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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous][quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]the goal of every other parent on this board?

So, if you take Algebra I in 7th grade, what is the result? What is the difference in outcome for the student who takes algebra I in 7th vs. the student who takes it in 8th grade?

My child is in 6th grade btw.

I would really appreciate it if someone would explain this to me as my child will be going to 7th next year and, if she fulfill the requirements, I would like to make an informed decision.

Thanks.[/quote]

Americans like to rush "smart" kids through math so that they get to complicated concepts sooner. However, they rarely do challenging problems so most of the progress is illusionary. I went to a top school in the US and nobody in my class was familiar with mathematical proofs, like, they literally never did it. Now, in my own country kids do proofs starting in fifth grade. But it is quite possible that those very same Americans wrote their first integral earlier than I did. But before starting on integrals I had to do a lot of difficulty problems with limits, epsilon delta type problems, proofs of theorems etc.[/quote]

Exactly this. The AP race to calculus is pretty much a sham because the kids have no problem solving abilities and can barely handle the algebra to compute integrals.

https://artofproblemsolving.com/news/articles/avoid-the-calculus-trap[/quote]

[b]"The primary difference is that the curricular education is designed to give students many tools to apply to straightforward specific problems. Rather than learning more and more tools, avid students are better off learning how to take tools they have and applying them to complex problems. "[/b]

yes, this, 1000X this. when our kids started school in america my DH and i realized that they are simply not doing hard problems. at any given "tool level", as the article put it there (e.g. knowledge of certain concepts and algorithms), [b]they do loads of extremely simple problems,[/b] then move and introduce the next thing.[/quote]

Yep, in many old school textbooks in other countries those were denoted as "exercises" to distinguish them as more straightforward from the later questions which were indeed called "problems". The idea being an exercise is testing your basic understanding of the material taught, vs a problem which is challenging your ability to use the ideas in the material to solve something you don't initially know how to do (but can work out via some amount of thought).

[b]In virtually all of America's K-12 math classrooms, there are no problems to solve, only exercises. The music analogy of playing scales over and over again and seeing no songs.[/b]
[/quote]

DP. There are also old textbooks from this country like that, btw.

School has changed a lot since when we were kids and especially in the last decade or two, throughout all of K-12.  [/quote]

This is exactly it, and it has been this way in American K-12 education for generations. [/quote]

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