advice on teaching Calculus to my son

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I did great in math until I got to calculus. The math seems made up to me. Calculus is nothing like algebra, geometry or trig with very strict easy to follow rules. Calculus seems to be more of an art form than a fact with a clear process and correct answer. I even asked another student to explain it to me and he couldn't tell me how he got his answers it's like they came to him by magic or something. This was the part I kept missing in class how you magically come up with the correct answers.

One criticism I've encountered of American math education that instead of trying to cover a few topics in reasonable depth, they concentrate on covering many topics but to a very shallow level.

Another criticism is that we try to treat everyone exactly the same. It is somehow unfair to group students into classes by their abilities.

When I was in school we had 60 students, more or less, in my grade for all twelve years. What I didn't realize until it became quite obvious in junior high was that the three classes were grouped by ability from second or third grade through eighth grade. The top third was in one classroom, the middle third in another classroom, and the bottom third in yet another classroom. The teachers were able to teach the classes according to the abilities in that classroom. Each class progressed at different rates and to different degrees of mastery of each subject.

By just randomly assigning students to one of three classrooms, the teachers end up having to teach all classes with instruction geared toward the worst students in the grade. The smarter the student, the less there is to interest them in the class.

In high school we ended up getting mixed together to a degree, but there was some differentiation based on the fact that different people were attracted to different courses. Being a small school, we didn't have a great number of different courses, but maybe a third of us took geometry and chemistry and only a tenth of us took physics.

eric76, I totally agree with you that in the US we cover many topics but at a shallow depth. That is absolutely true, and it drives me crazy.

I do think that calculus is an art form. Oddly enough, the past couple of days DS is doing better… I have no idea why...

He could've gotten to a topic that's easier for him. Or he could have gotten interested. Or maybe he's just had enough time to heal from that seizure and he's starting to get his concentration back.

Just don't let him push himself too hard! It's like an athlete with a sprain, just barely recovered, wanting to go back on the field and play hard again. His coach might have to tell him, "Hey! If you don't slow down, you're just going to hurt it again, and then you'll miss half the season!"

You are right, Callista. I do need to make sure that he doesn't work too hard. I think it was stress and lack of sleep that brought on the seizure in the first place. Lucky for us, we had planned a vacation for the entire week of Thanksgiving, which will give him a chance to rest (at a time when his meds will increase, which will also increase his cloudy cognition). We've tried to make it so that he won't have much school to do during that time, and he will be with his siblings, who will force him to relax.

From a students point of view, I'm a big fan of using tutors to help with homework over parents, for me as a kid it really cut a lot of stress.