What is the point of enrichment?
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Anonymous
| For DC, people often do "enrichment" to make up for shortages at school. The schools have like half of kids below grade level (or worse), so the teachers aren't really teaching to grade level, often. That is not a knock on teachers. So because the content at school is not grade-level, you provide "enrichment" to just do what school isn't (but should). |
Anonymous
Your kids aren't gifted/high IQ. They get plenty of stimulation from school work and whatever bog-standard extracurricular activities you put them in (soccer, yawn). Gifted kids brains work differently. In many case they have already taught themselves math beyond grade level[i] and they find soccer to be the most boring activity in the known universe. You do you, and we do us! |
Anonymous
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echoing the shortcomings of public school. Standard education is about bare minimums now. Above average kids really dont get anything other than some socialization. Kids are barely reading books in ES and MS. At least with Math, they try to place your kid in appropriate levels...
Enrichment is about education and challenge, not advancement. |
Anonymous
Interesting take. Why do they "need" to play sports? |
Anonymous
| Enrichment for us is filling in the gaps. I think public school is failing our kids, but we can’t afford private. |
Anonymous
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OP, ignore the jackass above. I totally agree with you. I come from an extremely well educated family and when I was growing up the idea of doing a ton of extra academics outside of school would have been bizarre. Tutoring was for dumb kids who couldn’t keep up, not for smart kids who were able to thrive on their own. I attended a pretty good school district, maybe my parents would have felt differently if our schools hadn’t been good. Attended a very competitive college and now in an excellent career and I’m glad I spent my childhood doing things other than academics day in day out.
Of course we did tons of sports/arts after school but this was driven by our interests and not for the goal of enrichment. I was a voracious reader but that was also self motivated. Renaming reading books for fun “enrichment” destroys all the fun, no? |
Anonymous
First of all, education has drastically changed when you went to school. Now it’s all about equity and race to the bottom. Kids above grade level are being ignored. So either you don’t have a kid or your kid is not above grade level, or you are in denial about the decline in the educational system. As stated above, we supplement to fill in the gaps and for greater depth and challenge which DS is not finding at school. |
Anonymous
Yes! Us too. |
Anonymous
Given how close AoPS is to you, I would do that. Contact them for an eval to put him in the right class RSM honors would be fine too, but given how far it is from you I would just do AoPS. (We do DSM but only because it is close to us). |
Anonymous
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I don't view enrichment as a way to get my child ahead. I consider art and music and sports to be forms of enrichment too.
I use the term enrichment to refer to out-of-school time for my kid that actual benefits them. So a bare-bones aftercare program that just put kids in a room with a movie and coloring sheets is not enrichment, but an after school art club or cross-country team or a sitter who will take my kid on a hike and talk about bugs is enrichment. Enrichment is literally just something that enriches my child's life. That could be academically but it could be something else, too. It's not about getting them into advanced classes and getting a jump on college applications. It's about leading a rich life full of meaning and interest. |
Anonymous
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OP here. Thanks everyone for the serious replies. I'm not trying to argue for or against enrichment, just truly trying to understand. I have a kid who will be entering K next year so I have very little knowledge or experience with schools today, nor do I feel like I could even judge what a good curriculum would look like. My kid loves numbers so I guess that's why my original question sounded like it was more geared towards math enrichment, but I think I generally refer to academic enrichment. Non-academic enrichment seems clearly worthwhile to me. Certain things like instruments or dance or foreign language you have to learn when you are young or you'll never have the same proficiency. Even with sports, you will likely never have that chance again to play on teams with your age cohort. And the skills you pick up from those extracurricular activities can greatly enrich your life as an adult. Despite what some have said, I don't believe the goal of schools is to teach these extracurriculars. You may have PE but it's to exercise your body, not to provide proficiency in a sport. You may have band but it's to expose you to the possibilities and see if there is an interest there. None of these offerings are central to the mission of a school. But math and reading, those should be the bread and butter of the schools.
It sounds like people are saying schools today are just not teaching the basic subjects adequately. What are you comparing today to? Do you have in your mind a standard of teaching or some timeline of when kids should be learning certain math concepts for example? Are there specific examples of how the schools are falling short? As I mentioned, I am a product of public schools and MCPS specifically. I have no idea if the curriculum back then was good or bad and I doubt my parents gave it a second's thought. I always thought I had a good education (went to a "W" school), but looking back, I now realize there were some gaping holes. I don't think math concepts were explained in depth for example, because I met classmates in college who had a much firmer grasp on fundamental concepts. And I distinctly remember not knowing what nouns and verbs were until I started taking a foreign language in 7th grade (not because I was a bad student but it was never taught). I also remember only learning about how to write simple essays (a thesis and 3 supporting paragraphs with a topic sentence each) until 9th grade. Is all that normal or would my W school have gotten a failing grade from you all? But despite all those failings, I turned out fine. I still learned the math that I needed to go to a great college and I caught up on the more fundamental concepts in college because it was easier for my adult brain to grasp anyways (and while I did well in math in HS, I LOVED math in college like multivariable calc and linear algebra, so the lack of good foundation did not turn me off math). And by college I was a good writer and went on to a top 3 law school. I'm not bragging and I know my education could have been better and I could be better today than I am but the point is I turned out acceptable. At the end of the day, does it matter if a kid learns algebra in 6th grade vs 9th grade? (I have no idea when kids today learn algebra so please don't correct me, I am totally making up grades here). As adults, we use maybe up to basic algebra in our daily lives? And there are plenty of horrible writes in the legal field... Again, I am not trying to challenge anyone's enrichment choices. We all have limited time and I am trying to decide, in the future, if it would be more worthwhile to spend time enriching non-academic areas or academic areas. My personal experience is telling me non-academic enrichment but I don't want to screw up my kid's chance at a good future because I am not getting with the changing times. |
Anonymous
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OP: Do what feels right to you. I did not think I would be sending my child to a math program in ES. I figured he might benefit from some CTY type programs when he was in high school, my older brothers participated in similar programs and loved them, but I wasn’t counting on ES. He is not a complainer so we really didn’t hear much from him about school being easy. Then came distance learning and we heard what math class was like. We know he loves math, he enjoyed logic puzzles and creating math problems, so we asked about a separate math class and he said yes. Now he does a math competition class and a regular math class. His choice.
He also plays a rec sport each season, participates in Scouts, and has tried things like Ninja Warrior class and fencing. We go to some museums and do a lot of hiking and camping. I would say he is pretty well rounded. It isn’t all math all the time but he does extra math because he likes it. We have friends who use programs like Kumon or Mathnasium because their kids are struggling a bit or are pretty regularly getting 3’s in math and the parents are worried about the kids not really absorbing the foundational skills. I don’t know anyone who is accelerating for accelerations sake. I know one parent whose kid is not enamored with math who is at RSM but most the people I know there have kids who want to be there. But do what feels right to you. There is no right answer, each kid is different and each parents comfort level is different. If DS told us he didn’t want to do RSM next year we wouldn’t sign him up. He has dropped other activities because he lost interest and that is fine. He is supposed to be exploring different things now. |
Anonymous
We started with AoPS online during distance learning and DS loved it. We moved to RSM when things went back to in person because DS wanted to take classes in person and RSM is a 10 minute drive while AoPS is a 40 minute drive. DS would probably choose AoPS if it was closer but he doesn’t like it that much better that he is willing to drive an extra 30 minutes each way. He highly values in person learning over online learning. The programs are different. RSM is more of a traditional classroom where the concepts are taught and the kids do practice problems. There are three levels for each grade and kids are placed based on ability. The kids go more in depth into the concepts and solve more challenging problems as they advance in the levels. AoPS has one level for each grade and the class seems to be designed more to be creative with math and solving math problems. Concepts were introduced but kids were expected to pick them up quickly and be able to use them pretty fast. It felt like there was more of an emphasis on learning shortcuts to completing problems then on learning the concept behind the problem and then understanding different solution methods. RSM does offer a math competition program which is closer to what AoPS offers but is a bit different still. They study the logic behind solving different types of logic problems and games and learn about the types of problems that appear in math competitions. They do practice math tests and participate in math tests but they are learning about approaches to solving logic problems and the like. Some of what DS brings home feels more like code breaking and the like then traditional math. And I fully understand that code breaking is mathematical in nature and why it is being taught in the class but it is different then complicated word problems and the like. The math competition class is his favorite class, he loves it. I think he prefers that class to the AoPS class that he did. Some kids will thrive in AoPS, some in RSM, and some in either. They are not interchangeable. We have friends who drive 40 minutes to do RSM because their kids did not like AoPS but love RSM. We have friends who drive for AoPS because it is a better fit. |
Anonymous
For math, in the US, I think this is true. PISA scores consistently indicate that US schools are not good at teaching math. Most of the kids in FCPS or MCPS who are good at math learned it outside school, not during the school day. |
Anonymous
Yes, same here. |