s axles are a little rusted from the weekend. While we get greased, enjoy this puppy (thanks, LA Times, for fetching it, from cuteoverload.com, I presume).

LAKE WOBEGON: Dammit, if Matt can file a post with a dateline why can’t I? Aren’t I gifted enough or talented enough to merit a dateline, even if mine is from a fictional location best know for a population where “all the children are above average.” (I found that quote on a wiki site devoted to explaining “illusory superiority.”)

I suppose in the case of DadWagon, I’m the exception that proves the demographic rule: of the four DadWagoneers, I’m the only who didn’t work the fact that he had been in a G&T program as a child into his contribution to the Tantrum on G&T education for our children.

Not that there was much disagreement among us four, really. Matt and Christopher thought such programs were irrelevant–but wouldn’t counsel against putting their children in one. Nathan and I both seemed to think gifted and talented education were a bad thing–Nathan because the programs are inept, me because they don’t benefit boys and girls equally–but both of us are presently having our children tested.

Perhaps the best thing, in the proper Wobegon-ian spirit, would be to put all children in G&T programs.

Meanwhile, off the prairie, was Matt, reckoning with Chinese dad-bigotry, and Christopher, venturing out to Brooklyn, where parents are driven to drink. Nathan begrudged the French their silly gift rituals, when he wasn’t kissing some blogger ass. Meanwhile, I was helping my son stalk a television star, pondering anti-semitism in Kansas City, and watching Taiwanese reenactments.

Generally speaking, a productive week. Speaking of productive, have you taken the DadWagon poll? Inquiring minds want to know what you, the readers, think of G&T education. Please take the time to participate–there’s absolutely nothing in it for you.

Have a nice weekend.

Short answer: No, but it’s unlikely to be worth the trouble.

In my childhood, these programs were called TAG, not G&T. (I read the latter abbreviation as “gin & tonic,” which is a lovely summer diversion for parents, less so for 8-year-olds.) Gifted programs were new to the school district, and ours called for a little knot of seven or eight of us to be pulled out of class once a week, for a couple of hours’ Time to Do Creative Things. My memory of those classes is significantly faint. I think there were word puzzles and other brain-teasers. I do remember the first teacher I worked with, a guy named Bob Ginsberg, who was funny and clever and made me feel smarter principally because he talked to us like adults. Ran into him regularly through my high-school years, and I think of him surprisingly often, and fondly.

But I also remember the following year, when Dr. Ginsberg got kicked upstairs to administer something or other, and a new teacher was given the gig. She was an elementary-school lifer, and what I remember was that (a) her classes were fairly uninteresting, and (b) we were a little bored by them, and (c) she became snappish at us because we weren’t Being Creative. And a couple of years later, I recall hearing that she’d stopped running the TAG program, and had even become a little bit embittered by the whole thing–like it had been her shot at a dream gig, and she hadn’t been up to it. In fact, a few years after that, she dropped dead.

Well. Reading this, I suppose I’m painting a more negative picture of the whole experience than it actually was. I mean, I got to step out of class for a few hours and do puzzles. That’s hard to call a bad thing. But I do wonder, given the limitations of the experience I had, whether it’s realistic to expect anything out of such a program. If it’s so dependent on teaching skill, and teachers who can deliver are so thin on the ground that even in a well-funded suburban school system we went one for two… would my son be better off spending more time on the standard everyday curriculum? Would the better G&T program be just an hour on Saturday morning with his dad, sharing the Times crossword? Could be. And neither of us will end up embittered and prematurely dead. I hope.