3 ms·

And I think it's extremely harmful to delay these concepts for children like we do in the US. I wasn't particularly smart growing up, but my parents always kep

And I think it's extremely harmful to delay these concepts for children like we do in the US. I wasn't particularly smart growing up, but my parents always kept me up to date with the math and science curriculum they had at their respective ages in their own country. At least up until the end of middle school, the difference was astounding and had a dramatic effect on my academic (and thus future) success.

jimktrains2 8y ago
> And I think it's extremely harmful to delay these concepts for children like we do in the US. I wonder how many people grow up hating math, like I did in elementary school, because they just don't like how rote arithmetic is and how trite simple word problems are because they steer away from algebra. It wasn't until I got to Algebra that I really, really started to love math.
- PeterCorless 8y ago
  I was an algebra teacher and tutor for years. It isn't the subject matter. It's the contextualization into the student's life. How is this relevant? I once taught a girl who was a soccer nut how to use algebra to budget for an imaginary soccer team. Soon it wasn't just basic algebra. We created a whole spreadsheet to calculate the entire thing. Change a number and it cascaded down to the final budget. She was jazzed. It is vital not just to teach to the curriculum, but to teach to the student. And that's where a lot of modern education falls apart. It's not just algebra though. History. English (from literature to grammar). We're just failing to connect.
xacintosh 8y ago
I wasn't particularly smart growing up, either, and I failed to place into the middle-school algebra classes like most of my peers. Somehow clicked for me in high school, though, and I raced through the curriculum at an accelerated pace, finishing with Calculus my senior year. A few years after that I graduated from MIT with an aerospace engineering degree. My grandfather never advanced beyond trigonometry in high school, but went on to become a moderately famous theoretical physicist. So if we're looking at anecdotes, it's hard to form a clear conclusion. Today I teach high school mathematics and I see accelerated kids who fall to pieces their junior year, and also kids like me who arrive in the 9th grade knowing nothing, but somehow end up in an accelerated track by the time they graduate.
- fouc 8y ago
  Yeah it's interesting that grade 9 or 10 is kind of the point where students can make a complete turnabout in scholastic achievement and enter the accelerated track and get to a good university, etc. In my case I started getting serious in grade 10, entered accelerated track for grade 11 & 12. Unfortunately I sorta peaked in grade 11 and started coasting in grade 12. I probably shouldn't have gotten serious until grade 11.

jimktrains2 8y ago

> And I think it's extremely harmful to delay these concepts for children like we do in the US. I wonder how many people grow up hating math, like I did in elementary school, because they just don't like how rote arithmetic is and how trite simple word problems are because they steer away from algebra. It wasn't until I got to Algebra that I really, really started to love math.

PeterCorless 8y ago
I was an algebra teacher and tutor for years. It isn't the subject matter. It's the contextualization into the student's life. How is this relevant? I once taught a girl who was a soccer nut how to use algebra to budget for an imaginary soccer team. Soon it wasn't just basic algebra. We created a whole spreadsheet to calculate the entire thing. Change a number and it cascaded down to the final budget. She was jazzed. It is vital not just to teach to the curriculum, but to teach to the student. And that's where a lot of modern education falls apart. It's not just algebra though. History. English (from literature to grammar). We're just failing to connect.

xacintosh 8y ago

I wasn't particularly smart growing up, either, and I failed to place into the middle-school algebra classes like most of my peers. Somehow clicked for me in high school, though, and I raced through the curriculum at an accelerated pace, finishing with Calculus my senior year. A few years after that I graduated from MIT with an aerospace engineering degree. My grandfather never advanced beyond trigonometry in high school, but went on to become a moderately famous theoretical physicist. So if we're looking at anecdotes, it's hard to form a clear conclusion. Today I teach high school mathematics and I see accelerated kids who fall to pieces their junior year, and also kids like me who arrive in the 9th grade knowing nothing, but somehow end up in an accelerated track by the time they graduate.

fouc 8y ago
Yeah it's interesting that grade 9 or 10 is kind of the point where students can make a complete turnabout in scholastic achievement and enter the accelerated track and get to a good university, etc. In my case I started getting serious in grade 10, entered accelerated track for grade 11 & 12. Unfortunately I sorta peaked in grade 11 and started coasting in grade 12. I probably shouldn't have gotten serious until grade 11.