So yesterday we experienced our first math competition, and as the title of this post suggests, it did feel akin to visiting a foreign country. Imagine, 160 middle school students turning out at 8 a.m. on a cold Saturday morning…to do math! How had we not crossed paths before?
Homeschooling Math
As I’ve noted elsewhere, C.’s true strength and passion is on the verbal side, in the arts and humanities. But she’s no slouch in math—her SAT’s put her at the 90th percentile in math for a 7th grader taking the test—it just doesn’t happen to be a passion. Anyway, this fall she’s been studying high school geometry with some other homeschoolers in the area, and it’s been a great experience. Prior to this she had completed algebra using Aleks.com but by the end found it very dry. She craved the interaction of a class. I met the teacher—a brilliant, mellow soul who has homeschooled her own PG daughter—and several other homeschooling moms with highly gifted kids raved about the class. So we joined. And for the first time in long time (maybe ever?) C. came home saying, “I really am enjoying math. Geometry is fun.” Those words alone were worth their weight in gold.
After a few classes her teacher called our house and asked if C. would like to join the MathCounts math competition class. When I relayed the invitation, C. just rolled her eyes. I could just imagine her saying to herself, “Great, I can be a mathlete.”
“Just try it once.” I said. And so she agreed. She went to the class and when she came out she said it was okay, but….
“Well if you don’t want to do it, you have to go in and tell your teacher.” She went back in and it was awhile before she came out. She said I needed to go in too.
Back in the house her teacher told both of us again how much she would love C. to join. C. “well, umm-ed” until finally the teacher exclaimed, “Do you know how good you are in math?” At that C. finally agreed to do the class.
In the ensuing months she has marveled at being with other kids who actually think doing math problems is fun. “Mom,” she told me after a timed test (Qualifying test? Practice test? I have no idea. I just show up where I’m supposed to go for these things.), “There were kids who actually were so excited about this that they couldn’t sleep the night before! Kids who practiced!”
On Friday night we saw some more of these kids at a potluck dinner and homeschool club awards ceremony. I was impressed at the amount of swag the kids got for participating in various math competitions in the prior six months: pins, ribbons, trophies, and certificates of all sorts. However that stuff was incidental. What was really so nice was the chance for her to socialize with some of the other girls in her class, to talk about sports, hobbies and school experiences and who knows what all else. And for me and my husband to get to know some of the parents. (“You don’t have a TV either?”)
The Competition
As for the competition yesterday, we were complete neophytes. MathCounts virgins. It took us about an hour to reach the high school hosting this chapter competition. C. checked in and then joined her teammates (predominantly girls, I’m pleased to note). They chattered away in a sea of similarly animated kids surrounded by parents ranging from the blasé to the over-invested.C. was not competing as part of our team’s team, but as a “certified individual.” The students did their team and individual tests and around noon everyone migrated to the auditorium, where the “countdown round” took place. Not surprisingly, C. didn’t qualify for this event, but two of her teammates did.
The “countdown round” works like this. Hanging above the stage was a huge projection screen. At the foot of the stage was a podium and two tables facing the screen, each equipped with a buzzer. The top 16 students were bracketed, with the pairs taking turns facing off. The moderator revealed the question on the screen and at the same time read it aloud. The students then had something like 30 seconds to hit the buzzer and offer the correct answer. Whoever got two out of three answers progressed the next round.
Talk about pressure. After a few questions I leaned over to my husband and said, “My brain just doesn’t work this way.” I wouldn’t be finished reading the question when some kids were already hitting the buzzer. In most cases I didn’t even have the vaguest idea of how I would start to try to answer the questions. C.’s teammates were eliminated, but no matter because when it came time to announce the top 40 students who would be advancing to the state competition, four of her teammates (all girls!) made it, and two were among the top 6 of the entire competition. Not bad.
Next came the announcement of the winning teams. The parents were sitting behind the kids and with each school named, it became clearer that our homeschool team was among the finalists. When it was announced that our team won, everyone whooped and leapt to their feet, and the kids went up to the stage to accept their trophies and certificates. Not only were they going to the state competition, but the team would be the guests at a formal dinner hosted by the state chapter of a national engineering society.
A Strange Land
On the way home C. commented that it had been “oddly exciting.” It was. But what I was struck by was the fact that this whole infrastructure, this whole world to foster math talent exists and had existed unbeknownst to us for all these years, until now.
Well, not really. Ever since being initiated into the circle of people with PG kids three years ago, I have waded through (and deleted) e-mails littered with a cryptic alphabet soup (and the odd foreign word): AMC-8 (and 10 and 12), AoPS, ARML, USAMO, AIME, MOSP, Mandelbrot…. [Note: Just found out about yet another math competition: Purple Comet! Mathematics.] Over time I learned that there is this whole pipeline, this whole feeder system for kids who have mathematical talent and scientific talent (I’m not even going into the robotics, physics and chemistry competitions etc. etc.). That there are trophies and certificates, and opportunities for bonding, and interested adults.
I had no idea. And now I am jealous.
You see, there is very little that is comparable on the verbal talent side. Sure there’s the National Spelling Bee and now the Geography Bee…but those are more about prodigious memorization. There’s National History Day, which kicks in at middle school. High school has debate and quiz bowl competitions, the new kid on the block, the National Vocabulary Championship, and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. But nothing on par with the Intel Science Awards in terms of prestige and publicity. And that’s about it. At the elementary level the only thing that I can think of that might appeal to a highly gifted verbal kid would be Destination ImagiNation. The American Bar Association or the American Library Association or the Modern Language Association aren’t falling over themselves to create programs to foster verbal, creative or artistic talent. Neither are the private or foundation sectors (although I would guess there’s money out there for remediating reading). There are no mentorships. A budding writer can try to get published in Cricket, or New Moon or the occasional local poetry contest. But again, sustained opportunities over time are pretty sparse, as fellow blogger Adsoofmelk points out.
Even in a place like Cogito.org, an online community for exceptionally and profoundly gifted students, the content and even the whole “feel” of the site skews heavily toward the sciences. Which is not surprising, when you look at the underwriters. To its credit, CTY is doing what it can do address this within its funding parameters and even invited C. to become an online community leader. I’m very grateful that a place like Cogito exists. However C. seems to have lost interest in Cogito and has switched her time and attention to her online knitting community, Ravelry.com, instead. Which in many ways is a shame (although it sounds like there are some very smart, cool and creative people there….)
Just to give you an idea of this whole other world of mathematical talent development, check out this documentary, Hard Problems, that has been produced by the Mathematical Association of America as a response to “Spellbound.”
Pretty amazing, no?
I don’t know what the answer is to better identifying and supporting verbal talent. But surely something can be done. And needs to be done. What do you think?
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never really checked Destination Imagination, but isn’t it largely geared toward inventing things? I suppose I should…you know…LOOK.
Do you just think it’s evidence of gender bias in gifted education? A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of a recent Newsweek in which families with gifted boys are far more likely to identify them as gifted than do families with gifted girls. Is it that math is “hard” (or at least we perceive it as such, so we accord it more respect)?
Good issue.
Hi Adsoofmelk,
C. never did DI, but I have friends whose kids did/do. There seems to be a lot creativity, improv, drama and thinking on one’s feet involved. Here’s the description from the website:
“The Destination ImagiNation Flagship Program is a process-based program grounded in sound creative problem solving theory that helps young people build lifelong skills in creative and critical thinking, teamwork, time management and problem solving. Up to seven participants work together as a team for eight to twelve weeks to create their solution to a Team Challenge, which can have a focus that is theatrical, structural, improvisational, scientific or technical. Teams also learn and practice creative quick-thinking skills for the Instant Challenge portion of the program.”
To answer your questions. Yes, I think there’s a bias in what our society values. Math and science have a concrete economic value–think Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
As for a gender bias in identification, again, I think there is a bias toward identifying math/science talent as being emblematic of extreme intelligence. Girls are “supposed” to be verbal.
On the subject of gender and prodigious intelligence…I don’t know if you’ve looked at what is out there about girls and Aspergers but I find it striking (and frankly a bit disturbing) that in the very very little research that exists on how Aspergers manifests in girls, one of the “symptoms” (according to the leading expert) is “a fascination with classic literature such as the plays of Shakespeare and poetry.” I came across that and I went, “Huh?” Makes me wonder if profoundly gifted girls risk being misdiagnosed as Aspergers. If extreme intelligence is being pathologized. Here’s the link: http://www.aspergerfoundation.org.uk/infosheets/ta_girls.pdf
Finally, check out this blog about girls and giftedness from a woman in the technology field: http://alphawomen.com/me-me-me-me-me/invisibility-geek-girl
The Aspergers paper that you linked bothers me. I’m left wondering – are autism researchers expanding their territory so as to grab more research funds, or is it a case of blind men examining an elephant? It almost seems as though the writer seeks to incorporate the gifted spectrum into the autistic.
Finally read this post — I can so much relate to everything about girls and verbal giftedness. (Although my 8yo is quite good at math too, despite her professed dislike of it.)
For us, homeschooling has been pretty much it on the “what can be done” question — keeping her learning and growing in a positive environment until real opportunities become available (like in college, sigh . . . ).
[...] This would have been the first year that C. was eligible. As I’ve written before, there are comparatively few national level contest opportunities for kids who are highly verbally [...]
I think that there are more opportunities for verbally gifted kids than for mathematically gifted ones. There are hundreds or thousands of essay contests and dozens of magazines that accept kid writing. Almost every school has a student newspaper. There are many *fewer* opportunities for math kids.
The math contests are largely an attempt to level the playing field, to give the mathy kids one place where they are not regarded as freaks.