No, it’s “you should lighten up on your ordinary kid, because pushing him 24/7 is causing him damage, and it’s negatively affecting those around him too.” Again, these are not all genius kids we’re talking about who need exceptional levels of challenge. Many are of average intelligence but are being expected to perform as if they weren’t.
The arms race affects everyone, including those who choose not to participate. Once a dynamic is established, it’s pretty hard to escape it. Even if you are able to ignore the social forces around you, the likelihood is that you’ll have a friend, a relative, a classmate who is touched by it in some significant way. We have a close family friend who has attempted suicide. We live in a community where children have thrown themselves in front of trains. Whether my kid participates in it or not, its effects are profound.
Plenty of arms race resumes are getting admitted. It’s true that plenty are not but then plenty of * every * resume type are not. The brilliant quirky kid who doesn’t have the right check boxes checked is the rare admission, hardly the norm. I do hope that the schools are starting to look more carefully at those resumes and with a different perspective.
A really important lesson in life, though - is to “run your own race” and not care or pay attention to what others do, especially when you and your kids have nothing in common other than you all happen to live in the same area. I daresay teaching your kids that is far, far more important in life than all the calculus in the world. This goes for the bright kid in the hood surrounded by people with no ambition, the bright kid in Sourh Dakota whose classmates can’t understand why anyone would leave SD, and it goes for the bright kid in NJ surrounded by the types of idiots who believe the meaning of life is admission to Harvard. TheGFG, your entire posting history is a history of paying lots of attention to everyone else’s goings- on in your community. That’s your choice.
Suppose your child does have things in common with his classmates? Suppose it’s his good friend that is cutting himself? Or is suicidal? Suppose your child is sensitive and internalizes the anxiety swirling around him without even quite understanding it? I just don’t believe it’s as clear cut as run your own race and ignore everyone else or jump into it with both feet.
As a family, we do pay attention to what goes on around us. We cook for the shelter, we contribute to the food bank, we have helped to organize coat drives. We are working on a human trafficking project, I have attended workshops on issues regarding mistreatment and racism in our local jails. We do this because even though we aren’t running the same races as those who rely on shelters or who are victims of human traffickers, what goes on around us, in our immediate community, affects all of us.
I told this story on another thread, but it suits this one too. D and I went into the bank to open up a student account. The person assisting us sees the name of D’s high school, and starts questioning us about how things work in our district. You see, her first grader really, really likes math. She was getting 100’s and stars on all her papers too. But then, in May, the class was administered a placement test for tracking into “advanced math.” IN FIRST GRADE. 17 children made it in to the special math, but she did not. 17! The little girl was devastated and confused. Hadn’t she done well in all the math she was taught in school? What went wrong? The child now believes she is NOT good at math at all. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, but nothing about what had occurred in the classroom told her she needed to do better, work harder, learn more. She only figured out she was not “up to par” after the special test (not the tests on the first grade curriculum, mind you) which in most cases was because the other kids had been taught outside of school in Kumon or elsewhere. So now, at age 6 or 7, her academic trajectory has been established, unless her parents find a couple of hundred dollars a month to counteract this. Does this seem right to you all?
At least for my older kids, no important math placement tests were administered until 6th grade. Then they gave a test to sort out who was going to take algebra in 7th grade, 8th grade, or not until high school. The problem was, the test had algebra problems on it. So the very bright, intuitive kids would figure enough of them out, and the kids who had already been taught algebra outside school would also do well. But the smart kids who would be capable of learning algebra if taught it, would not be selected. D1 did not make it in, but I fought it. Though certainly not a math genius, she still scored over 700 on the SAT in math, and was smart enough to be admitted to an elite school and earn a degree in economics there. Yet the system told her she wasn’t smart enough in math to be in our school’s ordinary top math track (though in reality that’s not even the top track anymore, since plenty of kids are taking AP Calc in middle school). That’s baloney.
This kind of thing is partly what parents are protesting in WWP–that you have to be in school outside school to make it, even if you are naturally bright.
What percentage of Stanford admits were not in the top 10% of their class, and not athletes? Approximately none. If a student at an arms race school wants to go to Stanford, they have to enter the arms race.
65% is not just a “stat.” I regard this story as an example of a cultural split between the majority of the parents with children in the system, and the rest of the town. According to the latest census, West Windsor is 37.7% Asian, and 54% white. However, those stats are changing rapidly. (You can play around with census facts for West Windsor here: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml?src=bkmk#none. The 2014 “American Community Survey” found the shifts in population.
According to this article, the white population is dropping, while the Asian population is surging: http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2011/06/asian_population_jumps_in_grea.html. More Asian residents are entering politics, which is a good thing.
The Board of Education seems to be staffed with highly educated members: http://www.west-windsor-plainsboro.k12.nj.us/about_us/board_of_education/board_members/. Four out of nine are Asian or Asian American. The board members do not look to me like people who would stand for education being “dumbed down” in any way.
It is possible to offer a fine, public education which prepares students for college, without the need to guard train crossings.
But as the number of Asians increase, it’s harder for students to be able to “win” just by working hard and engaging in the Saturday and summer school routine, because all the other Asians are doing the same thing. So more and more is required to succeed, and thus the stress level rises.
Or you could have redefined success as one rung lower than Dartmouth and Stanford (and their peers). Were you willing to do that?
"Suppose your child does have things in common with his classmates? Suppose it’s his good friend that is cutting himself? Or is suicidal? "
Well, then, you support the child as appropriate and teach him that some races aren’t worth winning if they come at the cost of your mental health. Even if you (gasp, horrors) don’t get to put an Ivy sticker on your car.
You question the goal that everyone is racing towards, instead of continuing to hold it up as the goal.
“What percentage of Stanford admits were not in the top 10% of their class, and not athletes? Approximately none. If a student at an arms race school wants to go to Stanford, they have to enter the arms race.”
Any student anywhere who wants to go to Stanford will have to work his butt off. But then you have to decide - is Stanford worth it at any cost to my child? I say no (of course, insert elite school of your choice for Stanford, it’s just illustrative).
IMO, “I want to go to Stanford” is the wrong goal. The goal to me is - do your best, love learning, but take time out to be human too and that means having family dinner, not having ECs that involve driving all over the state, and having time just to chill with friends, etc. “I want a college that will provide an excellent education” is a fine goal, but defining it so narrowly as a handful of schools is just silly.
The other thing is, for the super selective schools, passion in some EC by itself is unlikely to do it. Passion must come with a high level of achievement in order to stand out in the context of super selective school admission. I.e. the “arms race” applies to ECs as well as academics, and the super selective schools are effectively encouraging it.
“in May, the class was administered a placement test for tracking into “advanced math.” IN FIRST GRADE. 17 children made it in to the special math, but she did not. 17! The little girl was devastated and confused. Hadn’t she done well in all the math she was taught in school? What went wrong? The child now believes she is NOT good at math at all. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, but nothing about what had occurred in the classroom told her she needed to do better, work harder, learn more. She only figured out she was not “up to par” after the special test (not the tests on the first grade curriculum, mind you) which in most cases was because the other kids had been taught outside of school in Kumon or elsewhere. So now, at age 6 or 7, her academic trajectory has been established, unless her parents find a couple of hundred dollars a month to counteract this. Does this seem right to you all?”
This sort of thing happens all of the time.
Lessons
- THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR OBSERVANT AND INVOLVED PARENTS.
Never assume that the school is always making the best decisions for your child. Sometimes they get it wrong.
- OPEN A DIALOGUE WITH THE SCHOOL.
The parents should be talking with the teacher and understanding what the students in the other class know that their D does not. Is there a clear difference? Or not really? In first grade, it really may not matter which class she is in, but by 5th or 6th grade it will. Know the tracking process and be involved in finding the best track for your child.
- "The child now believes she is NOT good at math at all."
TEACH HER THAT STUDENTS SUCCEED AT MATH THROUGH EFFORT NOT BY BEING GOOD AT IT.
If kids think they do well because they are good at it then, when they have difficulty, they will assume they are just not good at it, instead of working through it. If you ask the students whether math achievement comes from effort or ability, you will find the the best students almost always believe it is about effort, and the lower performers believe it is about ability.
- "...her academic trajectory has been established, unless her parents find a couple of hundred dollars a month to counteract this. Does this seem right to you all?"
I doubt it is established in 1st grade, but by 6th grade it may be. You have to understand the tracking process for your school. If the parents know the skills she needs to work on they can work with her themselves without Kumon.
I think that this happening now is actually a break for the parents. At this age they have an opportunity to get involved, learn what she needs to know for various tracks, and find the right one for her. In elementary, our school has a regular group and an accelerated group, but for several years, it is easy to move from one to the other. Students struggling in the advanced group move to the regular group and students in the regular group who improve, move to the accelerated group. Basically, the accelerated group moves a bit faster and assigns more homework. They do this for math and English. Not being put in the accelerated group initially is not a big deal at all.
@3girls3cats: I love the work you are doing.
I think that you are extrapolating a sensitivity and compassion for those who have less than your family, who are in tougher situations, with the sensitivity and reactivity to academic competition that then compels families to do evermore in terms of acceleration, enrichment, etc.
Having the compassionate response, and working toward being the helping hand, is admirable, neighborly, and human.
Placing those activities on the EC’s and service portion of the college application then make such work suspect, and the intentions and effort ring thin.
And yet this is how it must be done these days, despite that for your kids, community service is something which is a natural expression of your thanks for the good health, wealth and fortune you have.
@TheGFG, this is a poorly designed placement test, and likely the cause of much of the problem. You don’t test kids on whether they can already do algebra to see if they should be placed in algebra. You test them on the material you would be teaching them if you didn’t place them in algebra.
As far as acceleration in grade school goes, the same thing applies. You don’t test kids to see if they know how to do multiplication to qualify them to learn multiplication. All they need is mastery of the material that comes before multiplication. If the tests were well-designed, then the good students who had mastered the prerequisite material would be able to qualify just fine without having pre-learned the material they are trying to place into.
As far as economic inequality favoring students who can afford tutoring and Kumon, that may be a factor when you get into high school level math. But my kids were both able to accelerate because, unlike most parents, I was willing to make sure they learned their math facts in the early grades. So, while the other kids were flunking their weekly competency tests and going home with the same material to study over again the next week and the next week, my kids actually learned the assigned material and moved on. This did not require any special parental resources. I quizzed my kids for 10 or 15 minutes when we were in the car and if there wasn’t much car time that day, I gave them one page of drill problems on that week’s math facts which required 5 minutes to complete. Having efficiently completed years of monotonous drills, first kid started algebra in 5th grade. No summer school, no tutors.
@GFG: #445:
Nicely said.
@“Cardinal Fang” : Stanford actually shouldn’t be the case study to use as its stats are a little lower than HYPM, Chicago, Columbia, Vanderbilt, and WUSTL for example. They are more in the Duke, Penn, JHU range of incoming statistics despite getting higher application volume than those schools. I don’t know how they select GPA’s, but they don’t appear in a rush to achieve a perfect score range although it is quite high. After they got in a certain SAT range, it is clear that they began looking at certain other characteristics and their essay prompts suggest the same thing. Even for those who are perfect on paper, it may be hard to attain the qualities they seek in many of the students they admit. The same sort of goes for HYPM but they just require more “perfect” academic credentials.
I think any child who is smart and capable enough to eventually be qualified for elite school admission, should have a fair shot at developing the necessary skills so that he can throw his hat in the ring senior year along with the other thousands and his application will have a realistic chance. In WWP and districts like it, very smart kids will be eliminated from contention for those schools, and for schools one and two rungs down, in elementary school, unless they participate in an expensive parallel school system. What I have been trying to communicate is that in a district where kids are now taking AP Calc BC in 7th grade or earlier, the student who takes Calc BC as a sophomore or junior is only AVERAGE. Before long, AP Calc will have to be taken in 5th grade to stay ahead. That’s where the stress is coming from.
As I explained upthread, there is a trickle down effect such that lower ranked schools are now requiring the stats that used to be needed for tippy top schools, eg. bio at TCNJ.
"Though certainly not a math genius, she still scored over 700 on the SAT in math, and was smart enough to be admitted to an elite school and earn a degree in economics there. Yet the system told her she wasn’t smart enough in math to be in our school’s ordinary top math track "
But she got into the elite school you were craving. So how did it hurt her?