Dumbing it down

My mind is boggled. I had heard this happens, but never thought it would happen to US! You know how we always assume bad things happen to others but never, once, think about what if they happened to us? Yes, like that. Maybe it isn't all that terrible. Maybe I am over reacting.

Yeah. That's what it is. I AM over reacting. On purpose. To draw you in, create a mysterious air. So that when you are three paragraphs deep into the post and find out it was only about me breaking a leg, you'll say "I've come this far, let me read this to the end". Only, it isn't about me breaking my leg. There. Gotcha!!

Sorry folks. I am in a silly mood today :) Couldn't help but take your trip. What I am really bugged about is the use of calculators in ELEMENTARY schools. Now, if you are one of those who think it's no big deal, please PLEASE do take a minute and leave me a comment with your views on this. I am just not able to comprehend why a 5th grader would need to use a calculator. And I did ask my daughter to show me the problems that she was told by her teacher to use a calculator for.

1.5 x 1,000

4,000 / 1,000

1.5 x 10

I am not kidding. I copied these questions directly from her homework assignment. This, for a kid who is already solving simple linear equations in one variable at KUMON. She is doing JUNIOR HIGH ALGEBRA at KUMON. And she has been told by her class teacher she could use a calculator to solve problems like the ones I have listed above. Now, I accept that the teacher said "could", but anyone who knows how 9 year old kids' minds work will immediately know that for them a "could" uttered by their teacher means "should".

My problem is not how to stop her from using a calculator, and I will list my reasons shortly. My problem is how to make her understand that she doesn't need to. That I am not a parent from hell for making her use her brains. That she is not uncool for not using a calculator. That, in fact, she should be considered super-cool for not needing a calculator for the stupid problems. How, in this screwed-up society where anyone doing good in academics is immediately ostracized for being a nerd, can I protect my daughter from the heartache that she will definitely face sometime in the future for being good at what she is supposed to be doing at school - studies. These are a few of my problems. Another problem is - how do I strike a balance between letting my daughter experience the thrill of finally using a calculator like older kids and making her use her brain for math that comes as easy to her as a tumble in the grass?

Now my reason for not wanting her to use a calculator for such simple math. It will rot her brains. As simple as that. OK - I am being dramatic. But what I mean is, she will lose her mathematical skills if she doesn't use them on a regular basis. Anyone who has studied math (and enjoyed it) would agree that math is all about practice. The more you practice, the better you get. The less you practice, more you forget. So if she starts using a calculator for such problems, she will start forgetting the simples principles and methods. We are not talking about someone who has been multiplying-dividing for a better part of 15 years. If that person starts using a calculator, they don't run the risk of forgetting the basic concepts. Though I can say with surety that they WILL lose some of their speed if they use the calculator long enough (not that it matters - if they are using math just for their day-to-day activities). But if a 9 year old, who has done multiplication-division for only a couple of years, and who still needs practice to keep up with her skills, starts using a calculator, you can be damn sure she is going to forget some concepts. She already did - couldn't figure out where to place the decimal point in the first problem.

I hate this trend of dumbing things down for the sake of those who can't keep up. We don't spend time in bringing the ones struggling up to the par. We push the others, who are doing well, down to their level. J and I didn't use calculators until we reached college. The first time I used a SIMPLE calculator (not a scientific one) was in B.Sc. second year for differential math. We studied trigonometry and probability, among other topics in 12th grade and weren't allowed to use calculators. So forgive me if I scoff at the idea of using a calculator for these stupid math problems.

So J and I explained our reasoning to her. She wasn't happy. She says even though she is sad over our decision, she can "live with it". I did propose a compromise - she can use the calculator occasionally in school, but not for her homework. And we told her we will revisit the issue once the problems they are working upon get more difficult. You see, if the rest of the class uses calculators and she doesn't, she will fall behind on the basis of speed. Which means either the class will have to wait for her or she will miss some problems. So when it becomes she can't keep up with their speed, we will let her use a calculator. But then THAT makes me mad. Why should a child have to use a calculator just because other kids are using it. When she is perfectly capable of doing all that math mentally? I will bring this up during the parent-teacher conferences in November but I don't think I am going to get a satisfactory answer. So I have to find an answer of my own. I have to strike my own balance. Any suggestions?

Mad. Hoppin' mad.

I am mad at S' teacher. Its been slowly building up but now I am at a point where I am ready to explode. When S first got assigned to her class, we were happy. We had heard good things about this teacher. On the day of parent orientation, she seemed attentive and courteous enough. She asked each parent what their social and academic goals for their child were and she actually wrote the answers down in a small notebook. I thought "Wow! Here is someone who is not just talk". She even gave us her home phone number and encouraged us to call her in the evenings if we wanted to discuss something with her. And to be fair, she does take calls when we call her, and talks to us.

Even now I am only mad at her for just one thing. Otherwise I think she is a good enough teacher. From what S tells me, she has a sarcastic tongue and rolls her eyes at kids and is too opinionated about certain things - but that I am willing to live with if my child is learning well in her class and isn't being traumatized with all the eye rolling. In fact, S seems to be one of her favorite students so I don't have anything to complain about there.

Now a little background on why I am mad. The Norwalk school system has an "Academically talented" program in which kids who are considered "gifted" or capable of taking more challenges than other kids are instructed on something above and beyond the curriculum. Frankly I never cared if S got in this program or not. I thought she would get in on her own merit if she was good enough. But a few friends convinced me to at least talk to the teacher about it saying sometimes teachers wait for the parents to bring it up. That seemed kind of strange to me because if you have a program that has certain criteria one has to meet in order to get in then one should get in if they met the criteria irrespective of whether their parents talked to the teacher or not. Right? Apparently not so.

Anyway. I talked to Mrs. Z, S' teacher. And she gushed about how academically advanced S is and how she cannot imagine why S isn't in the AT program already and how some other kids who have no business being in the program are in there and how she WILL recommend S for the program this year. I told her I was not looking to get my daughter in at all costs, but I was just asking her for her opinion. She asked to look at the standardized test results for S from last year and I sent her a copy. She looked at them and said S indeed had achieved advanced level in math and writing but was on (the upper side of) the goal level (range) for reading and that is why she didn't get in the AT program (a child needs to be placed in advanced level for reading to qualify for the program). I knew that already. I told her I thought that if S had the potential to be in that program, then I thought I owed it to her to help her try and achieve it. If, after trying, she still couldn't get into the program, I'd be OK with the decision - she would have at least tried. If a little help is all she needed to get from goal level to advanced level in reading then I thought I should give her that help. Mrs. Z said she will work with S on her reading skills and she was confident S will improve her reading skills enough to become eligible for the program. She even started working with S on her reading skills initially.

In March, during the parent-teacher conference, Mrs. Z raved about how S' comprehension skills were so much better than most of the other students and how she was the only one to have correctly answered a few questions based on a particular passage while the rest of the class got it completely wrong. She said she was definitely going to recommend S for the AT program. I reminded her again that I wanted S to go into that program only if she was eligible because I definitely don't want her to be in a program which is above her level as that would stress her out more.

So all year long, every time we talked to Mrs. Z, she raved and gushed about how S was doing so well and yes, she was "AT material". Then, when I thought the deadline for recommending students to the AT program much be approaching, I called her and left her a message. She called me back to tell me she was waiting for the standardized test results for this year before she recommends S as she wanted to make absolutely sure that S' grades justified the recommendation. That was the first time I felt a little odd - hadn't she been saying all along that she WILL recommend S for the program? And I knew the results wouldn't be out until May or June by which time the deadline would have gone by. She assured me we would still have time.

Now, two days ago, I learnt that the deadline has indeed passed. So now even if Mrs. Z wanted to, (I am questioning her intentions now) she wouldn't be able to recommend S for the program. I left her a message citing all this (our past conversations and her recent stance on waiting for the results) and asked her why did she lead us to believe that S would be recommended for the program when she didn't want to? She called our home number a couple of hours back (and I am sure she did it on purpose - to avoid talking to me, otherwise she would have called me on my cellphone like she has done in the past for other issues. And I left my cell phone number for her in my message. Its her bad luck that J is at home today and received the call) and told J that she didn't recommend S because "her test results from grade 2 weren't good enough and now it is too late anyway". We already knew that. I'd rather not go into my theory regarding why her results weren't as good as they could have been because that would need another lengthy post. And that IS why we asked her to assess S' performance during THIS year to determine if she could qualify for the program. There IS such a provision in the regulations for doing this so we weren't asking her to go out of her way to do this. We just asked her to follow procedure. Also, I did ask her about the deadline and at that time she said we had sufficient time.

So all this has pissed me off terribly. I am not mad because S didn't get into the program. I was ready for that result. And as I said earlier, if S doesn't qualify for the program, I don't want her to be in it as it will only stress her out. I am mad because the teacher raised false hopes. She should have been straightforward in her stance from the beginning and should have told us she didn't believe S should be in the program. We would have respected her decision. Maybe, she really believed initially that S should be in the program and as the year progressed, realized otherwise. But in that case, she should have told me so during our last conversation on this issue (during the March parent-teacher conference). But her review of S' performance in that parent teacher conference led me to believe that S had improved her reading comprehension skills considerably. I talked to another friend whose daughter is probably better in reading comprehension than S and I found out that Mrs. Z did the same thing to her. I feel cheated. I feel like an ass who has been walking for miles in hope of getting a bite out of that carrot dangling in front of its eyes. That's exactly how I feel.

KUMON: How and why it works for us

Some time back I wrote a post on how parents sometimes push their kids unnecessarily to achieve academic excellence. In that post, I also mentioned KUMON - a chain of individually owned math and reading learning centers. One reader left a link in the comment section for an article that discusses a few drawbacks of the KUMON way of teaching math. I read that whole article twice - I swear! I agree with parts of it and there are parts (regarding trigonometry and calculus etc.) that we haven't gone through yet so those don't apply to us. Yet. I highly recommend that you read this article if you are thinking about signing up your kid(s) at KUMON. I am not going to discuss the article here. I am merely writing what works for us in the KUMON method. I am not saying it will, or should, work for other parents too. Every kid is different and what works for S might not work even for M, a few years from now. So, please take everything I am going to write with a grain of salt. Research the options out for yourself and then decide.

S started KUMON math program in August 2003, just before she started Kindergarten. I came to know about it through a friend who sent her son to a center for a brief time. S was a quiet kid from the beginning and we thought being good at something, like math, will give her self-esteem a boost. In the long term, we HAVE been proven correct. Also, I had heard that due to various factors, girls here lose interest in math and sience by the time they get to middle school. I was determined to prevent that from happening to my daughter. I wasn't going to let math become a "monster" to be afraid of. So, this is why our KUMON journey started.

Soon after she started, S began struggling with the homeworks. She would do all correctly, but would take 45 minutes or more to complete each homework. We began worrying if we pushed her in it too early because there is no way 45 minutes of homework is going to be good for a 5 year old. Thankfully, the owner of the franchise that S attended agreed with us. She said it should only take a child 5-7 minutes per homework, and no more than 10-12 minutes even if they take too long. So she reduced the number of pages that S was getting per homework. Once the load decreased, S also began taking more interest in doing her homework again. So, it has been this way ever since - we reduce the number of pages in her homework if she starts taking too long to finish and slowly increase it again once she finds a balance.

Another thing we always made sure of was to never push S into finishing a level fast. We let her take her own time and even let her repeat a level if she takes too long in that level's test (the objective is to complete one page in 1-3 minutes). After all, she is the one who will benefit if she masters the concepts at one level before advancing to the next one. Also, having to repeat a level has never been associated with failure in Kay household. It just indicates that some more time is needed to master the concepts. We do, however, try positive reinforcement to keep her motivated. So, every time S completes a level at KUMON, she gets to buy a board game or a book of upto $15 dollars in value. We are very rigid in enforcing the "board game or book" part. No soft toys, no video games or anything of that sort. She really looks forward to these opportunities. She only gets this gift if she has finished the level for good and doesn't have to repeat it. There are no penalties for repeating a level except that she has to wait longer to buy her gift.

Every year, when we mention that S is in the KUMON math program, her teachers ask us the same questions. How do we keep her interested (because it does tend to get repititive)? And since she is clearly ahead of grade level in math, how do we keep her interested in school work? For the first question, our answer is "Because we never gave her an option. KUMON homeworks are not optional, and she knows that. And, since she can herself see the progress she is making, she willingly does it now." As for the second question, we have noticed that the math that she learns at school is usually complementary to the math she does at KUMON. So, since KUMON math program doesn't really have many word-problems, the school curriculum helps her practice that part. KUMON math does not cover money math concepts while her school curriculum did. And, school curriculum also helps her revise the parts that she did long time ago at KUMON and has forgotten by now. For example, when she was doing multiplication in KUMON, her class teacher was still teaching subtraction. That helped because S was beginning to lose subtraction skills for lack of practice. And this year, she finishes her math classwork and then goes ahead and does extra with her teacher's permission. Which, in my opinion, shows a "will to learn" - a very important ingradient of success.

In my opinion, this is also teaching her a few other things. One - you have to do what you have to do. Meaning, even if you already know multiplication (or any other skill that is currently being taught in class), you have to do it as part of the school curriculum. You CANNOT get out of doing it just because you already know it. Two - never be smug about your math skills because though there are things you are very good at, there are some other skills that you need to work on, just like other kids. (Example - her struggles with money math last year) Three - practice makes perfect. This one she has experienced for herself and now realizes its importance (I hope!)

Almost everyone in our social circle, who has ever sent their kids to KUMON at one time or the other, has mentioned to us how their kids used to get "bored" with math at their school because they were ahead of the rest of their class. Most of them cited "boredom" as a reason for dropping out of the KUMON math program. I don't know why. As I mentioned earlier, it hasn't happened to S. And if it has, she hasn't mentioned to us - which is just as good because we would still have made her do it. "Bored" is a word I don't entertain. No way, no how! I know, I sound like a tyrant. Heck! I am a tyrant when it comes to studies. I know that is THE ONLY TICKET TO SUCCESS my daughters have. S does mention it when KUMON begins to become a burden of sorts. Then we let her take a break for a week or so. Every year, she gets a break form KUMON for one week each in summer and winter. And sometimes an extra week here or there if we feel (or if she says) it is becoming too much for her. That, I guess, prevents it from becoming a huge burden. By now, KUMON is a way of life for her. She remembers to do the homework every day without us having to remind her. I hope this will continue into her middle school and high school years. Because the skills that KUMON is teaching her reach far beyond just success in math. The discipline will definitely help her in other avenues in life. The skill to understand concepts on her own (of course she takes our help when she gest stuck) is going to prove important later in college. The perseverance she is learning in understanding tricky math concepts will pay off later in life.

Coming back to the article - I agree KUMON is not perfect. Nothing is. But we work hard at making it work for us. Like everything else in life. Nothing comes your way custom-made and ready to fit. You have to tuck here, nip there.

The author of the article suggests that parents should do every homework themselves along with the kids. I agree, but not completely. You don't need to do every single homework. You do need to know how to solve those problems and be able to explain to your kid(s) if the need arises. Having solved the problems yourself a few times does come in handy when you have to explain it to someone else.

We had signed S up for KUMON's reading program as well and she attended it for over 3 years. But then we learnt about SCORE's writing program. We liked the program and wanted to try it out. S loved it and even made some remarkable progress in her writing skills. but we had to take her off of the program. There were a few reasons. One - they weren't offering Writing as a stand-alone program. They wanted us to opt for the whole Math-Reading-Writing package. Since we were already very happy with the KUMON math and reading program, we decided not to join SCORE. Two - and this one was a biggie for me, I am not sure if other parents will feel the same way as I do - the SCORE program is COMPLETELY computer based. I mean, even the "writing" that S did was on a computer. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I believe a child should learn how to write well before graduating to typing. And, with all the typing, S was losing her handwriting skills fast. At KUMON, she is required to write everything - math answers as well as answers to the questions in her reading material. I like it that way. As I said - nothing is perfect. You have to work at making things fit you. We tried but we weren't able to compromise on these two issues regarding the SCORE program. I think we might give it another try a few years from now when S is done with KUMON (one can hope, right? :P)