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    Joined: Sep 2007
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    Val Offline
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    Originally Posted by kcab
    Originally Posted by Val
    He is forbidden from taking calculus at the high school next year (I told him he can take AP Statistics instead). He's not happy about this idea, but I told him it's too bad. He can take it at the community college in 2015.
    Forbidden by you? Or the school?

    Forbidden by me. The quality of the textbooks and instruction will be too low.

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    And does " The Art of Problem Solving Online School is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges." not cut it, or did you not know about that (it's recent, I think)?


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    I'm going to have her run that past advising at Uni and see.

    EPGY, we strongly suspect WOULD be sufficient.

    Not sure of the formatting of AoPS for DD-- I mean, the class structure, she'd be familiar enough with, but I mean the pedagogical approach may be so alien as to cause her some stress initially.

    Remember, this is a kid that has (mostly) been "processed" by conventional math teaching as it's now known in secondary ed in the US.

    {sigh}



    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Well, she just talked to the Uni-- and they basically said "any way that you think you've met the prereqs is fine with us-- sounds like your score on the placement tool amply supports a placement in precalc. Knock yourself out, man."

    :happydance!:

    laugh

    drop-drop-drop that turkey, kiddo.

    (As she was dialing the school counselor, she let loose with a primal, Mel Gibson scream; "Freeeeeeeeeeedom!!!" Which should tell you something about this class, because she is ENJOYING the material otherwise.)



    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Kai Offline
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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Originally Posted by Kai
    Off topic, but could you tell me what you don't like about the Glencoe text?

    Thanks!

    It's procedure-heavy without much in the way of WHY or deductive reasoning and careful conceptual building, if that makes sense. DD has also found a hefty sprinkling of errors, including examples that are mis-printed or flatly INCOMPLETE-- cutting off at the bottom of the page so that only the first half of them are shown.

    There's "this is what you do with problems that look like this"
    and "this is what you do with problems that look like that instead."

    But very little "this is the law of cosines, this is where it comes from, and here's what it applies to and why..."

    I had a feeling you'd say this.

    My son's school just adopted the Glencoe book after a year with an IB math text (which was truly the most horrible math book I've ever dealt with). The books they use for Algebra I and II and geometry are exactly as you're describing the Glencoe book to be--procedural with zero concept development. Which is why I'm homeschooling math this year and will be for the foreseeable future. It's a small school with one math teacher for high school, and she just doesn't get it.

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    Val Offline
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    Originally Posted by Kai
    My son's school just adopted the Glencoe book after a year with an IB math text (which was truly the most horrible math book I've ever dealt with). The books they use for Algebra I and II and geometry are exactly as you're describing the Glencoe book to be--procedural with zero concept development. Which is why I'm homeschooling math this year and will be for the foreseeable future. It's a small school with one math teacher for high school, and she just doesn't get it.

    IME, very few schools get it, and the textbooks just make that problem worse. My kids' school uses Holt-Rinehart starting in pre-algebra, and they're as you and HK described. The Sadlier-Oxoford series for K-6 is pretty much completely driven by recipes.

    Meanwhile, two other local schools use Saxon Math. You can get many of those books free online as PDFs. I looked at the pre-algebra book. It has the same problem, and is compounded by an ADD approach in the book: there were umpteen types of problems with no cohesion between them.


    Last edited by Val; 02/26/14 01:52 PM.
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    Originally Posted by Val
    Originally Posted by Kai
    My son's school just adopted the Glencoe book after a year with an IB math text (which was truly the most horrible math book I've ever dealt with). The books they use for Algebra I and II and geometry are exactly as you're describing the Glencoe book to be--procedural with zero concept development. Which is why I'm homeschooling math this year and will be for the foreseeable future. It's a small school with one math teacher for high school, and she just doesn't get it.

    IME, very few schools get it, and the textbooks just make that problem worse. My kids' school uses Holt-Rinehart starting in pre-algebra, and they're as you and HK described. The Sadlier-Oxoford series for K-6 is pretty much completely driven by recipes.

    Meanwhile, two other local schools use Saxon Math. You can get many of those books free online as PDFs. I looked at the pre-algebra book. It has the same problem, and is compounded by an ADD approach in the book: there were umpteen types of problems with no cohesion between them.

    I even let this teacher borrow my copy of Lial's Precalculus. She kept it so long that I ended up buying another copy. So it's not like she never had an opportunity to see a decent precalculus book.

    After struggling with this teacher through three classes and two kids, I found out that she did Kumon worksheets for fun as a child. Makes perfect sense.


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    I figure that we can wade through a combination of Lial and Brown using the lighting provided by the burning of the Glencoe text.

    Heaven knows that's its best hope for providing illumination of any sort. wink


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Well, she just talked to the Uni-- and they basically said "any way that you think you've met the prereqs is fine with us-- sounds like your score on the placement tool amply supports a placement in precalc. Knock yourself out, man."

    :happydance!:

    laugh

    drop-drop-drop that turkey, kiddo.

    (As she was dialing the school counselor, she let loose with a primal, Mel Gibson scream; "Freeeeeeeeeeedom!!!" Which should tell you something about this class, because she is ENJOYING the material otherwise.)
    That is great news!! I was going to support the idea of her taking the AP Math II test, since I know that many universities uses scores on it for placement. But i guess it's not necessary.

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    Val, what textbook will you use?


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