I briefly took tennis lessons alongside a kid who made it to the final rounds of the National Spelling Bee. He also displayed a high level of precocity at being a smug, entitled piece of shit.
The national spelling bee includes dozens of words meaning smug entitled piece of shit.
Two of the things I find weirdest about American culture are 1. that they have a National Spelling Bee and 2. that anybody cares.
The Great American Novel must have good spelling.
The spelling bee is a ploy to keep smart brown kids from doing anything useful with their time and talents.
5: Nobody really cared about it until Indian immigrant families about 20 years ago.
6. Then the Great American Publisher should employ subeditors.
7/8 is interesting. And strange. Why would immigrant families involve themselves in such a bizarre misuse of resources?
That kid on the left's education has been lacking the key lessons of 1. Throwing an overhand right. 2. That when you're a juvenile you can just knock some pretentious twat the fuck out and the legal system won't do shit.
Why would immigrant families involve themselves in such a bizarre misuse of resources?
My guess is that it seems like an "achievement" to them, and they have a mistaken belief that they're giving their kids a leg up.
Nobody really cared about it
One of our number (previously, anyway) was a finalist, but that was before getting to the finals became an all-consuming task.
Why would immigrant families involve themselves in such a bizarre misuse of resources?
Maybe also because in-depth rote learning at a young age is characteristic of Indian education? Indian schools have been booming in Japan over the past decade for that reason.
Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.
India's more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.
Great. Now I've got endless looping of this asshole on the web page that I can't stop even though I can't seem to get vines working on twitter for some reason.
14 made me think of a relevant question that might actually make this an interesting thread instead of just more Ogged racism:
As some of you know from the other place, we'll be abroad about half of next school year. Our oldest kid, who's advanced in math so is doing 6th grade math during 5th, was offered to be allowed into a program when he's in 6th-7th that does 7-8-9 math all in two years, normally for 7th and 8th graders (so he'd be accelerated into a program that is itself accelerated.) But since we're away we'll have to do essentially do the first part of the class as home schooling Then in 8th he could go to the high school for 10th grade math, and in later years of high school go to local colleges.
He says he wants to do this, my wife, who is a math teacher, thinks it's a bad idea because 1) being responsible for home schooling sucks; 2) we've heard the 7th-8th accelerated is quite stressful and sometimes makes kids who liked math hate it; 3) it messes up the schedules for his other classes, both when he's doing the in-school accelerated and when he has to travel to high school the following year. Probably would also suck socially.
However, per 14, the suggestion that you actively hold your kid back when he's been offered advanced teaching seems like something many other people might think of as child abuse.
Speaking of smug pompous assholes, I was at an alumni event at University of the Ruling Class yesterday, chatting with an old friend who knows Ted Cruz fairly well. The most positive thing she had to say about him was, "You know, you have to work pretty hard to be the biggest asshole at Harvard Law School, so I'll give him that."
As far as sucking socially that would depend a lot on the social groups he's most likely to be in: unless it's a program that's only offered to a handful of students, rather than a full classroom's worth, there's a good chance that saying 'no' would be leaving him behind a big chunk of his friends. And that would suck at least as much if not more than being ahead of them. (And if he wants to do it I'd suspect that that might be the case.)
I tend to think you might as well do it mostly on grounds of "you can always cut something to make it smaller but never cut something to make it bigger". Leaving an advanced program if it turns out you'd rather be in the normal one isn't hard, but getting into one late in the game because you don't like the standard one is pretty much impossible.
16
My brother was very accelerated at math, and did something a bit similar, going to high school for math in middle school, and going to college for math in high school. He completed basically a math BA by the time he got to college, so for his math major in college he had to take PhD math classes to fulfill the coursework requirement. Now he's earning a gajillion dollars in Silicon Valley doing every nerd's dream job, and he's still taking math classes for fun through Stanford's MOOCs. Leaving HS for class didn't seem to disrupt his social life too much, though our HS was open campus and in a down town area, and the college was only a few blocks away.
I should probably add that he wasn't popular enough in middle school for leaving for a portion of the day to have any effect on his social life.
every nerd's dream job
Peeping at high school girls in a locker room?
8: You've never seen A boy named Charlie Brown?
Do the regular accelerated version once he returns, and during your year abroad do something interesting and mathy that's not part of the standard curriculum. If I remember right, the book I used at that age (I was homeschooled, so it should be fine in that context) was "Creative Problem Solving in School Mathematics." There's probably other good similar "problem solving" options. Or maybe Euclidean geometry if your school doesn't do that anymore. Another possibility would be some programming, depending on whether that's part of your school's standard curriculum.
I'll be working remotely keeping hours aligned with the home office so I'll be doing work when kids are home. I was thinking about teaching him how to do my job.
19 reveals the flaw in all this acceleration: it's ideal for the tiny, tiny sliver of the population that spends its adult free time taking extremely advanced MOOCs from Stanford. If you're not in that sliver, the advantages are less obvious.
Not saying that makes it a bad idea, and you've already revealed a preference for accelerated study, but I think the fact that this represents a family-wide hassle at a time she life is already going to be hassled should bear some wait.
But then I'm just a mindless slacker.
I wouldn't have thought anyone needed to be be particularly responsible for six months of 12/13 year old maths - it's not very difficult. Give him a list of topics, a couple of books and an internet connection and he'll be fine, surely?
In Europe, you could order from UKMT, whose books are a bit cheaper than the AOPS ones I think. http://shop.ukmt.org.uk/ukmt-books
Also, is 7/8 really true? I never really knew why it got on ESPN or whatever, but I just figured it was the need for content on 24 hour cable crossed with a bit of 23.
SP, here's what you should do: have the resources available that he can self-study if he wants to. If he is so intrigued by the joy of math that he learns it on his own, then he will really enjoy the challenge of the accelerated course. If he doesn't pick up the materials and gets immersed in other stuff, no harm no foul.
I also want to confirm that if he's at all self motivated, he could teach himself with minimum effort on your part. I taught myself algebra 2 over the summer one year by working through our school's algebra 2 textbook, with no input from my mother or a teacher. I got a teacher to sign off that I'd done algebra 2, and took trigonometry. I was worried that maybe I didn't learn it as well as other math sections, but last time I saw a break down of questions I'd answered right on a standardized math test, I got 100% on the algebra 2 part.
Thanks for the suggestions. He is intermittently self-motivated- he picks up various hobbies, whether fun ones or more academic ones, for a couple months at a time then moves on to something else. Currently he's learning a number of programming languages by setting up and configuring various minecraft servers. He seems interested in learning some of what I do. He has at times liked parts of math like geometry, I imagine if I can him teach some parts of physics with the associated math he'd have fun with that. So it seems like the best approach is not to tie him down to something yet.