If she has a chance, have her look at some of the work done by Jo Boaler, who has shown that thinking deeply and creatively about math and thinking fast are not always linked and that the emphasis on the latter often discourages kids who are good at the former.
She might also want to look at work on a growth mindset, because at the end of the day, that’s what matters!
As for dealing with the jerks, if there are any who seem redeemable, perhaps she could ask them about how they see a problem, how they approach it, etc. It’ll help get a dialogue started. Besides the fact that there are usually several ways to solve a problem, the flattery element might serve her well. It is unfortunate that so many bright kids see the world in such a hierarchical way. If your D can shift even a couple into a collaborative mode, she will have mastered a very powerful skill!
My son’s middle school math teacher (who used to be a stock trader) told me there are only two situations where you need to do math fast: stock trading and math contests.
Cardiovascular surgeons do fast math to figure out if a patient is bleeding out/needs more oxygen/more fluids. Air traffic controllers do fast math every day. Pilots used to do fast math- now it’s just during an emergency when they need to calculate their speed/distance/angle to land a plane safely without their autopilot functioning.
My ORM son sucked at math also. He told me it’s embarrassing to be in the same class as a Senior with a bunch of Sophomores who don’t even try and get As while he has to try the hardest in this class to get B+. To make it worse, they have Group Quizzes where they divide into groups of 4 kids and work together on the quiz. If you are stuck in a group with kids who are not good in math, your grade on that Quiz will s*ck. Good thing they change groups for every quiz.
I feel it’s good to experience some areas where you are not that good. After one year of cross country and tracks, my kid has a great deal of respect to other students who participate in sports year around and yet get pretty good grades. When he was doing sports, he fell asleep around 9 PM because he was so tired and couldn’t didn’t finish homework. It teaches you that you cannot be good in all areas but not giving up is important.
I assume you are paying for this camp. It is obvious that the teacher does not have some of the students under control. You should report what is going on to management and tell them it is unacceptable in no uncertain terms
I was always picked last for gym. I have no artistic ability and can barely carry a tune.
My parents (not of the “participation trophy” generation) always thought it was important to push oneself. So there are some things I’m very good at, some things I’m average at, and some things I’m terrible at. But my self-esteem doesn’t take a nose dive every time I meet someone better at something than I am, even if that person is a sniveling and obnoxious egomaniac.
I applaud your D for holding her chin up and surviving math camp. She will learn a LOT more than math. Just keep encouraging her to get out of the experience what’s meaningful for HER- and ignore the immature and crass kids.
What a great life lesson- she can enjoy something even if she has to work harder than other people; she can relish her own accomplishments without comparing herself to somebody else.
Run your own race- the hardest life lesson I ever had to learn.
My son competes on the varsity math team. He is the " worst" one on the team according to him. All of the other kids are complete math whizzes, whereas my son ( mid 700’s math sat) struggles with some of the problems and sometimes doesn’t even finish the problems to score any points at the meets.
He told me it sort of bothered him at first until he started thinking of math meets as kind of a track meet. Not everyone at a track meet is going to win. Someone will win, others come close, and others further behind. But the kids who come in last are sometimes the most content with their performance because they have set a new Personal Record. So my son goes into every math meet hoping to break his previous best score. Sometimes he does, sometimes not.
He realizes that there are just certain kids who have an incredible aptitude for math, like the 7th grader on his HS team who is the best! That doesn’t mean my son isn’t bright, he’s just going up some incredibly intelligent competitors. He appreciates being on the team because it exposes him to new types of math and challenges him.
Tell your D to keep at it. Just like in sports, there are late bloomers in academics. A lot of times these are the kids that stuck with it and didn’t quit. Good luck to your D!
This is why my daughter, who finished calculus by 9th grade, didn’t attend math competitions or camps. Not interested in the hyper competitive, socially immature boys who unfortunately populate many of these camps. The director of one told me that the boys consistently overestimate their ability, and the girls underestimate theirs, and that the most arrogant students were usually not the best. Tell her to hang in there, it should improve a bit by college. And she is in the exact same camp now as all those math contest folks, so in the end, it all evened out.
"My son’s middle school math teacher (who used to be a stock trader) told me there are only two situations where you need to do math fast: stock trading and math contests. "
Add certain business situations to that list. Discussing valuation in an investment meeting or how certain changes impact multiple reporting ratios for publicly traded companies during investor calls are a few examples where it would be a bad idea to pull out a calculator. At least none of those are advanced math, but you do need to be able to do the calcs rapidly in your head.
I am, as some famous person once said, “like, a smart person”. In fact, for many people who don’t frequent the hallowed halls of academe, I may be one of the “smartest” people they have ever met. My academic record is fairly astonishing. When I meet people and they ask what I do, they almost invariably respond “you must be really smart”. It is part of what attracted me to the hallowed halls - finding other people like myself. But I’m not REALLY that smart, whatever smart means. I’ve had smarter students, and met many smarter people in my field(s) - genius level people, (which I’m NOT), far beyond my limits.
In these many years with their many courses and credits and people I’ve encountered the boundaries of my abilities, in pretty much EVERY direction. I’ve come to realize and accept that no one has unlimited abilities. No one. Everyone has limits to what they can and cannot do. But I’ve also come to believe that everyone has something to offer their world community, and whatever that is should be respected and is often of considerable value. Ever live through a garbage strike? The garbage collectors have a bad job, but they certainly have value.
OP’s D may not be one of the kids who are at the exceptional/uber level, but she has something of value to bring to the table. She needs to find that thing, now and as she goes through the next 5 of so years, and not let the egos of snippy 16-year-olds deter her from learning where she should go and how she should best use her talents in her own life. OP, I would ask D, “how do you want to make a difference in the world?” and the “how are these dweebs going to prevent you from doing that?”
Math is an area where the experience of problem-solving really helps your thought processes develop, as well as enlarging your “bag of tricks.” When you are starting out, it is easy to mistake greater experience for greater ability. It is really beneficial to work on hard problems, which a lot of schools do not offer.
As a college sophomore, I signed up for a senior-level math course with a certain amount of trepidation. Most of my classmates were a year or two ahead. But the guy on my right was a freshman, and the guy on my left was still in high school. The math prof advised me that it did not matter how rapidly one advanced in mathematics, that everyone wound up in the same place. That’s not entirely true–most mathematicians do not wind up in Terence Tao’s place–but in terms of the odds, it is very likely true in most cases. Everyone who persists in mathematics will probably wind up at the forefront in some field (the frontier of knowledge is very wide), scratching his/her head a lot of the time.
As far as dealing with the obnoxious younger kids: A lot of them probably don’t know better. They most likely don’t think about the impact of their words on other people. They may be repeating types of comments that have been made to them. I would recommend to your daughter to “float above” their comments. The suggestion of flattering them and then asking how they approached a problem, when there is some “down” time or opportunity for conversation, will probably yield some benefits. There will no doubt be some who say “I just got it,” or “It is obvious,” but she may find a gifted explainer among the boys.
The issue of interactions is a substantial one in mathematics, especially for women, and especially in some countries, of which the US is one. The professional mathematicians I know tend not to fit the stereotypes at all, but a lot of the students do. The only way to change math student culture is for people with a clue about interactions to stick with it, so that they are better represented in the group of math students/majors.
Its rather disheartening thinking what these arrogant kids are going to be like as adults in the working world. Will their behavior continue? Will they tone it down but still harbor those feelings of superiority, even if they are based in insecurity?
Middle school boys, especially 8th graders tend (and yes I am generalizing here) to go through a phase of being veyr self-involved and braggy. They are likely feeling very insecure in themselves, their looks relative to the “ideal” and other issues. For some reason, that translates to putting others down.
The good news is that most of these boys grow up and recognize that this is not the way to be and realize they are not better than others. There are certainly some, and silicon valley may have more than most, that think that women are not as good as men in math or techy stuff. But hopefully, it will get better both at the camp and beyond.
It sounds like she is learning more than they are at this particular camp, especially if they already have experience with these types of problems.
My rising senior is a leader in the math club at an all-girl school. They don’t win a lot of competitions but that’s not what the experience is really about. I have to say, I am quite pleased. There’s plenty of problem solving obviously but also plenty of teamwork, joint celebration of success when it happens and the ability to laugh together when the path takes a wrong turn. Wherever my D ends up, I’m sure that skills she learned in math club and in earlier experiences with AoPS will serve her well.
I would also distinguish fast calculation from problem solving - two different things. There is great value in patience, the ability to step back and look at the big picture when faced with a type of problem one has never encountered before, and to stick with it, to not give up when the first few attempts don’t result in success.
I’m not sure what I would say to your D other than what has already been said. I’d suggest she focus on what she is learning from the experience, that it’s about self-development rather than achievement. Someone else finishing faster isn’t relevant.
Remind her that she is older, and has more life experience (even 1 or 2 yours makes a difference). Most likely these boys are used to “getting it” quickly, and have never struggled in a math setting (however, start talking about history or literature, and they’ll fall apart). Their time will come. My youngest daughter was like them in that sense - STEM subjects have always come easily to her - though she knew to be polite about it, and reserve her insults for ranting at home with me. This year she suddenly ended up in an extremely rigorous schedule of classes, and for the first time had to actually work to understand the material. It gave her an entirely new perspective - she still doesn’t understand why her classmates struggled in Algebra 1, but now she at least understands how that struggle felt, and is a better person for it. There is a young man a year ahead of her who is absolutely phenomenal - he was one of 3 perfect scores on AP Chemistry last year, as a sophomore. The difference between him and these boys your daughter is dealing with is that his parents have stressed humility his entire life. He will become something - they will not. Unless they learn humility, and drop the arrogance, they won’t get far, because when they hit that wall, and meet their first struggle, nobody is going to want to help them.
Tell her to hang in there - she wants to learn, and is learning. Not just about math, but about people. Perhaps it will provide some perspective on what to look for when choosing a college environment, and reduce the shock of showing up on a campus where these will be her classmates.
Yesterday was much better she kept up pace (she felt like) they had fun. Thanks for all of the replies and feedback! Very good input some of you should write books!
Keep supporting her, keep giving her the words to say to reject their jibes (coming up with a set phrase and just repeating it over and over, so that there’s no value to them in engaging is one way), keep giving her the tools to continue to learn, including learning from those who have other ideas. She is being courageous in leaping into this class and if she wants to be there, she can’t let the nattering nabobs of criticism get her down. That puts an additional weight on her shoulders, we know, and unfortunately, I can’t promise that it goes away. But, I do know that being strong gives one tools to face many other challenges (and not just in math). If she can find one sympathetic peer, who doesn’t engage in the competitive posturing, though they might be hard to find, they exist, the path will be less hard.
And, tell her that we are pulling for her, we strangers on the internet.
some of you should write books!