NYC’s socialist mayor who attended private schools will shut down ‘gifted and talented’ program that helps smart children from humble backgrounds achieve their potential
New York City’s Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has infuriated parents with a plan to axe the school system’s gifted-and-talented program for young students. [Source]
The Soft Bigotry Of Lowered Expectations
Progressive communist democrat officials love to sermonize about “equity,” but what they actually deliver is mediocrity wrapped in moral smugness. Their favorite trick is teaching to the lowest common denominator, then declaring victory when standards collapse. When nobody is allowed to excel, nobody can accuse the system of failing the kids it never challenged. That isn’t compassion—it’s camouflage.
This mindset isn’t accidental. It shields administrators, unions, and political appointees from accountability while producing a steady supply of compliant activists instead of informed citizens. If students never master reading, history, or math at a serious level, they also never learn how to question authority—or recognize when an ideology has spectacularly failed, at enormous human cost.
Hypocrisy With A Trust Fund Accent
Nothing exposes this rot more clearly than watching elite progressives dismantle opportunity after benefiting from it themselves. Consider New York City’s socialist mayor, a product of expensive, ultra-progressive private schools, now pushing to eliminate early gifted-and-talented programs in public education.
These programs weren’t finishing schools for the wealthy. They were one of the few escape hatches for bright kids from modest backgrounds—often students of color—who could move faster, learn deeper, and break free from generational stagnation. Shutting that door while preaching fairness is breathtaking hypocrisy.
The message is simple: excellence is acceptable if you already have it, but dangerous if it emerges organically from the public system.
Equity As An Excuse For Institutional Failure
We’re told that removing advanced programs makes education “more equitable.” Translation: it makes failure easier to explain. If every classroom is flattened to the same slow pace, bureaucrats never have to admit they failed to meet individual needs. Teachers’ unions avoid differentiation. Administrators avoid metrics. Politicians avoid blame.
Meanwhile, parents who can afford alternatives flee to private schools, charters, or out of the city altogether. The families left behind are lectured about patience while their children lose irreplaceable years.
This isn’t equity. It’s educational austerity imposed on the poor by the comfortable.
Manufacturing Activists, Not Thinkers
Progressive media cheer this erosion of standards because it aligns perfectly with their long game. A population that struggles to read complex texts, understand history, or interpret data is far more easily mobilized emotionally. Chant first, think later—if at all.
Curricula become ideological pamphlets. History becomes grievance theater. Math becomes optional. The goal isn’t literacy; it’s loyalty. And anyone who points out that similar ideological experiments have ended in misery and death for millions is dismissed as “problematic,” rather than historically correct.
This is how societies forget hard-won lessons—and repeat catastrophic mistakes.
Educators Trapped In A Broken System
To be clear, many teachers know this is wrong. But unions and bureaucracies reward compliance, not courage. Innovate too much, demand too much, or expect too much, and you’re labeled elitist—or worse. It’s safer to go along, keep your head down, and let standards erode quietly.
The real victims are students who could have soared—and a society that desperately needs adults capable of independent thought.
Bottom Line
When progressive leaders dismantle merit-based opportunities while hiding behind “equity,” they aren’t advancing justice—they’re laundering guilt. They enjoyed rigorous education, then pulled the ladder up behind them. The result is a system that excuses failure, punishes excellence, and turns schools into ideological factories. That isn’t progress. It’s sabotage with a smile.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the progressive communist democrats want to create a functionally illiterate society with third-world achievement levels and erase history when it comes to progressive ideological failures that ended in misery and death for millions. In some cases, trying to eliminate the learning disparities between Americans and newly arriving illegal aliens.
We are being screwed.
— Steve
