From third to fifth grade, I was in the PLATO program at Fishburn Park Elementary. PLATO is a backronym (Pupils Learning Appropriately TOgether) meaning the name was only created to euphemize the segregation between the smart and stupid kids. The stupid kids were in the Socrates program, which didn’t stand for anything.
PLATO arose from the educational theory of giftedness. The “gifted student” has an aptitude for learning and therefore should receive a more challenging curriculum than his “chronological peers.” Thus, teach the gifted third- through fifth-grader about paradigm shifts and entrust him on overnight field trips. Have him sing in nursing homes and remind him regularly that he is gifted. Protect him from the rabble of Socrates and the student will maximize his intellect in middle school and beyond.
Giftedness must be innate; I don’t recall any prerequisites or evaluations in the first or second grade. There was one shibboleth I imagine marked me for this higher elementary education: my ability to cut “neat trash.” The school had an environmental focus, so it was a priority in Art Class that when cutting an image from a piece of paper we keep the recycled scrap as one connected piece–otherwise, birds might choke. If we could cut our paper without making confetti of the excess, surely we were cut out for PLATO.
To our parents, PLATO must have been marketed as a fast track to the Governor’s School in high school, which was certainly marketed as a fast track to the Ivy League. To us pupils, PLATO meant we were spared Socrates’ simple education.
We were promised that, as a PLATO pupil, we’d be enriched and equipped for middle school. There, we’d take the advanced classes which would ably equip for high school wherein we’d be amply equipped for college. And a college degree would keep us from working alongside a Socrates alum at a McDonald’s someday. So, we thanked our lucky stars that we were in PLATO.
Today, I find ‘gifted’ a sorry euphemism for ‘smart.’ ‘Gifted’ offers the same confusion as the connotations of ‘special’: Is the child special, as in exceptional, or, you know…special? The last laugh here is that what was once the classrooms of the specially gifted PLATO students are now the classrooms of Fishburn’s special education students.
‘Smart’ more appropriately describes how I saw PLATO taught and treated compared to the ‘stupid’ of Socrates. The irony of the PLATO-Socrates nomenclature is that, of the ancient philosophers, Socrates taught Plato, which should make Socrates the smarter of the two.
The greatest lesson I learned in the PLATO program was that only in age were my chronological peers my equals; in all else I, being in PLATO, was superior. Today, I know that’s wrong.
– Scott Bellavia
