Parent Resources

Mathematics Summer Programs

Why send a youngster to a special program?

The July 2001 issue of the Psychology Today magazine reported that attending a summer enrichment program in general increased the IQ of the student by 1.6 points on the average. There are at least two more serious reasons.

(1)The student's need for enrichment
It is a safe assumption that the school curriculum and instructionl methods are designed to meet the educational needs of students who fall within 1 standard deviation above or below the mean. Therefore, the greater the IQ of a student deviates from the norm, the less suitable the standard school curriculum is for that student. One remedy is to provide special instruction in a class comprised solely of such individuals and provide special instructors. However, the number of such students in a given school will necessarily be very small and so it is not an efficient utilization of the school district's resources. The other way is to send gifted student to a summer program that is appropriate for their level of gift.

(2) The psychological need for peers
The greatest need of the highly gifted is for peers - in a non-competitive, non-conflicting and stress-free FUNvironment. This is important for all gifted students, especially those who are home-schooled. A suitable summer program affords this opportunity.

Which Summer program?
Having decided to send the child to a summer program, the parent is faced with the task of choosing the program most appropriate for the child. Clearly, to benefit, the student must go into a program that matches or slightly exceeds the ability level of the student. If your child is profoundly gifted, choose a program for the profoundly gifted. There is only one mathematics program of this kind in the USA and Canada for middle school students, namely, MathPath. Elsewhere on these pages, the Executive Director of Mathpath speaks to the issue of why a profoundly gifted middle school student should go to the Mathpath summer program. If the child is gifted and loves math, but not profoundly gifted, then you are faced with choices. One choice would be to send the child to a Gifted/Talented Program run by one of the universities active in this - Johns Hopkins University, Duke University and the Northwestern University. These and other choices are listed in the web links given below. If your child is highly gifted and is in high school, there are several good programs for high school students. You can find them at Yahoo's gifted summer program listings.