Comment on Does the USA have gifted schools or was Spider-Man Homecoming lying?
fratermus@piefed.social 3 days ago
half of My polycule says that magnet schools are all fake
US magnet schools are real, although controlled by the local school district rather than the federal govt. They tend to be organized around subject (STEM, performing arts, etc) rather than cognitive gift per se . One might argue that a pre-law/pre-med magnet could have substantial overlap with cognitive ability.
Services for the cognitively “gifted”, to the degree they exist, tend to be located within a given school. They have a special curriculum, the flipside of one might have for kids who are cognitively challenged.
and only serve the rich. There’s no way a low income white boy
I assure you that isn’t true, both from direct experience and from working in magnets. Rich folks can likely influence any situation but magnet != private school for rich kids.
it doesn’t have any dumb jock types
They typically don’t have competitive sports teams so any jock-ness is individual rather than collective. Kids geographically local to a magnet can often attend automatically so there is a subset of Normals at a magnet, including jocks.
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Seconding this explanation. It’s exactly right.
That’s not to say there aren’t private schools for rich kids. There definitely are. But that’s not magnet schools, and it’s not where Spider-Man goes.
There was a whole scandal a few years ago where a bunch of people, including Aunt Becky from Full House, was caught paying to get her kid into Stanford. That’s university, not secondary; and maybe someone who wasn’t so splashy about everything might’ve done better. But it illustrates the point: we at least try to maintain the illusion of being meritocratic.