Labelling In Education: Supportive Or Stigmatising?

I loathe the idea of being labelled. To me, it feels limiting, as if whoever has labelled me can only see one facet, ignoring everything else that makes me ‘me’. It’s bad enough if the label appears accurate, it still fails to consider all the elements which make me unique, and if that label is an oversimplification, my discomfort would lead me to rally against it. Yet in education, we label all the time and, many teachers would argue, with good reason. Labels allow us to bette