"What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school, but a different way of looking at the world and learning"
About this Quote
Grassley’s line is a gentle rebuke wrapped in Midwestern plainspokenness: stop confusing compliance for brilliance. As a politician who’s spent decades talking to parents, schools, and taxpayers, he’s choosing a definition of “gifted” that sounds inclusive and obvious, then quietly detonates the premise beneath a lot of education policy. If talent is “a different way of looking,” the system that rewards neat answers and punctual homework starts to look less like a meritocracy and more like a sorting machine.
The intent is double. On the surface, it’s a pro-child, pro-potential sentiment: the smart kid isn’t always the straight-A kid. Underneath, it’s a critique of institutions that measure what’s easiest to measure. Grades become a proxy for orderliness, test stamina, and social fit; Grassley’s wording hints that genuine cognitive difference can be messy, nonlinear, even inconvenient. That’s a notable message from a career legislator, because “inconvenient” is the last thing bureaucracies like.
Context matters: Grassley is from Iowa, a state where public schooling is both civic pride and a political battleground, and he’s long operated in the policy lanes of education and youth issues. The quote works because it smuggles a humanizing argument into a debate that’s usually about budgets and benchmarks. It invites voters to picture the kid who’s bored, the kid who’s restless, the kid who’s brilliant in ways a report card can’t translate - and to consider that neglecting them isn’t just unfair, it’s wasteful.
The intent is double. On the surface, it’s a pro-child, pro-potential sentiment: the smart kid isn’t always the straight-A kid. Underneath, it’s a critique of institutions that measure what’s easiest to measure. Grades become a proxy for orderliness, test stamina, and social fit; Grassley’s wording hints that genuine cognitive difference can be messy, nonlinear, even inconvenient. That’s a notable message from a career legislator, because “inconvenient” is the last thing bureaucracies like.
Context matters: Grassley is from Iowa, a state where public schooling is both civic pride and a political battleground, and he’s long operated in the policy lanes of education and youth issues. The quote works because it smuggles a humanizing argument into a debate that’s usually about budgets and benchmarks. It invites voters to picture the kid who’s bored, the kid who’s restless, the kid who’s brilliant in ways a report card can’t translate - and to consider that neglecting them isn’t just unfair, it’s wasteful.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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