In article , Ericka Kammerer says...

toypup wrote:


I doesn't matter what it's called, everyone will know what it means. We had
a blue bird, red bird program at school where the excellerated readers
started school a little later. The labels didn't mention gifted or
talented, just a different colored bird, but everyone knew what it meant.


I certainly agree with that. Most of the grades in
our school have reading and math groups. They aren't
identified as anything beyond "Mr. Alexander's reading group"
or "Mrs. Grader's math group" and they don't tell the kids
(or the parents, unless you torture it out of them!) which
groups are which, but the kids figure it out in very short
order. Still, I think there is something important about
names, and calling something the "gifted and talented"
program does beg the question of precisely what these
kids are gifted and talented *at* and whether everyone
else is *not* gifted *or* talented (which would be patently
untrue). I'd be happy seeing a somewhat different label,
but I haven't the foggiest idea what it would be. And
really, maybe it wouldn't do any good after all. Even if
you started out with more neutral words, perhaps they'd
just acquire the meanings one hoped to avoid anyway, as
you say.

I've often heard "accelerated" and always thought that was a pretty good
non-judgemental term.

Banty