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by bigbillheck 1899 days ago
> The union will also delay the teaching of geometry to grade 9

That's when I took it as a youth and nobody in either of the school districts I went to around those years took it any earlier.

(For non-North Americans, 9th grade is 14-15yo).

(And did you mean 'board' instead of 'union'?)

EDIT: Some basic googling isn't coming up with anything about this, the closest I've found is SF high schools delaying algebra 1 until 9th grade, but with an option for kids to take both algebra 1 and geometry at the same time (or algebra 2 and geometry at the same time). Details at https://www.sfusdmath.org/high-school-pathways.html

> I'll simply send them to private schools, all kinds of camps, or tutoring schools. They will learn calculus in grade 7 or early if they are talented. They will have a bucket list of volunteering experience and so-called leadership proof in their resume. They will build their ML-powered robots or conduct their favorite chemistry/physics experiments in their private lab that I can help build, if they are interested. And in the worse case, my wife and I have no problem and plenty of time to home school my kids.

Sounds like a great way to give them one hell of a complex.

I've had co-workers who were parents of kids in the Princeton NJ school district (and adjacent districts) and from what they say it is an incredibly stressful and competitive experience. On the opposite coast, there's a reason kids in Palo Alto are killing themselves so much more than elsewhere.

1 comments

Yeah, pushing kids may not always work out for kids. I used those examples to show it's possible for some kids to get advantages. That's also the reason I kept quantifying the examples with "if they are interested/talented" and etc. Maybe a reversed example is better: some kids could've stood out but didn't because they didn't have the edge of being in those camps/tutoring schools. I'm already seeing such trend: kids are in arm race of taking as many APs as possible. Kids rush to STEM contests, and etc. Schools can take out challenges, but the competitions won't stop simply because top-quality education is a scarce resource.
I get this but can’t bear to not participate!

The world is very quickly bifurcating into 1. a small professional elite and 2. poverty for the rest. The middle class is going away, and with it, jobs and dignity for B, C, and D students.

As a parent I feel if I don’t go into six figure debt paying for camps, tutors, sports, accelerated this, and advanced that, then there is some other parent doing this whose kid will take her spot on the train. Id be dooming her to a future of poverty.

College placement is a highly competitive, zero sum slugfest and for her sake I need to at least try.