Anonymous wrote:You need a different group of friends. Stop hanging out with people who keep talking about their kids and their math classes. They sound exhausting. Who cares. I’m a math teacher and wouldn’t want to hear that and didn’t accelerate any of my kids 3 grade levels. I certainly don’t talk about their classes and their abilities to my friends at social events.

+1. If these people truly are talking about math classes “all of the time”, why are you hanging around and talking with them? It sounds boring and tedious.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, I hear you. My kids are also better at ELA, particularly my youngest now in 8th who reads books I read in college regularly and with great understanding, which her teachers can’t believe. She also writes incredible plays. public school ELA can be very boring, as they lean formulaic writing and only read a book a year (yes, really).

Yeah, I think this is the crux of it. Kids who are math whizzes get positive reinforcement and opportunities for nurturing of those skills in most public schools. But kids who are advanced in reading and writing don’t; they usually have to take the same grade-level curriculum with their peers until 11th grade.

MS also limits kids who are very good in math. My 8th grader finishes his Geometry homework in class and has 100%. He could benefit from higher math but that's not how the program of studies is set up. He's also good at ELA and actually gets more encouragement to write more, has the opportunity to read higher level texts

Anonymous wrote:Op, I hear you. My kids are also better at ELA, particularly my youngest now in 8th who reads books I read in college regularly and with great understanding, which her teachers can’t believe. She also writes incredible plays. public school ELA can be very boring, as they lean formulaic writing and only read a book a year (yes, really).

Yeah, I think this is the crux of it. Kids who are math whizzes get positive reinforcement and opportunities for nurturing of those skills in most public schools. But kids who are advanced in reading and writing don’t; they usually have to take the same grade-level curriculum with their peers until 11th grade.

It’s a lot easier to be “advanced” in ELA. Any kid that enjoys reading and reads a lot of books is going to be advanced. It’s pretty low effort on the parents’ part to buy kids books or the them to the library frequently. Spoken and written English is everywhere, kids are constantly exposed.

Being advanced more than one grade level in math takes a lot of deliberate work and teaching from both the student and parent.

Anonymous wrote:I’m tired of listening to all these parents talk about their math wiz kids and how they need their kid to be accelerated 3 grades. Good for them - they also can’t string a coherent sentence together without the help of AI and my kid happens to be very creative and artsy (looooves to write). FWIW I was a B student in math and took 1 math lite class in college so don’t see the need for all this crazy focus on math if it’s not your thing. I found a job and have a career that pays well. Can’t we focus on other things besides math and not punish kids for not being mathaletes ( mine happens to have an IEP for math) which is what this feels like. He could spend all his time on math and still not get more than a C. What happened to being well rounded?

If your kid could spend all his time on math and still not get more than a C then he’s not well rounded at all. The mathy kids you’re putting down could get higher than a C for the non-math subjects if they spent all their time on those. It’s fine to be sad that your own kid isn’t better, but putting down others and making assumptions about them isn’t helpful.

Anonymous wrote:I’m tired of listening to all these parents talk about their math wiz kids and how they need their kid to be accelerated 3 grades. Good for them - they also can’t string a coherent sentence together without the help of AI and my kid happens to be very creative and artsy (looooves to write). FWIW I was a B student in math and took 1 math lite class in college so don’t see the need for all this crazy focus on math if it’s not your thing. I found a job and have a career that pays well. Can’t we focus on other things besides math and not punish kids for not being mathaletes ( mine happens to have an IEP for math) which is what this feels like. He could spend all his time on math and still not get more than a C. What happened to being well rounded?

Op do you hear yourself? Are you really vilifying middle school kids? What’s wrong with you?

Op, I hear you. My kids are also better at ELA, particularly my youngest now in 8th who reads books I read in college regularly and with great understanding, which her teachers can’t believe. She also writes incredible plays. public school ELA can be very boring, as they lean formulaic writing and only read a book a year (yes, really).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They don’t accelerate kids to higher grade levels for excelling in English or other humanities, so it’s a bit of apples and oranges for math parents to brag. (I say this as someone with a kid who is very far ahead in math.)

That said, who is “punishing” your artsy humanities kid? Why don’t you just reciprocate with conversation about how well your child is doing in writing, etc.?

+1000

Ding ding ding. OP, you're just mad at these parents because you're insecure about your OWN kid's ability in math.

Nope.

Yup.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m tired of listening to all these parents talk about their math wiz kids and how they need their kid to be accelerated 3 grades. Good for them - they also can’t string a coherent sentence together without the help of AI and my kid happens to be very creative and artsy (looooves to write). FWIW I was a B student in math and took 1 math lite class in college so don’t see the need for all this crazy focus on math if it’s not your thing. I found a job and have a career that pays well. Can’t we focus on other things besides math and not punish kids for not being mathaletes ( mine happens to have an IEP for math) which is what this feels like. He could spend all his time on math and still not get more than a C. What happened to being well rounded?

Plenty of kids who are good at math are also excellent at writing, creative and athletic.

Not many less than .0005 percent

LOL. Citation needed.

Anonymous wrote:I’m tired of listening to all these parents talk about their math wiz kids and how they need their kid to be accelerated 3 grades. Good for them - they also can’t string a coherent sentence together without the help of AI and my kid happens to be very creative and artsy (looooves to write). FWIW I was a B student in math and took 1 math lite class in college so don’t see the need for all this crazy focus on math if it’s not your thing. I found a job and have a career that pays well. Can’t we focus on other things besides math and not punish kids for not being mathaletes ( mine happens to have an IEP for math) which is what this feels like. He could spend all his time on math and still not get more than a C. What happened to being well rounded?

You sound weirdly insecure for a supposed adult. Work on that. Therapy can help.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They don’t accelerate kids to higher grade levels for excelling in English or other humanities, so it’s a bit of apples and oranges for math parents to brag. (I say this as someone with a kid who is very far ahead in math.)

That said, who is “punishing” your artsy humanities kid? Why don’t you just reciprocate with conversation about how well your child is doing in writing, etc.?

+1000

Ding ding ding. OP, you're just mad at these parents because you're insecure about your OWN kid's ability in math.

Nope.

AI can do math. But it can’t write or think well yet, so your kid will be laughing when she is the only one with a job skills in 5-10 years.

OP you are part of the problem, you’re building up your kid’s skills while tearing down others

Anonymous wrote:I’m tired of listening to all these parents talk about their math wiz kids and how they need their kid to be accelerated 3 grades. Good for them - they also can’t string a coherent sentence together without the help of AI and my kid happens to be very creative and artsy (looooves to write). FWIW I was a B student in math and took 1 math lite class in college so don’t see the need for all this crazy focus on math if it’s not your thing. I found a job and have a career that pays well. Can’t we focus on other things besides math and not punish kids for not being mathaletes ( mine happens to have an IEP for math) which is what this feels like. He could spend all his time on math and still not get more than a C. What happened to being well rounded?

I think there are many reasons. As someone mentioned, math is black and white. The answer is right or wrong. It’s easier to work (or pay someone to work) with your child on math skills. Writing is a subjective still. It is harder to teach and there is so much variance to what can be taught and how it would taught, the style, etc. Kids aren’t “tested” on writing in quite the same way they are in math. They even discontinued the essay portion of the SAT. However, college essays are a big part of the application and weighted heavily. But even so, the are written ahead of time, edited, people can hire help for them…they aren’t solely dependent on the skill of the person writing it, like your math grades and scores would be. A kid weak in writing, with enough time and money, can have an amazing college essay.


I totally agree you though, that writing skills ARE equally important. Unfortunately schools are doing a really terrible job in developing them.

I have one more math-y kid and one less math-y kid. Personally I never ever hear parents brag about how far their kids are above grade level but I do think there is peer pressure and comparison within the schools, intentional or not.

I agree with other posters that the math pathways are more black and white so it is an easier metric to explain acceleration.

I think as parents we need to role model to our kids that lots of pathways can work and people all have differently strengths and weaknesses and that is a fine thing. I think you seem very caught up in the competitiveness and it is probably stressing your kid out too. Just because you feel someone else wants to be in a competition with you doesn’t obligate you to participate.