Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifted kids and maths in the NY Times

Just found this article in tomorrow's Times. It's about poor math education --- for gifted students --- in the U.S. Wow!

You people will all be shocked to learn that a recent study has found that the United States is "failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels."

It's nice to see this issue in print!

V.

Very interesting article.
I have the feeling that much of it could be applied to The Netherlands, at least I get this impression by looking at the math curriculum of the primary school. It is appallingly low....
Same goes for science by the way.

Shocked........hee hee hee..........

On the other hand, look at the stereotypical super competitive sport parent. I've seen great coaches quit only because they didn't want to deal with some crazy parent.

Imagine that filtering into the classroom environment.

Yuck.

Yes, they are going to psychotics no matter what field or endeavor. But I do feel there is a feeling that math is hard etc in this country. I've heard parents say "OH I was never any good in math either." this thought is filtered down to the kids. So they give up before they even get going. I think many parents would have no problem with paying money to have Johnny go to an expensive sports camp but wouldn't occur to them to hire a tutor to meet Johnny's math needs. It's just a different culture. Not that either is the best or to be emulated...

Right, I'm not a fan of either extreme. I do think US culture floats at one of those extremes.

Oh, I so agree, CFK! Well put!

Add to that the fact that most elementary school teachers have only the most basic math courses under their belts and consider themselves "bad" at math, it's not surprising that GT kids aren't getting what they need.

Shocked, indeed. :p

My upper level and grad math classes had GT-Math kids from Eastern European countries. They were identified when they were very young and were mathematically mature in their teens. They were 2-4 years younger than us and and they were very, very good. It took a lot of hard work by me and others to keep up with them.

They had tremendous breadth across all fields and its applications and knew numbers and transformations and tricks and key ideas most of us never had heard of. They also knew how to prep for tests. It was eye-opening.

They lived and breathed math and had been schooled by the best teachers, some Nobel-caliber, in their nations among a group of their mental peers in a competitive, socratic setting. They got an omnibus education on all the hard sciences from a mathy perspective.

The US has nothing like this at all.

I would think there would be value in an omnibus curriculum that is aimed at generating a Post-Doc level intellect in several fields with a mathy-focus.

The other thing - is how many parents would willingly move to be near a school like this?

I would! (DW doesn't want to move though...)

JB

That's why many top universities do interviews as well as encourage visits to the campus. During my interviews, which were done by post-doc Alums, they asked me a lot of questions about math, science, physics, chemistry, and computers. I had to work out problems they posed.

I keep thinking of Ren's post about your work being about your values. Does it matter where you live, as long as you do what you like? How much of our choices are frivolous??

My only worry about that sort of early specialization is that I'm not sure I want to make those choices for my kids.

I always say that my elder child especially is *clearly* an engineer, but I also always say that if he wants to do something else entirely, I'm 100% behind him. I worry that focusing so young on math and science might steer him away from a career that might involve art or writing, too, areas of study he also enjoys deeply.

Still, the idea of that kind of school is pretty tempting... As long as we're at it, could the fantasy school we're creating here involve a great art and writing program, too?

Good point, Dottie!

In 4th grade, my son's school starts to separate out kids by math ability, thus changing rooms for math. They pre-test the kids at the beginning of the year, and after a few weeks the new math assignments begin. DS was put in the highest math grouping. But on the first day, the new math teacher started by telling the students how hard the math class was going to be. DH and I just cringed. Why not tell the students how exciting the year was going to be? Why not say that it is fun to be challenged and that they were going to do some amazing things in this class?

Now when DS rushes through an assignment because it is too simplistic, and hence gets a lousy grade on a homework assignment, he just shrugs his shoulders and says that it is because math is hard. <fume, fume, fume!!!>

I would happily move so that DS could be in a challenging school. In fact, DH and I had that discussion just last night.

I think this has been one of the most frustrating aspects of my advocacy for my kids. You would think that if a kid shows math ability (in a sea of low ability--or else, lack of interest), they would be encouraged to progress...but we have not seen that.

DS (now 10) knew multiplication tables before going to kindergarten. He progressed through 5th grade math before 2nd grade. I asked the district for a mentor when he was 6 and approached several teachers/professors...probably making an obnoxious mom impression...no one was interested. His teacher, accelerated math program, SCAT test, etc. said he was ready for algebra at age 7 (3rd). Teacher repeatedly told me she couldn't keep up with him in math, had run out of material. The district said they would not teach him algebra (even if I took him to the school every day) until he was in at least middle school, meaning he'd wait 3 years! I finally got it together and had him take AoPS course as a 5th grader (so he only waited 2 yrs). I just think it's so cruel to make them "wait".

Oh my - really? Can I roll it up and whack our adminstrators heads with a copy. I was just coming online to post the same article. The question is - how long do a relatively small group need to sound the alarm before something on large scale is changed. America will return to its agrarian roots and blue collar history if we don't wake up and smell our five dollar coffee being shipped out.

I feel very lucky that our state allows partial homeschooling. I take this matter into my own hands by taking DD8 out of school for the math hour and she works at math at her own level.

Specialization does not mean isolation, but specialization does mean excellence.

The specialization needs to be the hook that snags and then drags other areas into ones' interests. I can see Math -> History (via OOPARTS) -> Literature -> Writing or Writing -> Literature -> History -> Science -> Math.

Greek and Latin are pretty much de rigeur for learned types anyway. There is no way to escape history and literature when studying these.

In any case, teaching math without applications and usage in the past is pretty dry.

Edit: Writing a sonnet or hauiku is specialization, too.

Well, in practice, specialization usually means focusing hard on one subject (or two related ones, like science and math) to the exclusion or vast minimization of others. Especially for young kids who have a limited number of hours in the day for school, particularizing early usually means you have to give up time spent on some other area of study.

And I'm not sure what you're getting at with the poetry. Writing one sonnet is definitely NOT specialization. Doing nothing BUT writing sonnets is specialization. Big difference.

Yay! Nice work, kcab!

(And your niece, too, of course.)

That's the best! Congrats Kcab's niece!

That's great news! Congrats to your niece. It's a nice reminder that we can help encourage these kiddos, even when you think that half the stuff you say gets the standard eyeroll...

I began a math club at dd's school about a month ago. We are participating in Math Olympiad. One good thing about the club is that I have a wonderful variety of 4th grade students (5 girls, 4 boys; 3 caucasians, 2 African-Americans, 2 Hispanics, and 2 Asians). I have been pleasantly surprised at the interest. Over the last month, we have been meeting 3 days a week for an hour after school. Every child has attended math club regularly when transportation is available to them.

I was unpleasantly surprised that their problem solving skills are terrible. These are probably the nine smartest kids in the whole school. They have spent 5 year in public school and have never really been challenged in math. Though they are taught problems solving in school it is generally two-step problem solving and involves a rubric where they check off steps which they are required to follow. IMO that is not problem solving. When these students were presented with four and five step problems they did not know what to do because they could not see the entire problem and solution at one time in their heads.

After a month of math club we took our first test. Eight of the students scored 1 or 2 out of 5. The other is a PG student who is an intuitive problem solver who scored a 4. Though this may sound bad, I was actualy encouraged because most of them actually attempted all the problems. The first time I gave them an individual test, most of them just stared at the paper for 30 minutes not knowing how to start, so I feel like we have made significant progress.

All this to say, I don't think we can change the system but there are tools available for us to make at least local level improvements to help our kids.

Wow! Thanks for sharing that, TS. It's an eye-opener. And it makes me think harder about how I'm teaching DS7...

Hmmm...

Could you post the 5 problems on that test? I'd kind of like to see how GS9 would fare.

Below is a link to sample test on the Math Olympiad website.

http://www.moems.org/sample_files/SampleE.pdf

This isn't the test that my students took, but it is the same type of test.

I believe there are books you can buy to help the students prepare. This is on my list: George Lenchner, Math Olympiad Contest Problems for Elementary and Middle Students

Yes, Art of Problem Solving has a variety of math contest books.

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Books/AoPS_B_Texts.php

I just remembered, I wanted to post this link so this thread is a good one to add on.
Archived problem sets for various math contests *free* *free* *free* Did I mention, free ?