you can't cram math (or anything else)

Numerous parents here have spent years lobbying our high-performing, generously-funded district ($22,000 per pupil spending) to move to the international standard for math education. That being: algebra in the 8th grade.

We have approximately 30% of our 8th graders taking algebra. The figure at KIPP, in the Bronx, is 80%. ($10,000 per pupil spending, roughly)

They're not going to do it. They're so not going to do it they're not even going to say 'no.' They're just not going to do it.

While we're on the subject of well-funded school districts saying 'no,' I should add that the middle school is also not going to allow more students to take Earth Science in the 8th grade. Only forty-eight students, of 150 or so, currently take Earth Science, compared to 100% of students in Pelham. However, in the view of the school that is 48 students too many. As the chair of the science department told us, "If it were up to me, I wouldn't offer accelerated courses to any students in the middle school, but this community demands it."

The district argues, in meetings with parents, that learning depends upon maturity. Not all students are mature enough to learn Earth Science in the 8th grade. Or algebra.

Of course, maturity has nothing to do with ability to learn, as the National Math Advisory Panel reports. However, maturity has everything to do with a student being able to monitor his learning instead of depending on his teacher to perform this function. So, yes. It's easier to teach Earth Science to a high school sophomore than to a student in the 8th grade.

So why do parents continue to lobby school districts across the land to teach serious courses to younger kids?

What is the big deal, after all, about taking algebra in the 8th grade?

What's the difference when you take algebra so long as you get around to it sometime before college?


Brain Rules

It turns out there is a very good answer to that question.

It takes years to consolidate a memory. Not minutes, hours, or days but years. What you learn in first grade is not completely formed until your sophomore year in high school.

Rule # 6: Remember to repeat
John Medina

Bingo.

Here we have one of those facts of life many of us have picked up over the years but can neither verbalize in conversation with school officials nor defend as true, primarily because we don't realize we know it.

We don't know what we know. ^*

On the other hand, when we hear someone else verbalize it, we recognize it as true of our own experience. At least, I did, when I read this statement by James Milgram:

First of all, I claim that taking -- even asking to take it out of the curriculum -- shows a profound ignorance of the subject of mathematics. The point is, in mathematics, many, many skills develop over an extended period of time and are not really fully exploited until perhaps 10, 12, or even 15 years after they've been introduced. Some skills begin to develop in the first or second grade and they do not come to fruition or see their major applications until maybe the second year of college. This happens a lot in mathematics and long division is one of the key examples.

I'm going to guess that this is another reason why Singapore students are so far ahead of American students. Singapore students are doing simple algebra in the 5th grade. They're doing simple algebra in the 5th grade, and they're not dipping in and out of simple algebra, either; they're not being "exposed" to "algebraic thinking."

They're learning what they're learning to mastery.

At age 10.


^* not to be confused with known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.