On top of his Hugo Chavez-inspired scheme to run government groceries, establish free universal child care, and reinstall rent control to create one, two, many Fort Apaches, New York City mayoral candidate frontrunner Zohran Mamdani also plans to end the gifted and talented program for schoolchildren, from kindergarten to the grade of three.
According to the New York Times:
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic front-runner for mayor of New York City, plans to end the gifted and talented program for kindergarten students at public schools if he is elected, calling for a major overhaul of a program that has deeply divided parents.
Mr. Mamdani’s campaign said in a statement that he would embrace former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan, announced in 2021, to phase out the gifted program for elementary schools, which has been widely criticized for exacerbating segregation.
Students who are in gifted classes would remain in the program, but there would be no gifted program for kindergartners next fall, the campaign said on Wednesday.
"I will return to the previous policy,” Mr. Mamdani said in the statement. “Ultimately, my administration would aim to make sure that every child receives a high-quality early education that nurtures their curiosity and learning."
The Times reports that it's just kindergarten, the Washington Post reports it goes up until kids enter the third grade. Mamdani insists that New York, which scrapped its gifted policy under Bill De Blasio, and then reinstated it under Eric Adams, be re-scrapped, even though the only reason it was reinstated was because scrapping it was so unpopular.
What on Earth is the point of that?
Gifted and talented programs, such as New York's, are a leg up to bright minority students who have different learning needs over other students, including special needs students, who need extra attention, too, and which no one is talking about cutting funds for. The sooner the gifted students are placed in these programs, the better.
Mamdani says that whites and Asians are overrepresented, but has no insight as to why that might be happening -- cultural differences for sure. But for the many minority students, who form about 21% of those in New York's gifted and talented program, it's a lifeline, coming as they do from underprivileged backgrounds, where academics are not valued. To take that away from them is an outrage.
Why would putting bright kids in with kids who are either slower, or who have no interest in learning, be an improvement over the program as it is now? Bright kids are the ones who are actually interested when Shakespeare is introduced in the lesson, or science experiments are conducted. They're the ones who wamt to solve the math problems and enter the math contests. Putting them in with other students who don't like to learn will make them feel like weirdos and loners, like something is wrong with them. It's the most unaffirmative thing that can possibily be done.
But Mamdani doesn't care -- actually, he wants to eliminate excellence, particularly in education, denying kids the critical thinking and problem solving skills they can develop through gifted programs -- and replacing their schooling with a one-size fits all model of mediocrity. Sure, he calls it 'high quality.' But a car can only run on its slowest wheel. It won't be high quality for the gifted, or probably, anyone else. Nothing suits Mamdani like education becoming a factory for blotting paper bureaucrats. And nobody resents a gifted minority from a poor background who pulled himself up by his bootstraps than an idle prep-school privileged kids as Mamdani had been.
Which raises the question as to why he wants all education to be alike, high-quality as he claims. It seems ideal for converting education into indoctrination, which is always one-size-fits-all, and indoctrinators always like to start with the young.
I can't even say that maybe that won't happen, because it looks so inevitable that that is the idea.
If this Chavista freak wins, New Yorkers need to get out of that city as soon as possible. The socialism and its accompanying corruption is going to be De Blasio cubed.
Image: Bingjiefu He, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed
