Gifted child discourse is so fucking tiring because it just cycles round the same two positions of "gifted child burnout is real" and "gifted child burnout is real but developmentally irrelevant, get over yourself", without addressing the actual central problem.

Which is THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GIFTED CHILD AND G&T PROGRAMMES EXIST AS THE TOP END OF THE SAME DENIAL-OF-SUPPORT STRUCTURE FOR KIDS WITH DISABILITIES THAT SPECIAL MEASURES ARE THE BOTTOM END OF.

G&T kids burn out BY DESIGN because the programme denies them curated support

When you have ND schoolchildren the way you avoid giving them any kind of meaningful educational support is you skim off the ones who present in ways bad for your education model into "troublemakers" and all the ones who present in the short term in "good" ways into G&T.

The bottom lot get an expectation of failure that they then fulfil, because they get no support, and the top lot get short-term praise for engaging minimally because it's easy and are thereby trained to be violently independent so they crash out later, because they get no support

It's the same problem in both cases- neurodivergent and otherwise underprivileged kids (other external factors work into this too) don't fit well into our template for one-size-fits-all schooling, so we isolate them in such a way as to make their failure to engage their problem.

Which dying field you get put into is based entirely on an assessment of how useful you would be to capital if your current situation continued in perpetuity, the practical upshot of which is one group gets yelled at more but they're both being set up to fail the same way.

And I don't think this can be solved individualistically- schools can barely offer disability support to the most stereotypically model autistic child without screwing it up or outright abusing him.

How are you going to get them to care about their actions to minimise their personal trouble now causing a kid to have a fucking meltdown in her early twenties because it was more convenient for them to instil an unsustainable sense of independence in her?

An individual teacher might be able to see the pattern and try to address it but without a fundamental change to how that kid is taught (which would be beyond the teacher's reach) nothing will actually prevent that crash.

The point of this thread is bickering about whether gifted or special measures kids had it worse ignores that both scenarios happen because our school system absolutely does not give a shit about the needs of disabled or underprivileged students, or individual needs in general.