Pretending to Lead

I was watching 20/20 last night and John Stossel was saying something about government programs meant to help the poverty in America. He mentioned that the nation’s poverty had been declining steadily even before the government programs existed, and that it was like the programs were “jumping in front of the parade and pretending to lead.”

Now I don’t really care to argue about poverty levels and government programs. The phrase “jumping in front of the parade and pretending to lead” just stuck out at me. It seems applicable to… I don’t know… gifted education programs?

Not that I’m against all gifted education programs, of course, but I think one has to be careful in trying to analyze how much good they’re doing. In a way, they might just be “pretending to lead.” I can just imagine some creative children drawing great drawings and writing interesting stories (or whatever creative children do these days), impressing adults, only to have some teachers jump in front of them and say “We’ll be their mentor, their guide!” when they might not really be doing much of anything, maybe even just getting in the way. But an onlooker might say “wow, those teachers have a bunch of creative children; they must be great teachers!” when in fact it’s the students that are great.

In the real world, however, I’m sure there’s much more of a balance. Gifted education programs can certainly provide students with more opportunities, and that’s definitely important. But I think it can be quite telling to look at the requirements to get into these programs. Students are usually tested and analyzed before receiving these opportunities; what would happen if the opportunities were just given to everyone? What if we just called every student “gifted”? Sometimes it seems like some education programs can just pluck out the students with the qualities desired, then pretend to instill those qualities.

Kind of annoying, aren’t they, people who are pretending to lead?