The Subtle Way We Label Children Too Soon

I ran across a photo online the other day, and it made me think a lot about how we approach childhood.

Here’s the picture:

As you can see, it’s a letter, presumably written by a principal, regarding standardized testing at their school. First of all, I fully support what they’re trying to do with this letter. The goal, I think, is to help parents take the pressure off their children with these standardized tests. I totally support that, and I think it’s a good message to share. It’s a sad state of affairs that this even has to exist, but that’s a discussion for another day.

The part of it that made me really think was this underlying assumption that children need to be pigeonholed or labeled in some way to justify their skill set.