We Can Do by Moshe Kai with guest Robert Levy discussing Saxon Math.

[Kimba15]

No, not 20.  And (this won't go over with the feminist crowd too well, but what the heck), I always wonder if I would have gone slower if David was a girl.  The idea of having a little girl that's 11 years old starting in college would have scared me a lot more than David, and I would have worried a lot about her social development.  So you can do less...just don't get to the point where you're doing it in your "spare time", because, if nothing else, your school will take care of filling up that time.


Hi Robert I have been lurking around this thread and not commenting yet, than I read your above comment and it struck a chord with me. I am a mother of two little girls who are early learners and so many times I have held them back because of my fear of them being so far ahead and starting Uni at 14 or 15 just scares the heeby jeebies out of me. As it is my eldest daughter has been accepted to start school almost a year early and has started reception or what you call kindergarten at age 4 instead of 5. She has taken to it with gusto but I now think into the future when she goes to uni she is going to be almost a year younger than everybody else and not being able to go do the stuff other uni kids can do or getting mixed up in group more to social naivety rather than smarts.

Unfortunately that is a real reality for girls even though they do mature quicker than boys do. I feel horrible that as a parent at times I have held her back because of this fear of what 'could' happen to her as an adult and largely felt that the reason I haven't home-schooled her is because the system will slow her down and the internal debate continues. I do send her to an excellent Montessori school which I love but have spent weeks frustrated with even to accept Sophia at the level that she is at.

I think it is a point that at times I have held her back because she is a girl and I am afraid of what will happen even if it is unlikely to happen. I have worried that she would not be accepted by her intellectual peers because the age gap was too big. But this is silly talk. You make a very valid point and I don't think it is sexist at all. Once they go to Uni and even if most Uni courses are online if they are going to do Medicine or Law they have to show up to the institution and I can no longer protect them especially when they are under-aged.

I have started her on ixl for her to do after-school and that is not that tough for her. She is flying through it and I think it is time for something harder. I appreciate you making the above point and I think I need to challenge my own perceptions and allow her to fly than to worry about what will happen if XYZ happen, and think what sex she does not matter I have no right to hold her back because of it.

Thank you Robert.

Kimba

[Robert Levy]

Kimba,

Thanks for joining in the discussion.  I'll give you my comments:

-------------------------------------

"I am a mother of two little girls who are early learners and so many times I have held them back because of my fear of them being so far ahead and starting Uni at 14 or 15 just scares the heeby jeebies out of me."

I don't blame you...it would be the same for me.  I think what I would do is keep them at least 2 years ahead in math (more is fine), but still at their grade level, or maybe one level ahead.  For math, even if you finish Saxon Calculus when they're in 9th grade, it's not the end of the world...they can take a break for a few years before starting college (they'd still be playing math games in school, so they won't forget much).  Then, maybe at 16, you start them in a community college or commute to a 4-year school.  In that environment, the kids generally leave each other alone, so from a safety aspect they should be good.  When they're 18, then they can go to a 4 year and live there (if it makes sense).  They'll be freshman-aged, so they should be able to handle it, even though they'd be taking upper level classes.  That what comes to mind for me.


"As it is my eldest daughter has been accepted to start school almost a year early and has started reception or what you call kindergarten at age 4 instead of 5. She has taken to it with gusto but I now think into the future when she goes to uni she is going to be almost a year younger than everybody else and not being able to go do the stuff other uni kids can do or getting mixed up in group more to social naivety rather than smarts."

Based on what I wrote above, I would try to keep her away from living at college until at least age 18.  Being a year younger in primary/secondary school may or may not work, it probably depends on the girl.  For college, I think that living in a dorm was my biggest mistake, so if there's some way to have them avoid that, it would be best (i.e., even a 4 year college is good, if the kids can live at home while they're young).  The social end of it should be addressed outside of school (i.e., church, for example), if at all possible.


"Unfortunately that is a real reality for girls even though they do mature quicker than boys do. I feel horrible that as a parent at times I have held her back because of this fear of what 'could' happen to her as an adult and largely felt that the reason I haven't home-schooled her is because the system will slow her down and the internal debate continues."

Your first job as a parent is to protect your kids...that simple.  If you get them through their childhood without the nasty traps (drugs, pregnancy, etc.), and get them a decent education, you win (and they win).  You really won't slow them down permanently anyway - as they get old enough, they'll do great anyway.


"I do send her to an excellent Montessori school which I love but have spent weeks frustrated with even to accept Sophia at the level that she is at."

Welcome to the club.  You must understand that having an advanced kid, you (and the kid) are troublemakers.  You people are distracting the cohesion of the class.  You are the enemy.  Well, that's how the school look at it.  But that rubs off to private schools and even Montessori.  You have to get to the mindset where your kids are getting their education at home, and "school" is really daycare.  We did that with David and it made life much easier.  And we told David the same, which was to feel sorry for the other kids whose parents weren't teaching them and to be patient as they tried to learn at school.


"I think it is a point that at times I have held her back because she is a girl and I am afraid of what will happen even if it is unlikely to happen. I have worried that she would not be accepted by her intellectual peers because the age gap was too big. But this is silly talk. You make a very valid point and I don't think it is sexist at all."

It's not sexist.  The same concerns are for boys too and you have to provide for their social lives in any case (for David it was church).  As far as being accepted by older people, that is possible, but the kid has to behave at that level - in other words if he's a silly, giggly, type, the older people will quickly tire of him.  But if he speaks like an adult and acts that way, then things can be better.


"Once they go to Uni and even if most Uni courses are online if they are going to do Medicine or Law they have to show up to the institution and I can no longer protect them especially when they are under-aged."

Now that is silly, as they should be adults by the time they're in med school or law school (although I wouldn't wish law school on my worst enemy, they way that is now).  Anyway, if the girls are simply going to class and acting mature, they'll be fine.  It's when they're out of your control, like in a dorm, I'd really worry.


"I have started her on ixl for her to do after-school and that is not that tough for her. She is flying through it and I think it is time for something harder. I appreciate you making the above point and I think I need to challenge my own perceptions and allow her to fly than to worry about what will happen if XYZ happen, and think what sex she does not matter I have no right to hold her back because of it."

No, you have the right and the responsibility to hold her back, if you cannot convince yourself that she'll be safe in her pursuits.  So do what you can, but protect is always first (and yes, we were exactly the same with David).

[Robert Levy]

Hi Kerileanne99,

My comments:
-----------------------------------------------------

"I cannot envision using LofF as a complete program! It is so, so much fun as as a supplement, and it is absolutely awesome for gauging just how much my kiddo has gleaned from her RS, Singapore, and supplemental math....but on its own??? NO WAY for Early Learning!"

From my 5 minutes on their site, I agree.  This is just another in the long string of attempts to make math fun.  Math isn't fun, at least for most kids (certainly most boys).  Attempts to make it fun is futile.  It might be entertainment (as you later say)...but I can't see how they're learning the subject.  I also don't like the swipes they take at traditional methods, they seem a awful lot like our schools.


"Thanks so much for inviting this forum into your living room Robert, as it has highly motivated me!"

Happy to help, where I can.

[Robert Levy]

Hi Jenene,

(regarding below) Yes, one major difference between reading and math is that once a kid learns to read, his appetite for reading will be unending and he will always be practicing, as there are always things to read in his environment.  But math is just the opposite.  You stop doing math, then the kid never will think about it all (unless he's one of them super self-motivated types) and what he's learned will bury itself in the back of his brain.  We, obviously, had breaks from Saxon, maybe even up to 3 weeks (typically when we went on vacation).  I don't remember it being a problem but I'd certainly get nervous going much longer.  There's reason the first 20 to 40 sections of each Saxon book is review.  But no, we might have taken a day or two off when David completed a book, but not any longer - he got right to work on the next one.  Also, on vacations, I would sometimes bring the Saxon books, just to have him do a little of it then.


"That was what I assumed of Life of Fred.  Fun and interesting but not a math program in and of itself (for the early years at least - I think the upper level ones are different but I haven't looked into them at all).  That was why I thought maybe we could use it as a fun 'break' between Saxon books but after just having 3 weeks off between books it is taking a bit of work to get back into it so I'm not particularly sure I want to have a break between the books any more."

[Mandabplus3]

My oldest just got back from a 2 day school camp. I was worried the whole time and was SOOOO grateful we had the forsight to pack a mobile phone in her bag. She rang us 3 times to chat and once for advice on how to deal with another child. Since then I have found out that another parent is tarnishing her reputation (never mind I will sort that one out, plus noone will actually believe it anyway!)
There is NO WAY i will be sending my kids off to university early. NO WAY i will put them in a dorm before they are at least 18, and its unlikely I will let them go anywhere without me as a parent helper again. its just not worth it. I spend all this time and energy building confident selfassured but very well behaved children and it is sooooo easy for them to be led astray.
Anyway for uni I figured we will probably get there a year or 2 early and do the first 2 years by correspondance. SInce the kids will be well trained in independant study habits by then it should be a minor ajustment to uni life at home. If they need practicum for thier course they can do it close to home at one of the many unis we have within an hours drive.
After high school here we dont have a lot of choices. its really TAFE or University. Of those two TAFE is generally too easy and not of a high enough graduate advantage to bother with. SO we only have school and University. Doing uni degrees by correspondance is an accepted practice in Australia. doing a mix of on and off campus is also entirely possible.
It is possible for people overseas to do our university degrees by correspondance also, if you all get stuck look into that! our standards are high enough that most courses would be recognised by employers.

[Tamsyn]

I'm not sending my kids off to college early, but I'm not going to hold them back either.  I remember Susan Wise Bauer once said, "Have they read the good books?  ALL of them?"  So they finish high school stuff early?  So what?  Let them master pottery.  Let them be active in Boy Scouts.  Let them practice, oractice, practice their music.  Start a business, paint a picture, get a black belt.  Pursue their interests!  There is so much learning to be done in the world that can be done in the safety of the home.  Even the most gifted of the world don't have enough time to learn everything.  I would never hold my kid back academically because of safety concerns 5-10 years down the road!  Colleges don't have a monopoly on learning opportunities.  After you finish college, then what?  College isn't the end goal, preparing our kids for a successful life is.  They might be so busy running a successful business producing their new invention that they won't have time for college by the time they're 18.  I think college is very important, but I'm keeping an open mind.  The sky isn't the limit unless we think it is, especially with these EL kids.

[Jenene]

I agree with Tamsyn.  I'm not going to be sending my kids off to university early but I am not going to be holding them back because of that either.  My goal at this stage is for them to be finished 'highschool' level math, science, english by the time they are around 12 - 14 years old.  Then they can spend the next few years doing what they want to do (within reason obviously).  Music, art, social services/voluntary work, start a business, read more classics .....  And there are so many uni courses available by distance education now that if they do want to 'go to uni' than we will find a distance one that they can do at home until they are old enough to leave home if they want to. 

[Robert Levy]

I certainly won't fault you guys for not holding back your kids.   You all are putting their safety first, so they'll be great.  To be honest, I hadn't considered the option of an academic break (in the sense of the formal flow of academics).  Ironically, here in Texas I would be breaking the law if David wasn't "Enrolled in School" through age 18, and while there are exceptions, none applied to him.  So having 2 four-year degrees just before turning 17 years old wasn't enough here, he still needed one more year of "school", although that could be loosely defined.  I actually used that law a few times to motivate him to study, since he literally would have been sent to the public schools if he didn't keep up in college.

There is also a lot you can do with them academically, outside of actually being enrolled in college.  With David, I had no promises that any college would take him early.  It's up to them, and saying "no" is always the "safe" answer for them (i.e., one college here in the states had a 14 year old girl in the humanities...it was time for a semester abroad, and she wanted to go to South Africa, and her parents wanted the same - the college said no, not safe - the parents sued...I doubt that college will be admitting any more little kids, for a very long time).

So I wondered also...and the best that I could come up with was to keep him moving at the same speed, especially in math, and if he was done with Saxon 5 years before any college would take him, so be it.  I do also have engineering math text books that pick up where Calculus leaves off, and could have keep him busy for another 2 years.   So, in that case, he could hit college and breeze through math there (and likely other subjects), hopefully getting very high grades - so it would bump up his GPA and maybe get him scholarships.  As it was, my wife knew the head of the math department at her community college (my wife had taken a class from her) and asked her to help.  She wasn't sure if a kid David's age could be enrolled, so she checked with some obscure state agency and found out there wasn't any rule against it, providing his standardized test scores were high enough.  As it was, she had to override the computer each time when enrolling him for classes because they asked for the kid's age, and the computer kept kicking it back, asking for a "valid year of birth".  LOL.

I think in the end you guys will find a suitable compromise that allows you to let your kids progress as fast as they are capable, but still allows them to get a good jump on college - so all will work out.

[MummyRoo]

Maybe when you've finished school-work years before you want the kids starting uni is a good time for unschooling 

Perhaps after years of structure and high-level work they will be ready to make good choices about what they want to do 

Or you can always do what Robinson did and pull out the higher level science texts that you can't do until you've finished calculus... they might even CHOOSE to do that 

[nee1]

I'm not sure I'll allow an academic break - it disrupts the flow of things. From experience, the longer the academic breaks you take, the more difficult it is to get into the flow of things again. I have a friend who completed his Masters (in one of the hard sciences), then took an academic break to go into high school teaching. By the time he came back to do his PhD in that subject (2 years after), he told me his first year as a PhD student was tough as he had forgotten a lot of what he had learnt during his Masters, and now had to spend the first year of his PhD attending Masters classes to catch up.  He was so regretful of the whole thing. One of my other friends finished her Bachelors, and was wondering whether to go into the job market first, then come back to do her Masters. I encouraged her to go straight in and do the one year Masters degree, so she won't have to spend the Masters time trying to catch up what she might have learnt and now forgotten.

And sometime ago, Ayesha Nicole started this thread on this African-American boy who was enrolled in community college at age 12 - http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/video-story-andgt-12-year-old-genius-goes-to-morehouse-college!/msg79554/#msg79554 . And here is another news article about him - http://www.championnewspaper.com/news/articles/21313-year-old-student-wows-morehouse-213.html.  And another one- http://www.urbannewsroom.com/2011/06/07/detroit-teen-is-youngest-ever-to-enroll-at-morehouse-college/ . And here is another one which features an interview with his mom - http://www.goblackamerica.com/Pages/education0911.html.  This is part 2 of the interview - http://www.goblackamerica.com/Pages/educationarchive1011.html.

So, I am seeing that homeschooling/accelerated learning/ early learning has the capacity to produce children who finish high school very early. (The standards are low anyway, so there is a very strong possibility that our kids will finish in record time). So what do we do when that happens? Do we let that potential go to waste? In my opinion, no. We continue to light that fire and allow the child to progress. If a child has a good support system at home, he can continue to progress academically, even in college.

If the child finishes high-school work early, he/she could be enrolled in University correspondence courses if the parents do not want early University entrance (i.e., physical presence on campus). That way, the brain remains fresh and active and ready for University when the time comes.  I will not encourage long academic breaks with my child, experience has shown that this is not effectual. I would rather he finishes University and be done with it . There are correspondence Universities like the Open University, where a child might get a Bachelor’s Degree via correspondence studies if the parents do not want physical presence on campus. There are always ways to work around things, for example, check out what the Swann family did, or the Harding family. Or see what the Robinson family did – to reduce the time spent in college, he made his kids take AP courses while at home. That way, his first 2 kids spent only 2 years in University doing a course that normally takes 4 years. Here is the link to the whole story - http://www.home-school.com/Articles/dr-arthur-robinson-kids-in-2008.php. I quote an excerpt from his comments there:

"Second: spend as little time in college as possible. Two of my boys got their Chemistry degrees in two years. This can be done through taking Advanced Placement exams. Prepare well, as if they are SATs. With good scores on AP exams, an ordinary student should be able to skip at least one year of college and possibly two.

"Third: do not live in the dorms and dunk yourself in the environment more than necessary. Even Caltech, still one of the best places in the country, has degraded greatly. When I took Matthew to the dorms, I was repelled by the noisy, animalistic atmosphere. My children have either lived at home or rented a house near the campus. Having a good study environment is vital. Students should not always be in the midst of the craziness that will drag them down.

 And I strongly believe a child should be met at his level, no holding back to make him fit into the very dumbed down society that we have today. We want our children to set standards, not follow standards.

[Korrale4kq]

I am completely for James enrolling in Open University via Australia. He qualifies as an Australian citizen for the reduced rate. But international students around the world can enroll too.

I have almost completed a double degree through there and it is so much harder academically than any college work my husband has been doing in the US at a brick and Mortar school, OSU.  People have this expectation that distance learning is easy, or that you can cheat.... From my experience it is so much more rigourous and you are mostly on your own.

[Korrale4kq]

I would also have James self study so that he can complete college level credits by doing CLEP exams too.

I also have no qualms about him going to the community college here at 14. It is a small college with limited classes and small class sizes. And the campus, if it can be called that because it is a smal building is just down the road from us. Going to university would mean travelling 50 miles away and that is not an optin until he is older.
Personally I am more concerned about him attending the public school system in this town.
Either way, I am not worried if he is accelerated. But we have choices.

[Jenene]

My son would need to still be enrolled in school until at least 16 years.  So, yes, we would have to have a plan for the year/s to submit to our authorizing body but it can be written to suit your child as long as you can show they are learning.  And I still expect my children to be doing something once they finish high school subjects it is just that they will have a lot more independence in choosing what that something is and it doesn't necessarily have to be as 'academic' as the years up to that point will be.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't see getting into college (university here) as the ultimate goal. We will definitely be heading and planning for that but it will depend on each child, what their talents are and what opportunities are open to them at the time. 

[Robert Levy]

Gutsy.  It's really limiting not having that piece of paper, as Mr. Robinson calls it, when referring to the same subject.  Decades ago, when I was in high school and convinced that I wanted to be an auto mechanic (I was actually running a repair shop at my house in New Jersey at the time - I still have my records from it), my mother said to me:  "Get your engineering degree, and then you can be a mechanic" or whatever you want to be.  Unfortunately it's impossible for me to know how my life would have worked out had I stayed in the auto repair business - I don't think as well, but who knows. 

[PokerDad]

Due to education inflation (thanks in large part to the current education bubble), the degree is the new high school diploma. It's hard to get a janitor job now without one. Anyone out there knows vertical ascension now requires a masters, which is the new degree.

Perhaps in 12 years or whenever, the bubble will have popped which will make a huge difference. However, two things I'm quite sure of will still be true: jobs will be scarce (jobs per population ratio as bad or worse than it is today), and education inflation still in play (pretty tough to erase a few decades of entrenched mentality). Based on these two, I'd suggest to adjust your plan accordingly.

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