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Mike in SA

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Everything posted by Mike in SA

  1. Do you realize how insulting it is to AL parents to have 12yo kids lumped into sweeping general classifications? I will not apologize for others' narrow views. It's all on topic. I described views as being skewed. You are being insulting. I refuse to devolve in this direction. I'm out. No more troll feeding.
  2. And I thought I was clear about 12yos in college not being typical middle schoolers??? There's more than one point being made here. Talking about the extremes is talking about why typical kids might not want to take that route. Plus, it lets people know they aren't completely off their rockers for thinking about sending their 12yo kids. Both can be simultaneously valid talking points. If the thought process affects your sensibilities, then please ignore my ramblings.
  3. The wonderful thing about a conversational thread on the Internet is that people can have different positions without any real consequences. I do recommend not letting resentful thoughts color one's outlook on life. There are much more significant on goings in the world these days than an internet thread. Still, if anyone would like to understand when a 12yo in middle school might make sense, the answers are largely here. Feel free to ask if you would like to have more insight.
  4. But, all the parents who come along after will see the title when searching for info. I choose not to assume for more than OP's sake.
  5. Sorry folks, but some of this debate is downright comical. Those 12yo kids who belong on a college campus are in the 1 in 10,000+ range. How many kids have you personally taught? Interacted with? How many of those were in the 1 in 10,000+ category? Ever met one? 20-year educators may have never seen one example in their careers. Anyone with preconceived notions should throw them away, because extrapolation from the norm is not valid here. You are talking about the tail end of a very long curve - someone who is very much not normal by definition. I dare say you won't find many 12 year old kids in a college setting, but if you were to find the 1 in 10,000 child, odds are fairly good that you will run into them in a college setting, because that's where their peers are, and where they fit right in. Yep, 12yo girls get creeped on. We know of a couple such examples. 12yo boys get protected by their peers. We know of a couple such examples. By and large, they all really love it - it may be the best educational setting they've ever had. If the OP isn't talking about one of these kids, then a CC may not be feasible at all. I will not make any such assumptions because there are quite a few of those families on this site. We like it here. ETA: If you have sincere questions, you'll find many of us are more than happy to discuss what it is like. It is difficult living on an island not by choice but by social misunderstanding. Having an opportunity to educate through sharing is a prize we cannot easily walk past. Just please don't pose the questions as accusations.
  6. Very much depends on the 12yo and 15yo. I know plenty of 20yo's who can't compete with some 15yo's!
  7. Agree! There's a reason that AP calculus scores are being accepted at fewer schools than they used to. Even our local directional state school doesn't give credit for Calc 2 and expects 4 or better to get Calc 1 credit. High school teachers just aren't nearly as qualified and/or do not have the opportunity to teach an equivalent curriculum. Many AP students have never done delta-epsilon limit derivations. For business calc, that's fine, but for science and math, it is abominable. I do understand that there are some atrocious CC's out there, in which case you'd be comparing substandard to atrocious. I guess substandard beats atrocious.
  8. Wow. Those can be expensive hobbies. D&D varies by version. Ours haven't played the newest, so can't help too much. If there is a group to be joined, then you may get by with only a player's manual. If he intends to start one, then there is a much larger investment to be made. Do you have access to his gaming group, so you can ask covertly or via another group parent?
  9. Again, I chose not to assume. I didn't mean to start a row. The nice thing about this board is that future home schooling families will be able to come for information that may apply to them. They may be just like what one poster preconceives them to be, and may not.
  10. Some may be worse, for sure. I know the courses DW has taught at the local CC are essentially equal to the ones I taught at a top-20 uni. I took calculus at another CC when I was younger, and it compared to what MIT uses on OCW. Problems may be a bit simpler, but the texts and content were solid. Most CCs have to meet a state standard to allow transfer to the flagship schools. Courses intended to transfer must deliver comparable content. AP's, on the other hand, are clearly stripped down. Theory is almost absent. The CC content >> APs (first hand experience on all counts).
  11. Didn't mean to start a row! I get the misunderstanding here. Younger kids who can succeed in a CC course - and I will argue that most common CC courses are quite on par with low-level university courses - are often asynchronous. Being able to succeed in one subject area does not imply success in others. We all know that every kid has talents, but for some, the differences between those talents are often magnified. Our local colleges (and uni's, for that matter) will occasionally cater to these needs. Usually the local B&M schools will not. That means no to DEs, but yes to early enrollment. Older DS is doing precisely this, and younger DS will be all but forced to at some point in the near future.
  12. No offense - it really is not meant as such - but this is exactly the challenge ALs and the parents of those ALs face every day. There is a complete misunderstanding of how, why, and where this phenomena comes to be. There's no hyper-parenting, no exceptional schools, none of that. The child makes the acceleration happen, and they can do so living on a farm in the country (we know of one such case). But, that isn't really the point I was making. Languages at a full college pace can be very effective for a child who is ready to study at that pace. Ours was, and is. Thankfully, he does have a native speaker to tutor him regularly. Otherwise, he'd be in another disaster of a blow-off course (for him, which is all that matters for his consideration). HS-paced courses have always been too slow for him. He would have thrived as a middle schooler taking a CC language course. He probably should have been taking CC courses across the board for the last couple of years. It's just who he is. Others, maybe not so much. Like I said, YMMV. Only the parent really knows the child. For the OP, if you have an exceptionally bright child, I wouldn't let anyone else deter you. Do what you know is right. If you really aren't sure if the timing is right, it probably isn't quite right yet. If you just want to keep up with peers, then there are lots of options available beyond the CC. A MS foreign language course often runs about half the speed of high school, which typically runs half the speed of a full college pace. You will need to decide if your child is ready to work at 4x the pace of their age-peers, and carry an A/B grade in the process.
  13. Maybe not, but I deliberately chose not to assume. Middle schoolers in college are an unusual bunch, and just that additional bit of lensing may be useful to some who aren't quite sure if their kids are ready. Fwiw, I believe my son (now 15) would have been far better off taking language at CCs when he started studying them (10 Latin & 12 German). His progress has been hampered by the slow plodding courses he has been taking. I am sure that he would have been very successful in a college setting. He has a gift for languages, though, so ymmv.
  14. Precalculus is chock full of examples from physics, as well. I look at it this way: it will make physics easier later. The volume of physics problems in calculus shouldn't be a surprise, btw. After all, Newton created it in support his studies of mechanics (no disrespect to Leibniz, whose approach was in studies of areas, etc, also prominent in calculus examples today).
  15. It so very much depends on the student. Some act like we are talking about stereotypical middle school kids, which could not be farther from the truth. These are exceptional kids, maybe 1 out of every ten thousand or fewer. They cannot be compared in this manner - they have the maturity of kids 5 years or more older than themselves. My wife and I started as middle teens, and while maturity may have been an issue, it was for none of the concerns described above. Maturity mattered because we lacked executive skills. Adult material, etc, was around us every day, anyway. Other students didn't show any resentment to us. They treated us as peers, just as we needed and deserved. Many classmates take pride in having had the opportunity to study with much younger peers who are poised to do great things. I have no concerns about my 15yo taking college classes - he has proven he can do work on MIT's site, so why not a CC? It's highly probable that my younger son will be starting at 12, and I have no concerns about that. We have taught them how to handle the environment, and they are showing their capabilities. I don't suggest that it is an easy path - quite the contrary. Remarkably few kids can really handle it and come out with all A's. However, I am thankful that our local colleges and universities are not narrow minded, and will accept kids who are in need of challenging material in an adult setting.
  16. Don't know about Michigan, but parents generally are able to lobby for accelerated placement in most states. That doesn't mean that they will always be successful - parents on this site can tell you all kinds of stories about how difficult that process can be. Legal routes rarely end up in a good place. Your best bet is to keep your grades high (if not all A's, that can work against you), and look for alternative testing if available. The school will want to see that you have a better-than-average chance of success in the more accelerated courses. In science, for example, mathematics is a very reliable indicator of success. Read ahead, work ahead, and make sure you are competing for the best grades in class. Then you will have a chance at jumping into a more accelerated path there, which will open up doors in science.
  17. I would not call that mastery. That is more likely parroting, which is an important first step in learning, but it isn't full comprehension. When we use the college B&I algebra texts, we may have to use problems from various sections, but we do test at the end of each long AoPS chapter, or every two short chapters. With AoPS, I wouldn't sweat too much. If a child can do the challenge problems (I do not recommend skipping), the mastery will follow.
  18. Agreed. If you can forget it, you didn't master it - you may have tricks down, but you aren't qualified to teach it. Masters can teach.
  19. Mastery is an A. No questions about it - anything less would not be mastery.
  20. We used challenge problems from the back of a community college beginning & intermediate algebra textbook, because they are harder than typical HS algebra books. They were still absurdly easy after AoPS.
  21. Yes, Larson texts are ridiculously expensive. E-book versions are often much, much cheaper, but that proprietary reader is painful to use.
  22. Don't know if that's the reason why - in my limited experience, most mathematicians and physicists detest Saxon's lack of theory and abstraction. But, if you are going into an applied field (including chemistry and engineering), the fact of the matter is that there are many students who end up with perfectly happy lives after using Saxon. Odds decrease for theoretical fields, but a good student often succeeds regardless.
  23. The BASIS school system uses Saxon all the way through calculus, and have plenty of top-scoring students. You really don't need more than that. They have some interesting rules about it, including: No section or problem is to be skipped - ever Teachers must provide additional content in class to make each lesson complete (Saxon does a lot of spoon-feeding - BASIS wants the students to get the full picture in each lesson) Tests should be comprehensive, and students who have issues should receive timely remediation so those issues are corrected early Provide lots of opportunity for remediation All in all, your success depends largely on 1) your ambitions, and 2) your willingness to address the robotic nature of the texts. If your ambitions are to be adept at application without having to think, then Saxon works great. If those ambitions include higher abstractions in mathematics, then you will need to address that either offline during each year, or after completing calculus.
  24. Number theory, if she is up for it. It's foundational, and would actually be a challenge.
  25. It really is difficult to slice & dice AoPS this way. There is content in the Intermediate book going up to about ch 14 (radicals) that you probably should cover. However, there is content in early chapters (eg, Vieta's formulas) that is not normally covered in any algebra 2 course. You could consider it a "College Algebra" course, because it goes so deep. I seem to recall Kathy in Richmond posting a detailed sequence of what should be included in a prior post, but I couldn't find it. I do know that the "second half" of Introduction will meet California's UC requirements, fwiw. Odd thing is they consider Intermediate as equivalent to algebra 2 as well, which is nowhere close to reality. If it were me, I'd look at the precalculus book I planned to use, and look for content in the first 75% of Intermediate that is not covered in the precalc book, and include some coverage of those topics. ETA: Assuming here that AoPS Precalc is not your target precalc book. If it is, then plan on doing more Intermediate as the first half of precalculus, and do the trig from AoPS as the second half.
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