Should I send my kids to mathnasium?
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Anonymous
I view Robotics Club, Chess Club, Coding Club and other similar activities as enrichment. DS asks to participate in those after school activities. They all involve math/engineering/critical thinking skills in some manner and they are all fun. He loves attending them, some of his friends attend them with him. He comes home and works with his Legos at home or asks to play board games. I asked my son if he was interested in going to extra math classes and he looked at me in horror. A few days later he was working on a Sudoku book and then a logic puzzles books. I am in favor of enrichment but enrichment does not equate with Mathnasium or Kumon or AoPS or whatever other math tutoring programs are out there. And I roll my eyes at the parents who complain that math is too easy at the school. Normally those parents are the ones who put their kids into a tutoring program as enrichment. Well of course the math is going to be easy, you have been drilling your child in math for how long? |
Anonymous
People have different priorities. Some kids are into travel soccer while others are actual mathletes. 
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Anonymous
I disagree. They do not need to sit and do math for fun at a “center” in kindergarten, first, 2nd, or even 3rd or 4th! That’s a very preposterous view you have. Also, it’s tutoring. |
Anonymous
Nope. Read the prior posts from others about what enrichment is, it's quite different from tutoring. Enrichment provides mental stimulation in many forms (e.g all the various types of after school or weekend clubs), tutoring generally implies extra help (not always, but in most cases). Kids that learn quickly and get bored need enrichment type activities to stimulate them, they thrive on that. They would not (and this is where we sort of agree on) enjoy activities where they are taught basic things without any challenges. I agree that many centers are more tutoring and less enrichment, but some places are the opposite. |
Anonymous
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OP's school sounds like it's doing a fabulous job with AAP math. The kids who don't already know the material are being taught the material. The kids who already know the material are getting extensions, so they aren't bored but they're also not being pushed ahead. At the end of the year, all of the kids have covered the same material, but at appropriate challenge levels to keep everyone happy and engaged.
OP, your kids are testing into the group that hasn't already learned the material, because they in fact haven't already learned the material. But the school is then teaching them the material, and they're getting 4s. Everything is working out exactly how it should be. |
Anonymous
As an Asian, I am getting used to the blame on us as above. My son is in AAP IV, 3rd grade. We moved from MA due to dad's job relocation when DS was in 2 grade. We didn't send him to any test preparation to get into AAP IV. Currently, he is not taking any classes out of school except drawing and tennis. The fact is, he is struggling in advanced math. I let him do Beestar to improve problem solving skills. that's it. I learned from several other parents in his class that their kids go to Kumon and Russian math school. I believe that some Asian kids are doing the same. But the parents who told me these resources their AAP kids use are not Asian. But I do observed an interest thing, they are all immigrants. I learned recently that there are Russian School, Netherland school....... where people send kids to learn math, reading and writing after school or in the weekends. Instead of blaming the immigrant parents including Asian, Russian,etc, maybe we can put the public school education quality under scrutiny. There are many threads on this and other forum complaining that public schools are not teaching spelling. The reading class at many school in FCPS is a joke. No textbook, it has pros and cons, which made teaching and learning highly depend on teachers' capability. Math education in public schools has been a big problem for a long time. People born and grown-up in US may feel everything is good, but immigrant parents experienced different education systems may think:"This is not the effective way teaching math. No, what the school teaches is far from enough." I once discussed with my supervisor and senior colleagues about this, they told me that the school education they had when they were children was difference. It seems that public school system once provide a better, more rigor education but now it's failing. I want my son to have a happy childhood. But I am also started to consider reading and math extracurricular classes now. The only way to make students stop taking extracurricular course is to implement enough academic rigor in public school, hold high standard for both teachers and students. |
Anonymous
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I agree about noticing mostly immigrants using these math tutoring businesses.
I attribute it to a few things. —immigrants are nervous where there kids will fall —immigrants tend to view education as the way to improve class —immigrants tend to stick together and they share info on tutoring places —Immigrants move around a lot and want something consistent since curriculums Country to country and even district to district |
Anonymous
As an immigrant parent, I agree that the rigor in the classrooms here pale in comparison to the ones we had growing up elsewhere. I came to the US when I was in 11th grade. I did not study until I got to college, because pretty much everything covered here, I had done somewhere between 8th and 10th grades. I try not to worry about it much for DD (because it was and continues to be an extreme amount of stress placed on kids), but I have friends that go back home to visit, and find that their so-called advanced kids here, are years behind their peers there. And there is so much less emphasis on giftedness, and more on working hard. |
Anonymous
We supplement because your country's public school DO NOT TEACH. Period. |
Anonymous
Oh, and we love learning. Math IS FUN to us.
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Anonymous
Agreed. I believe immigrants have more realistic expectations of the types of challenges kids will face after college. They have a strong belief that what is covered in school does not (for the most part) promote independent thought and enough critical thinking to help kids solve problems in the real world (certainly very often true in math class). Why should kids fail later on in adulthood when it really hurts? Let them fail now when they're still playing, let them learn, and parents guide and help them get back up. It is sad to watch parents who do not pay any attention to their younger kids, leaving them to the school in younger grades, only to see them stress out in late middle and high school realizing that they have gone through the motions and not learned much and are having a hard time because they were used to easily getting good grades with minimal effort, but can no longer do so. |
Anonymous
My kid would have a heck of a lot more time to be a kid if her school was a school, not a jail where she is locked up in a room and expected to discover her own knowledge while playing allegedly educational math video games and being pushed into ridiculous time-wasting group projects. I'm not Asian, BTW, just bitter. |
Anonymous
Yeah our kids have to have concrete skills to succeed, they won’t get jobs just b/c of family or private school connections. |
Anonymous
| I’m an immigrant and I supplement math because I don’t think it’s taught well. There is not enough reinforcement and Common Core is a joke and the curriculum is just subpar to the education in my native country. |
Anonymous
I agree. |