EmseB
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Posts posted by EmseB
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I would encourage her, and look for ways to keep out of debt (or at least think of a maximum debt that is acceptable) while pursing her goal. This might include planning out community college years, planning a work & savings plan by looking at costs of colleges she might want to transfer to, etc. Say, "Okay, let's do this!" and then keep it realistic and plan, plan, plan so she understands the commitment and logistics necessary.
Starting out at a CC allows her plenty of time between now and when she would actually need to transfer, so if she finds her interests broaden or change, you wouldn't be commited to a huge debt at a four-year school with a very specific major.
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Forgive my hijack, but I'm having trouble defining exactly what WP is just by looking at the site. Are the themed packages like a history spine with assigned readings and projects? It says it's open and go, but it seems like there'd be a lot of prep from what I'm looking at.
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I'm just getting over severe nausea of early (half) of pregnancy. I cut back on a lot of stuff, but my kids are young and it was the beginning of the year so it was a lot of review for my 2nd grader, and honestly my kindy student is progressing amazingly now that I'm back on track. Now that I'm through it I can totally say that I would not make a big deal about "falling behind" in kindergarten. With my guy, I did one lesson of Ordinary Parents' Guide...in my bed...every day. We did the Saxon worksheets together, but no way was I able to pull off a math meeting everyday. Yet, now at lesson 37, we do math meetings and if there's something that we glossed over a few weeks ago, I just explain it to him and we work from there. I also had him do a McRuffy handwriting sheet every day and got a cheap-o math book from the grocery store of all places that he could do "fun math" in. I just couldn't read aloud a lot, so lots of audio books were listened to while I dozed.
This age is so forgiving. I know exactly how you feel, and I told my hubby that if there was ever a year I could have used a good school for the kids, it would have been this year with the nausea at first and then a big break in March for the newbie. But I honestly think they get so much out of learning that when mom feels bad they need to help, they need to be flexible. They just learn more about real LIFE at home, especially during the hard times, that it's been neat for me to see my big guy step up and become really independent and my k'er work to help his littlest brother and have the whole family come together to get through it. I know it is easy for me to say on the other side of things, but they did learn a lot even if it wasn't about academics all the time. :)
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My oldest played stack the states on kindle and memorized them just from playing the game.
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We do Saxon M-Th, and then I assign him a section of BA on Fridays (our light, "fun" school day).
I do it because I like the solid foundation Saxon provides, but I also know that at this point it's not terribly challenging for him and I'd like him to develop different ways of thinking mathematically and BA does that for us.
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i really think reading the release from the Coalition for Responsible Home Education is helpful for understanding the supporting side.
Except they talk in terms of access. The commission and others are talking in terms of requirements. It's all fine and good to say my kid should be able to have a psych eval, but it's quite different to say they should be required to have one to make sure that they are "normal" based on the standards of my school district. Or to say that as a homeschool parent my kid should be able to have an IEP and access to resources. But once my kid must have an IEP because he's not meeting public school benchmarks, and then I must start meeting objectives and standards set out by the district, that opens a whole 'nother can of worms.
To support "responsible" homeschooling in this light simply supporting one definition of responsible homeschooling, and I find it really just means bringing public school standards and curriculum home.
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I have also met conservatives who are against homeschooling as well.
I have met many conservatives who don't homeschool and feel very strongly against homeschooling their own children, and even strongly for putting their kids in public schools. I have yet to meet a conservative (someone who philosophically believes in conservatism) who advocates for making it illegal for parents to choose to homeschool their children if they so choose.
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Moreover, why not just write an article about West? He has conflated the Sandy Hook Commissions proposals on mental health with the inconsistent arguments of anti-homeschooling scholars. I guess hoping that we won't look carefully at the commission but just join in the frenzied rhetoric. His argument just as, if not more, sloppy than the one/ones he is criticizing.
Oh, sorry for posting again, but I meant to address this. West and the Sandy Hook Commission are both advocating for public policy change based on the idea that the state is simply allowing us all to homeschool our kids, but the government should be able, at any time, to ask us to jump through any number of hoops in order to retain our "right" to keep our kids out of public schools. In both cases, the underlying assumption is that kids who go to public schools are getting the oversight and care they need because the state is able to see the kids everyday and enact their standards for education, health and well being, whereas my kids don't get any government oversight and that's inherently a bad thing. If you read about the ills that West blames on homeschooling, and then see what the SHC is trying to fix by prescribing public policy for homeschoolers, it's not a conflation to say they are ideologically coming from the exact same place and advocating for very similar policies.
Williamson is talking about overarching ideology of both groups (Commission and anti-homschooling "scholars") and how it plays out in public policy advocacy.
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But, even with their clearly biased assumptions about homeschoolers, West and Reich and other opponents of homeschooling do not speak in the outrageous voice of someone like Williamson,
Um, really? She fancied up her language and it's not editorial style as Williamson's piece was, but the outrageousness is there. Especially in the parts about the harms of homeschooling
"Fundamentalist Protestant adults who were homeschooled over the last thirty years are not politically disengaged, far from it. ....They don't question authority, and they can't go AWOL. With little education, few if any job skills, and scant resources, their power either to influence the lines of authority within their own sphere, or to leave that sphere, is virtually nil."
and
"The husbands and wives in these families feel themselves to be under a religious compulsion to have large families, a homebound and submissive wife and mother who is responsible for the schooling of the children, and only one breadwinner. These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community's overall economic health and their state's tax base."
Not to mention that us homeschoolers are non-immunized diseases carriers waiting to incite a public health crisis.
Of course, I know a lot of people who believe this to be true about the majority of homeschoolers, so they probably wouldn't see any derisiveness here at all.
At any rate, in both cases, I try to look beyond the tone and look for the substance of what the author is trying to say as well as the merit of their claims (if I'm analyzing their writing). I do think tone can turn some people off of an article immediately, as I'm tempted to simply not read West's article based on her characterization of people who are somehow the core of unregulated homeschoolers, but I'm willing to look at what she can suppport because if what she's saying is true then I have to adjust my thinking instead of dismissing her outright. I have dismissed her, as it happens, but it's not because of her tone or obvious bias against fundamentalist protestant homeschoolers.
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If a liberal doesn't believe in a parent's right to choose the best education for their child (including homeschooling as well as any other approach), then they aren't liberal.
:)
ETA: I realize this is a little bit snarky, but I'm going to leave it with an explanation.
You do not get to disavow any conservatives who disagree with homeschooling, saying that they are "not REAL conservatives", without allowing liberals to do the same. Both people who consider themselves conservative and people who consider themselves liberal (as well as people who consider themselves neither) have a wide range of political viewpoints. The idea that in order to be "real conservatives" or "real liberals" (you don't see this about homeschooling with the liberals, but you see it about other political viewpoints where they sort of expect each other to be monolithic) they need to agree with all aspects of the party line is extraordinarily divisive and really fosters the "us against them" mentality.
I actually agree with this, so no explanation needed. :)
I was mainly basing my comment off of the actual definition of those terms as it applies to political philosophy, which is why in my post I tried to differentiate between progressive/leftist statists (who very much want homeschooling to be illegal) and liberals. To be clear, I don't think Williamson makes that distinction in his article specifically, but I don't think liberal homeschoolers (who are obviously for educational choice) would fall into the category of people he was lampooning like Prof. West or those trying to push for psych evals for homeschooled kids in CT. I do think, aside from the party politics we have here in the States, that there are objective philosophical tennents of both liberalism (classic liberalism) and conservativism, etc that do have a tendancy to manifest themselves into positions about big issues like education, welfare, etc. I think the philosophies can be objectively defined, but self-identification is trickier, especially American party politics is so divisive along the major issues. I'm sure there are leftists who would say that if you don't let the state educate your kids you can't be a true liberal, but obviously they haven't read the definition of liberal. :)
So yeah, anyway, I agree with almost everything you've said here, and I don't think a philosophically liberal person would be against educational choices.
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It might be helpful to read the specific leftist, progressive (not liberal, to be clear) perspecitive that Williamson was going after in his article (it is by the Professor West he mentions). It is full of logical fallacies and lazily cited assertions. It is in a journal specifically about public policy issues. And it is a dangerous perspective. If it seems like Williamson was attacking the statists on the left, it's because he was. That was his whole point. If you're a liberal proponent of homeschooling, then I don't think you would fall under the group of people he's speaking about.
And, not to "no true scotsman" this thread, but if a conservative doesn't think that a family has the inherent right to educate their own children, then they aren't conservative.
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Have you listened to SWB's talk on teaching writing? She addresses the exact issue of volume in ps writing vs WWE. In short, quantity does not equal learning or quality writing.
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When my guy was at that stage, I just put the book away for a couple of weeks, let him look at his other readers as he wanted to, did our normal read alouds and then returned to it with both of us feeling refreshed. After one of our breaks like this he started just getting it and not needing to sound everything out.
He's still a bit choppy on some things, so when he reads the sentences I make sure to ask him questions about them so he knows what he's reading and I know he's not just sounding out individual words to complete the task (What color was Kit's dog? Was the bug big or small?).
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I disagree that small children should be taught 9+6 as a discrete "fact" to be memorized without any understanding of what it represents or how the same numbers can be represented in different ways. As a child, I was never taught addition or subtraction facts at all. Every time I had to add or subtract, I had to count over with my fingers. The memorization of the fact came with the repetition of the concept.
It is quite possible that memorization feels like the intuitively right way to teach math to you, because that is how you were taught. Whereas making children manipulate the numbers over and over again till it becomes automatic is how I feel is the right way to teach, because that is the way I was taught.
Sorry my post wasn't clear, I don't think it should be memorization without understanding. I have yet to find a program or person that uses such. I was speaking specifically about the idea that if a student isn't "comfortable" with 9+6 then they should be taught that it is 9+1+6-1, so 10+5, so 15. Before I went down that road, if my student was uncomfortable with the idea that 9+6=15, then I would probably show them, either with a drawing or objects that 9 things + 6 things is 15 things. That concept of what addition actually is, if my child was uncomfortable with it, is what I would teach and cement before going on to manipulating the numbers (with further addition/subtraction!) to make the problems "easier". And I'm talking about single digit addition here.
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Perhaps you do not recall, but at about the mid point of the video you linked (after the "meat"), as they begin their anecdotal discussion (devoid of any actual dialogue about mathematical concepts or input from a math professional) of this example of conceptual instruction, the commentators sit and talk about how they just flat out memorized the facts when they were young. And, LOL, the last woman they asked said, "You're asking a girl who took algebra 1 three times. So I didn't know what they were saying under traditional....I can't imagine being in common core." Well, maybe if she had been taught with the kind of conceptual teaching they were mocking, she would have had understanding that would have led to success in algebra 1. :lol:
I took Algebra 1 twice, but I don't recall ever specifically memorizing math facts. :D Part of my problem was (I believe) that I was accelerated in math and I had a fall birthday, and when I got up to algebra, I just wasn't developmentally ready for it. Then again, maybe if I'd had an Asian math program I would have been fine. But when I went to college as an adult and took math, I loved it and I had no trouble.
But, if you asked my kids if they have to memorize math facts, they would hopefully answer yes. Of course, that's not all we do, either.
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Okay, I can't get multi-quote to work on the board and the wyswyg editor is giving me fits when I try to reply to parts of posts, so sorry if this is a mess when I post.
Roadrunner said:
As long as nobody is having their kids drill 7 + 9 = 16 without understanding it, all is good. If anybody is blindly memorizing facts than they should reconsider. I have seen enough posts on this board that sound like blind memorization. I want to caution against that approach (lots of people read this board). No reason to take things personally.I wasn't taking it personally, I thought you were commenting on something in the thread and I was trying to figure out what the context of your statement was as it related to the rest of the conversation.
Wendyroo said:It is a bit misleading to say that Peter memorized the single digit addition facts, because he only knows the facts up to 10, and he just picked them up along the way. When we started Singapore Essentials he was counting on his fingers a lot. When we started 1A he was still using Cuisenaire rods to figure out the 7, 8, 9, and 10 fact families We never drilled the facts, but by the start of 1B he had slowly mastered them.I'm pretty sure I didn't say he memorized them, I think in the portion you quoted I used the same word that you are using (mastered). I think the nitpick is important, because kids who master math facts in traditional programs don't just memorize them either. No, they don't regroup them every time they do a computation (single-digit), but they know that 9 things + 6 things = 15 things and it isn't just a fact without meaning. I think we might be talking past each other, because I feel like much of the beef I have with conceptual math is a lack of mastery that I see when it's taught by people who don't know that the kids still have to master the facts (as your son did). And when people have a beef with traditional, they think that we're just making our kids "blindly memorize" stuff without learning meaning. Neither of those caricatures is wholly true.
As for the final paragraph...for Peter (and me), 9+6 falls into the same category as 28+37. Both of those are addition with regrouping and get treated the same way. Sure, he could carry out that process on 9+6 earlier than 28+37, because 9+6 has less digits, but he did not memorize it.
I was the valedictorian of my high school class, I went to MIT, earned all A's and graduated with a Bachelors and Masters in engineering. I am very good at math, and yet when faced with the problem 8+5 I still regroup and add in my head. It is fast, lightening fast, but I still go through the process rather than having it memorized.
I absolutely do not agree that you need to know that 9+6 = 15 if you want to know that 9+6 = 10+5. If I have a cup half full of water and a bottle half full of water and I pour some water from the bottle into the cup, I am 100% sure that I still have the same amount of water total even though I don't have the faintest idea how much that is. This is the exact concept I am working on with my 3 year old in math right now: if you have 5 counters and then split them into a pile of 2 and a pile of 3, you still have 5 counters. And then if you move one counter from your 2 pile and add it to your three pile, you now have a 1 pile and a four pile and you still have 5 counters. I am confident that by the time he is ready for Singapore 1A that he will have no trouble seeing that 9+6 = 10+5.Yes, but he has to know that both of those are 15, or else, what's the use of knowing they are the same? At some point you have to get to the actual sum and not just know there's water in the glass. He has to know that there are 15 counters in either case, no? He has to know that 9+1=10 6-1=5 so 9+6=10+5. There is value in knowing how to manipulate these facts, I'm not saying there isn't. All I'm saying is that at some point a kid has to know the sums (and with fast recall, otherwise regrouping 8+5 any time you need to know becomes painful), or the manipulation is meaningless and confusing.
And, honestly, for single digit addition, I can't imagine having to regroup every time I wanted to do quick math in my head. I can do it for larger problems if I need to, but 8+5 just pops up as 13 in my brain when someone asks. That doesn't mean that I can't also recognize that it is 10+3, but for everyday situations I can't see the value in having to regroup in my head in order to know it at the single digit level.
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Obviously, in order to do that problem mentally "the Singapore way" Peter had to know that 10 - 8 = 2 and 3 + 3 = 6 and 7 - 2 = 5. There also can be a lot of repetition in Singapore (depending on how much the student requires and how the teacher chooses to utilize the program components). Peter fully understands the concept of addition with regrouping, but he can do a problem like that quickly and accurately because we have practiced A LOT of them.
And I think this is key. And yes, your son is advanced doing this at 5.5. I also have a 5.5 year old and it is taking him much longer to learn these concepts and this application would confuse him, whereas my older DS was like Peter and mastered it easily. The point being, Peter mastered and knew what those single digit facts were in order to break down the larger numbers and apply them to a more difficult problem.
But what I've quoted here what I was trying to point out in my last post. He had to learn all those facts and repeat them to be able to master the manipulation easily. And, IM(limited)E, that is not what public schools are doing with CC implementation of conceptual math, so they are losing a lot of what you have gained by having your son learn math this way. And if a teacher is not as well versed as you in teaching this method or as fluent in math as they should be, then this is going to be even more difficult to impart to the student.
I think Singapore is a great program for some kids, but not all. And what got me into this discussion originially was the CC instruction video showing teachers how to teach 9+6 as 10+5 to kids who aren't "comfortable" with the idea that 9+6 is 15. So, it's trying to teach conceptual math without mastering the facts that you're talking about above and I think that's where a lot of the pushback is coming from.
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I can't believe there are people who blindly have kids memorize "math facts."
Can I ask who you're referring to here? Or which program? Maybe I skimmed too much to see someone who is advocating this?
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The problem with this, though, is that once they get accustomed to just memorizing facts instead of breaking numbers down, it is virtually impossible to convince them to do it in any other way than the one they are comfortable with. They are very, very resistant to going back and re-learning how to do it in another way that is less efficient at first, even if it is more efficient in the long run.
I'd rather see kids working more slowly and with smaller numbers in the elementary grades, but learning mathematical strategies like this, than working faster through more material, but learning only fewer strategies.
Edited: To me, teaching math facts as something to be memorized seems more like teaching words as something to be memorized, rather than teaching phonics rules so that children can figure out words that they don't know by sight. Yet I have been told by reading teachers that it was too difficult for children to learn phonics and that whole words were "better for them", and that if they needed phonics they could learn it later. As with math, children (and adults) who have learned to read inefficiently with whole words are frequently very resistant to going back and starting with phonics.
A) I don't teach math by having my kids "just memorizing facts". You've set up a straw man here. I (and most traditional programs I know) teach my kids the concepts via number lines, manips, and drawings along with flashcard practice. And it's not about re-learning in any case. Like I said before, once they know that 9+6=15, then it's easier to teach them why 9+6 is also 10+5 and so on. The lesson of teaching place values and breaking down larger numbers comes later, and it is built on the idea that 9 things + 6 things = 15 things, along with the idea that 6-1=5, 1+9=10, therefore 10+5=9+6. Again, I think we're talking about two separate lessons, the latter built off of mastery of simple addition. If they don't know that 9+6=15, they can't know that 9+6=10+5.
B ) I teach reading comprehnsion to my kids as well. But I also have them memorize phonics and spelling rules, as well as basic grammar concepts. There are however, things I don't ask them to do in 1st grade that I will ask them to do later built off of the basic skills and rules they've memorized and internalized via practice in their 1st grade year. It's not about convincing them to do it some new way, it's using the skills they've developed, the facts they've mastered via doing them, along with the new development in their brains in order to do more complex tasks.
C) The problem with simply going more slowly is that 1) that's not what the schools in my area are doing, they are simply teaching stuff in a different way at the same pace and 2) some kids are not ready for the algebraic thought process that is required to get from 9+6=10+5 precisely because they have to know what 9+6 is first before moving on to applying it to different equations. And some kids will not develop this kind of dialectic or logical thought until they are a few years past the 1st grade. So going more slowly doesn't help. But later on, they will get it in a flash.
I actually think your analogy holds, but rather in reverse. I see this "conceptual math" much like the whole word trends of the past. Educators noticed that kids who mastered reading weren't sounding words out, they simply looked at the words to read them. So they started trying to teaching kids to read by just "seeing" the word. As it turns out, the kids who were good readers had already mastered and surpassed the phonics of reading and were very good at applying it to words they didn't know, so it looked from the outside like they were just seeing the word and reading it. With the type of math we're talking about in this thread, I think educators noticed that kids fluent in math could do the 10+5=9+6 type of manipulations fluently and thought that must be what's making them good with math, so let's teach it that way from the beginning. In reality, the kids that were good in math had already mastered the idea that 9+6=15 and that's why they could manipulate it so easily. So trying to teach it this way is putting the cart before the horse in the same way that whole word reading tried to. Mastery of simple concepts is required before more difficult ones. Some kids easily and quickly master the simple parts, making it look like they've skipped it entirely, but have really just internalized it. At least, that's my opinion after having read around a lot about conceptual math and having two kids learning elementary math right now.
What you're talking about here with re-learning seems to me to be akin to saying we can't teach a kid algebra because he's already learned to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division a certain way and it will be very, very difficult to teach him a new way of doing math. Obviously that doesn't make any sense, because he needs to master those skills to move on to algebra, and I'd say it's likewise with the manipulations of numbers in "conceptual" math. They need to master the basic skills before doing the manipulation with those skills.
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While I totally agree that breaking down something like this seems unnecessary, the whole point of teaching kids to break down something like 9 + 6 (where it's easy) is so that they can break down problems like 199 + 106, and then continue to problems like 1979 + 176. Learning a new mathematical skill where the problems are very difficult and the numbers are bigger tends to lead towards frustration as well.
Again, though, I think that if the teacher doesn't understand why they're doing this, or why the curriculum wants them to learn this -- if the teacher doesn't see where it's going later on -- it's going to be little more than a different kind of rote memorization for the students.
I get that, but I also think that it shouldn't be the way 9+6 is taught to kids, if that makes sense. In other words, I think the concept is important, and to teach the concept it's easier to show it with smaller numbers at first, but I don't think that's the way they should be teaching kids to learn or be "comfortable" with single digit addition in the early elementary years. So I think what you're talking about -- breaking numbers down to make problems easier -- is a different lesson than teaching a 1st grader that 9+6=15.
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I found this thread very helpful...I'm having a discussion on another board about a monologue that Greg Gutfeld did on a CC implementation video that, to me, just looked horrendous. The video is here, in case anyone wants to watch it (yes, it's fox news, for those of you who don't want to click there, but I find the analysis kind of funny, and the meat of what I'm talking about is in the first two minutes of the clip). Breaking down 9+6 seems so...unnecessary!! Instead of doing one computation that can easily be learned as 9 things + 6 things = 15 things (and then memorized via repitition), they have the kids making the problem into 10+5 via 9+1 and 6-1.
But the thread on the other board really challenged me on why I think traditional is better than conceptual. I really identify with what Ellie said above (traditional does teach concepts, and likening it to the whole word debacle), as well as the issue kiana brought up about teacher competance. If teachers are really having to watch instructional videos like the one I linked above in order to explain conceptual math to their students, then they should probably not be teaching conceptual math.
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Is there any way that maybe your local library has some videos or materials in Russian? If not, would they order them? I'm thinking fiction books, videos, etc.
If writing is difficult, probably some simple YouTube videos on cyrillic would be a good place to start.
I think I would dig to find native educational materials, maybe put an ad on CL or something (although who knows what that would turn up), and try to find maybe a Russian version of starfall (I know your kids aren't that young, but to start with simple stories, grammar, etc) online. That way it's for native kids learning the language, but it's not for English speakers learning Russian.
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I don't consider this arguing, but talking. The idea of a "do this, son"/"yes, ma'am" type of interaction just feels cold to me. My kids talk constantly but I think ultimately it's beneficial. I think you need to change your mindset, and when you make changes, be ready to tell them why.
I think maybe you're imagining things to be more austere than they are when you're seeing the "yes, mom" posts. My kids talk constantly as well, and I entertain a lot of questions every day. We do even have meal breaks. ;) There's also time where we just buckle down and get our work done, even if we want to nag mom incessently about how she wants to be done and why and why not do it this way and I'm hot and oh now that you want me to do math I need to have a snack or I am just going to perish before your eyes, can't you see the humanity, mother??? :) :)
It's easy to see the difference between that stuff and genuine curiousity and questions in person. It's harder to describe over the internet, and I admit it probably does read like some sort of boot camp. But everyone around here gets to talk. A lot.
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I think you might actually find that you have to deal with less of these conversations if you did answer them more directly. I hear you about being an introvert, but the reality is that you also are homeschooling with three kids. They are going to need to interact and ask you things. It doesn't seem quite fair to them teo expect them to not ask questions because you prefer less conversations.
I'm also a total introvert so I do get some of how you feel but it seems to me that you're making it worse by creating a situation where they keep asking. Either you can institute an "obedience first" kind of attitude and allow no questioning....or you can try and make the questioning less. It seems to me the way to do that is to make it more efficient so they get the answer they are looking for.
After reading the OP's latest and then this one, I would say that despite my previous post of taking a hard line (which I would in some of her examples), conversationally in the case of the Latin example I probably would state my reasoning if asked as long as the kid was asking while he was taking out his Latin book. It's the "But..." and the "Oh look it's lunchtime..." and "Oh I have to go to the bathroom..." that to me are deliberate cases of stalling and delaying.
To me it's obvious from her examples what the kid is doing, but maybe it's only because I have a kid who would engage me in arguments all day long about why and how I do things. And it is a tough line because usually he's not being petulant or whiny or overtly defiant or anything. He's just asking. And asking, and asking, and double checking, and seeing if we can't do it this way instead, and on and on. :) And, like the OP I can excuse his questioning because I can sometimes be rather absentminded. It's just that usually I can tell by the timing of the questioning and the line it's going down whether or not he's really interested in an answer.
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A kid who wants to go to school because she feels like she'll be more motivated to work
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Your daughter (or what you've posted today) reminds me of me.
PS provided me exactly the opposite of what your daughter is wanting to acheive by going there. I was a fairly bright kid and I learned how to pass all my classes with the minimum amount of work (which is a very, very low minimum, because it seems the goal is to graduate or pass as many kids as possible), and it absolutely destroyed my ability to learn how to learn, or to learn for enjoyment. I was a very unmotivated and smart kid. I learned to surf in all my classes because of this. I didn't have to work to learn the stuff and could do a minimum of homework and halfway study for the tests and still get at least B's. The exception was my senior year when I declined to show up a lot of the time, but even then I passed everything.
In my mind, sending a kid like me to a public school is going to acheive the opposite of what you and she want. It is not a place where motiviation and ambition abound, especially starting in middle school and especially in high school. I should say that there were motivated and smart kids working hard, but I never felt compelled to put the effort in just because they did. And my school was not necessarily lacking -- we lived in a town with a very competitive state school that helped with providing a lot of extra curriculars and advanced programs. I was expected to go to college and thought it would be "fun", but the learning part of things didn't really enter in to that equation for me.
I think your analogy of joining a gym is spot on. Just like joining a gym, as a student I felt at the beginning of every single year that this would be the year I would shape up, and these would be the classes that I would really take an interest in and really learn.
On the other hand, I could just be projecting too much. :tongue_smilie:
Honestly, though, I think I would have done better in school if I had been "held back" a year around 6th grade (I have an early October birthday and was younger than almost all of the kids in my grade). I don't know how to explain why it was overwhelming because academically I could do the work (if I wanted to), and socially I was a little immature, but at the same time could hang out with older kids (like on swim team or at church) easily. But it was just...a lot ot take in or something and looking back I think an extra year would have helped. Of course, in PS it takes a huge amount of impressive failure to hold a kid back when they are in 5th or 6th grade, so on I went!