[a1pulley]

Does anyone have experience with going to a "school within a school" for "gifted and talented" kids? I was trying to figure out why I don't remember any bullying from my middle school or high school, when it dawned on me that I might have been insulated from it by taking classes exclusively with gifted and talented kids —i.e., kids from stable/whole/educated households. I went to a high school where kids came from a mix of blue collar and lower-earning white collar families; does bullying still happen at public high schools in wealthy areas?

There's a lot of discussion here about how private school kids are insulated from bullying. Does anyone have first-hand experience or hard evidence of this? Based on books and movies about boarding school, it's hard to believe this.

[patentatt]

That's me. Grew up in a very middle to perhaps lower-middle-class area and went to more-or-less middling schools. It definitely wasn't 'the mean streets' or anything but very blue collar. I'm certain there were kids living through very real problems at home and in their personal lives all around me. But I was blissfully unaware and disconnected from all that as I was wrapped in the bubble of band and honors/gifted classes and the associated type of kid. A pretty good childhood overall. One time, one 5-minute instance, I was actively, actually bullied, in a very minor and entirely inconsequential way by the football captain jock kind of kid. Took me by surprise, but rattled my cage enough that I still remember it. He went on to play in the NFL, had a short and pretty much unremarkable career as an athlete best I can tell, and now is a construction worker nearby and I saw a headline once that he got arrested for a DUI. I now live in a much nicer neighborhood in a bigger house than he does, and based on the blurb about the DUI, I drive a better car than he does/did. Point is, I can't imagine what it's like to actually be bullied. One tiny thing happened to me in an entirely impersonal and inconsequential way and here I am decades later googling the guy and feeling smug that I came out on top. I would have been crushed by any amount of real bullying.

[cortesoft]

A lot of the biggest bullies at my schools growing up were the richest kids. They might bully about different things, but they were huge bullies.

It seems like a lot of the HN discussion is focused on kids being bullied for being smart, which makes sense given the audience on here. However, other kids get bullied for lots of different reasons.

[qwerpy]

Chiming in with my anecdote. Took all honors classes throughout high school, so I pretty much never mixed with kids outside of that bubble. Was one of the few Asians in my high school in the small midwestern town, so I'm sure there was potential for bullying. But I wasn't bullied, and I credit some of that to the tiered class system.

This is one reason I'm up in arms about public school districts near me shutting down their gifted programs because they made certain not academically-inclined demographics feel bad about not being represented. So now, kids in my demographic get to feel bad about being bullied.

[dullcrisp]

If I understand you correctly, shutting down gifted programs because they aren’t equitable doesn’t make sense. But if you wanted my advice, you might get further if you made that point without the racism.

[bentley]

The assertion that there are “not academically-inclined demographics” comes from those working to shut down gifted programs. Need we pull out the Smithsonian’s “whiteness” chart again?

[dullcrisp]

I looked up what you’re talking about and the good news is it looks like that chart was pulled with an apology, so you should be able to rest easy now.

[atomicnumber3]

This is essentially how "honors" classes worked at my large public high school. If I weren't in the Anime- sorry, I mean, Japanese Culture- Club, I would literally have only seen the same 50ish kids all day out of a class of ~1000.

In freshman and sophomore year I decided that English classes bored me to tears, so I took non-honors English both years. There was zero overlap between that class and the kids I saw the rest of my day in honors classes. Then in junior year when I decided to do IB and was forced to take IB/AP English, suddenly boom yep exact same set of kids.

I'll admit, I enjoyed the experience. Admittedly partly because even half-assed work got me easy A's and glowing appreciation from my teachers (for actually putting in some effort and not being disruptive etc), but also getting to meet lots of different people was fun.

Also good god did I hate English class. So many insufferable books of what I still consider to be terribly little literary merit. I wish we'd been allowed to just read classical literature all year. For one of the book slots we were allowed to choose our own book, and I chose Plato's Republic, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It was the only book from prior to the 20th century that I got to read for class that year as well. At least it got better in senior year when we got to do Shakespeare again.

[GoblinSlayer]

First I went to an average middle school an I remember many delinquents, but they had something like their own hierarchy independent from grades, so I guess nerds were no threat to their hierarchy, so they didn't care about nerds. Rather nobody cared about nerds to such extent that I didn't even know some animosity to nerds even exists. Standard grades were undefinable either, because ironically delinquents were below any standard, as a consequence nonstandard grades were undefinable either, so I guess separation based on grades was impossible as marginals were too numerous and visible. Then I went to an elite school for gifted kids (elite in terms of academic performance), but I didn't see anyone stereotypically rich there, and I'm not sure that a school for gifted kids is the same as a school for rich kids, I think they have very different goals. There was some kind of internment school for orphans nearby or something like that, so we got some flak from them, funnily I was once stopped by a girl and she tried to seduce me - a tomboy - I blushed, lol.