Raising Boys

That math contest again February 12, 2007

My 8-year-old son Dylan hates Math contests or he hates the intense reviews that accompany them and complains at how he has the bad luck of again being chosen to represent the second grade in the competition.

The dislike probably stems from that time in first grade when he was among three pupils picked as contestants for the Math Teachers Association of the Philippines (MTAP) contest and had to cram for the elimination exams.

They reviewed like crazy for two days–from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., it was enough to make a 7-year-old cry. One of the contestants, not my son, did cry, probably because he looked out the window while solving around a hundred review problems and saw that it was getting very dark.

He was eliminated during the eliminations and it was my son and another classmate who qualified for the yearly math contest that pits contestants from some 20 public and private schools in the Lapu-Lapu City division. My son and his fellow contestant for first grade placed second during the contest proper.

This year was even worse, my son and his two other teammates reviewed for an hour a day before the elimination exams. Since I accompanied my son to the elimination tests, I was even more nervous than he was. Hearing from parents of other schools that their kids reviewed for the competition since June last year doesn’t help any. Can you imagine competing with dedication like that?

Fortunately, the second grade did not do too bad. My son scored 39 points out of 50, and his was the highest score among second grade participants. They placed second in the ranking, though, because his teammate’s score was only 27 points and pulled down the total score for their school to 66. The Lapu-Lapu City Central School contestants placed first because although their scores were lower than my son’s, these did not go below 30.

The rule during the elimination contest was to get the two highest scores from the three participants for each school, add these, and the sum represents the score for that team.

I told my son that he was definitely better than the contestants from city central because he scored higher when they had been reviewing since June and he had only an hour to do it before he took the test. Since only one of two contestants from each school gets to compute during the competition proper, I told him they really have a big chance of placing first if he just remains calm and not mangle his numbers when writing them as answers. My son has really bad penmanship and I have to remind him everyday to make an effort to straighten out his writing so this could be understood.

He nods to everything I tell him but I’ll know for sure if he took my advise to heart on February 26, the date of the competition.