<p>I don’t think it’s a race to the finish. It’s a desire to learn and be challenged and happy throughout one’s education. Suffering through material that one has understood for years is not fair to student or teacher (and can cause bad behavior by either). It causes all sorts of problems. It isn’t a straight path. Students can veer off in all sorts of directions. My younger son took a logic course through the philosophy department at Rutgers when he was 10. It wasn’t exactly mathematical logic, but it certainly kept his interest. He took a second advanced philosophy course the next summer. He did have multiple grade skips and radical subject accelerations in public school including math, but he also took the opportunity to study topics not covered in a typical curriculum (in summers, he did this by his own choice). Other university courses he took over the years have included game design, biochemistry (working with green fluorescent protein) and some fine arts classes. Don’t assume that kids who took extra classes were pushed. While that may be the case, it could just be a parent running after and trying to keep up. My younger son will finish high school with enough credits for an associates degree in mathematics, if he wanted one. He will take those credits and become a freshman somewhere and enjoy a college experience (a bit younger than most). Or he’ll take another year and find something else to do and still be younger than most. Who knows. We’ll see. </p>
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<p>While true, it appears the “parental pushing” is more common these days. The apparent result is that high schools commonly have the two year calculus sequence (AB in one year followed by the rest of BC the next year), even though one would ordinarily expect that students good enough in math to be two years advanced in math can easily handle all of AB and BC in one year. Another result is the existence of non-AP calculus courses for math-accelerated students who would have difficulty with calculus AB (which is slow paced compared to calculus that the student will see in college).</p>
<p>When I was in high school, students a year ahead in math completed precalculus in 11th grade and then took calculus BC in 12th grade. It was assumed that those students (and the occasional two years ahead student who completed precalculus in 10th grade) could handle that. But there was not really much parental pushing back then. Only students who were good at math in 7th-8th grade were placed in the advanced track, but the regular track was considered good enough for college-bound students.</p>
<p>Perhaps the increasing focus on elite-admissions schools has brought out the tiger in many parents who fear that if their kids are not pushed ahead in math in 6th-8th grade, they will be shut out of desirable colleges or engineering majors. While the popularity of elite-admissions colleges (and other goals like medical school, top-14 law school, Wall Street, and consulting) means that they can effectively require students to reach eliteness two schools ahead, or at least consider the implications of decisions made that early (e.g. middle school math placement for elite-admissions colleges, whether to take college courses taken while in high school for medical and top-14 law school admissions, and the need to have stellar high school credentials to get into an elite-admissions college for Wall Street and consulting), the vast majority of educational opportunities in the US do not require that.</p>
<p>"True, they are not the same thing, but the OP said her daughter wants to be an engineer and loves robotics and computers. " - Computer Programming has NOTHING to do with engineering either. Love of computers does not tell anything about how person will feel about engineering or Cumputer proigramming which are absolutely different things. I do not even understand at all the title: “Software Engineer”, I have no idea what that means, since developing a software has absolutely nothing, zero to do with the engineering or even developing/designing hardware. The same actually goes for Computer Science, there is absolutely no science involved in the developing of the software, which is what CS graduates do - they write computer programs using various languages. Well, I might be the only person who is consufsed about it, but I have been EE for about 11 years and I have been in IT for over 30 years, I believe that I have at least some kind of idea what is the job of EE and Software developer.</p>
<p>“While the popularity of elite-admissions colleges (and other goals like medical school, top-14 law school, Wall Street, and consulting) means that they can effectively require students to reach eliteness two schools ahead,”
- Scratch Medical School from this, Med. Schools do not care a bit what you took in HS, where you went to college, your local unknown UG si perfectly fine. All you need is very high collge GPA=3.6+, decent MCAT score, some medical EC, some social skills to gp thru interviews and, believe me you will have a very very good choices of Medical schools, in fact, you will have very hard time deciding. No eliteness is requires at any stage. Actully, one may attend the lowest of the lowest Med. School to be a great success in medicine. Medicine is focusing strictly on personal accomplishments. </p>
<p>@MIamiDAP, despite your strong opinion on this topic, many Universities house their computer science programs in their engineering schools.</p>
<p>I don’t think the distinctions matter. Kids that are good at science and math may want to also think about engineering and computer science which are generally hardly taught at all at most high schools. I’d agree with Miami that many engineers were tinkerers as kids. I’ve always thought of comp sci as another branch of math, but it still requires the kind of brain that is “good at math”. Are there any good programmers who were terrible math students?</p>
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<p>College courses taken while in high school do affect GPA used for medical and law school admissions. That is the consideration being referred to where high school students may have to think about medical and law school implications when offered college courses while in high school.</p>
<p>ucb - how did I know my 2 older kids were humanities-type kids? Because from kindergarten on they were very predictable in their testing. One was a big time reader and writer and very lopsided and the other was a creative soul whose testing was balanced but he like to color outside the lines so to speak which doesn’t go over very well with teachers. Those two both have graduated college. S1 capitulated to what the world expected and graduated with a Business/English double major. #2 sprinkled his schedule with whatever fancied him at the moment although squeezed out a Major/Minor but took an extra semester to get to it. </p>
<p>I think my comment had to do more with kids progressing at their speed and not accelerating because it’s the expectation or because parents think they should. My kids all had friends whose parents drove them to the nearby university when they were too young to drive because they were super-math kids…they needed to accelerate because they really did “get math.” Even my #3 isn’t a super-math kids, just a good solid student who moves on a pretty linear path with math and he hasn’t been held back in engineering school with the curriculum pre-req flow charts. The kids that skip ahead might benefit from being able to progress through the flow chart alittle faster but it’s not terribly significant because they have all the other required curriculum that can’t be replaced in high school to complete. My 3 has friends that entered uni in multivariable so they are a year ahead of finishing the math requirements but by junior year they will be all pretty much “even” on the flow chart. The one thing that kids who accelerate math for engineering have that my son doesn’t have is room in his schedule for many enrichment classes if he wants to finish “on time.” </p>
<p>We pulled clout when the line in the sand was drawn in 6th grade: “no one gets to skip 6th grade math and no test could be given to be placed at a higher level.” S had a natural gift for math that had nothing to do with having been taught the math or not and he neither liked nor disliked math he just was able to do it easily and we didn’t want him to be bored to death. He had very high scores in all math tests up to that time and it was the first time we had to use his “gifted” status as such since K. He did get to skip 6th grade math, went on to college for physics/math, graduated in philosophy/math, and has now been a computer programmer (or “engineer” as they call it in his new job), that is what he really likes to do, for the last 2 years (yay, MiamiDap). In general he had pressure to excel from us but no push in any particular direction through HS or college, but our tongues almost required plastic surgery on many occasions.</p>
<p>Update: I went to her school and got the sixth grade textbook, her principal (at her new school) and signed the papers to give her permission to test. We have been going over the material for the past 2 weeks after work. She is taking the credit be exam test in 4 days. I am confidant she will make the required 90% to pass. She has been “bragging” to her friends that she would help them with their math homework. I really think she will be fine. But I will not hesitate to get her into tutoring if she struggles any. So, for a recap, she should be in Pre-Algebra school starts. Also, the 6th grade textbook really contained very few concepts she had not been taught in 5th grade. </p>
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