That, and teachers really fucking hate being called out on something for some reason.

Really? Seems like.a very shit teacher and school. Dont think a 7 yr old getting upset by that is unusual. Id be furious of that had happened to my kid.

Its kind of a perfect example of how mediocre has become acceptable and even celebrated. And the attidues of don't question, or don't challenge. Scale that up and you start understanding how the world is as it is, particularly in the US.

Yep, am autistic, can confirm.

As with Union of Kobolds, I eventually got into the 'gifted' program... they even had me as a 2nd and 3rd grader basically being an unpaid tutor for 4th and 5th graders, sitting in the hallway, helping kids with reading difficulties (in all liklihood, undiagnosed dyslexia) read through kids books.

But, there's always classes and teachers not part of the gifted program, and they're often difficult and wrong and rude for no reason.

I still remember a chemistry teacher getting very angry with me for even bringing up quantum scale electron clouds as a model of atoms.

Not allowed to go beyond the Rutherford-Bohr model, even in discussion, always dismissive and rude, incapable of saying just 'yes that is a more accurate model, but it is far too complex to go over without understanding Rutherford-Bohr first'.

... Or just a smart kid. Me and my friend in school were also early in learning about negative numbers, but our teacher was positive about it and encouraged us to use them in the problems even though the other kids didn't need to.

Absolutely not