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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The US turns out a good number of Engineers, Doctors, Architects, hell all sorts of people in jobs requiring advanced math. I would guess the vast majority of those focus did not attend centers like Mathnasium or do Beast Academy.

Families should do what they feel is best for their kids but this notion that math in the US is awful is silly. No, we don’t use a system of education similar to the ones found through out Asia. Heck, the IB program is meant to be similar to the European system. And yet lots of kids take advanced math in high school and go into math related fields. Most are not drilling on math outside of school.

OP: Your kid is not behind. He is where he should be. Ask him if he wants to spend 2-5 hours a week outside of school doing math at a math center. If he says yes, have at it. I would be shocked if he said yes. Otherwise, he is where he should be and the “advanced” kids are where they are because they are studying math as an extra curricular to get ahead.

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These engineers, doctors and architects are not who they are thanks to US. They are who they are thanks to who they are, if you know what I mean, and not because of anything the US does. The US is not capable of offering good basic education to all. Keep bragging about the top performers who we all know would be fine even when they never set foot to a school.
In fact, the school probably does get in the way of their education.
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I grew up in an Irish Catholic community. I know a good number of Doctors and Engineers who attended the same school I did. I promise you they did not go to math programs after school. I attended Graduate school and earned a PhD with a math based programs. Three quarters of my classmates where non-Asian and did just fine solving and developing Game Theoretic Models.

No offense, but there are plenty of US born kids attending Engineering and Medical schools who were not taking Algebra at a tutoring center in fifth or sixth grade.

Anecdotally, one of my co-workers is Korean and her kids did go to math programs and Korean school and TJ. [b]None of them are using that STEM in their jobs.[/b] My co-worker flat out said the kids didn’t want to go to TJ but they provided incentives so the kids did. All that money, time and effort [b]and her kids are not using those skills.[/b]

I asked my co-worker why the emphasized math they way they did and she said that is what everyone in her neighborhood did so that is what she did. She wanted the best for her kids. Her kids had great success in a competitive environment but it wasn’t because they were interested.

I fully get that there are kids who love math and learning, my DH and son are both in that category.  We play math games, have robotics stuff at the house, and do summer workbooks. I have asked my son if he wants to  take additional math classes and he thought I was crazy. He likes playing at the park, playing sports, building with his blocks/marble runs/legos and other things. He will be just fine. 
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This is the oldest fallacy in the book. Your anecdotal stance seems to be why bother learning something because "when will we use this?" That is a totally acceptable question when kids genuinely want to know why they're learning what they're learning in math class, but it's sad when adults essentially parrot this same argument. Of course there's issues if parents chose to push their kids to TJ, but that's not the point. The main purpose of learning math in school isn't because you are planning on using it on the job, it's to learn how to develop your mind. Kids don't play sports after school and on weekends because they plan on being professional athletes, it's because they enjoy it and it makes them healthier and more physically fit. And you can't be serious implying that because most people don't use the math they learned in school on the job, they should not bother learning it at all in the first place. It's even more surprising, coming from you, a professed PhD. And not to sidetrack from the original topic, but do you realize that most of the research and high tech jobs in our country are not Americans? Do you realize that the tech world can't currently find enough smart people to fill their positions and they have to scour the rest of the world and import them with visas? What does that say on average about US STEM college graduates?

Under your advice of letting everything just be, most kids here are [b]already locked out [/b]of any of these exciting opportunities before they even hit college. Sure, they go to college, many realize that they need to retake some math from high school (aka freshman year remedial math), and barely make it through a STEM field. They think they're not smart enough, or equivalently falsely believe that only the super smart people must work at the multitude of cutting edge companies that actually create new things. A few lucky ones overcome this by working incredibly hard through college and crack through these stereotypes. The rest find something they like in STEM if they're lucky and brave, or just settle by working in the average corporate office job. But all the exciting high tech and research jobs, high paying finance jobs, etc. are not available to most people who want them and one significant reason is that the average STEM US college graduates are not mathematically qualified to fill them.[/quote]

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