I agree that "not all people were born to love math", but I disagree, rather vehemently, that this means that we don't need to worry about what math is being taught in our schools or how it is taught.
I didn't mean *at all* that we shouldn't worry about what math is taught in our schools or how it is taught - I was addressing greenlotus' concern about whether or not her dd's preparation in pre-algebra would be enough for her to move forward into algebra the next year. Of course we should care about what math is taught and how it's taught - but as individual parents, most of us will be faced with one school year at some point in time where our child has a not-so-great teacher, or where our child isn't in love with a specific subject at that point in time. greenlotus was debating whether or not to enrich/fill in math over the summer, and my point was that a) she most likely didn't need enrichment to stay with the curriculum she is in and b) after-schooling or summer schooling in math simply to keep up or to get ahead in math *can* backfire, when a child really isn't that interested in taking math outside of school. If a student isn't accelerated two years in math but is at the level that will take them through the science they want to get through in high school, it's *ok* to jump off the "let's accelerate everyone in math as much as we can" (which seems to be a trend in our school district - and it's caused issues for some of the teens we've known who really weren't ready to be in Algebra in 7th grade etc. That might not apply to anyone on this forum, but I do also believe it's possible to be HG+ and even EG and perhaps not to be all that interested or passionate about being accelerated in math.
I was also speaking toward middle school math (which was the issue greenlotus' daughter is facing) - I didn't realize Everyday Math went beyond elementary school math (it wasn't implemented beyond that in our district, and it was dropped by our district and I am definitely not a fan of EM :)).
Best wishes,
polarbear
