"It seems like something Robert might say... and I might point out, completely disagrees with modern pedagogy and "best practices" that attempt to teach understanding before doing (or doing complicated methods in an attempt to understand)"

Thanks again PD, that is exactly what I stated and I stand by it.  And not just for little twerps - I remember getting hung-up in my engineering (and related math) classes trying to physically understand what was going on when I was doing calculations.  It was driving me mad and my test scores were showing it.  Thankfully a friend of mine told me to simply give up on trying to understand the physical meaning, and rather just get to an answer.  And the answers would then make sense.  The methods (such as matrix calculations or Laplace Transforms) made no sense at all in the physical world - rather they were simply tools to getting to the right answer, in a way that was easily done.

This push to "higher-order thinking skills" really makes no sense at all, if you don't know the lower-order stuff.  If you don't know understand addition, how on earth will you understand what multiplication means?  Same with division versus subtraction.

Another great point from the article is when John Saxon notes that people don't learn how to play piano by learning "piano theory".  They learn it by practice.  But I would add a bit here - in piano, it is actually "drill and kill" because you're mostly playing the same music, over and over and over and over, again - in order to try to get good at it.  In Saxon Math, if you look carefully at the problems - they do get harder as you go later into the book.  For example, Section 42 of a book may be division of fractions and in Section 42 you'll do a half a dozen of them.  Then in Section 43 you might do 3 of them.  Then in 44, 2 of them;  45, 1 of them; then 48, 1 more; then 55 one more.  If you compare the problem in Section 55 with the half dozen in Section 42, you'll see that the problem in Section 55 is significantly harder than the ones in 42 - so you are not repeating, you are learning.  What Saxon did was figure out that the way math was taught for the past 2,400 years (until about 1970) was actually right, and that is why he will always be hated by people that think they know better.

I had a longer post that just got wiped out by a browser crash, but it's probably just as well.  To summarize it in simple terms - if you beg the people that have given a broken system to fix that system, you will be waiting very, very, long, for results - and unfortunately your kids are growing up and will lose the only chance they have to be proficient in math and reading, if you wait for "the system" to get fixed.

This lady's kids would be much better off if she spent her time trying to get her kids out of that system, in some way, rather than hoping the president will come to her rescue.

You're welcome P-Dad.  I recommend that to everyone here.  Buy as many of the original Saxon books as you can, as soon as possible.  Math isn't optional - your kids will be taught math one way or another, and I can't imagine a better way than Saxon.  The books are getting older by the year, and more and more are being tossed out.  The ones that I used with David stay in a box and will (and have) come with me during hurricane evacuations.  I keep them now for his kids.

After John Saxon died, and especially after his kids sold off the company (I'll never forgive him for not leaving the company to his #2 man, Frank Wang instead), most schools that used them, private and public did away with them - since there was no longer anyone pushing back against Big Textbook (as I call the "mainstream" publishers).  At that point, or so I read once, China moved in took possession of the books at no cost, since they were headed to landfills anyway.  What that all means is that the supply is dwindling and it's going to get tougher and tougher to find the right editions, in good condition.

Since everyone else weighed in, so will I.  David had an experience in 3rd grade, at a Christian school, that would have been debilitating had we not taken control of his education.  He had the nicest teacher in the world that year, but she loved birds, and that was pretty much what she concentrated on the entire school year - lots of projects, field trips, etc., all to study birds.  By the end of the year, I could point to any bird in our part of Texas and David could identify it by its look and chirping, and tell me a bit about how it lived (where it made nests, how many eggs it laid, etc.).  The kids loved her, and she loved teaching.

Of course the problem was that there are only so many hours in a day, and this very sweet teacher didn't have much time to be bothered with teaching math and reading - at least based on his lack of homework and what he told me about his class days.  Obviously that didn't affect David, but the idea that the rest of the kids pretty much lost a year of their education because of her was not a pretty thought.

I suspect that she was not alone, and that there many other teachers like her, in one way or the other.  Maybe they watch educational movies for much of the day, or do other fun activities (extended arts and crafts, for example), but in the end the kids are not learning and the parents, generally, either don't know that or are intimidated enough to not challenge the schools.  I believe the push for testing was to once and for all identify those teachers hold them accountable.  The resistance to testing, at least initially, was from the teachers unions, which, like all other unions, exist primarily to protect their least productive workers.  The complaints from them about being forced to "teach to the test" always struck me as a bit odd.  If the test is determining whether the kid meets the state standard of being able to divide fractions by the end of third grade, for example, then I would want the teachers to "teach to the test", rather than be free to be creative and have the kids out bird watching once or twice a week.

But in the end, there is so much blame to go around, I don't think it will matter...as there are so many parties to blame for this mess we call education in the United States that it will not be cleaned up, at least not in my lifetime.  For example, teachers blame the parents for not caring.  I didn't think that was true until my wife spent a week as a substitute at that same school.  The kids figured they would have a free ride that week, but she had none of that and assigned home work and pop quizzes.  For that, she was "talked to" by the principal.  The kids complained to their parents about such a "mean" teacher, and the parents complained to the principal.  Again, this was a private school, and the parents were paying to send their kids there.  My wife was never invited back to substitute.

So, from an individual perspective, my suggestion is that you simply don't rely on schools for anything more daycare and you take care of the rest yourself.  When your kids are young they are either not in school yet, or they are in school, but don't have much homework.  Either way, there is actually a lot of time to take care of their primary education.  As they get older that time gets filled...often with homework, and of course, busy work (i.e., "group projects").  So don't let the opportunities slip away.

Hi PDad,

Simple answer:  No.  I figured, for a number of reasons, that the tests were not needed.  Here's my rationale:

1)  The spiral method of Saxon automatically works in the entire reason for a test, which is to review material an additional time, with the objective of understanding it.

2)  Our pace was so quick that David was not going to forget material anyway.  If you do 5 hours of math in a week, it is a side hobby, if you do 15 hours, it's a profession.  David was obviously closer to 15 hours (if not a bit more).  Also, the idea of a summer break didn't happen for him - and it was actually an opportunity for us, as he had more time to work on the material.

3)  He actually did every problem twice, in that I made him check his work.  He didn't care whether he got them right or wrong, as long as he put something on paper - but I cared - so instead of getting an average of 70% right, by checking he was closer to 90 to 95% right.

4)  He did every problem and he eventually got every problem right.  In almost all cases where he was stumped, I could give him clues so that he could get to answer.  In a very small number of problems, I did actually work it through for him.  But, unlike schools, getting "enough" right was never sufficient, he had to be able to do every problem in a given section, before we moved on.

Also, I took advantage of the lack of summer breaks to let him skip the early sections in the earlier books - in the earliest ones, such as Math 65, he skipped the first 40 sections.  It was all review, and he was just doing that work a few days prior - so why do it again.

I'd recommend that approach to anyone...in 12 months we completed the first 5 Saxon Math books.  At that point I purposely slowed down, simply because I had promised him a laptop after Algebra 2, and I didn't feel like spending the money then.  Yes, it was a high workload at the time, but the net hours he spent learning the material was half (or less) than what he would have spent at a "normal" pace.

The thing to keep in mind is that your kid only has to cover the material once - so if you cover 5 years of math in 12 months those are 5 years that he doesn't have to struggle through later.

For the later classes, same thing, although we didn't skip as many sections at the beginning, as the overlap was not nearly as much.  For the Advanced Math (pre-Calc) book, he did every section, starting at the beginning (lots of material in that book...forget about getting through 2 or 3 sections in a day).

Several years ago I had a trip to Russia for two weeks, with a 3-day weekend in the middle.  It wasn't my first trip there, and it was in the middle of winter, so I really didn't feel like "painting the town" that weekend.  I figured that since I was in the land of many brilliant mathematicians, maybe something would rub-off on me.  So I decided that I would try to re-learn Laplace Transforms (for about the 8th time, but the first time in 25 years) and I brought the same book that I used in college.  For those not familiar, Laplace Transforms are very high level mathematics used by engineers.  In the typical sequence of math, you'd start college with calculus, and after 4 semesters (i.e., at the beginning of your third year), you'd be ready for Laplace Transforms.  So I completed most of the chapter on Laplace Transforms.  I was happy that my brain still worked, but I also noticed that doing those problems forced me to pull-in information from just about every level of math that I took, starting with arithmetic and including algebra and calculus - if you didn't know that stuff, you weren't doing Laplace Transforms.

So when I read that 5 year olds are learning calculus, I kind of doubt it.  When I read that they can learn it without knowing arithmetic and algebra, then I know they're not learning it.  People that have read the thread on my kid, David Levy, know that I certainly believe kids can learn math at an early age, but I see no way to simply bypass the basics.  In David's case, he took calculus at the college level when he was 11, but he had gone through all of the Saxon Math books prior.  Towards the end, we actually slacked off a bit.  I was busy building our house (fun project, by the way) and I also figured David was simply too young to start college - but had I continued at the earlier pace, David could have easily been ready at age 10 (maybe 9, even) - but he still would have had all of those Saxon books behind him.  In any case, it worked out for the best.

So, if it sounds like I'm beating up on this claim, I am - sorry.  The concepts in calculus are easy - area under a curve, slope of a line, and later volumes.  It's the mechanics of doing the problems that are challenging, so I think a much better use of time is to build up knowledge in standard progression.

Keep in mind here, I'm only attacking the claim, there may be other merits to using this material.

"Have you seen this article about the mother who got "suspended from school" after giving her kid opt-out forms for distribution?"

She was caught off guard.  As a parent, you do have to understand how you're viewed by the schools (and it's not pretty).  The best thing for her to do, to the extent that she could, would have been to distribute those forms to the parents outside of school.  But sending in the kid with the forms was not that unreasonable, and the school's reaction was to be expected.

She pushed her luck with them and will probably survive, but could just as easily be facing huge legal bills and jail time.  The school can tell the police anything they want, and the police will listen to them (i.e., the 'experts', as opposed to a lunatic parent).

"Feeling very blonde right now!"

Sorry, blonds don't use Saxon Math.  I'm not buying it.

I had to think a bit too to figure out what I was dealing with.

While I'm no fan of teachers, or especially their unions, on this I agree with them 100%.

For you parents of very young kids who will be sending them to schools (at least public schools in the United States), it's imperative that you understand EXACTLY what the the schools think of parents that try to take (some) control over the education of their children.  And keep in mind here that the people running the schools (and implementing this policy) are almost always from the same background as the teachers (i.e., degrees in 'education').  This one article does more to get that point across than anything I can think of.

http://www.nysut.org/news/2014/february/nysut-strongly-condemns-sit-and-stare-policies

Once you understand just who these people are and what they think of you, then dealing with them becomes a lot easier.  I have a Russian immigrant friend at work who is shocked by the standards in the United States and by the way she's treated by the teachers of her kids (she has nieces and nephews that are considered "average" in Russia that are still years ahead of what the best kids learn here).  But I know the system and there is nothing she can say to me that surprises me, at all.  (thankfully she's using Saxon, so her kids will be fine)

So be prepared and don't waste energy trying to fight it as a parent...the schools (at least the public schools) don't answer to you, they just tolerate you and try to humor you.  They answer to the people that pay them, and that is the government, always.  I could go on and on...but I won't.

I also found a Washington Post article on the same thing - to be honest, I actually am surprised a bit that they would go this far:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/14/why-schools-are-forcing-some-kids-to-sit-and-stare-for-hours/

One final comment...it took me some time to figure out why the teachers' union would have such a problem with sit-and-stare, when they are almost always in lock-step with the people that run the schools, and the last thing on their minds is the welfare of the kids.  And then, after reading a few more articles, it dawned on me that the teachers are being evaluated by these exams, and therefore hate them as much as the parents that opt-out.  So it's in the interest of the teachers to minimize the number of students that take the exams, as that discredits their results.

Sorry for taking a while on this, but here's my info on Saxon Math:
-----------------------------------------------------
Saxon Math was created by John Saxon, a retired air force pilot in the early 1980s.  He had developed supplementary materials while working at a junior college, teaching math.  He put these materials together and started publishing math books, under his own company (Saxon Publishers).  As he got busier, he added some help, and their names, in some cases, show up as co-authors.   Regardless, in the versions of the books that I recommend, you will always see John Saxon’s name as an author (or co-author) – if you don’t see his name, then I’m not recommending that book.  Below is a listing of the specific books that I own, used with David (except for Calculus and Physics), and therefore recommend, along with their edition number and publishing date.  As to Calculus and Physics, I don’t see a problem at all with the editions below either.  Note that these are NOT the latest editions:

BOOKS  USED  BY  DAVID
Math 54:  Hake, Saxon;  Second Edition, 1995
Math 65:  Hake, Saxon;  Second Edition, 1995
Math 76:  Hake, Saxon;  Third Edition, 2002
Math 87:  Hake, Saxon;  (first edition), 1997
Algebra ½ :  Saxon;  Second Edition, 1997
Algebra 1:  Saxon;  Third Edition, 1997
Algebra 2:  Saxon;  Second Edition, 1997
Advanced Math:  Saxon;  Second Edition, 2003
Calculus:  Saxon, Wang;  (first edition), 1997
Physics:  Saxon;  (first edition), 1993

Some notes on the above list:
1)   All books are hardcover, with black and white text and pictures (believe it or not, kids can actually learn that way)
2)   Stephen Hake is an co-author on the first 4 books.  However, he is also a solo author on later editions of this series (which I do not recommend), and to avoid confusion, always look for John Saxon's name on each book.
3)   As pointed out above, all of the books that I own (above) have John Saxon’s name as an author
4)   There are later editions to these books, some are acceptable, and some are not, so be careful and read the other recommendations here.
5)   The first edition of his books do not say “first edition” which is why I’ve shown it in parentheses.
6)   Again, always check the editions and the publishing dates, and especially the authors.
7)   On a related comment, using the list above, the first introduction of calculator use is right near the end of Algebra 1.  While this is still too early for my taste (I would avoid calculators right through Calculus…after all billions of people were able to learn math without them), it is still much later than conventional math curricula, and only used, sparingly, in certain areas, like graphing.  In my case, I did not permit David to use a calculator until well into Advanced Math, but instead had him use log and trig tables that I developed and printed out…and this seemed to work fine.  As to the problems that were meant to be done on calculators (like multiplying very difficult numbers), he would borrow a calculator just for them.  Learning how to use a calculator is not hard at all and does not have to be dealt with at all in math class.  Now, if you do the Physics text, then, by all means, use a calculator, or slide rule, but use something, as the purpose of that course is not to teach math, but to teach science.
   The books in this list start at the 4th grade level (hence Math 54 is really 4th Grade math, at least when math standards had some sanity to them).  Don’t ask why they named them this way.
9)   The Physics book is not calculus-based, meaning that it is not a college-level, engineering track, physics book.  So your kid will still need college-level physics at some point.  Some people have questioned the need to even cover this book – I don’t know, but I will say that we did not cover this book and David still did fine in college-level physics.

That's too funny, thanks P-Dad.

I thinking, just this week, about Everyday Math and just how hard it has been to wake people up to just how terrible it is.  The vast majority of parents simply feel unqualified to take a stand and figure that the "experts" will take care of it.  Then Common Core comes around and the people that have been fighting Everyday Math now have a much easier target to shoot at...even if it's not the reality.  When I saw the articles and example, I said to myself “I’ve seen stuff like that from the first days of Everyday Math, nothing new here”.

But just having people saying that Common Core represents the Obama Administration shoving these crazy ideas into our schools will get half of the parents on board, and actually looking hard at the curricula, usually for the first time.  From my standpoint, I could care less whether the two concepts are being confused (intentionally or not), only that horrendous materials, like Everyday Math, get some light shined on it.

As to Common Core itself, it may have started as a "collaboration of the states", but once the federal government offered $4.35 Billion to the states to implement it, it did become federalized (i.e., Race to the Top, as they called it).  It should also be noted that many of the people involved in Common Core have been trying to federalize education their entire working career.  It's just that they finally realized that they could not get away with shoving down a federal curriculum (which may be illegal too), so they had to make it look like a state-led effort.

By the way, if you're wondering why there is such a strong drive to centralize curricula, it is because that is much, much, easier to control (you don't have to fight 50 battles, only one), and it is much harder for parents to fight, as everyone can simply blame the next level up, right up to Washington.

So what would I do now if David were 2 years old?  Exactly what I did, as I keep coming back to the same conclusions.  For reading, you teach him to read – that simple.  As you guys know, he was an excellent reader by the time he was 5 years old.  There is nothing that a future teacher can do to him to make him “unlearn” reading.  They can just throw garbage at him and he’ll twiddle his thumbs all day.  Likewise with math.  By being able to do math right, he then has a way to check his work that others don’t have (even if he has to erase his work on tests, so the teachers don’t know he’s doing it that way, since that would be ‘cheating’).  Once he’s good at math, the right way, then he should be able to do fine in the silly ways that Common Core (or whatever) demands, as it is still based on math, it just that you have to do 50 steps when 6 steps would otherwise be required.  In other words you’re kind of forced to play their games, and they are just that and nothing more.

This gives some very good background on Common Core and its development…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxBClx01jc

…and this article looks like it could have been written by me.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/10/american_student_pisa_scores_math_has_to_be_at_least_a_little_boring.html
 
It talks about how math is “boring” and there is no way around it.  It basically says that Pythagoras’s Theorem was true 2,500 years ago, is true in the Andromeda Galaxy, is true whether you’re black, white, Chinese, or a cow.  You have to learn the same stuff in cases, and you might as well learn it the most efficient and direct way.  One thing to always keep in mind about math – the people “redesigning” math, the people that wrote Everyday Math, are EDUCATORS, not mathematicians, not scientists, and not engineers.  They are the people that hated math from day one and that’s why I will never, ever, trust them with the subject.

Naa...valid point.  Using a number line is a manipulative, at least based upon my understanding.

One thing I meant to mention was that I worried that he would not understand the meaning of what he was learning...be it math or reading.  Sure, he might be able to add 2 and 3 - but what does that mean?  Likewise, maybe he could read big words - but he might have no clue as to what they mean.

Then I figured his school and social activities would fill in the gaps that I was leaving - and that did work.  In fact, it becomes a lot easier to expand vocabulary if you're not struggling to be able to simply read the word (similarly in math).

ROAR!!!!!!!!!!   Did I hear "constructivism" somewhere?

Nice to see this thread light up a bit, it's been a lot of fun.  As always, I have to qualify my comments by stating that my sample size is one person for math (and basically one person for reading).  In David's case, I tried and tried to teach him addition using drawings and objects to allow him to visualize the very basic number facts.  I'd ask him if there were 2 apples here, and 3 apples there - how many total applies are there?  SEVEN! (of course).  I even have a video of us at a Miniature Horse farm counting the horses.  He says "one", "two", "three", "four".  I ask him how many total - he says TWO!  Hopeless.

I gave up on that approach and then hit him with the raw numbers.  No dice there either.  Finally, I used a number line - so he could count his way on the line to help him get to the answer.  That actually worked.  Then I started deleting numbers from the line and leaving tick marks - he adjusted.  Eventually I told him to use the "number line in your head" - he did, and then slowly he learned the addition facts without having to count.  Multiplication tables, for whatever reason, was a breeze for him.  Anyway, that's my little story.

By the way David's doing fine.  He's living in New York City, working for a large company as a computer programmer (about the only skill I didn't teach him, at all).  Without getting too specific, they are paying him well, as he has his own 0.5 bedroom apartment (kind of a cross between a studio and one bedroom) in a really nice neighborhood in Manhattan (although it is a 4-storey walk-up), and a 5 minute walk to work - he's also saving up a bunch of money.  And he (finally) gets to see his grandma in New Jersey a lot.

He's visiting us (here in Texas) this week to work on our cars and do some plumbing repairs (my back's a bit messed up, so we put him to work).  But he is having a great time here and it's really nice to have a 19 year old come home to visit without asking for money (LOL).

Kerileanne99,

Tough questions, but I'll get through them.

"There is no way she could sit down and do an hour of independent work, so there is very little chance of skipping grades later."

I don't agree with the above.  Getting any kid to sit down and work independently at age 3.5 is a losing battle, but she seems already ready for Saxon 54, which is meant for 9 year olds, and which David started right when he turned 7.  So you definitely have time for her to settle down a bit, and still be ahead, and that's only when you start Saxon 54.  From there she'll be able to whip through the books and get further ahead.  You didn't mention reading, but I assume that she also reads well by now too.  If that's the case, she will be bored to death if she stays at her grade level, based on age.

For me and David, the hypotheticals are tough as I have to go back to my mindframe back then.  I do remember vividly thinking: "wow, this kid is so far ahead, what on earth is his future going to be like", rather than planning anything out and knowing what apartment he will be living in when he goes to MIT.  I do remember asking myself what to do next with a kid who has gotten as far as he had gotten.  I didn't actually expect him to end up in college that early, as I didn't think he would be accepted, based on his age.  So I would have basically kept trying to advance him in my area, which is engineering, by having him do higher and higher level math, and then engineering work (from text books) - with the idea being that when he finally did make it to college, it would have been a breeze for him, and with that, he may have been able to really learn the material well.  If I wasn't an engineer, but I wanted him learning engineering, I probably would found an engineer to use as a guide/tutor (and it probably would have been much cheaper than an early-learning tutor, LOL).   But that was how I saw it.  In college, he would have been able to take a large load of classes and maybe finish up to a year earlier than others his age.  He would have had a high GPA, which is critical when getting a first job or going to grad school, and doesn't hurt for later jobs.

Sorry, but I know nothing of the books/texts that you're referring to.  My background is limited to Saxon, and prior to that, looking at other stuff and not being able to see how it would have helped David (I did try some, but don't remember anything about them).  The other stuff looked intended to keep the kid happy and smiling, but not having to learn.  Obviously your child is much different, and those materials seem to work great for you.

I agree with your assessment of your public school options.  The advantage you have is that you already understand your schools are junk, instead of having to learn it the hard way (i.e., after it's too late for the kid to recover), like 90% of the well-intended parents learn.  So you do have the right mindframe going in.  But also keep in mind the spillover effect into private schools - that was something that I wasn't ready for and could have hurt David.  I figured private schools would be fine, but they are not so hot either.  It's great having the hook into college, and if she stays ahead, just slowly wean her into that school when you think she's ready.  We started by keeping David enrolled in his Christian school, but going to the community college for one class (Calculus).  The next semester, he stayed enrolled, but then 2 college classes.  After that we tried at our failed home school attempt and I think he was also taking 2 college classes.  Finally, we just dumped him full-time into the college, and that worked fine.

As to what David would have done if he had been left to his own devices is a great question.  It would have been great if he had a clone, so we could have done a study, but that's life.  Considering that he showed absolutely no motivation to learn prior to me force-feeding him reading starting at 3.5, and then only liking to read after he had learned it, and never showing any motivation to learn math, I would say he would have ended up pretty much like the kids of nearly all of my non-immigrant co-workers (and even some immigrant co-workers).  They're essentially spending most of the 20s now, living at home (mostly), trying to figure out what to do for the rest of their lives.  They generally have basic jobs (service industry type), and they dabble in college, but often find they don't like their path, so they double-back and try again.  David's love for video games would have made even finishing high school difficult, and college impossible - so he would have just been another statistic, maybe finding something that he liked, much later in life than necessary.  I also base it on my past, where I just barely able to get the distractions out of my way long enough to get my college degrees (I essentially moved 2 miles from campus my junior year, and lived in housing that was dominated by senior citizens, with no TV or stereo).  In today's Internet/Gaming world, there would be simply no way I would have gotten to where I am, not even close.

That's why I say it's the job of parents to steer the kids and straighten them out each time they veer off course, even slightly.  Facebook, video games, and other stuff out there is focus-group tested and proven to take kids away from studying.  For most kids (maybe not yours, yet, LOL), studying is about one step up from torture.  In the past, it wasn't as bad, as you had schools that actually wanted the kids to succeed, and you had much fewer distractions.  But today, if the kid is self-motivated to learn, he still does fine.  If not, either parents step in and make the kid learn, or it's game over.

Mandabplus3,

"When I calculated out what David did I decided it wasn't for us. I do want to accelerate my kids but I decided I didn't really need a kid doing calculus at age 9."

No argument from me.  Unless you, as a parent, have some need to have a kid being that advanced, there's really no reason for the kid to be there (and if you have that need, I feel sorry for the kid).  In our case, as I mentioned, we backed off a bit, so he was 11 when he started Calculus.  Still, of course, very young, but at that point we were getting nothing out of the Christian school, our attempt to home school had failed, so we figured why not try college full time.  He went to a day school (2-year college) about 10 miles from us, so my wife could drive him to classes and drive him home.  Not much chance to get in trouble.  But a key thing for him was that he absolutely loved being in college, relative to the Christian school, and no one bothered him, ever at the college, whereas he was having some trouble towards the end at the Christian school.  He also loved the idea of not having to deal with a police state (the way our schools are now) - if he didn't feel well, he packed some Advils and took them when he was supposed to - no nurses or shrinks to deal with at the college.  Little stuff like that meant a lot to him, as heard plenty of stories from his church friends who were in the public schools.  He then went to his 4-year school, which was 20 miles away, but again he was driven there every day, until the happiest day of his mom's life, when he got his driver's license.  But still no issues there.

So that's the good side.  The bad side we avoided, which would have been sending him away on his own, in any form, to college.  He simply would not have studied (and proved that, as I mentioned earlier).  So, we played it careful, but it was easy when you had one kid, and one parent available full time for that kid.  I realize that most people have/want more than one kid, and that would have greatly complicated things in our case, possibly making the logistics impossible - so delaying would definitely help there.

Overall, you got my message.  It's not how advanced you can get the kid, it's whether you are the one in charge of how they get their early education, because, in my opinion (and opinion is putting it very gently, I consider it a fact in this country), the education system we have, especially at those ages, is designed to fail, or at least hinder, the kids.  I base that on my understanding of the people that run the system and what their overall goals are for this country (and likely most of the West), and having well-educated kids is simply not in their interest.