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Article wasn’t great IMO, but looking forward to the comments. We found that our kid was excited about math until she started doing it in school, where they ju

Article wasn’t great IMO, but looking forward to the comments. We found that our kid was excited about math until she started doing it in school, where they just assigned busywork (zero times tables? Check!) and refused to let her learn with other kids at her level. We just kept doing math outside of school, for two reasons. In part, it was so she could learn more math, but equally important it was so she could see how to handle problems where the answer wasn’t immediately apparent to her. Otherwise she would just skate through elementary school, never being forced to persevere or really apply herself. Our schools like to talk about perseverance/grit/etc. a lot, but when it comes down to it they don’t care enough to give students work that requires it.

ryandrake 3y ago
> Our schools like to talk about perseverance/grit/etc. a lot, but when it comes down to it they don’t care enough to give students work that requires it. Well, they care, but just not about the students who are already excelling (and already bringing up test score averages). I've got a kid in elementary school, and it's pretty evident most of the school's resources are spent on the worst-performing kids, leaving the smarter ones bored and unchallenged. Yea, it was like this too when I was in grade school in the '80s, but it seems much worse today. If your kid is reading or math-ing beyond grade level, they're just going to get ignored and handed straight-A's while the teachers desperately spend all their time getting Donny Dumbass to at least stop screaming all day and eating crayons. There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity".
- ForOldHack 3y ago
  Pretty much it was that way in the late 1960s... until... we got a computer programming class, but this is about math: In Berkeley, they had a program called 'Seed' that had a great idea, give middle school students access to PhD math students. It was going fairly well, until Dr Steven Giavant stepped into a classroom and wanted to teach the students the frontiers and history of math. ( look this guy up! Genius at Math, Super genius at education. ) I know that besides me, 6 other students got degrees in math, and we suspect 2 more. Absurd. The norm was 1.2, even for Berkeley. He shared his enthusiasm for math, and the children got it. We only found out about it by accident, when my Abstract Algebra professor said that they were in Berkeley Math at that time. ( 15+ years later ). And the second influence was Michael Griffin, who taught computer programming, when I asked him "How do I get to actually learn Calculus?" he basically laid out the curriculum that led to my degree. With two more break throughs, I now can use this to inspire sucess in math. Thanks Steven, and thanks Mike. https://www.facebook.com/MillsMCS/posts/1920193231575804 https://www.facebook.com/MillsMCS/posts/1920193231575804
  - javajosh 3y ago
    >It was going fairly well, until Dr Steven Giavant stepped into a classroom and wanted to teach the students the frontiers and history of math. The way you wrote this it feels like you're about to say that Giavant tanked the program, and your parenthetical is sarcasm. I don't think that was your intent, but you may want to be aware in the future (and it could be an issue with the reader, of course.)
    - Harvesterify 3y ago
      Read it the same way.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      that's because Dr Steven Giavant was great at math, but nobody was teaching the kids english comp.
    - civilitty 3y ago
      I was about to google "Steven Giavant" to see what flavor of serial killer he was. Totally expected that comment to take a much darker turn.
  - jimhefferon 3y ago
    I'd be very interested to hear more about Dr Giavant. I teach and I'm always looking to hear what works for folks.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  Grade school is less a place for learning as it is a socialization experiment. Did you actually advance your level in any subject during grade school? Did your kid advance above their grade because of the grades that came before it? What's the utility in the school servicing your special child's aptitude when the school had nothing to do with either their current level or the lack of others'? But there are advanced level classes in some cases
  - twump 3y ago
    If grade school is for socialization than it should be focused on socialization. Group activities, athletic competitions, creative projects, theater performances, etc.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      Yes, it should be!
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      Well, in many cases, it is. If the opposite of socialization is exclusively grinding problems, grade school is often quite closer to what you mention unless you deliberately seek a different style.
- bradley13 3y ago
  You're right: low performing kids get the attention and resources. The kids doing well "don't need help." Which is just wrong. The gifted kids are far more likely to contribute significantly to our future. Boring them, stunting their potential, ruining their education is the worst thing schools can do. Kids need to be in different tracks. You need at least three tracks. Obviously, it should be possible to move between them as appropriate.
  - lexandstuff 3y ago
    "gifted kids are far more likely to contribute significantly to our future" Citation needed.
    - LargeTomato 3y ago
      I disagree. Citation not needed. Common sense and critical reasoning will suffice here.
      - spicebox 3y ago
        Common sense is frequently wrong and is usually invoked by people who want their beliefs to be taken as fact without needing to provide support
        bluepod4 3y ago
        Correct.
        georgeashworth 3y ago
        Citation needed
        spicebox 3y ago
        Touché - “Science has widely come to be understood as a systematic assault on common sense. Common sense said the world was flat; science showed this to be false. Common sense said the sun and the moon were the same size; science showed this to be wrong. Common sense said the Earth was the center of the universe; science showed this to be false. Common sense said matter was solid; science has shown this to be false” https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c6009k3&chunk.id=d0e1167&toc.id=&brand=ucpress https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c60...
- gnicholas 3y ago
  > There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity". The CA Dept of Education used to require GATE programs. In 2014, they made them optional, so schools stopped offering them. What's shocking to me is that this happened even in districts where there are lots of high-performing kids, with families that care about advanced learning. When we moved to Menlo Park, we were surprised that our highly-rated school doesn't have any programs for kids who are advanced in learning. They just talk about how all their lessons have a "low floor and high ceiling" which sounds nice in theory but doesn't work very well in practice (at least when you have a mix of kids who range from 1-2 grades below grade level to 2-3 grades above grade level).
  - alibova 3y ago
    We've heard good things about MP public schools so that's disappointing! Did you guys end up going to private?
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      We’re still in the district, and have finally pushed hard enough that they let our kid take a diagnostic test and move ahead independently. But that literally took 3 years to accomplish, during which time zero math learning happened at school. To clarify, this is the Las Lomitas district, which is west Menlo Park, not MPCSD, which covers downtown and the rest of MP. If you want a magnet program, go to Redwood City — it has one. Even the privates are generally not great on math acceleration. I hear Menlo School doesn’t allow early acceleration either, and they’re one of the more academic private schools. Feel free to email me (contact in profile) if you want more details.
  - treeman79 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron Excellent story about the government not allowing anyone to be too smart or beautiful. Example. If you’re smart, you wear head phones that emit random loud noises so you can’t form thoughts for long.
- spamizbad 3y ago
  > Well, they care, but just not about the students who are already excelling (and already bringing up test score averages). I've got a kid in elementary school, and it's pretty evident most of the school's resources are spent on the worst-performing kids, leaving the smarter ones bored and unchallenged. Yea, it was like this too when I was in grade school in the '80s, but it seems much worse today. This is basically the education reform movement of the 90s and aughts getting their wish via the monkey-paw. Schools and teachers are measured and judged on how kids perform on standardized tests. Your kid is likely in the 95%+ percentile so there’s not much room for “growth” as far as the metrics are concerned. So their efforts are on pulling up kids from the 5th percentile up closer to the median. Also, it’s not uncommon for low performing students parents to sometimes freak out at the school if their kid starts falling behind, so everyone scrambles to get these kids back on track so the parents don’t pull their kids from school (which will only make things worse for the kids academics)
  - twump 3y ago
    But won't it make it better for everyone else? Not even sure that bottom 5% should be in school. Just train them for a role that they can be competent in or decide that they will be a future ward of the state.
    - turzmo 3y ago
      The bottom 5% is hopeless. Yeah it would be better if we did that, but people think about education as a means to provide the individual the chance for success in life rather than thinking about the broader impact of individuals on society and the disproportionate effect that the top has. As far as most people are concerned, a kid that is acing everything is going to be fine in life and they don't worry about anything that could be going wrong there.
      - ryandrake 3y ago
        My parents were both [retired] teachers, and sadly this is the truth. Some bottom N%, I don’t know if it’s 1 or 5 or 10 or whatever, but they are absolutely beyond anyone’s ability to rehab, let alone educate. Often no fault of their own. Broken families, parents don’t care, gangs, lots of reasons. Any effort spent on them is wasted. They are inevitably fucked, and will end up in some kind of institution (prison, mental health) or unemployable, by age 25. It’s a sad reality and not something politicians like to talk about. We pretend that if we just whip the teachers so they teach harder, these people will miraculously grow up to be functional adults. It’s not going to happen. I remember a guy in my high school whose claim to fame was he dragged some other poor kid into the wood shop and filed his teeth down to nothing with a band saw. Spending 50% of the school budget on these blockheads is not going to rehab them.
- twump 3y ago
  [flagged]
- bluepod4 3y ago
  > There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity". I’m assuming you just mean in your school system. Or do you mean more school districts are moving toward this?
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  "You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks." - C.S. Lewis (in the voice of screwtape), almost 80 years ago.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  > to at least stop screaming all day and eating crayons Less developed children are challenging to the system, but it gets worse: there are children who are so violent that they essentially attend prison schools. Since this is CA, they are obviously not called that. Pretty sure that this is a massive drain on the educational budget.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    Those kids are few and far between. Can’t imagine it’s a massive drain on the budget even if they cost 10 or 100x more to educate to the same level.
    - chaostheory 3y ago
      These children live in the prison. They also require extra staff who are paid more and their very own buildings.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Yea, it was like this too when I was in grade school in the '80s, but it seems much worse today. This is largely a legacy of state testing and “accountability” regimes which were accelerated by national policy like NCLB and focus intense pressure on minimizing the number of students testing below grade level.
- Gustomaximus 3y ago
  > leaving the smarter ones bored and unchallenged. At my childrens school, as work is often online they allow them to go ahead in modules. The teacher mist open it for them though to have some control. Some people in year 7 are doing year 9 work. Great for challenging them but it will be curious where this goes as you might get some people finishing all of highschool classes for a particular subject quite early and need to keep educating and challenging them. For english they have a program where you can finish your end of school exams for this subject the year early, freeing time for other subjects. This is in Australia.
- sgu999 3y ago
  > If your kid is reading or math-ing beyond grade level, they're just going to get ignored and handed straight-A's while the teachers desperately spend all their time getting Donny Dumbass to at least stop screaming all day and eating crayons. There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity". Maybe, but at the same time it's OK if your gifted kid only has a PhD and a high paying job but not a Nobel prize. Whereas it's a bit problematic for society if Donny Dumbass spends his life being a burden to everyone because he remains problematic...
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    We're living on a rock with limited lifespan. Humanity itself is at risk from various extinction level events. If you insist that it's okay for all gifted students to never exceed to the point of making ground breaking discoveries, we're likely extinct sooner rather than later. The nongifted people, even if all completely stop contributing to society, would not result in an extinction. IOW, we are all relying on the gifted people to save us. Hobbling gifted people even slightly has a far worse impact than not helping non gifted people. And yes, I am part of the non gifted.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      How do you imagine gifted people have or will save humanity from extinction-level events?
      - sgu999 3y ago
        I believe we are facing a strong case of naive techno-optimism. I'll give it a go: a 19 yo genius may find a way to capture kilograms of carbons in each leaf of peppermint through a new kind of photosynthesis, and by showing it to the world, we'll all be able to reproduce it and meet our carbon neutrality by 2050. And my uncle Joe, enlightened, will start spending his days drinking peppermint tea instead of making millions trading disposable plastic products from East Asia.
        3y ago
loxs 3y ago
[flagged]
sublinear 3y ago
> Otherwise she would just skate through elementary school, never being forced to persevere or really apply herself. This really resonates. I rarely felt challenged until around high school when I accidentally tested my way into some advanced classes taught by teachers who demanded much more. It felt awful and my self esteem was shot, but I was grateful in the end. I had the same issues applying myself again in college, but for the opposite reason. Nobody should have to stumble through school like that. I do think it's important to diversify the experience of perseverance though. Math isn't everything.
troupe 3y ago
"No child left behind" is another way of saying, "no child pulls ahead." The cost of a set of children not achieving what they are scheduled to achieve is infinitely more expensive to the school than the value of some kids doing much better than what they are expected. Maybe this isn't bad for a public school system. Maybe the goal should just be to try to make sure no one falls below the floor. But the schools interests aren't well aligned with the needs of any student that is above that line, much less above average.
- rahimnathwani 3y ago
  Maybe the goal should just be to try to make sure no one falls below the floor. This approach widens the achievement gap between rich and poor. - If you're unchallenged at school and have rich, college-educated parents, they can pay for tutors or teach you at home. - If your parents are working two jobs to make ends meet, your SOL. The public education system is meant to give opportunity to everyone, not just the rich.
  - credit_guy 3y ago
    Wait, what are you trying to say there? It's not very clear to me, but the way I read it is that the school should say "if your parents help you at home, you don't need us at school". "So we'll just focus on those kids whose parents don't help them, because, you know, they have two jobs". Did I get that right? My last Uber driver was a Pakistani, he told me his oldest son got into the Stuyvesant High School. He is one of those kids who needs to be challenged. Should he not be, because he's got "rich parents" ?
    - rahimnathwani 3y ago
      No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'll try again: Schools should aim to maximize learning for every child, irrespective of their starting point or their parents' resources. If schools have everyone go at the same pace, some kids won't learn anything at school. Parents with resources can always pay for private tutors or, if that's not enough, pay for private school. I'm glad you brought up Stuyvesant. Imagine if Stuyvesant didn't exist, and all students at all public high schools in NYC went through math at the same pace. Imagine further that your Uber driver can't afford private tutors or private school, and is too busy working to tutor his kids himself. Would it be fair that his smart kid has to go slow whilst an equally smart kid with rich parents will be doing Calculus BC in 11th grade?
hinkley 3y ago
I will say it took us a long while to figure out that multiplication and addition were commutative, and the times tables helped drive that home. It took me a long time to figure them out, and when it finally came to a parent-teacher conference to discuss why I was having trouble with math, I count that as the beginning of my adventure in self-directed study. I took teachers entirely at their word at 8 years old, and it simply did not occur to me that they were just another human with ideas that might or might not be universal. "This is how you learn this" became an opinion, not a fact, and it was off to the races for me. I also found myself from time to time playing ersatz tutor because some other kids also didn't understand the teacher, and occasionally they liked my re-interpretation better. There is something about realizing you've been sweating bullets for something that is actually easy. Few lessons stick around like that, but the attendant feelings are complex and often not fun or helpful.
whimsicalism 3y ago
> Our schools like to talk about perseverance/grit/etc. a lot, but when it comes down to it they don’t care enough to give students work that requires it. Your... elementary schools?
LargeTomato 3y ago
If your kid is smart and you don't challenge them they'll walk through life never trying and that will hurt them in the long run.
pessimizer 3y ago
There was no better investment in my childhood than making me copy out times tables endlessly. Instead of being baffled by multiplication and division, I barely think of it as math. Plenty of other adults I know can't divide no matter how much time they have, and it's a handicap in their social, professional, and political lives.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  How often do you need to do that without a calculator (phone) at hand?
- Aeolun 3y ago
  But it’s the principles that matter, not the tables. If you understand the principles you can easily figure out 563*3557. If you only know the tables you get stuck on 16x21. Though I agree that it’s convenient if multiplying anything under 10 is a idempotent action :)
  - spywaregorilla 3y ago
    16 x 21 = (16 * 2 * 10) + 16 => (8 * 4 * 10) + 16 => 320 + 16 => 336 Is... that not how most people do mental math? I instinctively reduce everything to familiar patterns largely based on single digits numbers tables. 563 * 3557 is about 600 * 4000 => 6 * 4 * 100000 => about 2.4M Are other people doing the standard algorithm visualized somehow?
  - tomp 3y ago
    I urge you to "figure out" 5633557 in base 9. Guess what? You'll first need to manually* derive the approximate "multiplication tables" (for individual digits), only then you'll be able to multiply multi-digit numbers.
- throwaway154 3y ago
  [dead]
- bonzini 3y ago
  My son was doing additions and subtractions on his fingers until he had to learn multiplication tables. Until that point it hadn't clicked with him that you could also memorize the results! When forced to memorize multiplication results, he unconsciously started memorizing adds and subtracts as well.
BlackjackCF 3y ago
That really sucks. I know it's cliched to say: "It's the system that's broken!" But it is for (most) public schools in the US. Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but public schools are pressured to make sure that standardized testing scores are at a certain level for funding. Teachers aren't paid very well, nor do they get the proper resources to adequately teach their students. I'm sure I'm grossly simplifying the problems there, but I can already see how those two points make it so that there's a lot of pressure on teachers to conform to teaching what's on standardized tests. I can't imagine that any of those factors make it very easy for teachers to even WANT to teach, much less get creative about HOW they're teaching their students.
ChuckMcM 3y ago
Pretty much this. Teach them as much as they want to know. We were extremely fortunate and decided to home school our kids through elementary and middle school because a) they were learning faster than their peers and bored, and b) we had a lot of community involvement which was much better social interactions than school provided. If you are in the Bay Area and can send your kids to Reikes Nature studies[1] it is a wonderful program (as an example). Conveniently California provided all of the knowledge they "expected" kids to know[2]. Each of my children reached math proficiency differently, all of them went through calculus "C" in terms of subject matter but I don't thing the English/Business major took it past that, the other two (Physics, Bio) did. [1] https://www.riekes.org/riekesnature https://www.riekes.org/riekesnature [2] https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/ https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/ (side note, all of our kids could pass the high school "exit" exam when they started high school. I attribute this not necessarily to personal talents so much as a very low student/teacher ratio meant everyone learned things and a lack of "deadlines" on when they had to be done meant different approaches could be taken on a subject if one didn't seem to be working out)
adastra22 3y ago
Which after school programs do you use?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  We started with Khan Academy, which was good but IMO didn't have enough practice (just straight from a lesson to a quiz, which a kid might get lucky on and think she's mastered the skill). Then we added in some IXL (which we had access to via the school). That allows for lots of practice of new and old concepts, and it requires more thorough demonstrations of mastery. I also used free websites to generate worksheets for skills like long multiplication and division. Right now we're looking at AoPS and Po-Shen Lo for her main curriculum for next year.
agentgumshoe 3y ago
It's almost like parents could provide a better education for their own kids if only a) they could trust themselves and b) they had the time
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  IME the implication is not a universal truth.
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    So? We should not just throw the baby out with the bathwater. God forbid some people get it wrong, the current education system is not exactly the shining beacon of 'good.' If there's one thing I hate about social media especially, it's that we must skip all nuance to yell in absolutes.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      "It's almost like" suggests to to me the author thinks homeschooling is the obvious and best answer, perhaps that folks are afraid to admit. My experience has been that homeschooling has been worse than public schooling, even where parents have been professional teachers. No doubt it can be better for some and in some areas may be the only sane choice. Some stats even indicate better academic outcomes. Yet I've personally seen it bring a lot of strife, unreasonable expectations, and pain into the home. And the outcomes I've seen don't inspire confidence. As a group, at least where I've lived, homeschooling parents: don't give the kids a choice, do it for their own selfish reasons, produce kids without enough socializing among peers, and often indoctrinate the kids with religious 'teachings' that undermine critical thinking skills.
      - agentgumshoe 3y ago
        Oh for sure, if you're going to try and replicate 'the classroom' at home it's going to be pain. It needs some different thinking, especially around what the child does and doesn't actually need. As I said, it's not perfect, and people get it 'wrong,' but we're comparing to schools here (generalisation, there are of course very good schools and teachers around), which I don't think represents 'good' to compare to. It is a parent's prerogative if they wish to instill religious dogma and ignorance into their kids, unless we think we should enforce social conformity broader than what is created in the classroom? Schools are certainly not busy ensuring kids have strong critical thinking skills. Just look at the way universities are shutting down troubling topic debates for the mindsets arriving there. I'm curious what does 'enough socialising' mean?
whiddershins 3y ago
Yet we all keep sending our kids to these places.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  Because we've been told for so long that any other option, or especially taking into our own hands, is a disaster and our kids will 'fall behind.' And yet kids have never had more access to knowledge, information and quality learning resources outside of school, without the toxic social environment. Say you'll do it yourself thanks and people call you a child abuser - while their kids are bullied and 'underperforming' at school with teachers they don't like. It's insane.
tim333 3y ago
At my school (UK, a while ago) they dealt with differing abilities of kids in math class by having easier and harder questions in the textbook, so the teacher could explain the new concept simply enough for the slower kids to get it and then the faster ones could try to solve much tricker stuff and so not get too bored.

ryandrake 3y ago

> Our schools like to talk about perseverance/grit/etc. a lot, but when it comes down to it they don’t care enough to give students work that requires it. Well, they care, but just not about the students who are already excelling (and already bringing up test score averages). I've got a kid in elementary school, and it's pretty evident most of the school's resources are spent on the worst-performing kids, leaving the smarter ones bored and unchallenged. Yea, it was like this too when I was in grade school in the '80s, but it seems much worse today. If your kid is reading or math-ing beyond grade level, they're just going to get ignored and handed straight-A's while the teachers desperately spend all their time getting Donny Dumbass to at least stop screaming all day and eating crayons. There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity".

ForOldHack 3y ago
Pretty much it was that way in the late 1960s... until... we got a computer programming class, but this is about math: In Berkeley, they had a program called 'Seed' that had a great idea, give middle school students access to PhD math students. It was going fairly well, until Dr Steven Giavant stepped into a classroom and wanted to teach the students the frontiers and history of math. ( look this guy up! Genius at Math, Super genius at education. ) I know that besides me, 6 other students got degrees in math, and we suspect 2 more. Absurd. The norm was 1.2, even for Berkeley. He shared his enthusiasm for math, and the children got it. We only found out about it by accident, when my Abstract Algebra professor said that they were in Berkeley Math at that time. ( 15+ years later ). And the second influence was Michael Griffin, who taught computer programming, when I asked him "How do I get to actually learn Calculus?" he basically laid out the curriculum that led to my degree. With two more break throughs, I now can use this to inspire sucess in math. Thanks Steven, and thanks Mike. https://www.facebook.com/MillsMCS/posts/1920193231575804 https://www.facebook.com/MillsMCS/posts/1920193231575804
- javajosh 3y ago
  >It was going fairly well, until Dr Steven Giavant stepped into a classroom and wanted to teach the students the frontiers and history of math. The way you wrote this it feels like you're about to say that Giavant tanked the program, and your parenthetical is sarcasm. I don't think that was your intent, but you may want to be aware in the future (and it could be an issue with the reader, of course.)
  - Harvesterify 3y ago
    Read it the same way.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    that's because Dr Steven Giavant was great at math, but nobody was teaching the kids english comp.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    I was about to google "Steven Giavant" to see what flavor of serial killer he was. Totally expected that comment to take a much darker turn.
- jimhefferon 3y ago
  I'd be very interested to hear more about Dr Giavant. I teach and I'm always looking to hear what works for folks.
brailsafe 3y ago
Grade school is less a place for learning as it is a socialization experiment. Did you actually advance your level in any subject during grade school? Did your kid advance above their grade because of the grades that came before it? What's the utility in the school servicing your special child's aptitude when the school had nothing to do with either their current level or the lack of others'? But there are advanced level classes in some cases
- twump 3y ago
  If grade school is for socialization than it should be focused on socialization. Group activities, athletic competitions, creative projects, theater performances, etc.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yes, it should be!
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    Well, in many cases, it is. If the opposite of socialization is exclusively grinding problems, grade school is often quite closer to what you mention unless you deliberately seek a different style.
bradley13 3y ago
You're right: low performing kids get the attention and resources. The kids doing well "don't need help." Which is just wrong. The gifted kids are far more likely to contribute significantly to our future. Boring them, stunting their potential, ruining their education is the worst thing schools can do. Kids need to be in different tracks. You need at least three tracks. Obviously, it should be possible to move between them as appropriate.
- lexandstuff 3y ago
  "gifted kids are far more likely to contribute significantly to our future" Citation needed.
  - LargeTomato 3y ago
    I disagree. Citation not needed. Common sense and critical reasoning will suffice here.
    - spicebox 3y ago
      Common sense is frequently wrong and is usually invoked by people who want their beliefs to be taken as fact without needing to provide support
      - bluepod4 3y ago
        Correct.
      - georgeashworth 3y ago
        Citation needed
        spicebox 3y ago
        Touché - “Science has widely come to be understood as a systematic assault on common sense. Common sense said the world was flat; science showed this to be false. Common sense said the sun and the moon were the same size; science showed this to be wrong. Common sense said the Earth was the center of the universe; science showed this to be false. Common sense said matter was solid; science has shown this to be false” https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c6009k3&chunk.id=d0e1167&toc.id=&brand=ucpress https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8c60...
gnicholas 3y ago
> There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity". The CA Dept of Education used to require GATE programs. In 2014, they made them optional, so schools stopped offering them. What's shocking to me is that this happened even in districts where there are lots of high-performing kids, with families that care about advanced learning. When we moved to Menlo Park, we were surprised that our highly-rated school doesn't have any programs for kids who are advanced in learning. They just talk about how all their lessons have a "low floor and high ceiling" which sounds nice in theory but doesn't work very well in practice (at least when you have a mix of kids who range from 1-2 grades below grade level to 2-3 grades above grade level).
- alibova 3y ago
  We've heard good things about MP public schools so that's disappointing! Did you guys end up going to private?
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    We’re still in the district, and have finally pushed hard enough that they let our kid take a diagnostic test and move ahead independently. But that literally took 3 years to accomplish, during which time zero math learning happened at school. To clarify, this is the Las Lomitas district, which is west Menlo Park, not MPCSD, which covers downtown and the rest of MP. If you want a magnet program, go to Redwood City — it has one. Even the privates are generally not great on math acceleration. I hear Menlo School doesn’t allow early acceleration either, and they’re one of the more academic private schools. Feel free to email me (contact in profile) if you want more details.
- treeman79 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron Excellent story about the government not allowing anyone to be too smart or beautiful. Example. If you’re smart, you wear head phones that emit random loud noises so you can’t form thoughts for long.
spamizbad 3y ago
> Well, they care, but just not about the students who are already excelling (and already bringing up test score averages). I've got a kid in elementary school, and it's pretty evident most of the school's resources are spent on the worst-performing kids, leaving the smarter ones bored and unchallenged. Yea, it was like this too when I was in grade school in the '80s, but it seems much worse today. This is basically the education reform movement of the 90s and aughts getting their wish via the monkey-paw. Schools and teachers are measured and judged on how kids perform on standardized tests. Your kid is likely in the 95%+ percentile so there’s not much room for “growth” as far as the metrics are concerned. So their efforts are on pulling up kids from the 5th percentile up closer to the median. Also, it’s not uncommon for low performing students parents to sometimes freak out at the school if their kid starts falling behind, so everyone scrambles to get these kids back on track so the parents don’t pull their kids from school (which will only make things worse for the kids academics)
- twump 3y ago
  But won't it make it better for everyone else? Not even sure that bottom 5% should be in school. Just train them for a role that they can be competent in or decide that they will be a future ward of the state.
  - turzmo 3y ago
    The bottom 5% is hopeless. Yeah it would be better if we did that, but people think about education as a means to provide the individual the chance for success in life rather than thinking about the broader impact of individuals on society and the disproportionate effect that the top has. As far as most people are concerned, a kid that is acing everything is going to be fine in life and they don't worry about anything that could be going wrong there.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      My parents were both [retired] teachers, and sadly this is the truth. Some bottom N%, I don’t know if it’s 1 or 5 or 10 or whatever, but they are absolutely beyond anyone’s ability to rehab, let alone educate. Often no fault of their own. Broken families, parents don’t care, gangs, lots of reasons. Any effort spent on them is wasted. They are inevitably fucked, and will end up in some kind of institution (prison, mental health) or unemployable, by age 25. It’s a sad reality and not something politicians like to talk about. We pretend that if we just whip the teachers so they teach harder, these people will miraculously grow up to be functional adults. It’s not going to happen. I remember a guy in my high school whose claim to fame was he dragged some other poor kid into the wood shop and filed his teeth down to nothing with a band saw. Spending 50% of the school budget on these blockheads is not going to rehab them.
twump 3y ago
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bluepod4 3y ago
> There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity". I’m assuming you just mean in your school system. Or do you mean more school districts are moving toward this?
ChainOfFools 3y ago
"You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks." - C.S. Lewis (in the voice of screwtape), almost 80 years ago.
chaostheory 3y ago
> to at least stop screaming all day and eating crayons Less developed children are challenging to the system, but it gets worse: there are children who are so violent that they essentially attend prison schools. Since this is CA, they are obviously not called that. Pretty sure that this is a massive drain on the educational budget.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Those kids are few and far between. Can’t imagine it’s a massive drain on the budget even if they cost 10 or 100x more to educate to the same level.
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    These children live in the prison. They also require extra staff who are paid more and their very own buildings.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Yea, it was like this too when I was in grade school in the '80s, but it seems much worse today. This is largely a legacy of state testing and “accountability” regimes which were accelerated by national policy like NCLB and focus intense pressure on minimizing the number of students testing below grade level.
Gustomaximus 3y ago
> leaving the smarter ones bored and unchallenged. At my childrens school, as work is often online they allow them to go ahead in modules. The teacher mist open it for them though to have some control. Some people in year 7 are doing year 9 work. Great for challenging them but it will be curious where this goes as you might get some people finishing all of highschool classes for a particular subject quite early and need to keep educating and challenging them. For english they have a program where you can finish your end of school exams for this subject the year early, freeing time for other subjects. This is in Australia.
sgu999 3y ago
> If your kid is reading or math-ing beyond grade level, they're just going to get ignored and handed straight-A's while the teachers desperately spend all their time getting Donny Dumbass to at least stop screaming all day and eating crayons. There's no gifted program or tracking/segregating by ability anymore. I guess those are bad for "equity". Maybe, but at the same time it's OK if your gifted kid only has a PhD and a high paying job but not a Nobel prize. Whereas it's a bit problematic for society if Donny Dumbass spends his life being a burden to everyone because he remains problematic...
- lelanthran 3y ago
  We're living on a rock with limited lifespan. Humanity itself is at risk from various extinction level events. If you insist that it's okay for all gifted students to never exceed to the point of making ground breaking discoveries, we're likely extinct sooner rather than later. The nongifted people, even if all completely stop contributing to society, would not result in an extinction. IOW, we are all relying on the gifted people to save us. Hobbling gifted people even slightly has a far worse impact than not helping non gifted people. And yes, I am part of the non gifted.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    How do you imagine gifted people have or will save humanity from extinction-level events?
    - sgu999 3y ago
      I believe we are facing a strong case of naive techno-optimism. I'll give it a go: a 19 yo genius may find a way to capture kilograms of carbons in each leaf of peppermint through a new kind of photosynthesis, and by showing it to the world, we'll all be able to reproduce it and meet our carbon neutrality by 2050. And my uncle Joe, enlightened, will start spending his days drinking peppermint tea instead of making millions trading disposable plastic products from East Asia.
      - 3y ago

loxs 3y ago

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sublinear 3y ago

> Otherwise she would just skate through elementary school, never being forced to persevere or really apply herself. This really resonates. I rarely felt challenged until around high school when I accidentally tested my way into some advanced classes taught by teachers who demanded much more. It felt awful and my self esteem was shot, but I was grateful in the end. I had the same issues applying myself again in college, but for the opposite reason. Nobody should have to stumble through school like that. I do think it's important to diversify the experience of perseverance though. Math isn't everything.

troupe 3y ago

"No child left behind" is another way of saying, "no child pulls ahead." The cost of a set of children not achieving what they are scheduled to achieve is infinitely more expensive to the school than the value of some kids doing much better than what they are expected. Maybe this isn't bad for a public school system. Maybe the goal should just be to try to make sure no one falls below the floor. But the schools interests aren't well aligned with the needs of any student that is above that line, much less above average.

rahimnathwani 3y ago
Maybe the goal should just be to try to make sure no one falls below the floor. This approach widens the achievement gap between rich and poor. - If you're unchallenged at school and have rich, college-educated parents, they can pay for tutors or teach you at home. - If your parents are working two jobs to make ends meet, your SOL. The public education system is meant to give opportunity to everyone, not just the rich.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  Wait, what are you trying to say there? It's not very clear to me, but the way I read it is that the school should say "if your parents help you at home, you don't need us at school". "So we'll just focus on those kids whose parents don't help them, because, you know, they have two jobs". Did I get that right? My last Uber driver was a Pakistani, he told me his oldest son got into the Stuyvesant High School. He is one of those kids who needs to be challenged. Should he not be, because he's got "rich parents" ?
  - rahimnathwani 3y ago
    No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'll try again: Schools should aim to maximize learning for every child, irrespective of their starting point or their parents' resources. If schools have everyone go at the same pace, some kids won't learn anything at school. Parents with resources can always pay for private tutors or, if that's not enough, pay for private school. I'm glad you brought up Stuyvesant. Imagine if Stuyvesant didn't exist, and all students at all public high schools in NYC went through math at the same pace. Imagine further that your Uber driver can't afford private tutors or private school, and is too busy working to tutor his kids himself. Would it be fair that his smart kid has to go slow whilst an equally smart kid with rich parents will be doing Calculus BC in 11th grade?

hinkley 3y ago

I will say it took us a long while to figure out that multiplication and addition were commutative, and the times tables helped drive that home. It took me a long time to figure them out, and when it finally came to a parent-teacher conference to discuss why I was having trouble with math, I count that as the beginning of my adventure in self-directed study. I took teachers entirely at their word at 8 years old, and it simply did not occur to me that they were just another human with ideas that might or might not be universal. "This is how you learn this" became an opinion, not a fact, and it was off to the races for me. I also found myself from time to time playing ersatz tutor because some other kids also didn't understand the teacher, and occasionally they liked my re-interpretation better. There is something about realizing you've been sweating bullets for something that is actually easy. Few lessons stick around like that, but the attendant feelings are complex and often not fun or helpful.

whimsicalism 3y ago

> Our schools like to talk about perseverance/grit/etc. a lot, but when it comes down to it they don’t care enough to give students work that requires it. Your... elementary schools?

LargeTomato 3y ago

If your kid is smart and you don't challenge them they'll walk through life never trying and that will hurt them in the long run.

pessimizer 3y ago

There was no better investment in my childhood than making me copy out times tables endlessly. Instead of being baffled by multiplication and division, I barely think of it as math. Plenty of other adults I know can't divide no matter how much time they have, and it's a handicap in their social, professional, and political lives.

agentgumshoe 3y ago
How often do you need to do that without a calculator (phone) at hand?
Aeolun 3y ago
But it’s the principles that matter, not the tables. If you understand the principles you can easily figure out 563*3557. If you only know the tables you get stuck on 16x21. Though I agree that it’s convenient if multiplying anything under 10 is a idempotent action :)
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  16 x 21 = (16 * 2 * 10) + 16 => (8 * 4 * 10) + 16 => 320 + 16 => 336 Is... that not how most people do mental math? I instinctively reduce everything to familiar patterns largely based on single digits numbers tables. 563 * 3557 is about 600 * 4000 => 6 * 4 * 100000 => about 2.4M Are other people doing the standard algorithm visualized somehow?
- tomp 3y ago
  I urge you to "figure out" 5633557 in base 9. Guess what? You'll first need to manually* derive the approximate "multiplication tables" (for individual digits), only then you'll be able to multiply multi-digit numbers.
throwaway154 3y ago
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bonzini 3y ago
My son was doing additions and subtractions on his fingers until he had to learn multiplication tables. Until that point it hadn't clicked with him that you could also memorize the results! When forced to memorize multiplication results, he unconsciously started memorizing adds and subtracts as well.

BlackjackCF 3y ago

That really sucks. I know it's cliched to say: "It's the system that's broken!" But it is for (most) public schools in the US. Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but public schools are pressured to make sure that standardized testing scores are at a certain level for funding. Teachers aren't paid very well, nor do they get the proper resources to adequately teach their students. I'm sure I'm grossly simplifying the problems there, but I can already see how those two points make it so that there's a lot of pressure on teachers to conform to teaching what's on standardized tests. I can't imagine that any of those factors make it very easy for teachers to even WANT to teach, much less get creative about HOW they're teaching their students.

ChuckMcM 3y ago

Pretty much this. Teach them as much as they want to know. We were extremely fortunate and decided to home school our kids through elementary and middle school because a) they were learning faster than their peers and bored, and b) we had a lot of community involvement which was much better social interactions than school provided. If you are in the Bay Area and can send your kids to Reikes Nature studies[1] it is a wonderful program (as an example). Conveniently California provided all of the knowledge they "expected" kids to know[2]. Each of my children reached math proficiency differently, all of them went through calculus "C" in terms of subject matter but I don't thing the English/Business major took it past that, the other two (Physics, Bio) did. [1] https://www.riekes.org/riekesnature https://www.riekes.org/riekesnature [2] https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/ https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/ (side note, all of our kids could pass the high school "exit" exam when they started high school. I attribute this not necessarily to personal talents so much as a very low student/teacher ratio meant everyone learned things and a lack of "deadlines" on when they had to be done meant different approaches could be taken on a subject if one didn't seem to be working out)

adastra22 3y ago

Which after school programs do you use?

gnicholas 3y ago
We started with Khan Academy, which was good but IMO didn't have enough practice (just straight from a lesson to a quiz, which a kid might get lucky on and think she's mastered the skill). Then we added in some IXL (which we had access to via the school). That allows for lots of practice of new and old concepts, and it requires more thorough demonstrations of mastery. I also used free websites to generate worksheets for skills like long multiplication and division. Right now we're looking at AoPS and Po-Shen Lo for her main curriculum for next year.

agentgumshoe 3y ago

It's almost like parents could provide a better education for their own kids if only a) they could trust themselves and b) they had the time

paulryanrogers 3y ago
IME the implication is not a universal truth.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  So? We should not just throw the baby out with the bathwater. God forbid some people get it wrong, the current education system is not exactly the shining beacon of 'good.' If there's one thing I hate about social media especially, it's that we must skip all nuance to yell in absolutes.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    "It's almost like" suggests to to me the author thinks homeschooling is the obvious and best answer, perhaps that folks are afraid to admit. My experience has been that homeschooling has been worse than public schooling, even where parents have been professional teachers. No doubt it can be better for some and in some areas may be the only sane choice. Some stats even indicate better academic outcomes. Yet I've personally seen it bring a lot of strife, unreasonable expectations, and pain into the home. And the outcomes I've seen don't inspire confidence. As a group, at least where I've lived, homeschooling parents: don't give the kids a choice, do it for their own selfish reasons, produce kids without enough socializing among peers, and often indoctrinate the kids with religious 'teachings' that undermine critical thinking skills.
    - agentgumshoe 3y ago
      Oh for sure, if you're going to try and replicate 'the classroom' at home it's going to be pain. It needs some different thinking, especially around what the child does and doesn't actually need. As I said, it's not perfect, and people get it 'wrong,' but we're comparing to schools here (generalisation, there are of course very good schools and teachers around), which I don't think represents 'good' to compare to. It is a parent's prerogative if they wish to instill religious dogma and ignorance into their kids, unless we think we should enforce social conformity broader than what is created in the classroom? Schools are certainly not busy ensuring kids have strong critical thinking skills. Just look at the way universities are shutting down troubling topic debates for the mindsets arriving there. I'm curious what does 'enough socialising' mean?

whiddershins 3y ago

Yet we all keep sending our kids to these places.

agentgumshoe 3y ago
Because we've been told for so long that any other option, or especially taking into our own hands, is a disaster and our kids will 'fall behind.' And yet kids have never had more access to knowledge, information and quality learning resources outside of school, without the toxic social environment. Say you'll do it yourself thanks and people call you a child abuser - while their kids are bullied and 'underperforming' at school with teachers they don't like. It's insane.

tim333 3y ago

At my school (UK, a while ago) they dealt with differing abilities of kids in math class by having easier and harder questions in the textbook, so the teacher could explain the new concept simply enough for the slower kids to get it and then the faster ones could try to solve much tricker stuff and so not get too bored.