MYOS, He does plan on taking Latin 5 and French 5, which is post AP. I just don’t think I can make him study history. I am loath to split the schedule, however, as frankly I think he needs to slow down, not hurry up. I honestly can’t believe how hard students work in the USA. I was attending a meeting with students, parents and teachers about coping with stress earlier this year. While my son is pretty relaxed and happy go lucky, many of the other kids stated staying up till midnight every night, incredible academic/EC/sports stress, and lack of sleep to cope. I never had this experience. Really I don’t find it healthy. Yes, you can always do more, but then you can always do less as well. From where I stand, I see that US colleges ask FAR more of kids than anywhere else in the world really.
^Do you really think this is typical? You must live in a very rarefied community.
You need to understand if there is a point to all of this.
Lots of people like math competitions and lots of people dont. So we can just disagree on the subject. Some Fields medalists have made comments that math competitions are very counter productive. Math competitions tend to be extremely bad for girls as a general rule . They work to lower their self esteem and drive them out of the field . This is actually a fairly serious problem in the US There has been quite a bit written about the subject. I have never heard of a university professor coming to a high school to teach. Most high school kids just take classes at the university
Only the most highly selective US colleges would be that way.
However, highly selective schools in other countries can also be stress inducing for the aspiring students. In some countries, admission is entirely or primarily based on a high stakes standardized test (one chance only), so test preparation is magnified in importance there.
Nevada, I agree that it is impossible to plan out 4 years, but that’s the requirement from the school. As for competition math, I think it is good on two levels. First, it’s fun. Second, there is nothing better than competition math to teach a kid some humility. My son now knows very well that he is not that good in math, and there are kids who are far better than him. I think it’s an important lesson to have. As for Latin, you ask why? In return, I have to ask, why not, if that’s what the kid wants to do? Not every choice has to be practical. It is important also to do what you want to do. Don’t people take courses anymore just because they want to? I know I did that all my life.
As for what kind of music he really likes, let me recount a story, with some virtual chuckle. My son changed schools when in 6th grade, from one private school to another. We got a private school admissions counselor to review his application. Well, it was all about music, and classical music. The counselor thought that it must have been us that taught him to write all that, as there is no way an 11 year old would naturally gravitate towards classical music. We pleaded not guilty, as, really, we know nothing about classical music; we are first generation immigrants and don’t come from an European heritage.
Of course, the counselor didn’t believe. He started to ask my son probing questions about whether he really likes classical music. Now, mind you, this is a headstrong kid who is also mature beyond his years and quite perceptive. He understood what is going on. He just let loose on the counselor and kept lecturing him for some 5-10 minutes about what are the distinct characteristics among the different periods, why he likes moden atonal classical music, who are his favorite composers, which are their most famous pieces, which recording of these pieces are good, and what the music really tells him - so on and so forth. After listening to that for a few minutes, the counselor told us, “I think he has earned the right to say that his life revolves around classical music.” But he also warned us that nobody would ever believe that it is an interest he developed on his own, and asked us to tweak his application essays and talk about other things like sports.
We dropped the guy like a hot potatoe. Our son did fine in the private school admissions, despite gushing all about Ligeti and John Cage.
UCBAlumnus, Having gone through such a standardized test myself, let me humbly suggest that there is really no comparison. It’s stressful because it’s an elimination exam, but not stressful because you have to do a lot to ace it. The subjects are few and the content is limited. There’s no requirement for ECs and sports, which are huge time sinks. Languages don’t count. I hardly ever studied for it.
txstella, I do not know if it is typical. I am extrapolating from my own experience, which may very well be the wrong thing to do.
Actually, a very large percentage of colleges and universities in the US give little or no importance to ECs in admissions. For frosh admission, high school academic record and SAT or ACT scores tend to be the primary factors at most schools, with others being of much lower importance or not considered. Only at the most selective schools, where the number of applicants presenting top end high school academic records and top end test scores is greater (often by several times) the number who can be admitted, do ECs, essays, etc. get magnified in importance to distinguish between those applicants with top end high school records and test scores.
Just a couple of points. We can round and round about competition math. The critics would say that humility is not what you want to teach your kids and in fact that drives many many kids including a lot of girls out of math. Collaboration is what you want to teach kids when it comes to math.
If Latin is what the kid wants to do great. But why not spanish which seems to be universally practical these days. Have they ever tried Spanish.
Then again if classical is what they want great. But do they have an itunes account and an ipod? Have they been exposed to punk and country and hard rock and ska?
But remember UCBAlumnus, we are comparing top school in USA to top school outside USA. So you can’t really posit the example of a mediocre school in USA not asking for ECs. I understand that it is used as an elimination criteria. Outside the USA, selective colleges face the same problem as here, that there are a lot more qualified kids than number of seats. There are two ways to solve the problem. The first is to broaden the selection/elimination criteria, and make the kids do more. The other is to keep the criteria unchanged, but rank order the kids in a standardized test and lop off the bottom 90%. Both leads to a 10% success rate, but the latter requires less work for the students.
I am not arguing for one system vs. another. I am merely saying that kids work way too hard in the USA compared to what I have seen in my home country. That may be a good thing, but all good things become bad after a point. That’s why I want my son to take a step back and do less, and not more.
Nevada, I am a huge fan of humility, so we will just have to agree to disagree. In the USA, I have noticed that people in general lack humility and have a false sense of high self-esteem. It is in the culture. But IMHO it leads to sub-optimal results, at least in the workplace.
As for Spanish, he took Spanish from kindergarten to 6th grade and doesn’t want to do it any more. As for the other kinds of music, I am just as ignorant of them as I am of classical music, so I certainly didn’t introduce him to any. He picked up what he picked up, wherever he picked it up from.
It does not appear that your kid is overworked, though. If learning classical music and other things is what he does for fun, then it seems fine to let him do it.
The best results in this country in the workplace are not achieved by competition but by collaboration and teamwork. Most of the major tech companies and universities follow this model with great success. As I said before lack of self confidence has caused for huge problems with women in the tech and stem fields such as math.
Nevada, No one is forced to participate in the AMCs. Given that, why complain about them?
UCBAlumnus, My kid, thankfully, is fine, as it is impossible to make him do what he doesn’t want to do. You may recall that my original comment about American kids working too hard came in response to MYOS’s suggestion that he starts to split the day to take more college level classes in languages and history. Now, he is doubling up on languages because they are easy courses, and avoiding history because it is hard. So why upset the apple cart where he is in his bubble of easy subjects? I had a blast in high school as I only took science and math, and the obligatory languages where I was proud to get Cs. I did no sports, no ECs, just goofed about. I did fine in life regardless. An easy life, I think, is a good life.
I think the negative aspects to math competition you are citing are due more to a certain lack of social maturity among some of the kids who are seriously interested in this. My daughters were among the most successful math competitors at their schools and I never heard anyone suggest that they were disruptive in class. Quite the opposite.
For a kid who is way ahead of his peers academically it can be difficult to practice and learn collaboration. When a highly gifted and motivated kid is put in a group of kids who mostly don’t care, or even if they do, aren’t producing quality work, what happens is the gifted kid ends up doing all the work. This gets pretty old after a while. At least on a math team they have the opportunity to work out problems in practice with kids who do care and who may be among the few in their entire school or area to form an appropriate academic peer group.
Does he do ARML? That is a collaborative math competition. My son has fun with it and enjoys the overnight trip to the competition.
Mathyone, There’s really no point in putting a kid with an advanced math (or science, or languages, or music, or sports) ability in a group without it. In my opinion, each class should be segregated by interest and ability so that similar kids are grouped together. Then you take out all the problems like someone not collaborating, someone raising their hand too much, someone having to do all the work all the time etc.
Ynotgo, He does some kind of math league through school, but since that doesn’t involve any overnight trips, likely not ARML.
The negative aspects such as disruptive behavior show up at the university level not in high school. The loss of self esteem among girls from math competitions is a fact and research articles have been written about it. Collaboration is the rule at most math classes at major universities. That may not be the case in high school
Nevada, Are there any research articles that connect math competititons to disruptive behavior? 
There is an ARML forum on the AoPS website. If he looks at ARML and is interested, he could message Kent Merryfield on that forum to find out about groups that are local to you. Ours is through our local Math Circle, which is also a fun way to socialize with other mathy kids.
For the record, I agree some high schools put too much pressure on students, but often pointlessly (some schools in the Palo alto area come to mind)… If your son enjoys what he’s doing, let him continue. I was merely suggesting the half h half college schedule to find a way for him to continue combining languages. Sinc college classes meet two or three times a week rather than everyday it provides some flexibility. (Keeping in mind of course that there is more work in autonomy: hw, study group, etc)