It's hard to stop Math Acceleration once you start

93 pointsposted a year ago
by sebg
(kidswholovemath.substack.com)

100 Comments

physicsguy

a year ago

When I was in primary school (UK) aged about 10 I got flagged by a teacher for being gifted at Maths. At the time there was a local government scheme that put on little lessons at the local research intensive University on a Saturday morning. For me that was incredibly eye opening; nobody in my family had ever been to University and for the first time I also met people who had a shared interest in maths. The cohort of students was very diverse too. I did that for maybe 6 years and then due to cuts it closed down. At that point the staff tried to take it private and it ticked on for a few years during which I used to go and help (first Saturday job!). It was really really great for me, gave me a lot of exposure to advanced things way earlier, and not necessarily things that were on the normal syllabus either, so it didn't leap me forwards ahead of people in school, just gave me a much broader exposure to what maths was. I ended up doing a degree in Theoretical Physics and then a doctorate in computational physics. I vaguely kept in touch with a couple of guys from it, another one did a doctorate is now a researcher in Chemistry and the other did a degree in maths and is a software developer as well.

ThePhysicist

a year ago

If the kids are bright, send them to a school or an environment where they can live that out. I don't know about the US but in Germany the quality of schools varies dramatically both between regions and within. I loved computer science, physics and math in high school but my school did very little to encourage this. Only my physics teacher encouraged me and helped me sign up for competitions and a special programme that allowed me to attend university math/physics classes while still in school (I'm not a prodigy by a far shot, just very eager to learn and nerdy).

When I came to uni and met other kids with the same desire to learn I was shocked how well they were prepared, they e.g. learned using Mathematica/Maple in school, had real computer science classes and a ton of extracurricular activities. We didn't have any of that, our only capable computer science teacher was an alcoholic and none of the other teachers knew anything about computers. In the end it didn't make a big difference though, I had to catch up a bit on some of the things but it wasn't like they were leagues ahead.

The only thing I would be careful with is setting kids on a trajectory where their self worth gets coupled to feeling special or talented. Inevitably once they get into communities where more and more bright kids hang out they will regress to the norm, and some kids don't handle that well. Don't let them think they always need to be the best to be "worth" something, instead teach them to enjoy what they do for the sake of it.

wanderingbort

a year ago

We chose to do the opposite. Our kids are in a school that provides excellent opportunities to build the skills they struggle with.

They already pursue the things that come naturally to them. As parents, feeding those flames is easy and we take that responsibility personally.

It is the other life skills that we need help with. Having qualified educators work on our kids non-preferred skill sets seems to be a better balance of resources.

They may miss out on being nationally recognized math olympians BUT life is so much longer than that period.

tarsinge

a year ago

I hope it works for you. My parents chose to leave me in the normal school and curriculum "because that would surely make me normal". It was miserable for me. Social skills never came naturally, I was isolated and bullied, and bored to death in classes. At the end of my childhood the results were trauma and bad grades. I'm quite sure I would have been happier getting more stimulated on what I loved. They made the common mistake of thinking that improving skills you are already strong would be somehow detrimental to others.

aleph_minus_one

a year ago

> It was miserable for me. Social skills never came naturally, I was isolated and bullied, and bored to death in classes. At the end of my childhood the results were trauma and bad grades.

Concerning the social skills argument: the only "social skill" that school teaches is becoming capable of hating other people so much that you deep from your heart wish them to be dead.

aklemm

a year ago

Herding kids of all the same age into daily hours of structured instruction is an anti-socialization, I'm sure of it.

eitally

a year ago

Perhaps for a small segment of the school-going population but this is not universal and you know it.

aleph_minus_one

a year ago

> Perhaps for a small segment of the school-going population but this is not universal and you know it.

Indeed: there exist perpetrators and victims (or specifically for bullying: the bullies and the bullied ones). And there exist people who are simply "blind" to what happens around them.

DiggyJohnson

a year ago

Cmon. There is everything to learn in school in regards to socialization, perhaps besides cross cohort-socialization.

wanderingbort

a year ago

Well, we aren’t trying to make them normal. Just using the school system to provide opportunities we cannot.

Out of curiosity, did you feel as though you got stimulated in the topics you loved outside of school? We are trying hard to amplify anything we can rather than suppress or ignore it.

bawolff

a year ago

How succesful you are in life tends to be related to how much you can leverage your unique talents. Unique talents set you up for high paying jobs that make life much easier.

And yes you can go too far with that, but generally speaking being average at a lot of things is much worse than being good at one or two things.

wanderingbort

a year ago

I think I missed the mark in how I positioned it.

Generally, I feel it’s my job as the parent to draw out, amplify and support their unique talents. Schools aren’t really set up to maximize unique potential so, we are using them for what they can provide.

I suspect people read that we chose a school to address the challenges our kids had and stopped there.

hermitcrab

a year ago

I agree with that last paragraph. It is more healthy to praise kids for the effort that they put in, rather than the results they get.

ykonstant

a year ago

The last paragraph is very important!

ipnon

a year ago

It’s absurd to claim being 6 grades ahead in mathematics doesn’t make your kid better than others in many dimensions. Having the mathematical ability to grok a cutting edge paper, or not grok it, can make or break an entire career. It’s detrimental to the child’s development to instill the belief that there’s nothing special about their abilities, because it risks them not finding any value in applying them! That has negative effects on all the levels of the individual, the family, the community and even the greater society.

betageek

a year ago

I think that's a bad misreading of the article, and life in general. When the author is saying "better" he's talking about the whole makeup of a person, not just a single advanced skill. Being amazing at maths is extremely useful, but it can be quite a narrow area of expertise, and I would imagine the author wants his child to be a good person, not a hyperfocused maths machine with no social skills. The children's achievements are combination or talent, effort and nurture that other children may not have, it doesn't make other children lesser, and they will have talents of their own.

nextlevelwizard

a year ago

Two are not mutually exclusive.

Why is it always either or with you people?

They can be good at math and still have social skills.

All else being equal knowing advance mathematics and having the ability to think through a problem critically and analyze your mistakes is huge benefit and makes you objectively better functional than your peers.

Of course just like everything there are trade offs - like the time your kid spends doing math they wont be running track - and that is fine.

groby_b

a year ago

It makes you better at math. That's it. Which means you can function better in environments that rely heavily on advanced math, sure.

It does not, however, make you "better" than other people.

As for "better functional", many of my classmates from university (math majors) were absolutely brilliant at math, and could barely exist in normal life. And they were cognizant of that - brilliant folks are usually aware that they're brilliant along a specific axis, it's the B tier of almost brilliant folks that needs to harp on about how special they are.

nextlevelwizard

a year ago

>It makes you better at math (...) [w]hich means you can function better in environments that rely heavily on advanced math

Except is also makes you better at basic math, which means you don't get fooled as easily with advertisement dark patterns.

It also makes you better at problem solving and logic, which are very generalizable skills that can have profound effect on your life regardless of other circumstances.

This all enables you to better function in society, making better decisions, and just understanding how the world works.

ajuc

a year ago

If you say to your gifted kid that they're great because of how well they do with math - then they will likely build their perception of self-worth on their math skills.

Which seems fine at first (it's a great motivator as long as you're the best in your class), but later in life it often has very bad consequences if not addressed. It's a recipe for burnout and ego problems.

Youden

a year ago

That's not the claim the author is making.

Relevant paragraph: "Does math acceleration make our kids better than other kids? No, also not in the slightest. Our kids are just lucky that they like math and were born into a family that supports their love."

The two ways I can read this are:

- ("make" = "lead to the conclusion that"): His kids aren't able to handle the accelerated maths because of an innate aptitude that they were born with but because they like it and their family supports them.

- ("make" = "ensure that"): His kids may have an advantage but that advantage is no reason to view other kids as lesser or people to look down on, as the advantage is a result of luck and circumstance.

bawolff

a year ago

> His kids aren't able to handle the accelerated maths because of an innate aptitude that they were born with but because they like it and their family supports them.

That sounds pretty much like the definition of innate aptitude to me.

Religious people like to say things along the lines of - jesus helps those who helps themselves. I'm not religious, but basically the same thing applies here. Advantages don't just happen, they are the result of hard work. Obviously that is no excuse to look down on someone else, but people who put in work to give themselves an advantage should be able to be proud of the work they have done. Its not nothing.

alpinisme

a year ago

“Innate” = inborn. You’re not wrong about how talents are fostered but the claim here is that they weren’t just magic, “I was born with it” kind of things.

eitally

a year ago

I think that's an unfair reading of things. As a counter-example, my kids are in the "honors" track at their public schools, have done accelerated math since middle school, and will end high school having done Calc BC as a senior (my son) and a junior (my daughter), as well as AP Stats. To me, that's "good enough" for kids who aren't particularly interested in higher maths. That said, the kids are intelligent and if we pushed they'd surely move faster.

But instead we throw the majority of our discretionary time at sports. It's entirely possible both kids will have opportunities to play in college, likely in D1 programs (track & soccer, respectively). This isn't because either probably have the raw genetics of [pick a superstar], but because they have been practicing each one 8-10hr/wk since they got to about 6th grade on top regional teams & clubs. If we throw the amount of time, money and effort we put toward sports (on average, probably $6000/yr for soccer and about $3000/yr for track/XC) toward academics -- or any other extracurricular interest -- surely we'd see above average performance in those things, too.

Fwiw, I'm a big proponent of public schools for many reasons, but one of them is that the lower academic stress on top students (at all but the most elite schools) gives them more time to explore well-roundedness through hobbies, sports, jobs and other activities.

littlestymaar

a year ago

While self-confidence is a superpower and definitely something we should foster, thinking you're better than the others on the other hands leads to lots of socialization issues down the road, so if you can avoid that to your kids they'll be much better off.

spoonjim

a year ago

In America you can’t say that anyone’s better than anyone else. This even applies to murderers

scandox

a year ago

In fairness many people will feel they are better than you because they don't agree with the idea of people being better than each other. While you oppose their view you should approve of them feeling that they are better for some reason as that supports your position.

kazinator

a year ago

It's rather backwards. The liberals will believe these equality principles and whatnot feel that they're better than the deplorables who are not with the program, oblivious to the irony.

Patient0

a year ago

I think a lot of the hostility about over achieving kids is that parents and their fellow students instinctively recognize that a lot of the success that comes from education is "zero sum".

There are only so many places and scholarships available at the elite universities, employers only pick the academic "winners" for their graduate programs etc.

When a child spends all their spare time studying and does better in life as a result, a component of this success is actually at the expense of the kids who may have been as bright, but did not spend as much of their spare time on it.

So now should all the other kids spend all their time studying so that they can keep up and not lose out? Maybe...

I'm not saying that any of this is wrong or even unfair - just pointing it out.

soup10

a year ago

It's not always that simple, sure the more time you spend researching and reading books, the more certain types of knowledge accumulates but we all know someone that is book smart and life stupid. And so much about being truly intelligent and successful is having a framework in which you are able and motivated to apply what you've learned as well as the motivation to keep learning and doing more. Many kids will burn out(or worse, always shuffled into one matrix or another) if they don't have internal reasons for doing what they doing, not just parents or schools encouraging them but actual drive within themselves that goes beyond social validation, and part of that comes from exploring and learning about life and yourself through first hand experiences.

Aditya_Garg

a year ago

This is exactly the culture in Korea and other Asian societies. Kids regularly spend 3+ hours after school studying “just to keep up”

TrackerFF

a year ago

I sometimes wonder if academically talented kids also just burn out, in the same way many musically, athletically, etc. gifted kids do.

I grew up playing instruments on a higher level, and met A LOT of wildly talented kids in my younger days.

Anecdotally, I did observe that many such kids started quitting around the age 18-20. Some quit altogether, others just started pursuing other interests, and didn't do much to maintain their skills.

You spend 10-15 years of intense work reaching the 80% mark, and then spend the rest of your life trying to complete the remaining 20%.

HPsquared

a year ago

It really depends on why they were doing the thing in the first place, and if they actually enjoyed it.

holyknight

a year ago

They surely can, you get burn out because you get constantly frustrated for long periods of time in your daily tasks. It can be caused by overwork, underwork, underperform, overperform, etc.

helboi4

a year ago

yeah I had that. For me I had an early childhood like these kids except my parents weren't even that active in accelerating me. My dad gave me a science book for middle schoolers when I was 4 and taught me my times tables. That, along with my incessant reading that got me reading history and literature at an adult level by the age of at least 10 meant that I was years ahead for most of my school career.

I felt like I was wasting so much time to be in school, and all I got from it was being relentlessly bullied, to the point where I stopped engaging at all out of protest. I started to take pride in being as lazy as possible and getting top marks anyway and teachers who told me to work harder to reach my potential pissed me off because I knew everything they wanted me to work hard on was just too mind numbing to be worth it for me. In classes where I was too objectively ahead to be ignored, like Latin where I had literally already completed the first two textbooks they were using, they deliberately held me behind for everyone else to catch up. So it just seemed like a fucking scam when they told me to "reach my potential"

I crashed and burned at about 17 because of this. Suddenly more long research projects that required discipline that I had purposefully thrown away were required rather than just acing exams effortlessly. I got moved to a private school where the kids around me had actually been receiving a proper education and the standards were higher. And I took one of my worst subjects as a higher level class (maths) and failed exams for the first time in my life. My identity was so tied to being a genius and I was so unused to not succeeding effortlessly I pretty much gave up. Like this shattering of my reality just made me full on depressed.

Since then I've actually become stupider from the extra lack of effort and now I have severe issues dealing with frustration when not being immediately good at things and maintaining discipline or any focus whatsoever. I have so much resentment for the schooling system because I truly believe if I had been moved 2 years up as a kid I would have relished the challenge, kept gaining new skills and not created this learned helplessness for myself.

jddj

a year ago

I've been trying to address this recently in my own thinking, as I have the same tendency to overvalue the idea of effortless success. It has coloured far too many interactions and decisions in my life.

I've made some progress recently by trying to gradually tease it apart: who is this performance for, anyway? Why is it more important to me -- the monkey juggling in front of the mirror -- that the ability comes naturally? Surely the self-esteem that can be milked from some innate aptitude is limited compared to what there is from demonstrated improvement through conscientious practice.

Learned or not, it's a lazy, shallow and fragile foundation for one's identity. Success without effort is too much of a cheap endorphin shot to qualify as worthy of more than a passing thought.

neomantra

a year ago

I was at a talk that Po-shen Loh (https://www.poshenloh.com), a math education innovator, gave to parents while their kids were in a math competition. Much of it spoke to this point and beyond. He was giving advice related to college admissions and how kids are pushed these days. My distillation won't do it justice, maybe it a form of it is online somehow.

He described the "freight train" mentality where kids are pushed to do things because that's what is "needed" to get to college. Advance math and science as much as possible. All the honors and APs possible. All the competitions. Do thing X because that's what they think a college will want. Complete academic focus heavily driven by the parents. They can't change direction or slow down.

When he interviews for undergrad/grad/teams, he asks questions related to the candidate's intent and narrative, rather than the tally of accomplishments. Also, he asks things like "you've finally sold that company" or "licensed your award winning research breakthrough", then what will you do? [touching sorta on the remaining 20% you note].

What he's teasing out is their passion and character (of course, capability has to be there too). Because he is composing a team/cohort who will fulfill the mission of the organization, and that person will need both to think for themselves and to collaborate. Soul-less people who churned because their parents forced them too won't make a great team.

It relates to burnout. It relates to lack of passion once the parent influence is removed. It relates to tunnel vision and years without agency.

A person in the audience said they were considering their son quit as captain of the swim team to get a marginal improvement in their Calculus grade. Dr Loh disputes that and a corporate recruiter in the audience chimed in agreeing -- the parent was completely missing all of the benefit, direct and meta, of that athletic and leadership activity.

Another metaphor he used was between a "black hole" and a "star" with respect to the attitudes and tendencies of students. The two are energetically very different, despite working with the same physical principle of gravity. Contractive versus emanative. It gets to be pretty limited what can be done with that contractive energy, but emanation has so much creative potential.

He's built these mental models after teaching and interviewing many people. Pulling all that together to say, maybe kids won't burn out if they aren't on a freight train and given agency (combined with mentoring) to advance themselves optimally.

[Also noting that in that model, it's totally OK to be intensely devoted to something and then pivot when it makes sense for you.]

hermitcrab

a year ago

If you have a child who is interested in maths, check out:

https://parallel.org.uk/

"A home for curious mathematical minds. For ages 10-16 anywhere in the world. 100% free."

I particularly recommend the weekly quiz newsletter, which explores all sorts of interesting maths, not generally covered in school.

bawolff

a year ago

> A common question we’ve seen online or when we talk with parents in our communities is whether it is equitable or helpful to help some kids excel academically while others are (so) far behind.

Its disturbing that this is even seriously considered.

I'm all for trying to improve equality, but there are two ways of doing that - providing help and resources for those that need it, or dragging down the people that don't. The latter is straight up dystopian.

BroodPlatypus

a year ago

Crabs in a bucket. Only 16% of people are born into first world countries, we should question whether it’s equitable to give them clean water and housing while others are far behind.

travisporter

a year ago

Anecdotally a kid in my high school maxed out Princeton math undergrad classes by 9th grade and was offered admission to MIT at tenth grade. He took it. Not sure where he is now but he seemed normal enough at the time.

boringg

a year ago

You don't need to put in the paragraph about it being equitable and if anyone asks you that you should question their motives. The goal of society is not to hamstring development and intelligence because you have more free time to indulge your children's interests.

I'm glad to see math acceleration - the public school isn't quite capable to handle leaps and bounds (and that isn't their responsibility - speaking to the point about equity debate). I would expect them to be able to accommodate except move up years.

red_admiral

a year ago

> Stop doing math

While it's not the solution I would pick (my kid enjoys something that's not drugs - let them do it), as the following paragraph says, if someone really likes math and has an aptitude for it, they'll go on to major in math just fine.

However, making them stop even thinking about a math career because that would be low status or outrageous or "defecting" in their community would be destructive. This hits all the usual battle lines like "women / black people / disabled people ... don't do math".

hoseja

a year ago

Equitability focus has to be willful sabotage of national competitiveness.

littlestymaar

a year ago

That's the problem when you start worshipping competition: when competition becomes central to your society and institutions then you're going to have lots of popular pressure to make the competition “fair”.

HPsquared

a year ago

It's a couple of things.

1. Treating education as a competitive sport/ tournament (zero-sum thinking).

2. Blank slate theory, assuming if a kid does well it's because of external factors.

HPsquared

a year ago

And, more importantly, massive sabotage of the individuals affected.

helboi4

a year ago

Yeah it fucking ruined me and turned me from a very gifted kid into a non functional adult because I basically learnt to disengage with everything in my life and fail upwards. I find it really hard to get out of this habit and actually use the potential that I have. I mean, using your potential is much easier when you're a teenager and not a working adult that's already fucked up for a decade.

HPsquared

a year ago

Yep! Not sure what to call it, kind of an "achievement ceiling" with standardised testing. Allows gifted kids to develop really terrible work and study habits and still appear to be doing well.

graycat

a year ago

Reasons for kids to do math:

(1) It's a chaotic world out there that kids have to learn about. From math: In some respects it's possible to get rid of the chaos and separate junk from reliable truth.

(2) Later in life, in career or just social contexts, it can help a lot, have the person at a big advantage, really be the best, for the person to be nicely ahead in some field or even just some small part of some field, maybe math, physics, chemistry, statistics, computers, publicity, .... Soooo, don't get to dominate always or everywhere but can help life a lot if just eventually happen to stumble on a situation where "nicely ahead" permits domination, e.g., maybe head of a new group, stock, starting a company, impressing a few influential people. Don't have to dominate all the time, but maybe get to be a founder of PayPal, program "Hot or Not", etc.

youoy

a year ago

> If a US school year is 9 months and the summer vacation is 3 months, it means that every 3 years, a student who only does math in the summer will be accelerated by one year. This means that after 9 years of school with math in the summer, the kid (having done no extra work during the school year) will now be radically accelerated. Roughly, this means that in the US math system, they will be taking AP Calculus BC as a Sophomore or Freshman in high school. And this is only doing math in the summertime. Imagine what can happen if your kid does math year-round?!?!?!?!

If this is the reason why they are doing it, you are thinking about it the wrong way. What the kids are able to learn in those 9 years, a talented 18 year old (as I guess these kids are) can learn it and understand it better in a few months.

Do it because they like it, as if they were playing soccer, but not for acceleration...

bell-cot

a year ago

While math is easy to get ahead in, and currently cool and STEM-y, it's the same deal in other "hard" academic subjects. Or non-"hard" subjects - try getting college-level support in accounting, history, languages, literature, music, sculpture, etc. for your junior high school kid from the public school system.

From my PoV, the biggest problem here is attitudes & expectations. If 8th-grader Alize is college-level fluent in her second language (French), and already doing the accounting for her dad's chain of restaurants, then nobody expects the school system to be involved with those. It's all on her French-speaking relatives, and her dad's CPA. And that's perfectly reasonable. If Alize wants more, her family can consider student exchange programs in France, or talk to colleges.

hintymad

a year ago

> Pushback: Is math acceleration equitable?

Many people seem refuse to accept that the innate talent can't be suppressed. In contrast, the biggest hurdle for kids to get ahead in math, or in STEMM in general, is their innate interest. At least that's my personal experience. I have two kids. One can focus for hours and is naturally excited when studying maths. The other is a born extravert, can't focus for more than 30 minutes, showed zero interest in math, and had a hard time intuitively understanding even elementary math concept like relative speed or ratio.

Guess who effortlessly moved multiple grades ahead and who struggled, despite that they both had equal access to education and tutoring? I don't know how to create equitable education in a resourceful family, let alone the entire society.

g9yuayon

a year ago

> Pushback: Is math acceleration equitable?

The fact that the author felt necessary to even discuss this shows how sick the US culture has become. Was it equitable that Newton could invent Calculus before he was 26? Was it equitable that Poincaré could manage to work only 4 hours a day yet still be the most successful mathematician in the world? Was it equitable that someone could get the idea of limit in one pass yet some kids struggled to understand even what percentage is? Was it equitable someone could beat the shit out of everyone in her class by merely engaging in class, while someone could flounder their math class despite taking 20 hours of tutoring every week?

Since when the US elites have not been able to recognize that we should nurture talent instead of suppressing it?

eesmith

a year ago

> Almost every school we have talked to about helping our kids has been unsure of what to do.

The public school system I went to in the 1980s offered summer classes for students who wanted to take an extra math or science course, not as remedial education, but as a replacement for a year-long course. I did math one summer and physics another.

The high school I went to offered classes for the few advanced math students who wanted more. We had one course in linear algebra and another differential equations, and I think the latter counted for college credit.

I also went to a state-funded summer science and math summer camp for six weeks at one of the state colleges.

If those don't exist now, I'll blame tax cuts and our modern (post)Reaganomics switch away from New Deal social programs.

novia

a year ago

I am so jealous of these kids. I would have loved this.

chongli

a year ago

We really need to break the stigma on this. If these kids had loved basketball (and grew to 7 feet tall in middle school) nobody would blame the parents for letting them play more basketball! Same goes for young chess prodigies!

Yet if a kid gets addicted to math and loves all the math you can throw at them people start to panic and tell you to “slow down!” If your kid is accelerating in math and feels alienated from their peers, do what one of the families in the article did: find them a tutor such as a math major from a local college. Having someone to talk shop to with is essential for a kid, whether it’s basketball, chess, or math.

froh

a year ago

yes! a thousand times yes!

thing is: the barrier to entry is much higher and it's much harder to find peers and a supportive environment. it's much simpler to practice with a ball, be it soccer or baseball, than it is finding a decent place to train maths or other sciency stuff. you need a coach very early on while these more accessible sports only need a ball and some space.

to be clear: I'm 100% with you, brains loving to do "weird" brainy stuff need to be appreciated as much as we appreciate talent in dribbling some ball into some net.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

rors

a year ago

Your analogy is a little biased in that most professional basketball players careers are over by the time they hit their mid-thirties. If they want to go pro then they need to be playing at a high standard in their teens.

Whereas someone talented at math would be productive much longer than that.

mbeex

a year ago

G. H. Hardy wrote: "Mathematics is a young man's game." Of course, you can continue to be a mathematician later, but for top performance, especially in terms of novelty, you have to start early.

defrost

a year ago

Euler started strong early and peaked later

    During his Berlin years (1741–1766, aged 34-59), Euler was at the peak of his productivity.

    He wrote 380 works, 275 of which were published.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler

Admittedly some of that was playing a Swiss Charles Dodgson to 15 and 10 year old girls.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_to_a_German_Princess

mbeex

a year ago

Individual examples do not contradict the general statement. Galois was dead at an age when I wasn't even at university. Abel a bit later (so avoid groups if you want to have a long life), same with Ramanujan (which incidentally may be a factor in Hardy's comment). And so on, just as singular at the first glance. As a mathematician, however, I continue to argue Hardy's point, both for the present and for the past as a general and observable phenomenon.

And the number of books as a measure of quality, really? I think that view is skewed by today's “publish and perish” environment (nothing against Euler).

defrost

a year ago

There's no suggestion that Euler is anything but an individual example however it is explicitly stated that number of works was a measure of productivity not quality.

If you want to split the difference on the age of mathenaticians I happened by chance to be in Adelaide in 1985 when this was snapped: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao#/media/File:Paul_E...

Not all Groupies die young, https://mathematical-research-institute.sydney.edu.au/news/p... is still grinding along having created and steadily expanded on a system from 1980 through to today that is still actively used to beat quantum cryptographic cipher candidates.

mbeex

a year ago

> it is explicitly stated that number of works was a measure of productivity not quality.

I have noticed that. But my entire posting, to which you replied, had the subtext of excellence - in this case, the comparison of professional basketball and mathematics. And in the latter at least, quality and originality plays first fiddle. In this respect, I would be reluctant to shift the discussion to other qualities such as “productivity”. For me, this is not the relevant measure in this context and, as I said, I also view it critically as a criterion for whatever.

As for Tao, I knew the picture and the story. Yes, an old and a young one. So what? It's not countering my or Hardy's point. These are statements from experience about a whole profession.

defrost

a year ago

> But my entire posting, to which you replied

Do you assume that I accepted terms of discussion that you set? How odd.

> had the subtext of excellence

Is this a peak value or an integral?

> In this respect, I would be reluctant to shift the discussion

Goodo, you do you. Catch you later. Maybe.

arlort

a year ago

Mathematician very famously have their top achievement restricted to those under 40

nextlevelwizard

a year ago

What is your point? That because athletic ability degrades faster kids should be pushed into sports as soon as possible so they can reap potential benefits, but since math is mental thing and mental acuity declines slower kids should be kept away from mentally demanding things so they can reap the potential benefits at a later date?

Wouldn't both kids be better off if they could just do what they liked? Just because there is more money involved with sports and coaches and teams have noticed that they can get more bang for their buck when they focus recruiting as young as possible shouldn't make any difference if a kid is into chess or math or any other science.

CarpaDorada

a year ago

Good way to rob your child of their childhood... Kids need less schooling, not more, especially with the state of education (worldwide, it's bad everywhere).

edit: the author discovered his children like math and he's a banker with a math degree from MIT, talk about being oblivious to the effects of nurture.

froh

a year ago

I think we agree to disagree.

how is allowing a kid to do what they have fun with (maths in this case) "robbing them of their childhood??

If it involved tears and pressure for performance and obligation, yes, that's questionable. but a brain that wants to brain around for fun and giggles with other brains? greatest childhood ever.

CarpaDorada

a year ago

Kids don't brain around for fun, if you put them in that extremely competitive environment they will compete. Kids have fun playing with their friends. Take it from Terry Tao, who has been through all of this and also has a fields medal: <https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-gifte...>.

>[..] any short-term advantage one might gain in working excessively towards such benchmarks may be outweighed by the time and energy that such a goal takes away from other aspects of a child’s social, emotional, academic, physical, or intellectual development.

I'm more radical than him in my viewpoint. Academia and industry is infested with broken people with robbed childhoods. Heed my warning and don't let it happen to your children.

camdenreslink

a year ago

A couple points from my experience:

- Kids absolutely do brain around for fun. It’s one of the main things they do.

- Terence Tao is by far the most extreme example of studying advanced math as a child. A kid can work through higher concepts without being Tao.

Obviously if a parent is pressuring a child, or seeking specific outcomes like grades or graduating early that is a different story.

nicoburns

a year ago

Eh. Kids definitely do brain around for fun. More so if they have other kids (or parentd for that matter) who also like to "brain around".

I do agree that we need to be careful not to focus on things a kid is good at so much that we neglect other areas that they may not so naturally excel in.

CarpaDorada

a year ago

It's not excellence, it's the plurality of experiences.

nicoburns

a year ago

I agree with that. Kids being pushed to do things they are not good at too much would be just as bad. And I guess that happens too.

camdenreslink

a year ago

I think you might just be having trouble wrapping your head around the concept that someone might enjoy working through some math concepts as much as other recreational activities.

There are a lot of fun math materials out there, especially if you don’t have to follow the dry (and quite frankly slow) school curriculum/materials.

HPsquared

a year ago

It's not about "more" or "less", it's "the right schooling".

didgeoridoo

a year ago

> Pushback: Is math acceleration equitable?

What in the Harrison Bergeron kind of question is this?

graemep

a year ago

> If a US school year is 9 months and the summer vacation is 3 months, it means that every 3 years, a student who only does math in the summer will be accelerated by one yea

That is simplistic. Amount learned is not proportional to time spent. Its the same problem as more hours at work does not mean proportionately more output. There are diminishing returns.

> One family we spoke with has a kid (now homeschooled)

Home education is the logical endpoint of this. If your child is learning more at home than at school, what is the point of school?

> One family we spoke to decided that what they valued most about going to school was " Social-Emotional Learning (SEL),

My experience is that HE is is better for that - meet lots of different people in different settings rather than the same people in the same place daily.

> The parents are now not only worried about what they would do for high school if the kid decides they want to go to high school, but they are now worried about what to do about college!

Much less likely to be a problem. Its a lot less likely the child will be "ahead" as a young adult compared to other who are also good at maths.

I do not think this is a problem unique to one subject either. Kids will progress at different rates in different subjects given the chance. its almost as if different people have different talents!

nkrisc

a year ago

> Home education is the logical endpoint of this. If your child is learning more at home than at school, what is the point of school?

There’s more to school than learning math. Learning how to work with other people, learning how to do things you don’t want to do, learning how to function in a group of people with different needs and goals, learning subjects other than math, etc.

> My experience is that HE is is better for that - meet lots of different people in different settings rather than the same people in the same place daily.

Those are all transient relationships. It’s still worth having long-lasting interactions/relationships - even with people who aren’t your family or maybe you don’t even care for.

brobdingnagians

a year ago

There are other places to learn the social networking aspects of school, and arguably so it better. Sports teams, churches, volunteering and other extra curricular activities can develop the friendships, group work, and compromise skills that are good for society, while also giving a family and child the choice to pursue their interests.

Schools often do a low quality job of those. Teachers don't have a lot of time to mentor individual gruops, so often some individuals end up doing all the work and resent groups. Children get bullied and start hating school because teachers don't really have time, interest, or ability to stop it.

It is more about learning to work and value knowledge. But it is easier to learn to work when you see some point in it. For a lot of people, school feels pointless other than the low quality social aspects of it. And teachers generally do a bad job of explaining the importance of anything. So a lot of children eventually leave school with the mentality that they won't use math and they don't need books and they only learned things so they could 1. Maybe go to college and 2. Maybe get a good paying job where they don't use those things anyways. Those answers are now cliche in our society.

If we did more apprenticeships, application of knowledge in practical situations with adults and other members of the community (volunteering, organising events, work experiences, etc.) people would learn skills and be excited to keep doing it and feel like they fit in.

graemep

a year ago

> There’s more to school than learning math. Learning how to work with other people, learning how to do things you don’t want to do, learning how to function in a group of people with different needs and goals, learning subjects other than math, etc.

Yes, home education is better at all that in my experience.

I specifically said that maths is not unique.

> Those are all transient relationships.

No they are not. My younger daughter has relationships that have lasted many years so far from HE. Despite our moving twice in the last three years.

If you go to the same classes or activities or have the same hobbies or stay in touch online....

You also have more time to maintain relationships outside school

nkrisc

a year ago

I don’t doubt that some schools are worse than home-schooling. But think (for many, not all kids) the best school is better than the best home-schooling.

graemep

a year ago

I disagree. I went to one of the best schools in Britain and my kids got a better education than I did.

Kids are individuals with different talents and interests. Tailoring education to the individual is usually better than standardising it and that is the key difference between schools and HE.

They can do subjects that schools rarely teach and follow interests. For example, my younger daughter has GCSEs in Latin and astronomy. Both my children have a really wide range of interests and and that broad education is something school rarely really deliver - they can make kids do subjects but few people seem to come out really enjoying a wide range of them.

I very much doubt my older daughter would be in a very male dominated career (automotive electrical and electronics R & D) if she had gone to school. There is more room to be yourself without being brainwashed into stereotyped roles.

pyrale

a year ago

> Home education is the logical endpoint of this. If your child is learning more at home than at school, what is the point of school?

Regardless of the difference in skills taught by school vs. HE, simply put, school is the difference between early 18th century where those who could (i.e. a tiny minority) were homeschooled, and 20th century where every kid in a well-functioning society receives an education.

There is a reason every single industrializing country started pushing mandatory education during the 19th century, and it wasn't benevolence.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

yapyap

a year ago

> Home education is the logical endpoint of this. If your child is learning more at home than at school, what is the point of school?

socialization

graemep

a year ago

As I explained HE is better for socialisation. At the very least it is better at developing social skills.

Schools (at least here in the UK) usually tell children they are not there to socialise so the people running schools do not agree with this idea.

jalk

a year ago

And learn all the other subjects they don’t love to do in their spare time. Presumably the parents also have things to do when the kids are in school.

graemep

a year ago

> learn all the other subjects they don’t love to do in their spare tims

One effect of HE is that kids are more willing to learn and enjoy learning in general more, and develop greater motivation and self-discipline.

> Presumably the parents also have things to do when the kids are in school.

HE does not rely on teaching the hours schools do - it takes far less time to learn in other ways than it does to do the same in a classroom. I generally spent less time on HE than many parents do on getting their kids ready for school, and getting them there are back, etc.

HE is not all (or even mostly) done by parents tutoring kids either. Self teaching, classes, tutors - whatever works for a particular time.

I think parents should spend more time with kids than most do. This is why I am an advocate for requiring (by law) more family friendly working hours and conditions AND of greater involvement of fathers (which needs both social change and legal change) rather than raising children being a female occupation by default.

QuadmasterXLII

a year ago

My scenario was that I accelerated relatively hard when young (calc BC in sophomore year if highschool) and then slowed down to the standard pace, or a little slower because college math is just hard in a way that pre-algebra isn’t. This was really, really beneficial- I came into college with enough math credits that I could underload when I needed to to avoid burnout without falling behind.

holyknight

a year ago

I don't understand the problem. School is designed for the average (as it should be), spending your whole summer vacation doing math is far from an average thing a kid would do. If you enjoy doing something beyond what school offers, you do it in your free time and be done with it, as with any other hobby.

HPsquared

a year ago

Designing for the "average person" suits almost nobody. Think ergonomics, car seats need to be adjustable for safety. And people vary mentally a lot more than they do physically.

holyknight

a year ago

Everything is designed with an average and it works, because by definition most people is in fact around the average. It's not a perfect fit for anybody, but it's a decent fit for almost everyone.

If you don't design stuff with an average user in mind, is literally impossible to build anything. You would never run out of edge cases to cover.

EG: You design a chair. You design it up to hold up to 250lb, then you start going thinking it further and say "ok there are 10 people who weight 550lb, so yeah lets build all the chairs that way even if they now cost 1200$ each". No, what you do is design a regular chair that fits 80% the people and then if you want you can design one who fit 90%, another with 95%, 99% or how much ever you want. You always need to decide what the cut-off point is, and it's usually mandated by costs.

anonu

a year ago

I stumbled upon the Little Professor "calculator" from Texas Instruments. It's not actually a calculator but shaped like one and cycles through math quizzes. My 6 year old loves it.

nicman23

a year ago

give him a C99 book and an arduino or something. that ll keep him occupied for couple of years

user

a year ago

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