The Lang School is a private, nonprofit, K-12 school for gifted and twice exceptional (2e) students located in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

's Financial District. It was the first K-12 school to specialize in educating twice-exceptional (2e) students, though it later came to include (and currently does accept) a wider range of gifted students.

Students

Twice exceptional students are identified as being gifted/talented ("G&T") and diagnosed with specific learning challenges, such as ADHD, dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities, anxiety, high functioning autism, social communication disorder, or sensory processing challenges. These students are often unable to master curriculum to their potential in a traditional classroom; they are often labelled "lazy" and misunderstood by teachers, administrators, and peers.

History

The Lang School grew out of the founder's frustration to find an appropriate school placement for her two sons. It opened in September 2010 with two classes totaling 13 students.Nikki Dowling
No bullying, support for a new kind of school
''Downtown Express'' ("The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan"), Volume 23, Number 6, June 18–24, 2010 By its eighth year (2017), the school had five classes containing approximately 50 gifted and twice-exceptional students.

Name

The Lang School is named after Cyril Lang, the founder's

tenth grade Tenth grade or grade 10 (called Year Eleven in England and Wales, and sophomore year in the US) is the tenth year of school post-kindergarten or the tenth year after the first introductory year upon entering compulsory schooling. In many parts of ...

English teacher. Lang was a suburban Maryland public school teacher who, in 1979, taught what the local Board of Education deemed overly challenging material to his "ungifted" students, engaging them in

Socratic debate The Socratic method (also known as method of Elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate) is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw ou ...

s about Machiavelli’s ''

The Prince ''The Prince'' ( it, Il Principe ; la, De Principatibus) is a 16th-century political treatise written by Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli as an instruction guide for new princes and royals. The general theme of ''Th ...

'' and

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institutio ...

’s ''Republic'', texts normally limited to 12th-grade Advanced Placement classes. Although the school where he was working threatened to fire him if he did not teach what was commonly considered 10th-grade material in more traditional ways, he persisted. “I made a premeditated, intellectual decision to continue teaching the way I had,” he said at the time. “There’s nothing wrong with the genetic makeup of these students. It’s the educational system that’s declining. We are bearing witness to the triumph of mediocrity.”

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lang School Educational institutions established in 2010 Private elementary schools in Manhattan Private middle schools in Manhattan 2010 establishments in New York City