How do people feel about teaching kids beyond school

Not sure if it's still true, but I remember hearing of stories that parents in China would give gifts to teachers so their kid would get extra attention in classes.

I think the teaching profession is higher respected than doctors over there as well.

 

The answer to that pertains to the topic of the thread. 2nd generation Asian Americans are children of immigrants who did go through schooling in Asian countries and many of these parents feel it is their obligation to drill them in math beyond what their child's grade school is teaching them because their pace is far too slow than what the parents were used to.

I remember my mom making me memorize multiplication tables in first grade on a Saturday morning while the kids on my street were playing basketball in our culdesac.

 

After working at an after school program for 2 years, I was shocked to come across kids who struggled to read and do basic math. These kids were in the 2nd and 3rd grade. I truly do believe that those kids struggle mainly due to the lack of out-of-school teaching by the parents. I understand that some of these kids had single parents and it would be difficult but I remember a kid who was in the 1st grade and couldn't even write his name.

As a kid, my after school/out-of-school activities included Kumon(math lessons), soccer practice, and piano lessons. As much as I hated Kumon and piano lessons I'm very grateful I did that as a child.

 

Incidentally I believe they have the highest graduation rate in the country for black students.

 

You could just manage the TV time, take them to the library a bunch, be cheap, grouchy or immigrant enough to not indulge every video game or amusement park request, or just ground and/or belittle them every time they come home with a C. If you have cash just move to a top neighborhood or send them to boarding school, they'll have to ace French and pre-cal and joke about "party schools" just to fit in.

 

It's a pretty damn good school district. I remember when my parents were house shopping when I was a kid and had better offers in other areas but decided that the school district was a more important factor.

 

You'd be surprised at how many people will say "It's the teachers job to teach my kid..not mine"

My wife is a teacher, so I know a LOT of teachers. Its not uncommon in some schools for the teachers to teach 2nd graders how to tie their own shoes because their parents never taught them. Thats 7yrs old! Its amazing to see the differences in kids at that age - some are reading at a 4th grade level, and some are struggling with anything past a Dick and Jane book. Parents sometimes don't have to do ANYTHING but support the teacher and make the kid do homework..but many parents won't even do that much.

I understand single mothers..growing up poor..etc..excuse..excuse. I grew up very poor in a single-parent home. My mom worked in a screen printing company and brought 5ftx3ft decals home every weekend to pull the excess plastic off - she got 10cents per sheet and we helped. She went to night school because she dropped out in 10th grade pregnant. BUT despite all our issues, she made DARN well sure that we did our homework - she went to EVERY open house and ANYTIME the teacher called she got on to US, NOT THE TEACHER. That being said, many of the kids in our schools were better off than us..not a lot better off, but they had the nice clothes we couldn't afford. But at Open house..our schools were empty. The only parents that showed up were the parents of the "smart" kids.

Parental support is the #1 determining factor of educational success..and many parents today refuse to acknowledge it.

 

Great. So in other words...we are doomed.

 

only as long as we continue to blame teachers, blame schools, demand tests, and let parents and kids off the hook.

 

Crappy parents are the worst people on earth.

 

How do you relate these two? Do "Asian" students here in the US fly back to "Asia" to learn calculus?

 

That hit a little too close to home huh?

*giggle*

 

You did kind of put the cart before the horse in seeming to infer this was about home schooling as an alternative rather than supplement, and then further narrowing the motives to those of evangelical parents, specifically with regards to science curriculum and creationism. To be fair at least you're not claiming that every calculus class is half Asian, in a town and state where white boys invented the pocket calculator, the portable computer and have been building refineries and planning moon landings for almost a century.

 

Is this a serious thread about the OP, or simply another "argument" in D&D that's a waste of time?

On topic, we never stopped "teaching" our kids while they were at home. One is now a successful 24 year old lead software designer for an Austin tech company, with degrees in computer engineering and computer science that he managed in 4 years, the other is a sophomore majoring in computer animation and loves it. They both went to public magnet middle and high schools here in Austin, which served them well. We were constantly encouraging them to have after school activities. One was in robotics and choir, the other deeply involved in theatre. Since the magnet schools were across town from our home in SW Austin, I put a lot of miles on whatever I was driving. We read to them when they were young, and I gave them a steady diet of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show while they had their after school snack, recorded the night before, starting while they were still in grade school. Most of you probably think I'm kidding, but while Stewart was there, I considered it the most honest news program on television, and damned funny, as well.

We were constantly doing things with them to encourage learning outside of the classroom. Any parent that isn't is crazy, in my humble opinion.

 

One problem in the US is the division of classes into AP, regular, and basic. So, there are children in lower level courses that think they're ok because they're average in their class or kids that think they're excelling because they're average in AP.

It goes without saying that you should teach your kids but the standards for grade schooling in the US are so low that there's a big chunk of kids that pretty much know nothing at graduation.

 

I live in Texas where the state school board is aching to inject intelligent design into textbooks as science so I have to be a realist.