Calc 2 freshman year of college for my lazy kid. He decided to become a humanities major because it requires less effort. Time will tell how that decision will work out for him. |
will probably go into management and do great |
we live in the DCC acceleration beyond Algebra in 7th wasn't an option unlike WPES but DC is a sophomore at SMCS taking magnet equivalent of Calc BC and almost never studies |
I think part of the problem is the testing. My dad is math professor and whenever he creates a problem on the test that wasn't explicitly covered in his undergraduate class, the majority of students will fail that problem and complain that it wasn't covered in the class. The students who took the time to learn will be able to figure the problem out, but very few students do that. |
Would like to add that he's a professor at a top 15 school, so there's really no excuse for this. |
I don't know of any MCPS school where Alg 1 in 6th is offered as a public option. Parents need to ask the math coordinator at their school to do a placement test for their kid. Since very few families know about this (MCPS does its best to not tell anyone), it usually happens by word of mouth - which is why it happens at very few schools. I don't know what WPES is or how they do it over there, but at Westland MS (Bethesda), a few kids took Alg 1 in 6th. They tested in the summer before 6th grade. |
Possibly. High school felt like checking all the boxes rather than learning deeply. I didn't get that until college. But I may also have been misinformed by the college advisor that told me to take diff eq if I wanted to be a math major. Funnily enough, my mom discouraged me from being a math major because her thought was "what are you going to do with a math major, be a mathematician?" Imagine her displeasure when I decided to major in English and Religion! I ended up in law school, so it's not like anything I majored in really made a difference. |
Several WPES offer AIM or higher in 5th. DC had a few 6th graders from WPES in their Honors Geometry class at TPMS. |
What is WPES? |
I teach finance at the undergrad level. I have the same experience. Kids want plug and play. When they have to apply critical thinking, they can't do it and complain the material wasn't covered in class. |
Wealthy Potomac ES. The place where kids get Alg 1 in 5th grade. Also fictitious. |
Honors Pre-Calc. Everything before that way too easy. But this course and everything after was a challenge. |
Once we switched and enrolled DC in a big3 DC private school. |
Functions (but only for the first 2 months, then easy again) |
My kids aren’t that old yet but I would think this is normal. I was *not* a math kid (I was more humanities oriented) but I was generically good at math and I didn’t find it hard until calculus. I would imagine the really mathy kids don’t find calculus hard either. |