Do you like "The Diane Rehm Show"? Tthere are two hour-long shows a day, so you can't possibly keep up, so you don't feel guilty about skipping a subject that isn't interesting. I would also like to listen to ItunesU classes, but there are so many, it would be nice to get good recommendations.

Double post.

Really learning Latin is a lot of work. I don't support what seems to be the conventional plan, that you need to do some super-basic Latin program in roughly first grade that teaches almost nothing, to prepare them for a Latin program which starts assuming no Latin prereqs in 3rd grade, to prepare them for another Latin program that teaches very little in about fifth grade which again starts from scratch. At the end of that, the plan is usually to start from the beginning _again_ and after many years of painful work, the student has learned maybe a semester or two worth of high school Latin, which they then start from the beginning yet again. I say, wait until they can do a real Latin program, there's lots to choose from, but do it rigorously at an age when they can handle the rigor. There's no problem waiting until High School or a bit earlier, and doing it seriously then. Until that time, get English grammar down.

Can you imagine the impact if schools had to publish these statistics, and were judged and graded on them? Referrals would drop overnight, and classrooms would get a ton worse.

One confusing thing is that the British edition is published in 5 books, and the North American is published in 4 books, but there are (I think) 6 extra chapters in the North American edition which aren't in the British editions. If you've finished the British editions, the last 6 chapter in the NA version are adapted readings from authentic Latin, and may be a good starting off point for intermediate level study.

Good luck. I'm sure that this time around, you've (both) got plenty of good questions to ask.

Before investing years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars in an academic endeavor to start a small business, I'd write a business plan first. While I agree that there may be a need for college counseling for homeschoolers, I'm not sure (at least in my area) that there's a market for it. How many customers do you think you could get each year? How much to you think you could charge each one? How will you market your services? Are you just offering your services to your immediate area or nation-wide? What happens if someone doesn't like your advice and sues you?

I wouldn't be sure about this. The lesson ordering is very unconventional (3rd declension nouns are taught before 1st declension). The nice thing about Latin is that there are a ton of textbooks available very inexpensively on the used market. (I picked up my Wheelock used for $5). There's also many perfectly useful textbooks out of copyright available for free on google books. I can't imagine that a video lecture would be substantially better than any of these books. And, much as I love Teaching Company courses, my pet peeve is that they are all 101 level classes like this. There's no "second year Latin" or "Senior year economics", etc. This is especially true for Latin, which has many, many first year books, but there is a dearth of good intermediate level textbooks.

The bar models are petty trivial in the early years of Singapore. However, they become vital by about year 4. There are a lot of problems that that are almost impossible for a student to solve without them. More importantly, make sure you understand the bar models, otherwise, there are a lot of problems in the older years that parents are tempted to solve with algebra, which the kids probably won't get. So, I'd make sure that he gets the bar models now, but if he gets them, I wouldn't go overboard beating a dead horse.

Are you wanting to teach these classes to homeschoolers or in the public schools? If the former, I just can't imagine finding enough local homeschoolers who would be willing to pay good money to outsource an AP class, at least in my neck of the woods. Would this be a full time job, or just part time?

Exactly. I don't understand why they are so disconnected. With the hindsight I have now, had I been in 8's shoes in this interview, I would have liked to ask the Dean. "Well, if you don't like the caliber of students that the admissions department is selecting for you, what are you doing to change the admissions process? Do the admissions folks even know that you are unhappy with what they are providing?" I wonder how many public schooling problems are driven by the college admissions process, and the desire to build up a "perfect" resume for college admissions. The admissions game isn't just about selecting some students from a pool, it also has a large influence on what the students do.

I totally agree. To a certain extent, I feel like the colleges have brought this on themselves. They select the students they admit, and they signal very clearly what they want. I'm guessing that this dean, complaining about all the high-stat kids, doesn't care a whit if they earned a varsity letter on some sports team, or served in a leadership role in some extracurricular activity. But that's what admissions keeps insisting is important.

I would definitely declare my major as soon as possible, assuming you are confident what it is. There may be many small benefits to having declared your major. Majors may be able to get into otherwise-full classes. There may be a mailing list and information about major-related extracurricular activities that you might not otherwise hear about.

The perception is certainly that Spanish is easier than Latin, which may be a good reason to take Latin... However, it is difficult to define "harder". Generally, the goals for studying the two languages are very different, and thus the goalposts are different. That is, the standards for getting an "A" in Latin 4 are very different from getting an "A" in Spanish 4. If your goal is to study to an "A" grade level in the fourth year, my guess is the amount of work would be about the same. However, by that fourth year in Spanish, the student should be able to speak at length in a way that a native speaker could understand her, and should be able to read Spanish language texts with some speed (maybe 10 to 20 pages a night (taking about an hour)). In Latin 4, a good student is reading 20-30 lines of poetry a night, again, taking roughly an hour, and not speaking or listening to the language at all. Which is harder? I think it boils down to the individual student, and how their brain is wired.

Boatloads of AP exams? Or Boatloads of AP exams scoring 5? I'd really be shocked if many students who scored a 5 on AP Calc (even AB) would be sunk by the math in honors freshman physics.

I think the Regent's Exam is just a New York State thing. I'm not sure any other states have an equivalent.

I'm not even sure that the existence of some class called "Algebra" even means much anymore, at any grade. I think there's been a ton of "title inflation" and content inflation, so that two different classes, both called "Algebra" can have very different content and rigor. When you can earn points just for attempting homework, and "earn back" test points by doing corrections or retaking the same test, and earn points for "classroom participation", there can be a lot of kids passing with high scores without actually learning much of anything. The trend to pushing Algebra earlier and earlier, I suspect, has been accompanied by a trend for dumbing it down. Frankly, I'd prefer to teach a rigorous, full Algebra when the student is ready for it. Accelerating into a watered down version doesn't help anyone. The only metric I trust now is AP exam scores, but they are generally only at the high school level. I don't think it is possible to teach to these tests. I do agree with you though, that the tracked classroom is a good thing for the upper-tracked kids, as it reduces a lot of friction.

I would pick Latin, but that's my bias. Latin, done well, will set him apart in the eyes of colleges from the zillions of kids studying Spanish. Almost all colleges accept Latin as a foreign language, though a few do not. (I think the service academies are the most well known of those that don't). If you really want to do Latin well, there's some very rigorous on-line options, which can provide external validation by prepping for the National Latin Exam (NLE) and/or the AP Latin exam. Of course, it is possible to do both, if you have the time and interest.

Subscription to Make magazine?

Whose property is the fence on?

I rely on the public library and an occasional garage sale find. I believe the BBC ones are public domain, and can be found online. Recommendations: "Civilisation: A Personal View". Perhaps the best documentary ever made. Very BBC. "Cosmos" Neil de Grasse Tyson has a high bar to clear as he is making a followup to the original

I think there are some subjects, like math, foreign language, and musical instrument practice, which really benefit from even a little bit every day. Skipping days (or even worse, many weeks) would really hurt. Then, there are other subjects, like lab sciences, and art, which really benefit from a single big hunk of time to sit down and work through a project. They don't need this big block of time every day, perhaps weekly would be good enough. The key to "block" scheduling is to match the subjects to the time patterns that best fit them.

Didn't you just write "I doubt it's the students with good scores on the SAT writing section who pose the problem."?

One thing I've noticed about Khan is that it only measures time the student spends "doing things", like watching videos or doing problems. It doesn't measure the time the student takes trying to figure out what to do next, between videos, checking up on scores and badges or lolligaging around. Ask me how I know...

Seems like admissions is sending a clear signal to applicants: "Our school doesn't care about writing".