Among the Intellectualoids: Little Brainos
Moore, Stephen
and so does Ward's Garage, the best wrecker service in the area. It's not about flatlander sodomy so much as Yankee impotence. They voted against gay unions at Town Meeting, and their...
...Despite my misgivings, my wife remains convinced that GT is "the chance of a lifetime" for Justin...
...True, the "Take Back Vermonters" might have been better advised to take their stand a few years ago, but the taciturn Yankee is temperamentally disinclined to spend his time arguing with vo]ub]e flatland activists, and so the big-government one-size-fits-all lobby wound up inheriting by default...
...Ditto for the people who work at the World Bank and the IMF...
...Entry into this exclusive club of smart kids is even more coveted than having your son or daughter cherry picked for the select soccer team...
...I could detect envy in the parents of Justin's classmates who didn't make the cut--which only made it all the sweeter...
...Actually, there is something even dumber: Telling the parents that their kids are special...
...These parents, who had prayed hard and long to get their kids into this program (some lobbied furiously to get their borderline kids accepted), now wanted to engage in the politically correct exercise of pretending that their kids really aren't superior to the rest who weren't chosen...
...But, in Vermont, the leaders of the Republican Party are a little embarrassed by actual Republicans, and would rather they went away so they could get back to voting with the Democrats and being hailed for their bipartisanship by the media...
...I tried to cheer them up by reminding them of how much carpenters are making these days...
...He's irreverent, uncooperative, and hyperactive...
...in the living room...
...We don't really have a property tax rate as such anymore...
...My first impression of GT parents was that there sure were a lot of Asians in the room...
...They voted against gay unions at Town Meeting, and their representatives-Democrat and Republican--ignored them...
...And the least they could expect from Jeffords & Co...
...They turned to their local papers, but most of the civil unions coverage is by Ross Sneyd, the Associated Press correspondent who formerly served on the board of Out in the Mountains...
...Word spread around the neighborhood without my having to advertise it...
...Back then in the Catholic schools there was none of this touchy-feely bunk about every kid being above average...
...He cuts corners...
...But Washington is also a place where supremely stupid ideas seem to sprout and flourish...
...It's elitist to the core...
...Whether he learns anything of value is a different proposition altogether...
...So he's attending...
...And alas, as Vermont goes, so goes the nation...
...And it had become solemn, as many parents gave in to a kind of nagging angst...
...I can't tell you what the tax rate is," said Avery...
...In fact, we'll feel fortunate if he just graduates from the second grade now that they've ended social promotion...
...Gifted and talented people believe the most unwise and nonsensical things...
...The other week I attended the GT orientation in a crammed cafeteria full of parents all aglow over their good fortune...
...And so civil unions became a final straw for the already brokenbacked Yankee highlander...
...Another decade of Democrat rule...
...After all, what does the Jeffords crowd actually want...
...Ruth Dwyer neatly wrapped it up by saying Vermonters "are tired of a state that tells them what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and then takes their money to force things on them that they don't believe in...
...When I was Justin's age at Saints Faith Hope and Charity school in Winnetka, Illinois, I was ignominiously detoured into what the nuns called "the poky group...
...His only gift and talent that we can detect so far is playing Game Boy for four hours straight without blinking or a bathroom break...
...Another actually wondered: "Will my daughter still be able to play with her old friends...
...Each and every one of us boys was constantly reminded that we were just one spitball away from eternal damnation...
...A year or two back, I attended the annual school district meeting in Fairlee...
...The day my second son, 7-year-old Will, is admitted into GT is the day Janet Reno is named honorary queen of the Cuban-American parade in Miami...
...I never tire of reminding the members of the PTA every time they start agitating for more money--which is almost always--that if we keep spending at our current pace, it won't be long before we've created an academic environment as enriching as the schools just east of us...
...But, after a decade of Democrat control of the state, Vermont's SOP at last has a viable shot at taking the governorship and the state senate...
...Will is, in the immortal words of Bart Simpson, "an underachiever and proud of it...
...During Q&A I could not resist asking whether the courses are taught in Korean or Vietnamese...
...He will continue to get good grades in math, reading, social studies (Lord knows why he's taught more Mexican history than American history), and all of the rest of the subjects they teach in public schools these days...
...Just the opposite was true...
...Negative reinforcement was the reigning incentive structure...
...Our community still has unshakable faith in the flat earth society theory that school 60 No v e m b e r 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator spending is somehow related to achievement...
...Just tell us what the tax rate is," said one guy...
...F inally the Moore genes are asserting themselves: My 8-year-old son Justin has just been accepted into the gifted and talented (ST) program in the Fairfax, Virginia school system...
...The parents applauded furiously after each presentation...
...The GT coordinator tried to allay concerns by noting how enriching it will be for our children to be amidst their "intellectual peers...
...When my wife and I found out we blasted Queen's "We Are the Champions" on the CD player and danced a little jig STEPHEN MOORE i8 president of the Club for Growth...
...As Austin Powers's nemesis Dr...
...And what could be more inadvisable than telling an 8-year-old that he is gifted and talented...
...Most Marxists are fairly intelligent people who for all I know sailed through gifted and talented programs...
...This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff...
...Anyway, the one enduring lesson you learn from living in Washington for nearly 20 years is how overrated intelligence is...
...He rebels against any and all authority (those genes asserting themselves again...
...The school board chairman, Allen Avery, stood up and tried to explain how, under the new Act 6o, they had to cut this and that program because they now had to give their money to the state but that certain people in town would qualify for rebates from Montpelier on the increased property tax bill...
...Asians are perhaps lO percent of the student body but half the parents seemed Oriental...
...The District of Columbia spends $9,50o per kid and its schools are like jails...
...One thing is certain...
...I felt like parading Justin around the block with a flashing neon sign reading: GIFTED AND TALENTED KID...
...But that wasn't necessary...
...They contacted their political masters and were told they should be content with a choice between voting for a Democrat who openly supports gay marriage or voting for a Republican who agonizes about how "conflicted" he is and then votes for it anyway...
...Not only are the geniuses not very smart, but tile people who choose them have a few screws loose too...
...I'm told that half the people who devised the dim-witted Hillary Clinton health care plan were Rhodes Scholars...
...N r~l [~1 [e] IIi [~ lil I:1 !~ RI ki !::1 }nl Lrq I..:1 [~ kn LJJllP~N[NN[o]I-[II-;'JI~ by Stephen Moore Little Brainos The joys and worries of having "gifted and talented" kids...
...If you were to ask me who will be more successful in life, Will or the kids of these smothering parents, I wouldn't bet for a minute against Will...
...In that case, why bother with Republicans at all...
...That's when a professionally dressed woman stood up in front of the parents and rather smugly volunteered: "Don't worry, this is my third child admitted into the GT program [lots of oohs and ahs from the rest of us] and my children are all happy and normal...
...Will has survival skills...
...And by God, the method worked...
...The pretense in the room was Both pitiful and laughable...
...I was actually a bit stunned to be there...
...The GT program is the ultimate status symbol in Northern Virginia...
...And how about the national party getting behind Mrs...
...You weren't pumped up with false and patronizing accolades...
...You learned simply because you were terrified of the alternative...
...left the school grounds convinced that the GT program is a sinister invention...
...Why give so much special attention to those who need the pampering the least...
...Their main worry: Would their child still be normal after being corralled in a classroom with all these 84o-lo yearold rocket scientists...
...I asked the father sitting next to me why, if she already had two kids in the program, she'd found it necessary to come to another orientation--unless it was to brag that she now had, count-em, three gifted and talented children...
...If the school system can provide such a wondrously nourishing academic environment for the 20 percent of the kids who are gifted and talented, why can't it do the same for the other 8o percent...
...This elicited no smiles from our solemn group...
...On balance, they appeared bright, nerdy, well-behaved (too much so for my tastes), and self-important...
...Dwyer7 After all, it won't be long before Vermont gay couples are pressuring neighboring jurisdictions to recognize their unions, and once that happens those jurisdictions will be under pressure to introduce their own gay unions, and once that happens it's over...
...Justin already senses that he's God's gift to the world without the school system reinforcing his superiority complex...
...I was never sure whether this was my punishment for rebelling against authority or for being a slow reader...
...We'd arrived at the absolute pinnacle of parenthood...
...The argument's always that a guy like Jeffords is what it takes to elect a Republican in Ben&Jerryland...
...Justin has high IQ...
...is some perfunctory, halfhearted support...
...Soon he'll start hanging out with his "intellectual peers," and I'm certain it will be the ruination of him...
...This city is a mecca for self-described intelligent people...
...But an apprehensive mother asked, "Do they have recess with the other kids...
...They wrote letters espousing t~aditiona] morality, but were told by the liberal crowd they were spreading "hate...
...IN The American Spectator _9 No v e m b e r 2 o o o 61...
...Evil put it during his family therapy sessions, "All in all, a pretty normal childhood...
...Not long ago the MacArthur Foundation actually awarded a "genius" prize to the Malthusian biologist Paul Ehrlich--the same dolt who once said that he would "bet even money that England will cease to exist by the year 200o...
...There is a whole raft of issues--from small-lot logging to school curricula-but all summed up by the same feeling of impotence...
...Somehow this didn't work...
...Maybe it's all come too late...
...Yes, academic excellence is everything to Fairfax parents, and I can show you my property tax bills to prove it...
...During the last phase of the dog and pony show, a group of GT fifth graders came in and read from their writings...
Vol. 33 • November 2000 • No. 9
