I am so happy that my kids are going to a christian private school because despite the WA recommendation to close schools, they will remain open this fall.. and have kids learn in-school. (Imagine kindergarteners expected to be online all day - what a crock of sh*t)
Anyway... now the karens around me, obviously jealous, started telling me bs like.... "well, i dont know if we can still come over to your house or something because masks only protect you from me... but nothing is protecting me, especially if the kids are in school "
Oh my gosh... im so sick of this scam. Thank you for letting me vent.
Kindergartners on scholarship?
Well technically i think its my middle schooler who is carrying the weight. My son is gifted and he does really well. (Not that im bragging but I really worked on my kids since they were young. He has a deeper appreciation of school and work because of this covid thing. He cant wait to go back to school.)
We got a 50% scholarship so technically one of them is free.
I was more or less neglected, and the first time I went to school was when I attended college starting at age 14. I was an unintentional experiment in un-schooling. The first time I took a standardized test was when the state mandated it for children who didn't attend formal schooling. I scored in the top 2 percentile in mathematics. That was before I ever took a math class.
You can see why I'm skeptical of the importance of any formal childhood education, especially as studies show the influence of early childhood education on IQ disappears by adulthood. My immediate family includes engineers at SpaceX and Intel with no formal education outside of university. Formal childhood education is all glorified daycare in my opinion.
The cynic in me wants to say that scholarships provided by private schools are a fancy synonym for "customer discount". Discounts are really about sales and customer retention. The obvious question should be, what is the average tuition that parents are actually paying? How many families are paying the advertised price?
I have no question you have bright children, but there's no doubt also that schools would make more money by marking up their tuition by 200% and then giving everyone a 50% discount, telling parents it's because their children are gifted. In truth, most children who are being put in expensive private schools are above average. Most parents who care about their kids education and earn enough money to afford it likely have above average intelligence, and intelligence is heritable.
So you studied math privately and then did well or are you saying you're so smart that you innately knew mathematics well enough to score in the 2%?
Math is simply logic with syntax, and It only takes a few hours to learn the syntax. My parents didn't teach me math. My dad (while great at math) was too busy working, while my mom has an elementary understanding of math at best and took a hands-off approach. However, they did buy a series of graded math textbooks. I remember waking up one night at about 2am and working through an entire workbook before morning, representing what the schools would cover in about a year. In my opinion, it takes less than a week to self-study all the required math before pre-algebra.
To clarify, I do believe that arithmetic and algebraic reasoning is innate, and arises from the structure of biological neural networks. The syntax and conventions aren't however, and must be memorized. You have to realize that if your brain wasn't built to understand mathematical reasoning, you almost couldn't function as a rational being. Also, the reason I say "neural networks" as opposed to "brain" is I want to stress that the brain is merely a biological neural network, and every network is different. I have aphantasia, for example, meaning I think entirely non-visually, I lack a "mind's eye" and have no visual experience associated with thought, memory, or anything for that matter. This is a heritable, structural difference which influences cognitive experience in a fundamental way.
Also, as far as being "smart", I think it would be a bit of an oversimplification to call myself "smart". I am very good at creative problem solving, and that's what most people refer to as intelligence. However, most people would also associate things like superior memory as part of intelligence, and I'm definitely worse than average at recalling certain types of information, almost certainly because I lack a visual memory. The visual brain is more efficient at storing at recalling certain types of visual information. I've never gotten a visual IQ question wrong on any test, however there is almost certainly a speed/accuracy trade-off between solving visual problems in the occipital lobe versus wherever visual problem solving takes place in my mind. I think it's a little misleading to measure intelligence in just one dimension. I'm not good at everything, but I do believe I excel in a certain type of intelligence.