Educating Kiddo

[Beth]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

Welcome to the wild world of unschooling.

The Beginner’s Guide to Unschooling : zenhabits

This is similar to how I was homeschooled. I can say that I continued to learn throughout my life. I would often purchase college textbooks from the Friends of the Library bookstore and study them thoroughly.

[Janet]

I saw the starred review of this book and thought, "Shea needs to see this." So here you go.

[LadyShea]

Oh wow, thanks Janet!

[mickthinks]

Not being sure what issues this thread actually covered, I'm just going to assume it's okay to bump it with this.

Children See, Children Do.

[LadyShea]

School "Kiddo is a high achiever but not gifted"
Us "How do you know?"
School "Non verbal screening test, observation, blah blah blah"
Us "LOL at your blah blah blah. Give him a full standard verbal and see what happens"
School does a full test "Oh huh, yeah he actually is eligible for gifted support services. Sorry"

[LadyShea]

PS we do not give a single shit about the gifted education at school..but as with other things, the designation on an official piece of paper offers outside opportunities we might care about.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

PS we do not give a single shit about the gifted education at school..but as with other things, the designation on an official piece of paper offers outside opportunities we might care about.

offers bragging rights at

[Ensign Steve]

Putting here cuz why not.

5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus - The Atlantic

I don't know which parts to quote, cuz the whole thing is good, so here's some shit I picked:

The familiar, hierarchical sequence of math instruction starts with counting, followed by addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division. The computational set expands to include bigger and bigger numbers, and at some point, fractions enter the picture, too. Then in early adolescence, students are introduced to patterns of numbers and letters, in the entirely new subject of algebra. A minority of students then wend their way through geometry, trigonometry and, finally, calculus, which is considered the pinnacle of high-school-level math.

But this progression actually “has nothing to do with how people think, how children grow and learn, or how mathematics is built,” says pioneering math educator and curriculum designer Maria Droujkova.

The current sequence is merely an entrenched historical accident that strips much of the fun out of what she describes as the “playful universe” of mathematics, with ... manifestations in everything from weaving to building, nature, music and art. Worse, the standard curriculum starts with arithmetic, which Droujkova says is much harder for young children than playful activities based on supposedly more advanced fields of mathematics.

“Calculations kids are forced to do are often so developmentally inappropriate, the experience amounts to torture,” she says. They also miss the essential point—that mathematics is fundamentally about patterns and structures, rather than “little manipulations of numbers,” as she puts it. It’s akin to budding filmmakers learning first about costumes, lighting and other technical aspects, rather than about crafting meaningful stories.

She started with algebra and calculus, because they’re “pattern-drafter tools, designer tools, maker tools—they support cool free play.” So “Moebius Noodles” includes activities such as making fractals (to foster an appreciation of the ideas of recursion and infinitesimals) and “mirror books” (mirrors that are taped to each other like the covers of a book and can be angled in different ways around an object to introduce the concepts of infinity and transformations).

Blah blah blah, read the whole fucking thing. It's good.

Dese are dem books:
Home - Moebius Noodles
Calculus by and for Young People (Ages 7, Yes 7 and Up): Donald Cohen: 9780962167416: Amazon.com: Books

[Ensign Steve]

I remember learning shit like set theory and combinatorics (aka "counting", according to my prof) in my higher mathematics courses in college and thinking I could have learned this in elementary school. I'm smrt and all, but geez. There is no reason that shit needed to wait until after high school.

[Angakuk]

As a child I was a victim of the "new math". I remember that they had us learning to count and work problems in base 5. It ruined me for math ever after. If they were going to make us learn to do math in something other than base 10 they could at least have taught us to speak binary. With that in my toolbox maybe I could have learned how to communicate with our robot overlords in their native language.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

As a child I was a victim of the "new math". I remember that they had us learning to count and work problems in base 5. It ruined me for math ever after. If they were going to make us learn to do math in something other than base 10 they could at least have taught us to speak binary. With that in my toolbox maybe I could have learned how to communicate with our robot overlords in their native language.

In college I was required to take Math 101 which was the most basic math there was, I had much more advanced Math in HS and was accepted as a Math major at another college. The course was so easy for me that one day I went to class and fell asleep at the start of the class, woke up close to the end of class when the assistants were passing out quizzes on the days lesson. I figured out the lesson from the questions on the quiz and "aced" the quiz.

[lisarea]

“Calculations kids are forced to do are often so developmentally inappropriate, the experience amounts to torture,” she says. They also miss the essential point—that mathematics is fundamentally about patterns and structures, rather than “little manipulations of numbers,” as she puts it. It’s akin to budding filmmakers learning first about costumes, lighting and other technical aspects, rather than about crafting meaningful stories.

Yes. They're almost two entirely different skillsets. The math people I know seem to dislike arithmetic as much as anyone else. It's boring for everyone, and it's kind of like penmanship. It's helpful to have some basic competence, but almost nobody needs to do it regularly.

[Angakuk]

I use arithmetic on a daily basis. Every night before I go to bed I take off my socks and count my toes, just to make sure I still have all ten.

Oh wait, that's just counting.

To hell with arithmetic.

[mickthinks]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Putting here cuz why not.
5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus - The Atlantic
...

Looks like a classic marketing spiel. Hitherto unknown author has book(s) they want to sell, so creates a message that everyone has been doing something wrong for ever, but here comes a new dawn of hope for humanity @ $15 a shot (or $248 even!).

It's a ploy that should be familiar to all those who have encountered Seymore Lessans and his revolutionary ideas.

I'm not saying Droujkova and McManaman are pure bullshit because I would have to read the book to be sure. I am saying that from here, based on what I get from the article, it steams and smells like a pile of edufecation.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

As a child I was a victim of the "new math". I remember that they had us learning to count and work problems in base 5. It ruined me for math ever after. If they were going to make us learn to do math in something other than base 10 they could at least have taught us to speak binary. With that in my toolbox maybe I could have learned how to communicate with our robot overlords in their native language.

Oddly, the lesson on base 5 totally resonated with me, and I remember trying desperately to explain it to a friend who just didn't get it, and didn't even get why it was important.

The concept that our number system is entirely dictated by the digits on our hands was a revelatory experience for me. Not too long after that, I got my first computer, I was exposed to binary and hexadecimal notation, and it all fell into place almost effortlessly. I can't stress how important this understanding on some stupid lesson about base 5 was to my future career.

Now that I'm thinking back, my mother was always a horse person. A horse's height is measured in "hands." By conventional standard, a hand is 4 inches. So, when I say a horse is 15 hands, 2 inches, I'm really saying the horse is 5'2". That's also converting between 2 base notations. The "base 5" lesson was building on my forced knowledge of horsemanship.

So you and I had a completely different experience with "new math."

Kind of like this "common core" complaints. Whenever I had to help my kids with a math problem, I generally recognized the lesson as introducing an important concept on *how* to think about a problem, which I'm totally cool with, even if both myself and my kids got frustrated sometimes at the pedantic nature of the problems - especially when a "better" solution presents itself.

[Janet]

I've never known anyone who was proficient at higher math who could still do arithmetic in their head. I always figure tips for my best friend and was shocked to learn she couldn't look at what was in her grocery cart and figure out roughly what she was spending. Of course, with every phone having a calculator and credit card machines, and sometimes receipts, that figure the tip for you, it's becoming a less useful skill all the time.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

I remember learning shit like set theory and combinatorics (aka "counting", according to my prof) in my higher mathematics courses in college and thinking I could have learned this in elementary school. I'm smrt and all, but geez. There is no reason that shit needed to wait until after high school.

Yes this!
Same thing for physics and relativity. All the books teach Newtonian mechanics and then have a final chapter on the hard and confusing Relativity. Only way later did I find out it can all be derived from relativity in such an easy manner, we might as well start out with it.