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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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".
Equitability focus has to be willful sabotage of national competitiveness.
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.
> 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...
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.
> 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.
> 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?
> 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.
I am so jealous of these kids. I would have loved this.
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.
> Pushback: Is math acceleration equitable?
What in the Harrison Bergeron kind of question is this?
> 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!
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.
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.
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.
give him a C99 book and an arduino or something. that ll keep him occupied for couple of years