How do people feel about teaching kids beyond school

I grew up in a theater family as a kid, and later played sports as I got older. I think those experiences were just as valuable as school and taught me things I would not have otherwise learned. I liked playing videogames and watching TV as much as the next kid but I'm glad I was forced to get out of the house.

 

If we continue to expect our schools to do all the teaching, we will fall behind the rest of the world. Its imperative for parents to continue engaging kids in all avenues. It is a parents responsibility to prepare their child for adulthood. Leaving it to a school system is failure.

 

I was forced to take piano lessons for a few years and was lukewarm about it and hated practicing. But I picked up a guitar at 30 and started writing songs in grad school and managed to have a mildly successful music career. I think had it not been for the piano lessons and doing musicals as a kid, that leap would have otherwise been impossible.

Had I never ran track or played football, the exercises I do now to combat middle-age fat explosions would be alien to me, and like my sister who was sedentary all her life, I'd probably be shopping in the Big and Tall store and taking medication for diabetes.

Somewhere my lineman coach probably deserves some thanks.

 

I'm for it. How else will our kids know the real age of the Earth and how Jesus rode dinosaurs? I mean let's be serious now.

 

Hey who would oppose this.

I taught my son a lot for instance by having him read my posts on this very board.

 

This.

At my wife's school, if your kids aren't reading when they enter kindergarten, they're already behind.



of course there was an article recently that said IF you teach your kids at home, YOU are responsible for disenfranchising others and YOU should feel bad for what you're doing.

 

There is a reason why if you walk into an AP calculus class, it's going to be dominated by South and East Asians, because parents of those cultures drill mathematics a year or two ahead of the U.S. standard. My mom did it and I'm sure other kids from Asian parents experienced the same thing.

 

Learning never stops.

 

Do it, but start early and try to get the kids' buy in by including them in the process or being aware of their interests and abilities. My mom just started sending me to summer math camps starting sophomore year of high school: four hours of lectures then four hours of group study every night from June to August, plus a project and presentation during spring break if you wanted to go back the next summer.

 

If I'm not mistaken, children who pick up stringed and keyboard instruments before the age of 11 tend to develop cognitive skills more quickly (and I've heard that children raised to be multi-lingual develop denser brain matter).

I'm pretty sure kids who are active in sports also tend to perform better in school, and are generally less likely to get into drugs (probably since boredom tends to play a role in why many start).

Hard to argue against the impact of extra-curricular activities on a child's development, IMO.

 

A few too many variables to correlate athletic participation with academic achievement, particularly the time and energy draw during key study hours. I think the development benefits are more apparent with female athletes across the board than with different subsets of male athletes, though.

 

Do these "Asians" have a racially associated slum glamorization culture (I.e. I'm-a-drunk-fat-stupid-redneck-and-proud-of-it country music)?

 

I'm very pro team sports for kids. It teaches them team work, leadership, and dealing with different personalities.

 

as opposed to what? letting your kids play video games all day?

 

My parents had me in piano and sax lessons from 6th-8th grade. One of the BEST things they've ever done for me. My only wish is that they would've started me sooner, and with the guitar as well.

And if I can hop on my soapbox for just a moment... If you decide to send your kid to lessons for a musical instrument, ensure that their teacher spends just as much time on music theory as they do on how to actually play an instrument. Theory is what will allow your kid to be able to pick up that instrument, or any other instrument with a little practice, YEARS after their lessons have ended and still be able to play by ear.

You never have to know how to play any songs if you can just sit at the piano and doodle around in a simple A minor scale, then slide into a G# Dim7 chord followed up with an Am11th (That's nasty btw ). But if you can do that, then you can also play any song that you want as well.

/soapbox

 

PLEASE get your kids into music lessons as early as possible. It makes them smarter and enriches their lives forever.

 

No...

The phenomenon stems from Asian immigrants coming from school systems in countries where basic differential calculus is taught at high school level rather than university level as the norm and not as an 'advanced placement' class like it is in the U.S. Thus the parents feel as if the school systems in the U.S. teach Math at a slower than necessary pace.

Have you taken AP Calc in high school? If you did I guarantee half the class was a combination of South and East Asian ethnically. At least that's the way it was in any high school in FBISD.