Academic prep vs athletic coaching

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think most of us are in agreement:
It's nbd if you put your kid in 1-2 hours of math enrichment per week. It's great if your kid spends much more time doing math lessons or contests because he or she loves it and wants to. It's bad if your kid spends tons of time on math enrichment because you're forcing the kid.

Similarly, for sports, it's nbd if you put your kid in a low time commitment rec sport so the kid is getting exercise, even if the kid doesn't like it. It's great if your kid is on a high level, time consumptive travel team because the kid loves the sport and wants to do it. It's bad if you're forcing your kid to play on an intense travel team.

While this may be true for some people, we hear way less vitriol about athletics.

No one is accusing travel team kids of cheating when they make the cut for varsity.

So true. Serena Williams started tennis lessons for her 3 year old - how do the anti-enrichment posters react to that I wonder

There is a difference between enrichment and pushing. I have no clue how to raise an uber talented kid like Serena or Venus. I have no clue how you balance nurturing their obvious talent with their need to be a kid.

Personally, I think Andre Agassi’s dad was abusive. Early lessons, tons of court time, sports academy. Agassi has said it was harmful and that he hated tennis. His natural talent carried him through as an adult when his work ethic failed him. A fair number of the tennis prodigies end up distancing themselves from their parents because their parents were too pushy and involved. Tiger Woods was pushed too hard and has struggled as an adult. Look at the kid actors who have had issues.

There are very few kids who fall into this talent category as athletes. I seriously doubt that that the kids doing prep classes, math classes, tutoring to improve their chances of getting into TJ are i this category. A kid who is academically Serena, Andre, or Tiger will not need TJ because they are in a different stratosphere and will be beyond TJ when they are that age.

I would bet that the majority of kids who are attending the sports academies do not end up playing professional sports. I would guess that many of them don’t end up at college with scholarships. Just like the majority of travel sports kids don’t end up with scholarships.

You are looking at the outliers to justify your desire for your kid to spend more time studying so that they can be more academically advanced because you think it is important.

I think that parents who are pushing kids in sports or academics are hurting their kids. Kids need a balance between fun and school, just like adults need to balance work, family, and relaxing in their lives. Supporting a kids passion is one thing. The problem is reading the lives of so many superstar kids you learn that the activity wasn’t their passion but their parents desire for their kid to be great. Sometimes that push works out and sometimes it collapses spectacularly.

Me, I am going to let my kid be a kid. Encourage him, let him do the extras that he wants, and make sure he is doing what he is suppose to do. He is a smart kid but he isn’t Einstein or Hawkings. I know he is likely to do well as an adult if he goes to his base school or the center or TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think most of us are in agreement:
It's nbd if you put your kid in 1-2 hours of math enrichment per week. It's great if your kid spends much more time doing math lessons or contests because he or she loves it and wants to. It's bad if your kid spends tons of time on math enrichment because you're forcing the kid.

Similarly, for sports, it's nbd if you put your kid in a low time commitment rec sport so the kid is getting exercise, even if the kid doesn't like it. It's great if your kid is on a high level, time consumptive travel team because the kid loves the sport and wants to do it. It's bad if you're forcing your kid to play on an intense travel team.

While this may be true for some people, we hear way less vitriol about athletics.

No one is accusing travel team kids of cheating when they make the cut for varsity.

So true. Serena Williams started tennis lessons for her 3 year old - how do the anti-enrichment posters react to that I wonder

There is a difference between enrichment and pushing. I have no clue how to raise an uber talented kid like Serena or Venus. I have no clue how you balance nurturing their obvious talent with their need to be a kid.

Personally, I think Andre Agassi’s dad was abusive. Early lessons, tons of court time, sports academy. Agassi has said it was harmful and that he hated tennis. His natural talent carried him through as an adult when his work ethic failed him. A fair number of the tennis prodigies end up distancing themselves from their parents because their parents were too pushy and involved. Tiger Woods was pushed too hard and has struggled as an adult. Look at the kid actors who have had issues.

There are very few kids who fall into this talent category as athletes. I seriously doubt that that the kids doing prep classes, math classes, tutoring to improve their chances of getting into TJ are i this category. A kid who is academically Serena, Andre, or Tiger will not need TJ because they are in a different stratosphere and will be beyond TJ when they are that age.

I would bet that the majority of kids who are attending the sports academies do not end up playing professional sports. I would guess that many of them don’t end up at college with scholarships. Just like the majority of travel sports kids don’t end up with scholarships.

You are looking at the outliers to justify your desire for your kid to spend more time studying so that they can be more academically advanced because you think it is important.

I think that parents who are pushing kids in sports or academics are hurting their kids. Kids need a balance between fun and school, just like adults need to balance work, family, and relaxing in their lives. Supporting a kids passion is one thing. The problem is reading the lives of so many superstar kids you learn that the activity wasn’t their passion but their parents desire for their kid to be great. Sometimes that push works out and sometimes it collapses spectacularly.

Me, I am going to let my kid be a kid. Encourage him, let him do the extras that he wants, and make sure he is doing what he is suppose to do. He is a smart kid but he isn’t Einstein or Hawkings. I know he is likely to do well as an adult if he goes to his base school or the center or TJ.

You do you. Nobody’s trying to tell you how to raise your child. And you sure don’t get to tell anyone how to raise theirs.

[Anonymous]

No one is telling you how to raise your kid. People are responding to the hyper defensiveness of parents who choose to push their kids in any area.

The purpose of this topic was to complain about the lack of eye rolling and complaints about sports parents. The overall response was we thinking those parents are crazy too. And yet the response is no one complains about Serena.

All the 9,000 topics on the same subject point to is a small group of people with a set idea of what is right who are annoyed that other people are not interested in rewarding them for making their kids study more then other kids. The topics are echo chambers that scream annoyance that other people don’t see or value your kids work ethic and love of math. They scream defensiveness.

So how about you do you and stop filling the AAP forum with yet another topic complaining that different people have different ideas of how we identify deserving kids then baseline tests that are easily manipulated, studied for, and the like. Be happy with your choices and stop asking why others don’t agree with your choices.

[Anonymous]

There is a huge double standard between sports and academics. If you put your kid in one AoPS class (total time commitment of 1.75 hrs + 1 hr homework) per week, people clutch their pearls, act as if you're ruining your kid's childhood, and tell you that you're cheating. If you have your kid in travel sports, no one criticizes you for it.

Also, even if most of us think that putting your kids in cram school is not great parenting, there are people out there who will do exactly that. We have to accept that those kids might be more advanced than ours, because we can't control other people. It is what it is, and whining about it won't change anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

There is a difference between enrichment and pushing. I have no clue how to raise an uber talented kid like Serena or Venus. I have no clue how you balance nurturing their obvious talent with their need to be a kid.

If you have one of those kids, there's still no good answer for how to approach things either. My kid is one of those kids in music. He first picked up his instrument 16 months ago, is already playing grade 6, and has never used tape to find the notes. He also has only practiced 30 minutes each day. I don't know if I'm doing him a disservice by not pushing more and if ultimately, he will resent me for not starting him earlier and not making him practice more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one is telling you how to raise your kid. People are responding to the hyper defensiveness of parents who choose to push their kids in any area.

The purpose of this topic was to complain about the lack of eye rolling and complaints about sports parents. The overall response was we thinking those parents are crazy too. And yet the response is no one complains about Serena.

All the 9,000 topics on the same subject point to is a small group of people with a set idea of what is right who are annoyed that other people are not interested in rewarding them for making their kids study more then other kids. The topics are echo chambers that scream annoyance that other people don’t see or value your kids work ethic and love of math. They scream defensiveness.

So how about you do you and stop filling the AAP forum with yet another topic complaining that different people have different ideas of how we identify deserving kids then baseline tests that are easily manipulated, studied for, and the like. Be happy with your choices and stop asking why others don’t agree with your choices.

People become hyper defensive because they realize it may not be in the child’s best interest for the parents to live vicariously through them. It applies to to both sports and academics alike.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one is telling you how to raise your kid. People are responding to the hyper defensiveness of parents who choose to push their kids in any area.

The purpose of this topic was to complain about the lack of eye rolling and complaints about sports parents. The overall response was we thinking those parents are crazy too. And yet the response is no one complains about Serena.

All the 9,000 topics on the same subject point to is a small group of people with a set idea of what is right who are annoyed that other people are not interested in rewarding them for making their kids study more then other kids. The topics are echo chambers that scream annoyance that other people don’t see or value your kids work ethic and love of math. They scream defensiveness.

So how about you do you and stop filling the AAP forum with yet another topic complaining that different people have different ideas of how we identify deserving kids then baseline tests that are easily manipulated, studied for, and the like. Be happy with your choices and stop asking why others don’t agree with your choices.

People become hyper defensive because they realize it may not be in the child’s best interest for the parents to live vicariously through them. It applies to to both sports and academics alike.

People also become defensive because they realize that while they may not have absolutely neglected their kids, they haven’t supported them either. So they try to attack engaged parents by accusing them of over parenting or living vicariously through their kids.

[Anonymous]

Watching ice skating on tv - awful lot of white and Asian contestants...and no Black people. What to do, what to do?

[Anonymous]

https://reason.com/2010/11/11/political-correctness-on-campu/?itm_source=parsely-api

[Anonymous]

Can not take an education away but sports LOL one injury away from never playing again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s a common saying in sports, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.”

For some reason the hard worker is often looked well upon in sports.

For some reason the hard worker is often looked down upon in academics, especially Asians.

But then there’s the Misty Copeland example where talent beat out the kids who had been working hard their whole lives.

Hard work without talent takes you nowhere.

But for some reason there's a often a stigma against people who work hard in academics, but no real stigma against people who work hard in sports.

I don't think this is true. Working hard in academics is not the same as forcing your kids to do Kumon every day after school. I've never seen anyone looked down on for working hard in academics, but I know plenty of people who think pushing kids into algebra at younger ages, for example, is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s a common saying in sports, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.”

For some reason the hard worker is often looked well upon in sports.

For some reason the hard worker is often looked down upon in academics, especially Asians.

But then there’s the Misty Copeland example where talent beat out the kids who had been working hard their whole lives.

Hard work without talent takes you nowhere.

But for some reason there's a often a stigma against people who work hard in academics, but no real stigma against people who work hard in sports.

I don't think this is true. Working hard in academics is not the same as forcing your kids to do Kumon every day after school. I've never seen anyone looked down on for working hard in academics, but I know plenty of people who think pushing kids into algebra at younger ages, for example, is ridiculous.

Oh please! 'Nerd', 'Dork', 'Geek' - these are well known insults in America. Anti-intellectualism has ruled the roost for so long that Richard Hofstadter wrote a book about it in 1963.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
But for some reason there's a often a stigma against people who work hard in academics, but no real stigma against people who work hard in sports.

I don't think this is true. Working hard in academics is not the same as forcing your kids to do Kumon every day after school. I've never seen anyone looked down on for working hard in academics, but I know plenty of people who think pushing kids into algebra at younger ages, for example, is ridiculous.

The difference is that if a kid is participating in travel sports, people assume that the kid loves the sport and is driving the commitment. If a kid is doing academic enrichment, people assume that the parents are the ones pushing. Some kids push themselves into algebra at young ages, but people like you can't seem to accept that and instead trash the child's motivation and accomplishments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a huge double standard between sports and academics. If you put your kid in one AoPS class (total time commitment of 1.75 hrs + 1 hr homework) per week, people clutch their pearls, act as if you're ruining your kid's childhood, and tell you that you're cheating. If you have your kid in travel sports, no one criticizes you for it.

Also, even if most of us think that putting your kids in cram school is not great parenting, there are people out there who will do exactly that. We have to accept that those kids might be more advanced than ours, because we can't control other people. It is what it is, and whining about it won't change anything.

The thing is, many of those kids are not actually more advanced, they’ve essentially been hothoused to appear to be advanced. Many of the kids who have taken extra math classes ahead of their grade level don’t fundamentally understand the extra math they’ve studied but have simply learned to memorize.

Math teachers at TJ have complained about the number of kids who come in who are “advanced” on paper but don’t have the understanding necessary to do truly advanced math courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The thing is, many of those kids are not actually more advanced, they’ve essentially been hothoused to appear to be advanced. Many of the kids who have taken extra math classes ahead of their grade level don’t fundamentally understand the extra math they’ve studied but have simply learned to memorize.

Math teachers at TJ have complained about the number of kids who come in who are “advanced” on paper but don’t have the understanding necessary to do truly advanced math courses.

Then TJ needs to write better math screening exams to differentiate between kids who understand the advanced math and those who don't. It would be much more productive to make the TJ tests more difficult to prep than it would be to complain that people are prepping.