Why is Math the Super Accelerated Subject?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because it is the one subject where the ed policy trend folks have not been able to deny that pure ability coupled with hard study is actually at the core. Everything else they can dumb down and decelerate by redefining outcomes. They try with math (see SF) but seem to have failed.

This is part of it but not all of it.

Another aspect is that STEM subjects have actual objective answers (with very rare exceptions). Grading any essay is inherently subjective.

[Anonymous]

Any Ivy plus candidate should be in Calc BC by 10th grade. That isn't up for debate. As for classes like English Comp, etc. where one could take classes at the local college, many colleges have age requirements based on the content that will be taught. Much different to accelerate in that respect. However, taking Intro Macro and Micro classes as an 8th grader at the local college will be allowed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because it is the one subject where the ed policy trend folks have not been able to deny that pure ability coupled with hard study is actually at the core. Everything else they can dumb down and decelerate by redefining outcomes. They try with math (see SF) but seem to have failed.

This is part of it but not all of it.

Another aspect is that STEM subjects have actual objective answers (with very rare exceptions). Grading any essay is inherently subjective.

I partially agree. They have undercut or gotten rid of the aspects of the humanities that are more objective - spelling, grammar, writing style, historical facts and the ability to synthesize them. Languages are certainly objective too. I was told flat out by the MS language teacher that they don’t even try to teach any grammar in 6th grade and don’t grade on spelling or even do vocabulary tests. With a foundation like this it is no wonder that there are not the same acceleration opportunities for languages in HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go to a private HS.

It’s part of the reason so many private high schools are feeders to the most elite colleges. They focus on the “accelerated humanities” track as well - at a very high-level and a degree of sophistication you would ordinarily find in college level classes.

Colleges want that preparedness and level of intellectual discourse/intellectual vitality. They want you doing humanities-based independent studies in school… Not in a pay-to-play research organization outside of high school… but with a high school teacher on a niche or specialized area of interest in the humanities. With an academic written work product.

+100

Jesuit & Catholic HSs turn out amazing writers too. Our kids have to write in class too- to do it themselves- and not AI generate.

WSJ just had an article about elite universities turning back to blue books and oral exams as well since kids are only learning to cut and paste and not learning material. I think this going to separate private and public education even more. Big public universities can’t manage that- they don’t have the class sizes-student-prof ratio for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any Ivy plus candidate should be in Calc BC by 10th grade. That isn't up for debate. As for classes like English Comp, etc. where one could take classes at the local college, many colleges have age requirements based on the content that will be taught. Much different to accelerate in that respect. However, taking Intro Macro and Micro classes as an 8th grader at the local college will be allowed.

Calc BC by 10th? Really? What planet do you live on?

If you are trying to be funny you are failing. If you are serious I don’t know what to say.

And I’m 99% sure that if I his applies to your snowflake, they didn’t get into an Ivy and they are probably a nerd with no friends who has never played a sport or watched tv in their life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any Ivy plus candidate should be in Calc BC by 10th grade. That isn't up for debate. As for classes like English Comp, etc. where one could take classes at the local college, many colleges have age requirements based on the content that will be taught. Much different to accelerate in that respect. However, taking Intro Macro and Micro classes as an 8th grader at the local college will be allowed.

OP here. This is my first time chiming in. Definitely a lot to chew on. However, I definitely don't agree with the above. We are. no longer in the DC area, but we are in another large metro area, and my daughter is enrolled in a competitive private that sends about a quarter of the class to Ivy+ schools yearly. Out of her class of 200 juniors, two were in Calc BC last year, and approximately 15 are in BC this year. I have no way to map it, but it looks like about the same percentage of kids get into that level school as hit BC by senior year.

My kid is going for reaches in the Emory/Vanderbilt range and has a particular talent as a "hook" so we literally have no horse in this race, aside from my nerdy interest in the topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in AP Calc BC in 10th grade. If there was an accelerated pathway for writing, she'd take it. But she can't, because the electives aren't any better than AP Lang and AP Lit (taken respectively in 11th and 12th), so there's no point. The English curriculum in MCPS is really bad. Thank goodness she reads and writes for pleasure, at home. She's in all AP classes for other things like APUSH and AP Physics C. All of it is easy for her.

Math is the one discipline where logical and critical thinking skills are all you need. Maturity and social skills are not needed. If you think about it for half a second, you'll recognize that all other disciplines need some basic level of understanding of human relationships. Very young, immature people can do very well in math. It's truly for anyone with the patience to cogitate.

This is why math, above any other subject, has been prized by scholars over the centuries of human civilization.

This is a very weird take. Math has definitely not been prized over other disciplines. It is currently the only discipline kids are allowed to accelerate in public schools because we have dumbed down the rest of the subjects, but the dumber-downers are not actually smart enough to dumb down math. they try by blocking advanced course work but that is all they can do.

So much so that they didn't let women study much math at all, for many centuries. You should review your history, PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1) Math is rules-based and therefore can be crammed.

2) Sophisticated written expression often depends on reading at an advanced level. Including archaic and ponderous books that are no longer mainstream. This is very time consuming and modern culture works against finding the time for it.

3) Jobs that involve more math in the job (or just higher math level attainment) tend to pay better so there's a reinforcement loop there.

4) Math is still associated with men doing well/specializing in it. So it has a little bit of patriarchal halo.

5) Calculus has evolved into an agreed component of the selective college application arms race. I believe sheer AP count is an equivalent phenomenon.

I agree with you about everything except 1. Lots of subjects have a lot of content that could be “crammed” (ie learned) but math is pretty much the only subject where it is still accepted that learning content matters and is a goal. Every other subject has been dumbed down to something akin to personal development goals. To wit the lack of spelling and grammar instruction and the increasing decline in any meaningful volume of reading and writing in humanities classes.

Yep, you can definitely cram languages and history. People don’t do it as often but definitely possible to cram AP history classes, for example.

[Anonymous]

The dirty little secret is that math is not that hard. So might as well accelerate it (because it isn’t hard), precisely because the ignorant amongst us use it as a proxy for hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in AP Calc BC in 10th grade. If there was an accelerated pathway for writing, she'd take it. But she can't, because the electives aren't any better than AP Lang and AP Lit (taken respectively in 11th and 12th), so there's no point. The English curriculum in MCPS is really bad. Thank goodness she reads and writes for pleasure, at home. She's in all AP classes for other things like APUSH and AP Physics C. All of it is easy for her.

Math is the one discipline where logical and critical thinking skills are all you need. Maturity and social skills are not needed. If you think about it for half a second, you'll recognize that all other disciplines need some basic level of understanding of human relationships. Very young, immature people can do very well in math. It's truly for anyone with the patience to cogitate.

This is why math, above any other subject, has been prized by scholars over the centuries of human civilization.

NP. This is true of pure math, but for the vast majority of disciplines where you actually have to apply math..it no longer holds true. Calculus, for example, is useful in subjects like physics and economics. To really understand how to use it, you need to understand the context and applications. When I was in college, a physics professor of mine who was German told me that in Germany Calculus is actually taught in physics or EE departments, not math, to ensure it's taught in a way to be useful.

I have a PhD in physics, but I don't work with college students much in my current job. I do wonder whether a lot of college professors find themselves reteaching basic concepts because their supposedly accelerated students never learned how to apply them properly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Math is more concrete so it is easier to measure whether you know it or not. The skills involved in other areas are more judgment-based.

I was super accelerated in HS in the early 90s. In 6th grade they put me and several others in a 7th grade math class. So we took Calc as juniors. That was very rare - in my very competitive suburban public HS where 30-40 kids went to Ivies each year, only about five of us per year were pushed ahead.

I think the obsession with accelerating kids has gone overboard. The kids are super accelerated and what does this get them when they get to college? Not much. The rush to take countless APs as early as possible is nuts. And it is not because your precious genius snowflake is bored and needs to be challenged more. There are different ways to challenge a child and admissions committees have gotten lazy and let APs be a way for them to measure that.

It is nice that an increasing number of private schools have pushed back at this and abandoned APs. And their kids still get into great schools, and not solely because of money and/or legacy status. I recognize that for some kids, it is a way to save money by getting credits and graduating early, but for many, it is a false badge of perceived intellect. There is no rush.

But I'm sure all of the tiger magnet school parents will bite my head off on this.

I agree +100. Spouse and I were accelerated in HS and quickly realized in college that we didn't learn math well at all - even with 5s on AP exams and placing into higher math at Ivy undergrads. I've been thinking about math curriculum and math tracks for as long as we've had our kids. Two who are on the advanced math track and find no trouble with acceleration and one who has more trouble with acceleration but was always advanced in reading and writing. The kids have different strengths and I can't say that one is smarter or will be more successful than the other... the one strong in reading and writing began to shine junior year in AP Lang when it was clear that he was one of the best in the class. The recognitions came later with department awards, writing awards, etc. My other math kids had recognition early by being pulled out for special math, etc, but all that doesn't last long bc other kids catch up. Math is easy to measure and very easy to accelerate when kids are young and sponges. It's an easy way for moms to compare their kids with others. I'm glad all that is behind me now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because it is the one subject where the ed policy trend folks have not been able to deny that pure ability coupled with hard study is actually at the core. Everything else they can dumb down and decelerate by redefining outcomes. They try with math (see SF) but seem to have failed.

This is part of it but not all of it.

Another aspect is that STEM subjects have actual objective answers (with very rare exceptions). Grading any essay is inherently subjective.

I partially agree. They have undercut or gotten rid of the aspects of the humanities that are more objective - spelling, grammar, writing style, historical facts and the ability to synthesize them. Languages are certainly objective too. I was told flat out by the MS language teacher that they don’t even try to teach any grammar in 6th grade and don’t grade on spelling or even do vocabulary tests. With a foundation like this it is no wonder that there are not the same acceleration opportunities for languages in HS.

I asked about this at school open houses every year.

Eventually, I got this answer: My state’s Common Core test based only 5% of the language arts score on the mechanics of writing.

So, the part of the humanities with the most obvious job-hunting value, that was easiest to teach and easiest to assess, was of no practical interest to the schools.

[Anonymous]

There are schools which have a stronger focus on acceleration of social sciences and language—Maggie Walker in Richmond, for example.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]The dirty little secret is that math is not that hard. So might as well accelerate it (because it isn’t hard), precisely because the ignorant amongst us use it as a proxy for hard.[/quote]

The problem is that most math teachers can’t talk or write very well. The students have to be able to look at examples scribbled on a whiteboard and guess what the teacher is trying to say.

So, math itself is not hard, but having the ESP needed to pull mathematical ideas out of the ether is hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math is more concrete so it is easier to measure whether you know it or not. The skills involved in other areas are more judgment-based.

I was super accelerated in HS in the early 90s. In 6th grade they put me and several others in a 7th grade math class. So we took Calc as juniors. That was very rare - in my very competitive suburban public HS where 30-40 kids went to Ivies each year, only about five of us per year were pushed ahead.

I think the obsession with accelerating kids has gone overboard. The kids are super accelerated and what does this get them when they get to college? Not much. The rush to take countless APs as early as possible is nuts. And it is not because your precious genius snowflake is bored and needs to be challenged more. There are different ways to challenge a child and admissions committees have gotten lazy and let APs be a way for them to measure that.

It is nice that an increasing number of private schools have pushed back at this and abandoned APs. And their kids still get into great schools, and not solely because of money and/or legacy status. I recognize that for some kids, it is a way to save money by getting credits and graduating early, but for many, it is a false badge of perceived intellect. There is no rush.

But I'm sure all of the tiger magnet school parents will bite my head off on this.

I agree +100. Spouse and I were accelerated in HS and quickly realized in college that we didn't learn math well at all - even with 5s on AP exams and placing into higher math at Ivy undergrads. I've been thinking about math curriculum and math tracks for as long as we've had our kids. Two who are on the advanced math track and find no trouble with acceleration and one who has more trouble with acceleration but was always advanced in reading and writing. The kids have different strengths and I can't say that one is smarter or will be more successful than the other... the one strong in reading and writing began to shine junior year in AP Lang when it was clear that he was one of the best in the class. The recognitions came later with department awards, writing awards, etc. My other math kids had recognition early by being pulled out for special math, etc, but all that doesn't last long bc other kids catch up. Math is easy to measure and very easy to accelerate when kids are young and sponges. It's an easy way for moms to compare their kids with others. I'm glad all that is behind me now

OP again.... that's all so true. I went to a small suburban school and I was the very first student, in 40 years, to go to an Ivy. I also was the first student they ever accerlated in math... I had to beg to skip Algebra I, but I did it and got a 5 on AB in 11th grade. Then got to college and got my first B in calculus!

My daughter has had a very different trajectory with lots of math anxiety and perfectionism. She finally felt ready to make the leap to honors this year so she could hit AB in 12th. Honors in her school is the difference between tests and homework that only contain material explicitly taught versus having to extend and improvise on the flow. She's actually finally enjoying math and seeing her conquer challenging math has been an incredible joy. However, she feels, perhaps correctly but definitely unfortunately, that it's "too late" for her to explore how far she could get in STEM.