Reply to Basis fills a gap that shouldn’t exist.

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Basis fills a gap that shouldn’t exist."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Come on, almost any BASIS kid can keep up with the math with the right prep and support (read STEM oriented parents and tutors in the US context).

BASIS parents like to boast about having kids who can do well academically. From what I've seen, what these kids tend to have in common are UMC parents and possibly tutors, math whiz classmates and summer enrichment programs, that help.

In my native Taiwan, almost all the kids were doing BASIS level, or harder math, from the upper ES grades. What you Americans consider to super-duper GT math has been normal in regular Taiwan schools from a young age for several generations.

What happens here is that too many of the students don't get the math prep or push they need to succeed at BASIS before they start in 5th grade. For the most part, the problem is a lack of ambition and commitment to good math instruction on the part of the society, not the kids' innate ability. But self-congratulate away, don't let me stop you.  [/quote]

I find this comment odd on a variety of levels. On the one hand, it derides upper-middle-class parents as being clueless about the stronger math instruction available in places like Taiwan or Singapore. Then, in almost the same breath, it lambasts BASIS parents whose kids have had early math enrichment (e.g., AOPS/Beast Academy, RSM, etc.) — as if their children’s success is somehow illegitimate because they did the very thing those other systems normalize.

In reality, many of those parents invested in math instruction early precisely because they understood how deficient most U.S. elementary math programs are. They knew that if they wanted their kids to develop real mathematical architecture during the optimal time window, they had to do it themselves. You’d think the poster would see that as a good thing.

So I’m left wondering: who exactly is the target here? The “ignorant” parents who didn’t prepare? The “knowledgeable” ones whose kids are now doing well at BASIS? Or BASIS itself — which, at worst, is simply offering a curriculum that gets closer than most D.C. schools to the global standard the commenter claims to admire?

It all feels like an amorphous critique of BASIS parents in general — a kind of reflexive discomfort with people who’ve found something that works for them. But in the real world, there’s no BASIS fan club roaming around congratulating itself. There are just families navigating a limited system and trying to find the environment that works best — or least badly — for their kids.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics