GATE School in Hindsight

From fourth through eighth grade, I attended Elkhorn, a GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) school that required students to take the Raven’s test (a fluid intelligence test) and allowed entry to only those students that scored in the highest percentile. It was still a public school but was set aside for the “smartest” students. Teachers had tons of freedom in how they taught. We had ridiculous projects. Some days we spent the entire time in costume, participating in historical reenactments. Some days we spent hours catching each other falling from ladders or passing students from one side of the classroom to the other through a PVC pipe square. And we were the only students beginning to pull all nighters doing homework at ages nine and ten. I don’t know exactly what the point of some of these activities were but it was definitely a unique schooling experience.

As I’ve grown up and moved outside of Stockton area, I’ve learned that these schools are rare. In fact, I’ve never heard of another entire school reserved for only GATE students. Looking back, I’ve also begun to question whether this school was a success or what point it even served. I don’t think that the group of kids I went to school with was particularly gifted or smart. In fact, looking back, the only major difference in the student population that I do recall was that a lot of my classmates were on the more wealthy side (I think because success in school correlates more with opportunities allowed by parent’s time and money than we like to believe). My classmates have not done exceptionally well since then. There’s a handful at prestigious colleges. There’s a good percentage that went to state schools, a good percentage that went to community college, and some who didn’t end up going to college at all.

The most obvious effect of attending this school that I saw was that students left with heavy expectations on their back. We were told high school would be a breeze after attending Elkhorn. And so we expected to get straight As in AP classes and when we failed at that, many of us felt like failures. We were expected to go to Ivy League colleges, so when we couldn’t get in or our grades didn’t even give us hopes of getting in, we felt like wasted potential.

As much as attending Elkhorn was a fun experience, I don’t believe it was beneficial or that separating out GATE students in general is beneficial. At nine years old, it’s not fair to decide who has ‘potential’ and who does not.

Related posts:

Before recorded history no doubt mankind used wind power — we just don’t know how the very earliest users used it. But imagine the stone age scene: a child laughing as she watches the autumn leaves…